[moocow01]

"after some time, loses enough social credit that the government decides to deprive him of the ability to use his car"

I know its easy to mentally walk down the dystopian road on this, but hasn't this always been the case? The only thing new is these policies are now getting codified using technology as society embraces it. Even from an apolitical stance, we as a modern society have always had mechanisms to take away a person's driving ability and car based upon a number of benchmarks based upon social behaviors.

[inglor_cz]

The mechanisms were there, but ease of deployment mattered.

To compare things: you could publish a book in 1970 and you can publish a book now, but the process back then, with no text processors and digital printers, was much more complicated. To use an expression of von Clausewitz: "there was more friction".

A digital system that limits driving ability of individuals is much more scalable and also fine-tunable than its old alternative. For example, the government has many more intermediate options. It can choose to limit your driving ability to 10 miles a day only, then proceed to 5 miles a day only (unless you clean up your act, of course), or ban you just for 24 hours or a week.

These smaller, graded punishments would be impractical if they had to be enforced by human officers, but are perfectly feasible with remote control.

[moocow01]

I actually share you're hesitancies but to play devil's advocate could these more fine-grained mediations lead to better policies in scenario's where those in control work for the greater good? Things that come to mind are reasonable speed restrictions on a driver caught going 50mph over the limit rather than an outright revoke of license or auto-detection of dangerous driving behaviors that could be punished with micro-fines. Maybe some would see those as a dystopia but it seems like you could utilize these to improve driving behavior as a society and decrease the need for overly harsh punishment.