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Rental Car + GPS = Speeding Ticket
Heem writes: "In an interesting use of GPS technology, it appears that ACME Rent-A-Car is fining customers that exceed the speed limit. Raises a lot of questions about accuracy and margin of error..." GPS is a double-edged sword. Ah, sonny, I remember the days when it was possible to go over 55 mph...
Imagine if you will a drive down an empty highway at 95 mph. The GPS picks up the fact that you are speeding and calls the police and alerts them to your location... You get pulled over and get a ticket...
Now imagine that your are driving 55 mph down the same empty highway and GPS is not functioning properly... The GPS still calls the police and you get a ticket... You are now going to have to prove that the GPS is not functioning properly.
This seems that there is a lot of potential for abuse with this...
Here are some other things to ponder...
Can you use a GPS as evidence in court as evidence that you are not speeding in rural areas where you are more likely to get caught in a speed trap?
How long until there are used in accident investigations and reconstruction?
-Just because you does not mean that you should...
Heh, We've got one down here that won't trigger on my truck. I remember I was wanting to make a right turn, and for some reason the intersection has a no turn on red sign (for no reason that I can see either, you can see about a mile down the road in every direction from the intersection, and the speed limit is only 35). Anyway, I ended up waiting through 3 cycles of the light before finally running right on the red. It's doubly frustrating that the police station is about half a block from that light.
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
I read the internet for the articles.
Kind of ironic this comment coming from somebody with the Slashdot id of "mp3car". Last time I looked, those car MP3 players required a lot more eyes-down time than monitoring your speedo with their fancy id3 tag displays and graphical eq and all that distracting crap.
.38 caliber "I'm too stupid to live" plan too.
If you can't watch the road and the speedo at the same time, I suggest you take your driver's license, go the nearest police station, and say "please take this away from me, I'm too stupid to drive".
While you're at it, you might enquire about their
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The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
This would be a good candidate for RISKS. This month's issue of "GPS World" has an article from a research team in Adelaide (Oz), which is working on an urban tracking system for vehicles. Small problem: in urban areas, GPS coverage tends to be spotty. The article described how it was necessary to include inertial tracking hardware and accelerometers in the system, with all three components working together to figure out when the others were providing bad information. Otherwise, the GPS would tend to show things like the vehicle going from 0-120 km/hr in 10 meters.
Not bad for a minivan.
sPh
Has to be somewhere in the inside the coach part of the car or on the top of the vehicle in a relatively unobstructed place.
RF is blocked by metal of any kind- if they don't put this thing in some place that could be relatively easy for someone clever to find it's not going to work well- if at all.
Furthermore, since this uses Cell/PCS tech to communicate back to home, one could come up with a gadget that sourced about a microwatt or so of broadband RF power intended to be clipped to the antenna of the cell link that it uses. The little gadget's signal shouldn't be powerful enough to block most cell setups, but would swamp the targeted cell unit for the AirIQ system so that it'd be effectively deaf and dumb. (NOTE: I did not say that this was a good idea or that someone should set out to do this- it's just that it's very possible.)
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
1) This is not law enforcement stuff. This is a rental company setting up a GPS/Speed Monitoring system tied to a central computer via mobile phone.
2) DMCA only applies to circumvention in the sense of copyright infringement. Blocking a signal isn't copyright infringement.
The most that this could be deemed is breach of contract- but I'll bet they can't/won't put language in there in that regard as hitting someone for the system never checking in because the mobile phone system was dead during the duration of the rental (which CAN happen) would cost them more than they lose in the form of a counter suit.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Someone even provided knowlege of the toys that you can use to do this. (Again, I am NOT advocating this! It's merely pointing out that someone clever could think of it and do it as easily as not.)
