Slashdot Mirror
UK Satellites May Keep Cars From Speeding
Stiletto writes "According to this article, the British government is planning on forcing automobile manufacturers to install devices that allow satellites to monitor the vehicle's speed and control it when it is moving 'too fast.'" I suspect that any U.S. politician who tried to push through something like this would be out of office immediately. I can't speak for U.K. residents, but I bet it's the same there. Does anyone think *any* government could really get away with this?
The Australian government could probably get away with it ;) Hopefully the brits won't, though.
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
What if there's an instance where a driver has to speed, such as to avoid an accident or rush to a hospital? Think about it, this is pretty terrifying to me...
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Oscarfish.com: tropical fish with attitude. Way t
and make them work at shutting you down, unless this dohickey attaches to your fuel line.
It sounds pretty expensive too, a GPS and a detailed map of the country's roads. In the US, 65 miles per hour is legal on most rural expressways, 55 on others, 75 or more in Montana, 30 on city streets, etc.
Yuck,
George
And i suppose that the satelite system would run on a MS server. When it finally crashed and every car in the UK was disabled, tech support would tell the motorists to close their windows and try again?
--BlueLines "The cost of living hasn't affected it's popularity." -anonymous
The issue here isn't speeding, it's monitoring. Technology must not be used to limit our freedoms, and we have to fight this everywhere we can as hard as we possibly can. If they can monitor your car to see how fast you're going, they can obviously monitor you to see where you are.
Governmental tracking systems cannot be allowed under any circumstances. Let's hope our bretheren in the UK are up to the fight.
I already see a bunch of "speeding saved my life" arguments cropping up here.
People, these arguments play right into Big Brother's hands. They can be easily countered with an argument based on increased hospital coverage (so there's always one closer to you), override switches that 911 operators can throw, etc.
No, resistance must be founded on fundamental human rights. i.e. Is it right that the government have the power to remotely control us? NO!. End of story.
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(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
I heard this morning on a local radio station that the local government in the Chatham-Kent region of Ontario, Canada is writing another letter to protest the deadly 401 (major highway) accident that happened in early September, and to make sure the Ontario Government implements Photo Radar along the entire stretch of highway. I don't like this idea one bit, even though it might save lives.
I don't like it because it won't have enough of a leighway as police officers do. If I was going 112 km. in a 100km zone, most police officers would laugh at how slow I was going.. 100km is just too slow for most drivers, and if you don't plan to be ran off the road for driving too slow, you have to go over the speed limit. The police do not stop people for doing 120km sometimes, let alone 112km.
Getting back to what I was saying, the leighway is different. I'm assuming that this "photo radar" or even this satellite in the UK will have a certain setting where "if this driver is over the speed limit, ticket him". Ok, that makes no sense, it's going to be ticketing about 300 out of 310 drivers that pass through the area at an increased speed. This is not my idea of getting people to slow down.. it's the actual pull-over from the police that scares most people to not do it again. It's embarassing, that's what it is.
I'm not saying that trying to slow people down and consequentley save lives is a bad thing, I'm just saying that satellites, or photo radar, will ever take the place of a good, old-fashioned police officer with lights and sirens.
Looking up to the sky,
Matthew
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sortakinda.ca | canadian paraphrasing.
£200 to install the device?? That would double the value of *my* car - and that's with a full tank of petrol too...
Wossit do when the car can't see a satellite anyway? like in a tunnel, or under trees? Or if the antenna breaks off (by accident of course).
And anyway, the sensible way to build something like that would be to have the car sense speed limits from roadside transmitters. Sounds like someone with a mountain of GPS receivers had a hand in suggesting this...
SteveB.
If this passes I could see some of the headlines hitting the papers...
Man Shot to death because Satellites would not let him speed away from Car Jackers...
Here is what will happen...
CarJacker: Hey Gimme your car...
BritishGuy: No... Its my CAR!
[the BritishGuy speeds away]
CarJacker: Bloody hell...
{the CarJacker jumps into his accomplices car]
BritishGuy: CRIMENY! This bloody contraption won't let me go over 60Kilometers/hour! Oh no he's catching up!
CarJacker: Thank god we got that speed thingy removed from our car... lets shoot that guy and take is car.
[you know the rest of the story]
This measure is taking road safety a little too far. I know that it will be welcome to many who have lost their nearest and dearest on the roads - as someone whose sister was seriously injured in an accident, I speak from experience - but at the same time, it is worryingly limiting on people's independence. There are times at which it is necessary to break speed limits, and as the RAC spokesman said, it might also create a dangerous tendency for people to drive at the limit when it would be unsafe to do so. Also, who is going to fork out £200 per car? If the government made it obligatory, it might well be the taxpayer. I'd also be interested to see how they expect to justify that statistic about removing 2/3 of serious accidents. --
"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist." Salman Rushdie
I dunno, maybe I'm getting too old, what with having kids and an MPV and all ... but, I'd be well happy to have a device that automatically set my cruise control to whatever the current stupid speed limit is. I just want to get to where I'm going and not have to pay speeding fines.
... but probably it won't and we're all heading for an Orwellian nightmare etc. Oh dear oh dear.
And I'm also of the boring opinion that people that drive at multiples of the limit are a danger to themselves and others (and more importantly me) and it would be rather a Good Idea if they could be stopped..
Now this UK satelite thing looks like it could be turned into what I want
Meanwhile, I recall an Arthur C.Clarke story where it was illegal to drive a manually controlled car - only computer controlled/coordinated vehicles were allowed. Does that make the paranoid faction amongst the Slashdot crowd any happier about accepting this development?
Regards, Ralph.
While conceivably each car could be fitted with an intelligent box that reports car speed to the satellite, I find it unlikely. They are far more likely to use a 'dumb' box that merely reports car position, and relies on the downlink systems to deal with the computations. Add a unique interrogative ID to the unit, and the British government can track your automotive whereabouts 24/7/365. So they get a tool to monitor the populous and maintain an often incorrect 'speed limit'. They've got cameras on street corners, and this is next?
Offtopic, but.. In such a system, what would be the 'British' way of dealing with long-term interruption of upstream service? Shut the car down? Just ignore the fact it cannot be 'monitored'? Also, I find it difficult to believe that anyone could easily refit many of the older cars..
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It seems pretty clear to me that it would violate our 4th, 5th, and 14th amendment rights....
But what also does seem overwhelmingly clear to me is that our friends on the other side of the Atlantic are increasingly in need of a written (rather than the gentleman's agreement they have now) constitution.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
MOO;IANAL.
There used to be a picture linked here.
I'd have thought by this day and age we'd all be air-commuting everywhere at well over the 20-30 mph that you feel lucky to hit on the interstate during rush hour. Will this system also address people doing less than the minimum speed limit. It'd be funny if you were FORCED to maintain 45mph on the interstate no matter what the conditions.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
When Mt. St. Helens erupted there were 2 cars fleeing the area. one was going 90+ mph and was found in the middle of the road squashed by a tree covered in ash, occupents dead. How do we know it was going 90+? Well the car that passed it going 110+ that just made it out of the blast zone.
