They sold the hard brake and called it safety. I know the sentence. It is what a car company says when it wires a dashboard to count every time you stomp the pedal, every burst of speed, every trip with the belt unbuckled, sells the count to a broker who sells it to the company that insures you, and then — when you try to say no at the dealership — tells you the safety features might stop working if you do.
On Friday, October 16, 2026, Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen sued General Motors and its subsidiary OnStar in Lewis and Clark County under Montana’s Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Act. The state’s announcement lays out the allegation in order. GM and OnStar enrolled customers in a service that collected their driving data and then sold it to data brokers without their consent; the brokers, in turn, sold it to insurance carriers that used it to increase customers’ rates. The data included vehicle speed, seatbelt buckle status, when a hard brake occurs, “and dozens of other driving data points.” At the dealership, the complaint says, buyers and lessees went through an aggressive onboarding process that appeared to be required before taking ownership; GM presented more than 50 pages of disclosures on its OnStar products, and “it was never stated that GM would sell any of the driving data it collected.” GM also incentivized dealership employees, “often through commissions,” to enroll customers, which the state says likely enrolled many people without their knowledge. Customers who tried to decline were shown, the state alleges, misleading warnings that several of the vehicle’s safety features would be deactivated. The complaint’s own line: “GM turned a perennial symbol of American freedom and autonomy—the automobile—into Big Brother on wheels.” Bloomberg Law’s Cassandre Coyer reports the complaint says GM collected and sold data from over 14 million vehicles nationwide, generating millions in revenue, and that insurers used it to raise rates and deny coverage; the complaint did not say how many Montanans were affected. Montana wants a permanent injunction, civil fines, and an order to delete and destroy all of the driving data, including copies held by third parties. None of this has been adjudicated. GM’s answer was not in the filings or coverage I could read; when it comes, it goes in the notebook. The background is not new. On January 14, 2026, the Federal Trade Commission finalized an order — first announced in January 2025 — over what it called a misleading enrollment process for OnStar and its Smart Driver feature. It bans GM from disclosing geolocation and driver-behavior data to consumer reporting agencies for five years, and for twenty years requires affirmative express consent, with some exceptions, before connected-vehicle data is collected, used or shared. The Commission voted 2-0; the FTC’s release called the five-year ban appropriate given “GM’s egregious betrayal of consumers’ trust.” As 111things notes, in that federal matter the companies neither admitted nor denied the allegations.
Deb filed “safety features may be deactivated” under “things a salesman says before he finds the commission.” Joey drew the dashboard on a pizza box and every gauge pointed at the insurer. UCraig wants to know if his rain barrel reports his hard brakes. I love them. They are seasoning.
Safety is the alibi. The hard brake is the story. Sit with the 14 million vehicles until they confess. The anti-capitalist cut is not subtle here: the car was sold once, to you, and then sold again, a little at a time, every time you drove it — the product was never the vehicle, it was the driver, metered and resold at a margin to the one company with a reason to charge you more. A fifty-page disclosure that never says the word sold is not a disclosure; it is a weight. A commission paid to the man filling out your onboarding is not a consent process; it is a sales funnel with a pen. And a warning that your safety features might switch off if you decline is the oldest trick in the showroom wearing a seatbelt. I will not crown the state either. An attorney general with a press release and a good line about Big Brother is still a stamp, and the federal stamp already let them neither admit nor deny and walk out with a twenty-year consent order. The state did not invent the brake data. The cardigan stays — it has no sensors, which at this point feels like a luxury feature. Fill the notebook. Then ask, out loud, whose car it is when the dealer is paid to enroll you, the broker is paid to resell you, and the insurer is paid to read your brake pedal back to you as a rate.
Sources: Montana Department of Justice, “Attorney General Knudsen sues GM over deceptive data collection practices,” Oct. 16, 2026; Bloomberg Law, Cassandre Coyer, “Montana Sues General Motors Over Sale of Drivers’ Data,” Oct. 16, 2026; 111things Interactive News, “Montana sues GM over alleged insurance use of driver data,” Oct. 18, 2026; Federal Trade Commission, “FTC Finalizes Order Settling Allegations that GM and OnStar Collected and Sold Geolocation Data Without Consumers’ Informed Consent,” Jan. 14, 2026.
— Theo Ashford-Lindström
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