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Speeding is defined in most jurisdictions as either a misdemeanor or a felony depending on the amount of violation of the regulation in question. You have to enter a plea of not guilty, guilty, no contest when dealing with a speeding ticket. Guilty is obvious. No contest means you don't agree with the citation but you're not going to bother with the presentation of a case regarding the violation. Not guilty results in a court case being heard by a judge. In Texas, if you're doing something like 40 or so over the speed limit, it's deemed a felony and they'll haul you off to the clink- same story for Oklahoma and quite a few other states.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Contracts are invalid if they make stipulations that are not legal (civil or criminal law) or require/involve illegal acts- PERIOD. It remains to be seen if the contract is legal- it matters little if it's their property if what they're stipulating can't be done by them.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
It's my understanding that legally they can't immediately charge his card for things not explicitly ennumerated up front on the transaction. Even though they claim that there will be a $150 per incident fine for excessive speed, since it's not ennumerated for each instance until they occur. They have to tell him up-front that they're going to charge him for the extra before EVER doing it.
Technically, the rental company can't charge for those- it's analogous to a Wal-Mart discovering that they undercharged you for something, taking your credit card number and charging the difference to your account.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
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This argument against such devices is totally bogus. However it still does not mean they are a good idea.
Either way, I think it's a great idea, and a leap forward to the day when we can detect aggressive driving on the fly and deactivate the vehicle remotely.
There is a considerable difference between driving faster than a posted speed limit and aggressive driving.
Driving at the posted 55 (say) in pissing rain or 20feet visibility fog is theoretically legal, but most likely far more dangerous to all concerned than someone doing 70 on a clear day on the same road with good visibility.
I propose that organisations promoting these types of device for general use (not just for rentals), and similar radar/camera combos like we have in the UK should develop more useful detectors (stupid ass weaving between lanes without signalling cameras, stopping to pick up a lottery ticket in an already double-parked street cameras, and no-rear-view-mirrors cameras). Penalties should be education-oriented rather than entirely financial. That, or admit that it's really a fund-raiser, and not actually directly linked to road safety.
What the world needs is better, more alert drivers, aware of their surrounding and the limits of their vehicles, not another gadget to allow them to talk on their cellphone, or hold a conversation without worrying about speeding.
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the telephone rings / problem between screen and chair / thoughts of homocide
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
I read some time ago that the police do look at these things on at least some sections of the French autoroute system. I wish I knew where though - just another unsubstantiated /. post :)
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the telephone rings / problem between screen and chair / thoughts of homocide
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
Frightening. If my best course of action is to floor it and accelerate to avoid an accident, I can not and will not accept a system that prevents me from exceeding a set speed. Car companies are sick of frivolous "unbuckled child in front seat dies when drunk father drives wrong way down steep one-way hill" lawsuits now. Imagine the carnage when a "big brother device prevents accident avoidance" suit hits.
<rant tone='disgruntled'>
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Drivers' Exams in the United States suck. Pennsylvania's exam, at least in the late '80s, consisted of rote memorization of parking rules and high-beam etiquette. The road test was a trivial slalom, a three-point turn, and parallel parking. Not once was I taught about the traction circle, or the difference between front-, rear-, and all-wheel drive, especially at the handling limits. I learned more about driving from the manual that came with Gran Turismo than I did from PennDOT. Maybe if we quit entitling morons to propel 3500 lbs of steel and aluminum over 60 mph, the temptation to impose such Orwellian intrusions would go away.
</rant>
We're not scare-mongering/This is really happening - Radiohead
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All other things aside, people seem to be missing the fact that these things are not realtime.. There is no big board back at Acme with your locatrion on it.. The download it all out after you get back.. So basically, you're agreeing to let them know where you've taken their van, and how fast it was going..
This is exactly the same stuff semi drivers have had for years..
GPS is accurate enough. I've actually found that it's more accurate than the speedometer in my car at high speeds.
Only on slashdot can a posting be rated "Score -1, Insightful".
Screw the speeding ding which by the way is totally arbitrary. Why do they collect for this and how did they arrive at this figure?
The big problem is that they went and paid themselves with his money w/o asking him.