Why do I bring this up. Well at the time the highway speed in the USA was 55mph. I know on average many more lives would be saved every day if everyone had to follow the speed limit (and the laws of physics). But we need to educate people not put spies in there cars. I will let others rant....(they do it better than I)
Many trucks in Europe are already equipped with (mechanical) reocrding devices that record speed and some other details. These have been used for checking not only speed, but various working-time limits (how many hours did he drive after how little sleep?). There are also some gps-based monitoring things that allow the *owner* of the truck to monitor where the truck (and its driver) is. Some Taxis also have this sort of equipment. I don't see these coming to private cars (yet), but monitoring trucks seems to be quite well accepted. - Heikki, posting from Denmark, not UK.
In Murphy We Turst
Everyone with those 'smart tag' or 'speed pass' transponders in their cars can easily be tracked in the US today. Its a simple mathematical calculation to track you. Lets see, if the speed limit on the toll road you are on is 65 mph and each time you enter and exit the toll road a time stamp is recorded on your account... This isn't rocket science...
The major cost of a navigation system today isn't the computer or the map but the LCD display. Eliminate that and you have a box that you could sell in massive quantities for $200-$400 US. We charge about $150 for the map data CD for a country, but if we knew we were getting a bunch of sales something could probably be done there, too.
This is another intervention of the government into private lives of citizens through the use of technology. While it probably won't kill anyone if it gets done, it certainly doesn't improve anyone's freedom either.
It is much safer for everyone if we have no freedom and the government controls everthing. I think I am willing to give up a little safety (or the perception of it) for some freedom. How about you?
More to the point, what happens when the speed limiter kicks in when a driver mis-judges the available time to pass on a 2-lane road, and cannot get ahead in time to pull in? This leads to one of:
- A head-on with the oncoming traffic.
- A side-swipe with the traffic being passed.
- A dive for the ditch, maybe colliding with trees or stones or a rollover.
- Emergency braking by traffic on one or both sides of the road, leading to possible rear-end collisions.
This proposal is bone-headed in the extreme; perhaps it should be added to the cars of chronic lame drivers (along with reaction-time testers to stop them from driving while drunk/exhausted), but it would create at least as many problems as it solved for the masses. In this it reminds me of the flight-control system on the A320 which was directly responsible for the crash at the Paris Air Show some years back; because it was in "landing mode" it refused the pilot's command to throttle the engines up, and because it had inadequate power it refused the pilot's pitch-up force on the stick. Result: aircraft flew into a hill. Cause: Design of control software required pilot to press a "go around" button to get the aircraft to do what it was commanded to do. My analysis: It is dangerous and stupid to require persons who are operating vehicles to play games of "Simon Says" with some unthinking control system.--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Wouldn't it be easier to simply make auto-manufacturers build cars that do not exceed 120km/hr or have that as a cutoff speed when being sold in Britain (i.e. a configurable maximum speed)...as oppposed to this expensive sounding satellite crap that will probably be circumvented as quickly as it comes out.
PS: I am totally against the concept of an eye in the sky controlling my car, but still this is a collosal waste of taxpayer's money simply to satisfy some politicians infatuation with technology.
I'm not sure about the UK, but in the US, speeding tickets are a very large source of revenue. Some little towns in the US use this as their primary source of revenue, and I think it is unlikely an politician would support a measure that would cut a large amount of money out of the budget, as well as causing very many pissed of people.
Let's get one thing straight: Speed limits have nothing to do with saving lives, and everything to do with money.
Money to the police departments and local governments, which speeders (who are law-abiding citizens) are more likely to hand over than some hardend criminal. Think of it from the police's point of view: Why go after murderers and rapists? You put em in jail, and even if you fine them you don't think they will acutally be able to pay their 500,000USD fine? On the other hand your average Jane or Joe is scared of the police dragging them away if they don't pay their fine, so they are more than happy to shell out $100 or more to the cop's coffers.
Insurance companies have a hand in this money pot too. Car wrecks cost insurance companies a lot of money, and if they can avoid paying this (doesn't matter if its done by taking away the rights of motorists) then they are all for it. Speed limits are an easy way to increase the profits of insurance companies, so they can have their way with you two ways: 1. by preventing them from having to pay up (you were over the limit, pal) and 2. by allowing them to jack up people's premiums after they recieve tickets (you're an unsave driver, buddy).
The whole system is corrupt to the core, and in the end has nothing to do with safety or saving lives. How many times (those in the US) have you seen a four lane highway with a speed limit of 45 miles per hour? Safety, my rear end! These are speed traps, designed to empty your wallet and create an atmosphere where the public fears the police.
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yeah... I Modchiped my GPS transmitter so I can recieve Japanese signals... HONEST!
There are speed cameras mounted -everywhere-. Country lanes, suburban roads, motorways, etc. These automatically transmit the licence plate to a central computer, which prints & mails off the speeding ticket to the owner of the car.
There are -other- surveilance cameras, primarily around London, which monitor cars. If you enter London by car, expect to have your entire criminal record in the hands of the police, along with details of your car, plus your exact location in London. If you're the -least- bit suspicious, they'll probably check you out.
This is a far cry from some of the more interesting traffic control measures that have been tried in England, such as cardboard cut-outs of police cars, in strategically-located places, where drivers can't tell if it's real or not. It's worked very well, in the past, without infringing on anyone's rights and without costing the taxpayer an arm and a leg.
"Sleeping Policemen" (speed bumps to Americans) and cobblestone roads are other popular measures. (Cobblestones are marginally less popular, as they are more expensive and tend to get stern words from disabled & pensioner groups.)
But, it doesn't surprise me that they now want to go over to a full satelite system. Not that I'm going to blame the Government for this. That's unfair. Decisions are made by the Sir Humphrey Appleby's of the world. In short, by the Civil Service, not the Government.
(The Civil Service is an unelected body of politically neutral people who enact the wishes of the elected Government. Or so they say. In reality, they really run the country and the politicians are simply targets for the media to throw the rotten eggs at.)
Will this get through? The House of Lords is all but phased out, so there is no second house which can oppose the Government. (The reason the House of Lords has been killed off is that it kept opposing measures which would destroy democracy and freedom. That it was unelected gave it the freedom -to- be "controversial", rather than tow the line.)
IMHO, that leaves the only other unelected body that has much influence, and even that's on the wane - the Masons. In England, the Masons are an ultra-secret organisation, with considerable power and influence over everything. It's rare that you ever hear about them doing anything directly, though. Probably because that would destroy their carefully-preserved secrecy. However, this is the sort of thing that I can see the Masons taking an interest in, as it would seriously affect them. (Not just with respect to speeding, but the ability to monitor every car in England. It's harder to keep secrets when the Government knows where you are, at all times.)
This isn't going to inspire the all-out rebellion that the Poll Tax did, or generate the intense questioning that followed the Falklands War and the "mysterious" sinking of the General Belgrano.
If Britain is going to remain a free country, in any meaningful sense, it's going to have to rely on the whims of some senile old men and a mysterious, half-mythical super-secret organisation, all of whom the general public have been pelting rocks at for ages. I don't expect them to have much sympathy for their persecuters, now that the Government is pelting rocks of their own, but they -are- Britain's last best hope at remaining a democracy.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The bigger problem is that as technology improves, of course, it will be possible to monitor us in more and more ways -- possibly even to lock us down or punish us without proof. And as society ebbs and flows, you can bet that at one time or another the public sentiment wil favor this sort of government control, and that once put in place the controls will not be voted out or removed. It's important to be against these things every time, *in principle*, or we are inevitably doomed to a sort of pseudo-fascism whereby "the people" control most of what we do, say, or even think.
