ABSTRACT
Ford’s February 2023 patent application raises a new possibility: that after a default, an internet-connected vehicle might autonomously drive itself off of the owner’s premises – to a public space, to the repossession agency, or even to a junkyard. But while this ‘remote repossession’ would minimize the risks of harm that attend in-person repossessions, it creates at least three new risks. First, a danger of bodily injury and property damage to the owner. Second, an increased likelihood of physical harm to a third-party with no obviously responsible entity. And third, most invisibly but also perhaps most importantly: further erosion of consumers’ current structural rights – which might include a right against intrusions, a right to a certain amount of due process and human engagement before a repossession, and a right to be free from foreseeable harms associated with corporate remote interference.
I employ a ‘techlaw methodology’ to explore what legal changes would better protect us – as potential defaulting owners, as possibly harmed third-parties, and as consumers who must increasingly rely on corporations to take reasonable care when engaging in digital self-help.
Crootof, Rebecca, Remote Repossession (December 22, 2023), DePaul Law Review, volume 73, forthcoming 2024.
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