So, can anyone tell me whether the US police (california even) can send you a speeding ticket through the post? And when this is legal?
I mean in the UK we have speed/radar cameras which clock you, take a photo of your license plate then you get a ticket in the mail. On the other hand, if you encounter a police car and they don't actually pull you over then you're not going to get a ticket.
I mean, it would seem in these days that the police can just take down you details and mail you a ticket - that's what information society is bringing us.
What kind of a moron would rent a car from ACME when they have this kind of policy in place?
Only because the law doesn't have the balls to make the owner of the car (the insurer of the car) liable for the car when he willingly lends it out.
My opinion is that if you're enough of a jackass to lend your car to someone that drives drunk, speeds, is untrained, has no license, whatever -- well, then, you deserve to be held as an accomplice when that vehicle is used to break the law.
Lending the car out is a *choice* and if you don't want to be liable for other drivers, then don't lend the damn thing out.
(Note that we're already partially there: if you lend it out and it gets wrecked, the insurance company is going to raise *your* rates.)
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I believe all good trucking companies are using the GPS-equipped trucks to ensure that their drivers are complying with the law: that they aren't speeding excessively, that they are taking rest-breaks regularly, that they are checking brakes before big hills, and that they are on-route and not picking up hitchhikers.
This reduces the company's costs: maintenance and insurance costs are reduced, and they can reliably predict delivery times.
Why else would they bother with the GPS? It'd be a waste of investment otherwise.
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Sure, there'd be a revolt...
...but can you imagine how much safer it would be to drive? The reduction in insurance costs would be pretty damn dramatic, too.
If only someone had the balls to implement something like this, *plus* mandatory driver training and regular re-testing.
My god! It'd damn near put hospitals and morgues out of business!
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So what? Since when has ignorance been any sort of acceptable excuse?
By your thinking, I should be able to stop paying my mortgage, and yet retain the house, because I didn't read the contract, and therefore it doesn't apply to me.
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If the major rental agencies ever come to realize that this will increase their bottom-line profitability, by reducing their insurance rates, car-theft rates, and accident rates, you can be damn sure they will immplement it.
And all you fruggin whiners who figure you've got some sort of G.D. right to speed will be screwed to the wall. And thank goodness, too.
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As speed doubles, impact force quadruples.
An impact of 75 vs 55, is an impact with nearly twice the energy.
Speed is quite obviously a major factor in the severity of an accident.
An impact where both drivers are speeding at 75 will have *seven* times the energy of a single-vehicle accident at 55. And that'd have to be a single vehicle hitting an immovable object, not a fencepost.
Of course speeding isn't the (common) *cause* of accidents. But it's an *extremely significant* factor in their outcome.
And the fact is that most of the arseholes who are speeding are just plain incompetent drivers. When they're forced to maintain pace with traffic, they put everyone at less risk, because they're not weaving in and out of traffic, nor passing.
That's the whole point: to minimize the chances of them fucking up, and to minimize the destruction when they do.
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Oh, hey, and speaking of blind spots:
You can minimize your blind spots, and possibly even eliminate them, by correctly adjusting your mirrors.
Place your head against the drivers' side window, and adjust the left mirror to where it just barely doesn't show your car at all. Repeat for the right mirror, with your head positioned toward the middle of the car (ie. above the center console/parking brake).
True, you can't see your car in the mirrors any more. But, then, that's okay: you know where your car is. Give it a week or two, and it won't seem so unnerving.
You'll see a *lot* more of the traffic on either side of you, and your rearview covers the traffic behind you.
In some cars, you will have *no* blind spots.
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Kinetic Energy = (1/2)*(mass)*(velocity)^2
The mass can be disregarded, as it's constant in this case (the car is not going to become appreciably lighter as it goes faster).
That leaves velocity-squared. Double the speed equals four times the damage when that car collides with something.
You're free to quibble about my casual use of "impact force," but I'm not much interested in arguing cheezy-ass semantics. The original point still stands: 75kmh is nearly *twice* the collision of 55kmh, even though the speed is less than half-again as fast.