I suspect that this is just the government's new attempt at reducing the number of cars on the road. Sounds like politics in action. Rather than spend more money on building the road infrastructure, they'll spend it on technology in any form. OK, so you now have cars going the "speed limit" on the highway or about 15% slower than they usually do. Now this fixed number of cars traveling to work take 15% longer to get there on the same highway. 15% more congestion, until the density reaches a critical level, where people start stopping and jamming up traffic. Then the accidents happen.
Speed limit enforcement is essentially a cop-out for those hard-to-prove things which, in reality, play a much larger role in causing traffic problems. For instance, tailgating causes more accidents than going 10 MPH over the limit on the interstate, but you almost never hear about someone getting a ticket for tailgating. Why? Because it's hard to prove -- there's no radar, just the officer's word for it.
Here's a list of other traffic infractions which the police should *really* pay attention to:
Reckless Driving: Unfortunately, this means "pissing off the cop" in my town -- the police tack it on when someone ticks them off, not for any particular driving behavior. Still, actual erratic driving causes accidents and should be policed.
Inattentive Driving: This is another one the cops add in when they're pissed. It deserves to be enforced properly, however. I can't count how many times I've seen idiots rooting for CDs or even *reading* while driving. Again, tell me that this isn't as bad as doing 10 MPH over the posted limit. As a special highlight to this, I'd point out that cell phone morons ought to be especially watched for. I mean, studies show that using a cell phone while driving causes as many accidents as OUI, but for some bizarre reason they're not regulated.
Not Signaling: I hate it when people don't use their blinkers. Older drivers (above 40) seem to be especially prone to doing this. As much as I advocate being unpredictable and spontanious in life, I'd suggest not doing so on the interstate.
Going too far under the limit: Just yesterday I was in a 55 zone (yes, I was doing 60) and almost struck a granny who was alternating between 30-35 MPH. I came up over a hill and there she was, practically standing still in her lane. People might *think* they're being safe by going under the limit, but if they go that far under they're actually a much larger hazard.
Old People: I'm not one of those pricks who thinks that drivers licenses should be revoked on your 70th birthday, but I do believe that some older people lose the ability to drive safely as they get older due to medical conditions. There ought to be a graduated system to make the roads safer for the rest of us -- for example, if a person can't pass a night vision test every five years, they ought to be prohibited from driving at night. This doesn't seem cruel and unusual to me; it seems like common sense.
I'm not saying that speed enforcement isn't an element of safety, I'm just saying that it doesn't deserve attention at the expense of other infractions (which are routinely ignored today). If the police and legislators were really interested in protecting drivers from accidents, these are the laws which would be enforced. Simple-minded speed limit enforcement is just a cop-out. Anyone have any additions?
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
That is exactly how the system is described in the article. The system that throttles the speed is in the car. The only thing that is "satellite-controlled" is the GPS, the government couldn't remotely control your car.
I still think it sucks, though.
Can't wait for somebody to hack the satellite, and make all the cars go 500 kph.
There's no need to install any new gadgets and satellites. There's already a system that can be used to monitor car speeds, surveillance etc. About 2/3 of Finns carry it voluntarily; it's the cell phone.
The cell phone communicates constantly with the GSM network. Even if you don't speak, it tells the network where you are and tries to find a better connection. Now you only have to monitor how fast a cell phone travels from point A to point B and you can count the average speed of the car.
Cell phones are also a great way of monitoring where people are. Many criminals are already caught because they were carrying their phones at the place of the crime. "Hmm, so you were at home all asleep while your cell phone travelled 200 km?"
The big brother is watching :-)
And does it actually work? Does it result in a happier, quicker and safer journey from A to B by everyone (not just the taxis)?
Me, I refuse to have anything that even risks cutting off the fuel supply. If you've ever so much as stalled on a motorway, let alone had a blowout or engine failure, you'll know it's not fun.
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
The cellphone is a good example. Does the Government make you own a cellphone? Are they forcing the tracking capability of that cellphone on you? And what safeguards would be in place to ensure the Government didn't get their hands on the telemetry sent back by your in car transponder? In the case of the cellphone, a warrant (at least here in the US) is needed for them to even try radiotriangulation. Would the transponders just be handing telemetry from millions of possible 'suspects' off to the nearest constable, or would there be a reasonable 'check' in place?
.sig: Now legally binding!
I don't understand the obsession governments have with regulating the speed of everybody's cars. If I am a good driver, why can't I go 80 miles per hour on an interstate? Of course I realize the need to keep everyone from zooming around school zones and residential neighborhoods, but do these people have any clue how *slow* 20 mph is, especially when you're slowing down from 40 or 50?
And what about the utter hypocrisy of speed limits? I've never seen a cop on the road who obeyed the speed limit, whatever it may have been. Local, County, State cops. All of them speed whenever they want and then park their cars on the median, pull out the lidar, and nab anybody doing 62 in a 55. What I love is the signs all over the LIE that say "State Speed Limit: 55" but then when I went up the NYS Thruway a couple of years ago, there were signs that read: "Speed Limit: 65." So the absolute maximum speed limit for the state is 55, unless it's not.
I think the driver's test should be modified to include some highway driving -- I don't think everybody is a good high-speed driver -- and the speed limit should be raised to 70 nationwide. Also, something has got to be done about the fines levied upon these heartless criminals who dare use their automobiles to their full potential. For example, When I came home from college this past September, I was stopped on I-95 in Connecticut in my mom's Volvo station wagon (loaded to the brim with bike, refrigerator, clothes, lamps, desktop computer, 17 inch monitor, tv, etc.). The officer said I was doing 77 (speed limit was 65). I tried explaining that I didn't think the car would go that fast, but he wrote the ticket anyway. I didn't look at it until I got home (Queens now) but when I did I was shocked. The officer was allowed to make up any fine he wanted, and he gave me a single ticket for $239. For going 77 in a 65, on an interstate. Well, I hit the roof, but I had to pay it.
The nation-wide, and, it seems, world-wide crackdown on speeders seems to me nothing more than government-sanctioned extortion. This, coupled with the hypocrisy of the police who so selectively enforce these laws, demonstrates the need for change. I don't really know what can change or be changed, I only know something must.
(I have nothing against police, mind you, I just think it's wrong for them to charge whatever they want of us [well, me, really] for a "crime" they commit several times a day.)
rooooar
Roblimo asks:
Does anyone think *any* government could really get away with this?
The Japanese, possibly. Think about it, they have terrible traffic problems, a history of strong government regulation on domestic products & imports, and far less of the "right to drive" mentality that Americans and (to a lesser extent) Europeans have.
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Open mind, insert foot.
Most accidents happen DURING THE DAY. DURING RUSH HOUR. Most deadly accidents involve alcohol.
I've got a fantastic idea.. let's put a sprinkler system on the Titanic.
What are they not telling you, that is ALWAYS the issue. Can that stop your car at any time? Can they collect individual's driving data? Can this data be sold, published, or used in a court of law? How can it be used in a court of law.. could someone be implicated in a murder based solely on your car's data?
You're playing a deadly game of British Roulette in my oppinion.
