The Trump administration announced Thursday noon-ish a complete end to automatic start-stop in our cars. This is a mistake IMO, and it’s a sad example of a nominally conservative administration turning toward nanny-state-ism.

It’s certainly true that many of us American drivers don’t like the technology and wish it gone. It’s also certainly true, though, that many of us American drivers do very much like the technology. Count me in the latter group.

With my 2023 model Ford Escape, I get much improved mileage in city driving when my car’s engine shuts off while sitting at a red light waiting for it to go back to green. My car does this utterly reliably and with no discernable wear and tear on the car’s starter or on the car’s engine-start battery—even in the Texas summer heat or the (surprisingly ugly) Texas winter cold. Only my battery’s aging OEM status interferes with the function: my car complains of not enough charge to support start-stop. Which is to be expected for a car that’s parked on the street in the Texas sun.

There is an easy solution to this one-size-fits-all disconnect among us Americans over start-stop. Taking my Escape as an example, I have a button on the panel just in front of my center console that turns off the start-stop function, but that only lasts until I arrive at my destination and shut everything down. When next I start my Escape, which involves much more than just turning the engine on, the car’s automatic start-stop function is itself restarted.

It would be a simple, one-line coding effort to turn that start-stop button into a toggle: push it once, and the function is turned off, and stays off even after a complete shutdown and restart of the car. After starting the car anew, pushing the button again would toggle the start-stop function back on, to remain on through successive car shut downs and restarts until the button is toggled again. Let the car come from the dealer with the function defaulted to Off; those of us who like the function are fully capable of turning it on with that button push and then leaving it on.

Another option, albeit much more expensive, would be to make start-stop an option for car buyers to purchase as an add-on when they buy their car.

Either of these would let those of us who do not want the start-stop function to not have it working, and those of us who do to have it; even if one of them would more expensive for car buyers to buy and more expensive for car makers to make.

In either case, though, both groups of us American drivers would do fine without the nanny state dictating our choices.