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In Massachusetts we use a version of the EZ-Pass system called FastLane. You pass through the sensors on entry and then again at the normal tollbooths and it debits your account. Both transactions have a timestamp and the distance between them is fixed so, doing the math means they can get an average speed on your trip. I've been wondering when they'll catch on to my commute being shorter than expected.
What inevitably happens? Going a little overboard, aren't we?
While I'm sure a rational case can be made for maintaining or strengthening the drunk-driving laws, or how a slippery-slope argument is not particularly persuasive, you're obviously not going to bother making it. It's so much easier to just brand someone as "paranoid" than it is to actually counter their position, isn't it? That way, you don't have to worry about any of that bullshit like reason, logic, or facts. How convenient.
Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
I take issue with comparing going over the speed limit to running red lights: While going over the speed limit has only mildly been correlated with accidents (though the British government, in its campaign to reduce car speeds, brought up some bogus stats to try to make the case for that), going through red lights is absolutely dangerous and is the result of many injuries and deaths. Here in the greater Toronto area (GTA) there has been a huge push to install red-light cameras and there is little or no public opposition (it's very unlike a GPS planted in your car anyways: Your own property is not giving you up, but rather an external unit is). Quite contrary though there was a huge public outroar about a previous initiative that saw them parking radar vans on the side of highways and racking up hundreds of fines for people marginally over the speed limit.
Just before the USDOT lifted the limits on interstate speeds, results from a study on traffic accidents and fatalities revealed that the likelihood of being in an accident correlated with only one number - the amount of time spent driving.
Speed, geography, road type, age, sex none of that correlated well with increased accident rates. The only thing that correlated strongly was time on the road.
Now, fatalities on the other hand, are different. Fatality rates do correlate with speed, up to a certain point. Once you get above 60, they start to level off.
So, the logical conclusion is, if you're going to drive freeway speeds, then you might as well drive over the limit and get there sooner!
I can see the fnords!
They could make it work if they wanted to. Heck, in Boulder, CO, they have sensors that work for bicycles.
I can see the fnords!
If it's just a matter of people driving the cars too fast, then the rental company should install speed throttlers to ensure the car won't go over a certain top speed.
I dunno. It all seems quite stupid to me.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
The system had to be redone so the passenger's face wouldn't show-up, because it seems a lot of husbands getting back home would be greeted with an angry wive brandishing the speeding ticket with photo, and shouting "who was that woman with you"????
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of course IANAL, but if you have knowlege that a crime is committed and don't report it to the authorities, doesn't that make you an accessory? Especially if you provided the tool that made the crime possible?
Moreover, if you begin to charge the transgressor money as a result of your special knowelege of the crime, could that constitute blackmail?
Just wondering,
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Well, I really like their rapid shipping.
signal, noise, to me it's all the same.
The software can tell the difference between
random GPS errs and continuous speeding.
No need to make up sophmoric excuses for bad
behavior.
Some rental locations, particluarly big urban
centers with high accident and default problems
have experimented with driving record and credit
rating denials of service. A number of people
have been peeved to fly into an airport and
find their rental denied because they had more
than one moving violation. The rental companies
wont tell you in advance because it costs several
dollars to run these searches and many reservations
are vapor. They feel it is worth irritating a
few percent of their customers rather than lose
thousands on high risks.
talking on a cell phone while driving *should* be illegal.
Really? I read recently that TEN TIMES as many accidents are caused by drivers being distracted by adjusting the RADIO than are caused by drivers distracted by cell phones. Shouldn't we ban car radios first, then?
Of course, even MORE people people were distracted by "something outside of the car" than the radio. Face it, distracted drivers are dangerous, no matter what the distraction. But don't single out cell phones to blame when they're only implicated in about 1% of accidents. Just because you can see the cell phone in the driver's hand doesn't mean you know he's distracted. One could easily be more distracted by a conversation with a passenger. Shall we ban passengers in all cars as well?