And every Catholic Irishman knows that is he's near an explosion in England, he's guilty. Brits could take a lesson from them now.. A little rebellion now could save a bloody hell later.
Pan
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Automatically ticketting speeders has been tried before in the US and didn't work at all.
Locally (MD), we have red light cameras, which take a picture of cars if they go through (duh!) red lights. They seem pretty widespread. Given how many people are "so nice, they go through lights after me to reassure me I didn't go through the light too late", I'm for it.
Fundamentally, the "rights" people here are missing something: you can drive a car as fast as you want to on YOUR OWN ROAD. Dale Earnhardt can drive 200 MPH at Talledega, no problem. It's just when you drive on publicly-owned roads that you are subject to tighter restrictions. And yes, if the ownership committee for the roads (the Government) decided that you need limiters to use their roads, then by golly, why are they any less entitled to do so any more than the owners of Talledega could impose a 50 MPH limit on their course?
This doesn't address the idea of whether it's a good idea or not, however.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I was making a reference to PlayStation Mod Chipping and how it is legal under the guise you are using it to play japanese games.
The GPS satellites only transmit radio waves that the receivers interpret. They don't know nor care how many are listening.
Exactly what human rights does this violate?
I'm guessing that a lot of the posters here assume that the satellite somehow tracks the position of every car, and the government can watch your movements. That's not the system described in the article: the device in the car gets its location through GPS, and limits the maximum speed accordingly. I don't see any privacy or human rights issues here.
There are a couple of problems: the first is mentioned in the article, the danger that some drivers would just floor it for the duration of the journey and let the machine keep their speed legal (as my driving instructor used to say, it's a limit not a target).
Secondly, although I'd discount the "escape from carjackers, volcanoes etc" arguments, there are many occasions when I feel it is reasonable to exceed the speed limit momentarily. If you're stuck behind a tractor on a windy road, and you're on the only straight for tens of miles, you want to overtake as quickly as possible, to stay on the wrong side of the road for as short a time as possible. When you get back in your lane, then you return to the correct speed limit.
I *would* argue that while vehicles have become safer (better brakes, visibility, etc), the speed limits are still designed for the cars of the 1970s.
Perhaps the most reasonable way to deploy these things would be to make them an option, and to subsidise the cost of purchase (from road tax). If it were cheap enough, I'd certainly consider buying one -- I'd like to stay under 30mph in built up areas, but frankly it's a challenge. It just seems to slow.
One more thing. My car, and most I've driven, like to be in third gear at 30 MPH, and fourth gear at about 40MPH and higher. Most cars in the UK have a manual gearbox -- I can't see this device being safe unless it works in conjunction with an automatic gearbox... Hmmmm.
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Traffic slowness occurs because perope are trying to cut people off and are generall driving poorly, not because they can't drive fast enough. Haven't you ever been in your car and wished that everyone would just drive 60 together.
Sounds nice, but I have seen people cutting each other off happens at the exit and entrance ramps, not in the fast lanes. Tightly regulating the speed limit would not help those lanes that have to deal with people moving on and off the highway. There still is a problem of following distances and people slowing down to accomodate the newer traffic. I see accidents in these lanes, by slower moving cars, due to these problems.
I have seen two fatal accidents in my life. One may have been caused by the beer cans and empty cases of beer that littered the scene where the convertible ramped the ditch, ejecting the three unbelted occupants from their seats. Just because it was a red convertible, does not mean it was speeding. Scene was about 10 years ago on Noland Road in Independence, Missouri.
The second, recently, apparently was caused by someone who no longer was aware of other cars on the highway. The other cars swerved out of the way, allowing the car to continue into the guardrail, where it flipped not once, but twice before landing into the ditch. Emergency vehicles took 15 to 20 minutes to arrive. This was in Eastern Missouri last thanksgiving day.
Anyhow, speed related? No. If you have a satellite control things like following distances, etc., we might as well give up on cars and take the train. We could have technology drive our entire lives, but at what point do we want our freedom?
If we had autopilots drive our cars, how reliable would they be? Would people rely on them too much and if they only crashed twice a day, would that be an acceptable risk?
I'll skip the political and legal ramifications of this. They have already been talked to death. But, for the sake of argument, let us assume that this system is put into place, and that the satellite only sends out speed data, relying on the vehicle to check on and limit itself to the legal speed.
Can you imagine what would happen if someone hacked that satellite? Some April 1, somebody decides it would be really funny to set the speed limit on a residential road to 100, and the speed limit on a major highway to 10. That could really screw up your commute.
Or perhaps a work of industrial/economic espionage. Slow all traffic into a city, or perhaps just people going to a major event. Terrorism uses of technology like this are also quite limitless.
Then again, with some creative programming, I could cut my commute down to 5 minutes and make everyone else late...
Read the article. This is not a monitoring technology. The car finds out where it is via GPS (hence satellite), and controls its own speed accordingly. The satellites merely broadcast.
Would it be more acceptable if rather than apply the brakes, a speaker were to sound an alarm whenever the car exceeds the current speed limit?
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Expectation of privacy - 3 words that make the governments case. On the roads, you have little to none.
Maybe you should at least try to figure out what you're talking about before you start. Not all the world is a Webserver.
There are no request in GPS, just as there are no requests from your radio to the radiostation. They don't have DoS attacks on radio stations either.
Have you ever noticed that you have no idea how the moderation/karma system on Slashdot works? You might try reading the FAQ.
A quick refresher: People who have enough positive karma post at +1 unless they specifically opt out. Perhaps I should have done that, but I didn't think about it at the time. And given that the article is about personal freedom restriction by governments, it isn't really that far off topic.
Absolutely. First one that springs to mind: Driving in LA, trying to pass a semi that decided he wanted to be in the same (left) lane I was in. Not enough time to brake, plus the cars behind me would probably have rear-ended me, so I poked it. Squirted out in front of him, probably doing 85 or so. If something had decided I couldn't do that, I would have been smushed against the median barrier.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
I also like the way the article mentions that itwill "cut total road deaths by UP TO 2/3" [emphasis mine]. Well, what if it doesn't? Do you think for a second that the law requiring these devices will be repealed? Not a chance. The British government is getting very good at justifying their actions, (in the U.S., we're faced with the "we need this to protect the children" mantra), and (at least in Britain) the people are getting very good at responding like a mindless herd of sheep.
Let's look at another example...the U.S. spent a couple hundred million to construct a "Y2K preparedness facility," or somesuch. Now that most of the Y2K concern has abated, they're talking about using it for dealing with other "technical emergencies". While it would surely be a waste of taxpayer money to decommission the facility after such a short time in service, it's no different that the ENDLESS waste that occurs in Washington, where funds are allocated to build Navy ships that aren't requested, parking garages that aren't used, and roads that don't go anywhere. The upside is that once it's out of service, the fed can't use it for anything that wasn't intended to begin with. With projects like Echelon lurking in the mist, it's wasted in the most productive way possible.
Why should we let people drive at all? Clearly, on the whole, they suck at it. About 40.000 killed annually in the USA alone should show us that.
We know software is never foolproof, programmers and engineers fuck up, etc., but still, I think a suitable team could make a system that would keep more of its users alive, take better routes, use less energy, etc., etc.
"But the average red-blooded American working stiff likes driving and won't give up that feeling of being free and in control for anything!".
