UK Driver Jailed After “My EV Went Crazy!” Scam

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On March 6, 2024, Nathan Owen, a resident of the UK, phoned police and told them his Jaguar I-Pace electric car had gone berserk on a motorway in Merseyside, a seaside area that includes the city of Liverpool. He told the police his car had suddenly accelerated and he could not control it. To make matters worse, the brakes were unable to restrain the wildly rampaging Jaguar, according to a report by The Guardian.

The police responded by closing off the M58, M57, and M62 motorways in Merseyside so the runaway I-Pace would not endanger other motorists. Then they surrounded Owen’s car with police vehicles to keep it from running into bridge abutments and other hard objects that might cause injury to the driver. This went on for more than half an hour at speeds up to 86 mph while the panicky driver fought to control the unruly beast. During that time, Owen’s car collided with police vehicles a total of 33 times. Eventually, the car’s battery became depleted and the I-Pace rolled peacefully to a stop. In the video taken by authorities, then and only then did the car’s brake lights come on. Hmmm….

Hoist On His Own Petard

Nathan Owen’s claim that the car became uncontrollable was undone by digital technology. Jaguar, naturally, examined the car thoroughly after the incident and found it was working perfectly (once the battery was energized a bit). Digital time stamps from the car and at the police emergency call center showed the car was stationary with the brake pedal depressed when Owen placed his first call for help. It was only after the call ended that the car started driving on the motorway. The brake pedal was never depressed at any time during the 35 minute high-speed rodeo. Double hmmm….

Upon subsequent investigation, authorities determined that Owen was heavily in debt and had missed several car loan payments. On the day of the incident and just 5 minutes before he first called for help, he had used his phone to request a loan to help him crawl out from under the mountain of debt he was under, but was turned down. He owed about £5,000 on the Jaguar.

According to the BBC, during the initial call for help, Owen told the call handler: “I don’t know how to explain … my car’s not stopping, my car’s stuck at 78 mph and I’m going down the motorway.” He said it had happened in the past when the car had gone “over 100” miles per hour and he warned the call handler “I’m coming to a massive bend on the motorway. I’m really shaking.” Text messages retrieved from his phone after the incident showed he had discussed how to get rid of the vehicle, possibly by getting it written off, in the months before the reported incident.

Frighteningly Stupid

Daniel Travers, the barrister defending Owen, had very little to offer in his defense, so he told the court his client’s plan was “frighteningly stupid for a man ostensibly reasonably well educated and intelligent.” He added that Owen, who had no previous convictions and came from a “successful, stable family,” had been described by his father as a Walter Mitty character who “lives in a fantasy world.” How that was intended to help young Mister Owen is unclear.

The prosecutor told the court that Owen sold his story to the Sun and the Daily Mail newspapers, describing his “terror ride” and “35 minutes in hell.” He told the Daily Mail, “I felt like a criminal like in a big police chase, that’s how it felt. It felt like Grand Theft Auto.” He was paid a total of £800 by the newspapers for his “story.”

For its part, Jaguar was none too pleased with the result of Owen’s antics. It told the court it spent £50 million in marketing costs to try to counter the publicity from the false allegations, which they said generated 180 pieces of adverse media coverage. The judge was also unimpressed. He sentenced Owen to prison for 4 years and 3 months. In addition, he barred the defendant from driving for a five-year period after his release, and then only after he passes an advanced driving test.

At the sentencing, the judge said, “You set in train a course of conduct which caused a significant police traffic operation to be deployed, undoubted alarm to the public and very substantial loss and disruption to others.” The judge said police officers placed themselves in danger because they believed they were dealing with a genuine emergency. He added: “You, meanwhile, sought to profit from a lie.”

Is there a takeaway from this story? Not for Nathan Owen perhaps, but there may be a larger point to be made about humans and digital technology. To a certain extent, we are trapped by electronic sensors that record our every word, our every movement. They know who we have spoken to and when. They know every time we step on the accelerator or brake pedal and by how much. We have willingly built ourselves a digital prison in which our every action is recorded and preserved for later inspection.

Jerry Bentham and his Panopticon was deemed too extreme when it was proposed in the 18th century, but it is child’s play compared to the digital surveillance ecosystem we have willingly submitted ourselves to today. Nathan Owen’s story may not seem relevant to you, but it has a message for everyone. Ask not who today’s systems monitor, they monitor us all.