This is ridiculous.
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
nope - Montana's highway fatality rate DOUBLED after reimposing speed limits. hhttp://www.hwysafety.com/hwy_montana_2001.htm
Not speeding is risky, too, especially on wide-open freeways designed to be travelled at 75 mph in cars which didn't handle as well as cars do today. I don't get too incensed about red-light monitors, but the speed laws in most of the US are incredibly irrational, and designed to raise revenue or facilitate police harrassment. If the speed limit on California freeways defaulted to 90, with lower speed limits (like 70 to 85) on the older ones with tighter turns, etc., I could respect them; but right now, the only thing which keeps me at the speed limit on a freeway is heavy traffic.
The technical term for a debit card is "dumbass card". The risks of using these cards is so vast is isn't even funny. I can't believe that they are even legal. It's is exactly as bad as including a book of blank pre-signed checks with every payment you make.
If he had used a credit card, he could have just refused to pay. Then, it would be ACME that has to go to court and justify the $450.00. But, since he used a debit card he is probably SOL. Even if he gets his $450 back, he'll have to give it to his lawyer. Also, notice that it says his account was "drained". It's quite possible that ACME just took as much money as it could. If he had had $4500 in his account, they probably would be claiming that they clocked him speeding 30 times instead of three.
"Yes, your honor. He was speeding at 4:13, again at 4:17-4:18, 4:20-4:23, etc. etc. It's all here in the logs."
Bah. I have no sympathy for the rental company, and hope the guy gets his money back. But, he is a dope for using a debit card.
No, they are not the same thing at all. Getting a bill for $450 dollars is not the same thing as having all the money taken out of your checking account without your knowledge or consent. I think what you mean is that, in theory, they are the same. In fact, they are not the same at all. In one case, you are in the very strong barganing position of requiring the other party to sue you if they want to force you to give up the money. In the other case, you are in the very weak position of being A) broke, and B) having to convince either them or your bank to give the money back.
If you still are not convinced, compare these two scenarios:
1) I send you a bogus bill for $500 dollars.
2) I steal $500 dollars in cash from you.
If you think these are the same, you live in a fantasy land. Debit cards are just a way for Visa et al. to get the benefit of credit cards (a tax on all purchases) without any of the risk (fraudulent use and bad debt.) They are not for the consumers benefit at all.
I agree. Unfortunately, *every* time I tell a police officer this, I get slapped with a ticket.
Really. What ELSE do you say to the cop? I just get handed a ticket if I get pulled over, no hitting involved.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
GPS used to have a 'feature' called select availability which could mess up your location readings by miles in some cases. In 2000 Mr. Clinton signed a bill that got rid of that 'feature' and enabled all of us to use our GPS devices with a great amount of stability.
I use my gps a lot when I go on Geocaching excursions. I have noticed that when traveling long distances my location jumps a lot on the screen. Sometimes my car manages to lose a signal and then, BANG, I'm going 120 when my GPS is trying to catch back up with where my car really is.
I don't understand how any company can reasonably believe that they can accurately track a persons SPEED with GPS. The locations are typically accurate to a matter of feet. Sometimes the accuracy can get up to a matter of yards or miles. It all depends on the terrain you are in (Trees, etc), as well as how many of those GOVERNMENT OWNED satellites are within sight range of your GPS.
Somehow I doubt that this car rental agency has their own ring of satellites up in orbit that have an accuracy of mere inches. Furthermore, if this system does exist, it would have to be not only accurate but absolutely fool proof. There could be no error at all in any measurements.
If they had that, they would quickly be out of the car rental business and have a lot of people knocking on their door for service.
-S
Scott Ruttencutter
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
I sure as hell won't rent from them.
Then you'd get a ticket or even arrested for tamering with law enforcment equipment. Or worse yet, get busted under the DCMA for circumventing encrypted copyrighted data (since I'm sure they've copyrighted the GPS streams from the satalites..)