<sigh> For the sake of 40.000 people a year, the average red-blooded American can grow up!
PS. Sorry for the US-centric post, but I wanted to fit in "red-blooded American". Just pretend we're all American for the moment.
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
This would probably not work as well with an automatic transmission because the computer uses the output speed to determine critical things like torque-converter slip and clutch locking.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
> My opinions of guns is best summed up by this recent article on Salon.
...". Until now. The fact is, the right to keep and bear arms is GUARANTEED by our Constitution in this country. "The tree of liberty is nourished by the blood of patriots." is a quote I'm rather fond of - a quote that expressed the sentiment at the time of its coining that we should fight for our freedoms, and remain strong in order to secure them. Well, now King George is President Bill, and the situation is the same. I can assure you that, deep down, there is that nugget of fear of armed rebellion that keeps our government from passing very, very oppressive laws. It's not because those in power are good-hearted; of that you can be sure.
Funny, that.
IIRC, the kids that shot up the school at Columbine were in violation of not less than like 25 existing gun laws. These violations would have landed them in prison for the rest of several of their lives.
The problem is not that we don't have stringent enough gun laws - it's that the gun laws that we have aren't enforced!
Why is it that, if I don't do anything illegal with my guns, I should be forced to give them up because some (group of) idiots has done something stupid with theirs?
Substitute the word "computer" for the word "firearm" in any gun law you care to read the text for, and see if you like the resultant restrictions on your right to pursue your happiness through your interaction with your favorite computer, then you'll see what the NRA folks are up in arms (so to speak) about.
+ Some people actually do like to use guns for sport.
+ Since we've obliterated entire classes of indigenous predators, we (humans - sportsmen)
must use guns to control populations of certain animals (this is why we have hunting seasons).
+ Some people really like to collect old or unusual guns (one of my friends has an old KayPro
computer he fired up to test its Y2K compliance - which it passed with flying colors, allowing
him to merrily play a game of text-mode donkey kong or somesuch - would you deny him that?).
+ Guns are even useful for (gasp!) self defense! In every (not just some, but every) state
in which concealed carry has passed, crime has dropped (not just NRA numbers, but real, solid,
official government statistics). Criminals, it seems, are less likely to mug someone if there is
a distinct possibility of that person pulling out a gun and wiping them out of existence.
It's all about rationality - would you mug me if I could potentially shoot you?
Now, to wax a little philosophical - I believe in the concept of liberty. My right to swing my fist ending at the tip of your nose, and all. If I don't harm you in any way by owning a gun, why should you have any right or reason at all, in any way, shape or form, to dictate to me that I cannot own one, thus injuring me?
All this, and I didn't even go on a rant about "a well-organized militia being necessary,
My rant is done for now, but I urge you to think about the matter a little more before blindly saying, "guns are bad". The old saw goes, "guns don't kill people - people kill people." And that's the truth. Punish the criminals and leave the law-abiding to their own devices.
--Corey
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
A bit of metal foil or metallic paint over the GPS antenna and it won't receive a thing. Then either the system cuts out because it can't figure out where you are (zoooom!), or the car won't run because it's programmed to not run when the GPS isn't working.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Your tinfoil hat is obviously worn out; I suggest getting a bigger one.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
This is definitely going way too far. Speeding is a problem, yes, but it can be controlled without resorting to such Big Brother-ish methods (you know they're going to install tracking devices in the cars along with this satellite thing too; it's simply too easy to resist).
A better solution would be as follows. The speed limit in a given area is broadcast on some radio frequency (a convenient place would be at each road sign, using what would end up being a very inexpensive transmitter since it only has to use one frequency and transmit only one thing). The vehicle would have a device inside which renders it incapable of exceeding the speed it "hears" from these transmitters.
Because the transmitters cannot recieve data, privacy is protected (since the vehicle cannot be tracked). It also stops the problem of speeding. And even though it means installing a lot of transmitters, in the end it's probably cheaper than launching a network of satellites and installing even more satellite recievers. It is cheaper for the car manufacturers, tool the technology is less expensive.
Now, I do have objections to forcing the cars down to the speed limit, of course. For one, the limits are often set ridiculously low, because the laws tend to use blanket formulas that don't apply well to some areas where faster speeds are safe, but because of the designation it's set slower than it needs to be. For another, I wonder if the British government realizes just how much revenue speeding tickets generate; you can kiss that goodbye (yeah, that's a self-serving reason, but to governments ever have any other kind?)
The police won't allow such a device in the U.S. After all, impossability is an excellent defence against a speeding ticket. A number of small town would dry up and blow away without the revenue. Sadly, I'm only half joking.
Consider that we have 100 times more government than we did in 1776. One way the government does this is by proposing such an outrageous law at first, and then many people people will actually be relieved when the final law that is passed ONLY monitors your driving and doesn't remotely control your car. Another technique is to claim there is a crisis. For example, over 30,000 people die on the roads each year!!! Can't you already see the tearful mothers testifying before Congress on TV? Another technique is to point out that other western nations, such as Britain, has even less freedom. It does not make me feel any better to know that we are not as far along the road to serfdom as other nations.
There's lots of problems with this proposal, but your list is way off the mark.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
GM also has a system that is capable of transmitting from Cadillacs TODAY. It is called OnStar. Read about it. It can transmit your location and it does its transmitting via cell phone. If your air bags deploy the car phones your car's lat/lon into a GM control center. The technology is real and here today. There is another feature going into cars today - A flash ram chip that maintains driving data (speed, rpm, braking, etc) so that if the car is in a collision the cops and insurance companies can figure out who to blame...
Adults are obsolete children. - Dr. Seuss
Me, doing 65 in a 65 zone, passing a slowpoke doing about 45. The slowpoke cut me off for some unknown reason; I swerved to avoid. He then saw me swerving behind him and jerked himself directly back into my path. Somewhere around the second swerve was where I lost it; I managed to miss him (in retrospect, I kinda wish I'd taken him out :-), but at the price of rolling my vehicle after leaving the road. The slowpoke never stopped. The seatbelt saved my life; I was uninjured, and was told how much air I caught while offroad by a witness who saw the whole thing from a dozen car lengths back. With the witness backing me up, the cops reported it as hit-and-run; the slowpoke was likely after an insurance settlement.
An acquaintance travelling in line with the flow of traffic when he got cut off when being passed by a drunk doing about 80ish. The drunk miscalculated and knocked him off into the ditch, and then spun out and ended up in the ditch himself. Everyone walked away. The drunk got his day in court, was convicted, and is probably on the road again.
Speed differentials kill. Stupid drivers kill. Drunk drivers kill. But speed, in and of itself, does not kill.
If the state wants to put a little gadget in the car to collect money from drivers, a GPS-based speedometer will be just fine.
If the state wants to employ these kinds of technolgoies to save lives, however, a breathalyzer in series with a seat belt buckle sensor and the ignition coil would be far more effective.
Of course, it'd be cheaper still to simply have better driver education (including a mandatory emergency manoeuvers course - which the highest-risk teenagers would probably enjoy as well as learn from :-), stricter driving test standards, and tougher convictions for impaired driving, but hey, that's not as sexy and high-tech, is it?
There are very few true "accidents" on the road. The problem isn't with the car, it's with the idiot driving it. If a driver is unsafe, he or she doesn't belong on the road at any speed.
I think that here in the UK we have suffered a huge erosion of our personal freedom in the last few years, generally due to the current Labour government although to be fair it occured a lot under the Major government too.
Transport fiascos are bad enough. Seeing Two Jags Prescott or our Glorious Leader swanning down the "bus" lane of the M4 like Soviet style leaders makes my blood boil. Recent tax hikes on fuel prices while halting road building and mantainence programs is absurd and is making our transport system practically Third World. But this are just some of the minor things we are losing.
What about the proposed restriction of the right to a trial by jury?
What about the loss of the House of Lords and its replacement by Tony's Cronies?
What about our continual loss of democratic government (including tax and defense issues) and replacement by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels?
> I don't think that the government (state gov.) really wants us to stop speeding, because they would no longer be able to collect revenue from fines.
You got that right. We've had radar-operated cameras for a generation now, but they never caught on. Why not?
Who would speed if a ticket was a certainty?
And can you imagine what the yearly take on speed tickets is for a metropolitan area of, say, one million souls?
> I live in Texas, and in the smaller towns "speed traps" are very common.
Supposedly a handful of towns filed for bankruptcy a week after the state mandated that the bulk of the fines issued on highways was to go to state coffers rather than the local kitty.
And I know that raising the speed limit back to 70 put the squeeze on some of them. There's a freeway overpass at the Manville city limit a few miles south of Houston, and for years there were ruts where the grass wouldn't grow because the highwayman^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H radar operator pulled his patrol car up in the same spot about 50 times a day. The grass grows green there, now. Wonder how tiny Manville is making up for those $100*50*365 = $1,825,000 per year, now?
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I'd prefer it if we could have limits set per road (there are some freeways which should be at 85-115 because it's safe and it would help reduce the traffic congestion which is the real danger) and focus more on the basic speed law (drive at a speed which is safe).
The speed differential between cars is the real danger.Moving at the speed of traffic is much safer than following the speed limit - I've been on freeways in bad weather where 40MPH would qualify as "maniac speed" because everyone else is going 15MPH due to very low visibility and poor road conditions; I've also been on freeways where the average speed is approaching 95-100MPH and there was little danger because everyone was going roughly the same speed and it was not inherently unsafe for the freeway in question.
<RANT> I'd also like it if the police would pull over people driving slowly in the left lane(s) and explain the whole "Slower traffic move right" concept. I've seen this cause accidents, while I've never seen one caused strictly by speeding (as opposed to speeding while driving like a moron)... </RANT>
I have a whole list of objections to this system, as well as several other proposed recently. This is certainly going to be a long thread on comp.risks, where a more reasoned discussion will take place than on /. Technology is now regularly being used to monitor your every action, and there is less and less you can do about it. By your argument everyone who doesn't like it can stay locked in their homes, and never come outside. That is wrong, I shouldn't have to stay locked inside my home just to have a little privacy or to avoid being treated like a criminal.
This system will make use of a GPS/CDROM unit similar to the ones currently on the market. I've got one of those, and it is not all that accurate or reliable. It quite often forgets where the car was parked last time it was powered down, so for the first 5-20 minutes it tries to figure out where the car is. And any type of reflections in a city render it unusable, as well as driving in hilly country.
The GPS system is an ex american military system, and although the US has turned most control over to a civilian agency, it can still be overridden by the US military at any time. The system regularly has problems, outages, position shifts and other glitches, which is why no commercial airline is allowed to use it except as a backup secondary navigation unit. I can't see other governments allowing their citizens to be so heavily influenced in daily affairs by a system still controlled by the US military.
The CDROMs containing the map database (which can easily have speed limits added for each segment of road) are often quite out of date. My system has a CD only 6 months old, but it is still missing 10% of the main roads in place for years. The system has a nervous breakdown whenever I take a new freeway section through a forest.
So what happens when a local council changes the speed limit on a local stretch of road (perhaps up, since repaving or straightening), and nobody can drive the new speed limit? Same question, but what if a speed limit is lowered in a dangerous area, but millions of cars are still allowed to drive faster? With this system in place, many drivers will go as fast as the system will let them, and pay less attention to the posted limits.
What happens when some drivers have one limit in their databases, and other drivers have another?
What happens when the unit mistakes which road you are on (say a parallel frontage road with a much slower speed limit), and force you down suddenly to 25 MPH in a normal 65 MPH area? What happens if this happens to 20% of the drivers in an area?
What happens during a GPS satellite outage? What is the default behaviour during LoS?
Will the system be able to compensate for rain/snow/broken water main conditions? Or will drivers start driving whatever the maximum is, despite the weather dictating a slower speed?
What happens to court cases, when someone has a perfectly functioning unit and still gets a ticket? How will this affect law enforcement credibility when people can use the existence of the system as a viable defence?
For those who are tracking how our liberties are being threatened by new technologies, there has been a parallel threat from cell phone companies. I have seen cell techs watch their debug screens and show me drivers who are speeding on the autoroutes, it is just a function of predicting how often to hand off a phone from one cell to another. Recently a cell phone company in the US has put together a package (they want to make more $$$) to sell to state police forces. It will track cell phones moving too rapidly from one cell site to another, and provide position info as well as subscriber info to a waiting police cruiser. Hey, instant tickets. Don't like it, dont own a phone.
I can predict this system will not be mandatory at first, but will be offered as an option with a reduction in insurance rates. The first adopters will be the old biddies who never get near a speed limit, and want to save some money. Next will be the families, followed by young people desperate to save some money. After 50% of the cars on the road have the system, expect the laws to change to require it on all vehicles within a few years. That also gives the system a while to be debugged, and for the initial panic to die down. But I expect a few hundred extra deaths due to this system before they get the kinks worked out, mostly due to large speed mis-matches.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Before you burn me at the stake, please hear me out.
:-)
We need Big Brother. More precisely, we need a living example of Big Brother. We need to see a country like the UK devolve into an all-seeing, all-knowing police state.
We need an example that we can point to that shows that it CAN happen even in a "democratic" society, so that we will KNOW that it is we, the people, who must remain firmly in control of the government, and not vice-versa. So that we will see with our own eyes what happens when we sacrifice freedom for security.
But it has to happen to a country that is relatively small and thus relatively harmless to the rest of the world.
I think the UK would make an excellent candidate. It's big enough that it'll have an impact on a large enough number of people to make the example compelling, but not big enough to pose a real danger of taking the rest of the world down with it.
It would be much, much worse if the U.S. devolved into such a police state because the U.S. is powerful enough to take the rest of the world with it. If that happened humanity might never climb out of the resulting hole.
We need an example like where the UK is headed to keep the rest of the world free.
If the UK wants to volunteer for this, who are we to argue?
--
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Consider, just for starters: The main character of the story is named Jim Hacker.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Lots of reasons. First of all, I want control over my own car. It's that feeling inside. I want to beable to shut them off whenever I want. My last car was old and had battery problems all the time.
:-) Shut the engine off maybe?
Up here in Canada we've had daytime running lights for years. At least on our models, the lights go out when you go to start, and come on after again.
For another, there are circumstances beyond the all-wise and knowing government/automakers. Like the time my mom and I were being chased by a drunk driver, and we pulled into a driveway and turned off the lights and we lost him.
Not sure how to comment on that one.
Or like air bags, which for a while were seen as the greatest thing since squeezable mayo. Yet now I can't put my 5 year old in the front seat because they've found that airbags kill kids.
Children should never ever be put in the front seat, ever, airbags or otherwise. That rule has been around since the 70's if I recall. Airbags just gave you a very graphic reason as to why this is so.
The reasoning that rules like this exist are simple. It costs the government, and therefore taxpayers, more in damages and the like to have no rules than to have rules like daytime running lights, seatbelts and drunk driving legislature. You're on publicly-owned roads (at least MOST of the time) so you play by the rules set forth to benefit the public.
Where this gets out of hand, of course, is with bleeding hearts and lobbyiest groups. Up here I believe our 400-series highways were designed to be driven at 140kph (roughly 85mph). That's when they were safest. Unfortunately crying moms and the general public got it in their head that speed kills and therefore forced the limits down. Now the roads are less safe since you need to overcorrect for bends and the like.
>Has anyone else ever avoided an accident by accelerating?
On my motorcycle?
Yes, lots of times.
-LjM
On South African leg the recent Around Alone , a solo circumnavigation sailboating race, one of the contestants was "piloting by navigation"--instead of getting his bearings by actually looking at the coast and comparing that to a map, he kept his eyes on his GPS receiver. Then he hit a reef, destroying his keel and putting him out of the race. The GPS had misreported his position by nearly three kilometers.
Once when I was on a camping trip in Colorodo, my friend's GPS spent a good half hour insisting we were in Kansas.
GPS is not reliable. At its absolute best, the fast-reading "civilian" version of it is only accurate to within around twenty or thirty meters. Have you ever driven down a controlled access road that had a city street right next to it? What will your car do when it thinks you're speeding on a surface street you're travelling parallel to?
And I seriously doubt that any practical system can cope with modern three dimensional roadway topographies. What happens when you're driving 120km/h and the GPS suddenly misreads that you are in a 50km/h zone because your motorway has a city street and a hospital beneath it? Or if your GPS reading takes place at the very moment you are on an overpass, where your motorway goes over a 20km/h cart path? Thirty seconds later your car slows to a crawl and you get rammed as you attempt to struggle from the rightmost lane to the shoulder.
Furthermore, GPS is not guaranteed to be available. Quite possibly the device can be defeated by building a Faraday cage around the receiving antenna, or better yet getting a 0.5mW transmitter that says "I am in Greece" over and over again in GPSspeak and taping it to the antenna.
The internal maps had better be accurate, too, and remain accurate. When that tiny roundabout finally gets enlarged to handle trebble the traffic at double the speed, you had better hope your car won't keep you "safe" by holding you to the old circle's rated speed. This probably represents yet another hidden cost: having to upgrade your maps periodically.
--
This is not my sandwich.
A few points:
Simple question: why can the Germans drive at acceptably fast rates of speed, while Americans arenot permitted to? The cars are the same, the roads are (in most interstate highways, which, btw, the Autobahn is only limitless in intercity routes) pretty much the same (though they built roads for 40 years while we cheaped out on our quality). Is it the training? Is it the severity of penalty? Is it the culture (are they _better people_ than we are)?
Rational answers only, please.
Your Working Boy,
On the other hand, the British Government felt compelled to pass a law requiring Masons to declare themselves if they belonged to the civil service, the Government, the legal profession, the police or the intelligence community.
Hey! The Thatcher Government were all secret Conspiricists! Bet ya never knew that!
Seriously, it's only been in the last decade that it became public knowledge as to who the head Mason was. At least, who the acknowledged head was.
Yes, lots of groups keep themselves to themselves, but few have sufficient resources to remain national and completely secret. Even fewer have the resources to scare one of the most powerful Governments Britain has ever had.
I'm not into the idea that the Masons are out to rule the world. If they did, I'm sure they'd have done so already. Or, at least tried. Nor am I into the idea that the Masons are necessarily evil. They are, as another poster has said, out to protect their own. As far as anyone on the outside knows, that's the limit of their manifesto.
Does that make me a "Conspiracy Theorist"? If so, then anyone who has read up on Trade Union history and their origins in coffee houses must also be one. Come on, come all!
I believe that the Masons are very influential in Britain, and probably make up a non-trivial fraction of the corporate, political, civil servant and legal worlds.
I don't particularly want the Masons considering me a threat, and hope that regarding them as a significant but totally impartial (except in matters affecting a Mason directly) is in keeping with that.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
If you read the article on the BBC website, you'll find that there is no monitoring done. This is merely a device which uses the satelite to pinpoint its position and then uses that to check if the car is exceeding the speed limit. The idea of satelites tracking all cars in the UK is inaccurate.
Here's the part that doesn't quite make sense to me. If all the system is meant to do is prevent cars from speeding, then why is it being tied into the GPS system? Why does a satellite have to check it's location and then tell it how fast to go? Surely it would be cheaper to install cheap transmitters on the ground that activate a governor in a car.
Can someone please explain to me the benefit of implementing this type of system by satellite if there is no intent to monitor the actual position of vehicles?
numb
Commercial vehicles are being monitored first. In-motion truck weighing, toll collection, road use billing, hazardous material tracking, and similar functions are already automated on some Interstates.
But that's just the beginning. Here's an analysis of ITS by the Canadian Privacy Commissioner:
Besides having the ability to identify individual travellers, ITS can also collect and store a lot of sensitive information about you. It can, for example, be used over time to create individual travel profiles indicating, among other things:
- your driving habits and any traffic violations committed;
- where and how you like to travel;
- where you live and when you are home;
- where and when you go to work;
- where and when you shop;
- where you go for recreation (bars? casinos?);
- what place of worship you attend and how often;
- what community groups you associate with;
- where your children go to school;
- where your friends live;
- what political protests or rallies you may have attended;
- whether you have been to a doctor (or abortion clinic, or AIDS clinic...).
These profiles can, in turn, be matched with other personal information, such as insurance, credit, buying habits, income, bankruptcies and liens, age, marital status, health data, and so forth. On a large scale, all of this could be arrayed geographically, resulting in amazingly detailed personal profiles on potentially millions of people.Such a personal profile could be used to make decisions about you, as well as to predict and manipulate your future choices. It could be used as a substitute for dealing with you personally. It has even been suggested that this ability to assemble information selectively, or to correlate existing information [is a] capacity, obviously facilitated by information technology, [which] enables (government) agencies (and other organizations) to identify, target, and perhaps manipulate a certain segment of the population that has common ... characteristics.
U.S. privacy protections in this area are weak to nonexistent. The general view has been that since anybody can stand alongside the road and watch the cars go by, logging all that data doesn't require any new authority. It's going to be interesting.
Spare me the groupthink. You're forgetting that roads are for pedestrians, cyclists, animals, farm equipment, and damn near anything that needs to get from point A to point B, at whatever speed it can muster.
This is not universally true. Consider limited-access highways, which are the primary use for these devices anyway.
DNA just wants to be free...
Way back in the ancient times (before they figured out how much revenue they could generate giving tickets) traffic engineers used to use radar guns to help set the speed limits.
They were typically set at the speed at which 85% of the drivers were traveling.
Because, mistaken Eccles, WE are the owners of these roads, we picked up the tab for the land, the materials, and labor, WE ARE the ownership committee.
...which is why WE vote for the steering committee (at least in Democratic Republics), who decide whether to put these measures in place or not. They are well within the powers of government to do so, or not to do so.
We, the majority of active voters, should not be subjected to anything which we deem innappropriate
More properly, that is the case in (generally non-existent) pure democracies. In a democratic republic, we vote for representatives (and can run for those positions ourselves) so we are not subjected to anything *they* deem inappropriate. If their judgement is faulty, we should vote for someone else next time or start a recall campaign.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
But I wouldn't be too sure.
How does this one get through, potentially? They bring out small kids who lost small siblings to speeding drivers. End of story. That's the way the British public's been trained to react by the media.
The problem is that we've got a heavily tabloid culture and not that high civil liberties respect. Our Labour Home Secretary (Jack Straw) has been putting out illiberal legislation for most of his term in office, but most people just don't notice.
This is horrible, short-sighted and probably trying to drum up publicity for the department at Leeds University who did the research. I really hope it doesn't get through, but I don't hold out much hope.
To stop (some of) the flames, why do I think I should be allowed to speed? Several things. Firstly, let's imagine I'm overtaking someone on a single carriageway road. Is this safer if I do it more slowly? No. It's safer (up to a point) at higher speed because I spend more time on the right side of the road and not on a collision course. Speeding briefly makes it a far safer maneuver. And if I don't pass, I'm potentially helping build a tailback - so causing air and noise pollution and frustration, so more accidents.
Next, look at how this works. It cuts off the fuel. Imagine what happens if it fails - the car dies, and there may well be nothing you can do to fix it short of calling out a repair technician. One more thing that I can't fix but that can strand me is dangerous.
Next, it perpetuates the myth that speed is the only problem. Police research shows speed is the primary cause in under 5% of accidents. But if there's a limiter, I'm safe, right? As it's speed that kills.
Now look at Japan. All cars are limited to 112, in theory. So, backstreet tuners hack the limiters away, with varying degrees of finesse. Some do a good job, sure. But is it really a good idea to encourage people to reprogram their cars? Because that's just what people will do to get round this, but it potentially introduces new bugs. Not pretty.
Finally, there's the fairly obvious civil liberties thing - not that I should be permitted to speed, as I'm happy with sensible law enforcement. It's more that this makes vehecile tracking extremely easy and, regardless of how legal my movements are, they're my business. I know they can be tracked to a fair degree via CCTV, but this would make it trivial.
What would I do? Jaguar have a new Adaptive Cruise Control system. Basically, there's an ultrasound system in the front bumper so that the cruise control system can keep you a sensible distance from the car in front. Build that into every car, linked to the speedo to determine sensible gaps, and I wouldn't complain. But this system is a very bad idea, which deserves to be fought.
Greg
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
The UK does not have a limited supply of deadly weapons, they have a limited supply of firearms. Don't make the mistake of confusing the one with the other. I took about fifteen seconds to look around the room I'm in, and I identified a good ten deadly weapons without even really trying. Electrical cords to strangle people, shatterable objects to cut or stab, some great heavy metal things that I could use as a bludgeon. Let's not forget my two hands and my two feet, which can kill someone pretty fast (though I've never tried).
Perhaps guns make it easier, but don't parade that "fewer deadly weapons makes for fewer deaths" thing, because you don't have fewer deadly weapons at all.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Reality check.
I am driving home from a friend's house one Friday night at about 1am. A truck pulls next to me and begins trying to race me. I ignore and at the next stop light he begins to yell and scream at me. He and his three friends are obviously drunk and angry. Further down the road he is following me, tailgating and driving in the other lane swerving into mine. His friends are hanging out the window yelling at me. My girlfriend is terrified. I slowly accelerate trying to leave him behind and he continues to follow. I put my foot on the floor (on a lonely highway that I drive often. Speed limit 65mph.) and because I have a sports car designed to be SAFE at high speeds I am able to leave him far behind. I held speeds well above 100mph until I got to the next exit a few miles down the road.
If cars are designed to handle higher speeds, and people are trained to handle their vehicles at those speeds, the roads would be safer today. My Supra is safer at 120mph on the highway than an Excursion is at 60mph.
Outlawing dumbshit drivers, and crapily designed vehicles would do a lot more to save lives than this BB monitoring crap.
2) Who can be monitored on public-owned roads?
This is less well defined. How far can that monitoring go? You would need to do some research on that one. There are many search and seizure related cases which could provide precedents. However, as monitoring becomes more sophistcated I believe you will see more cases challenged in court. That's where it will be settled.
Similarily, many cases of avoiding monitoring are not well defined yet. You can dig up a few obvious ones (e.g. certain states don't allow radar detectors or license plate covers). Once again, though, as monitoring and evasion become better, more of these cases will end up in court.
My personal view is that tracking devices should not be installed without probable cause. That's how I would vote on such an issue anyhow. To allow more than that would lend itself to abuse. Wiretapping laws exist for similar reasons.
Best regards,
SEAL
(Cynically, I must note that although the safe distance should increase with speed, 90% of the drivers don't bother. Similarly, it's safer and far more efficient for people to move at a consistent [slow] speed while in a traffic jam than to do the whole start-stop-kamikaze-lane-change bit. Of course, I think we'd all agree that bad drivers are by far the worst risk.)
To move more cars through a given stretch of road during a set interval, you need to either widen the road or decrease the amount of time each car spends in it. Since widening the freeway is impractical in many cases, I think the real answer is to keep people off of the road. Public transportation needs to be taken seriously and I'd like it if a driver's license was almost as hard to get as a pilot's license (skill-wise, not cost-wise). Every day on my drive to work, I see at least one driver who simply should not be on the road...
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
I think folks have forgotten the time in (I believe) the late 70's or early 80's when seatbelt switches were installed in some American cars which would prevent you from turning over the engine until your seatbelt was closed.
The goal was also to save lives--after all, if you can't start your motor until you have a seatbelt on, then you're less likely to die in an auto accident. The problem was twofold--first, many people were circumventing the system by locking the seatbelt closed and sitting on the belt. Second, the system made people more easily carjacked.
I predict this mandatory system will last three years--and as soon as folks get really pissed off, and as soon as a dozen or so people die when someone's car navigation system malfunctions and decides 25MPH is the speedlimit on the A1 in moderate fog--the whole thing will be scrapped in favor of a warning buzzer.
Having lived in the UK and California, my experience is that freeway driving in California is less stressful and feels safer. The main reasons seem to be:
1. The speed limits are enforced, so most people obey them.
2. Traffic may overtake on either side.
This tends to lead to all the lanes on the freeway moving at fairly similar speeds. By contrast, in the UK, there will often be one lane moving at 60mph (50 up hills), one a 75, and one at anything up to 100. Changing lanes becomes a serious business.
This leads to a further problem that all the light traffic concentrates in the centre lane. The traffic density in this lane often exceeds the critical density for the speed, leading to sudden speed changes in the lane.
The US system may seem dangerous to UK drivers, but it leads to much better distribution of traffic between lanes, and much more even speeds.
I think hardare speed limiters are going a bit far, but I would certainly like to see speed limits enforced in the UK.
I have a feeling that it'll never appear.
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.