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2B1ASK1
Ban Arby's!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
No, I'm sorry. That's not good enough.
Ever rented a car? They explain each detail to you, and ask for initials in several spots to indicate that they've explained the contract to you, including what happens when you encounter photo-radar (if it's in your jurisdiction), what happens when you get tickets, etc...
Suddenly adding a line to the contract about speed monitoring by gps and not TELLING anyone is tantamount to fraud.
Besides, for what reason do they collect monetary damages for this?
Yes. The gas thing is standard. Any time I rent a car, from Hertz, or Budget, they explained this to me very clearly, intial here to indicate that you understand that if you do not fill the car up before bringing it back, we chareg $3.50/gallon or whatever. It was *clearly and explicitly explained to me*
I've never had my rate changed, sorry. I get it very clearly from them what it will cost in the end. The troubles you have with this are no different than troubles at any other computer-drive powerless-clerk type agency.
I see a world of difference between this and mandatory speeding checks. This is not about speed limits; it is about a contractual limit beyond which you are not supposed to drive the car. I agree it's stupid, and I wouldn't rent from them, however...
Again, this isn't about posted speed limits, this is about the company saying 'you are not to drive this car faster than 55mph, or we'll fine you each time'.
As for your 'blind' ticket... what's that? Like photo-radar? Unfortunately.... the speed limit is still the speed limit pal. Yes, going with the flow can be used as a defense, but I doubt you were in a huge pack of cars when this happened. And if you were saving a life? You were *still* speeding.
I have so little sympathy for photo-radar whiners; no, I don't like photo radar, but I've seen so many people grumble about how it's 'wrong' while they speed to work at 20kph over the posted limit. Whee... it's like 'Goddamn bank security cameras! They interefere with my robbing the place!'
So just use the Ronald Reagan defense when asked that sort of question.
Officer: "Were you driving your vehicle at 8:52 AM on April 19, 2001?"
You: "I don't remember."
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
AFAIK, that's perfectly legal. The laws in all the states I know of make an exception for people running red lights when it is apparent that the light is malfunctioning. I think the rule is that if the light stays red for more than two minutes, you can treat the light as a stop sign and go after looking to make sure the way is clear.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
In some small towns (the ones that make traffic fines a main revenue source,) the lights going through the main drag would be synchronized and timed so they change in sequence, ostensibly for giving drivers a nice series of greens. Then they would set the yellow durations to 5 seconds on all the lights, except the last one, which would have a 2 second yellow duration. Of course, a cop would be waiting to nail the person who made it through all the 5 second yellows, but didn't make that last yellow.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
That reminds me of a friend of mine who got unjustly fired by Blockbuster. How did he get back at them? Some people collect stamps or antique cars or computers. My friend collects Blockbuster late-fees. He rents from a Blockbuster and deliberately keeps the movie late a few days (or months.) He keeps doing this until the Blockbuster stops allowing him to rent. He then moves on to another Blockbuster doing the same thing (the various stores don't share their late fee lists.) He won't pay the late fees until the collection agencies call and threaten to break his kneecaps. So far he's accumulated hundreds of dollars of late fees, hasn't paid a cent of them yet, and is working hard on increasing his collection. :)
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
The way ACME set the box up, when they do a remote shutdown of a vehicle, the box lets the driver keep driving until he parks & shuts off the ignition. Then it won't start up again.
Talk about Big Brother. I don't care what justification a company has about using this kind of technology. I deeply resent the idea of having every move of mine monitored. As long as I return the car in the same condition as it was before I rented it, where I drive or how fast I go is none of their damn business.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
If you have a series of positions measured at discrete times, it's very very easy to get velocity. V=ds/dt where s is position and t is time. Take your change in s (your last two position fixes) and the time interval of the measurements, divide, and you've got an excellent approximation of your instantaneous velocity.
Making a microprocessor do this is trivial. Sending that number over a radio is also trivial. Your thought that the costs of implementing such a system would be prohibitive is incorrect, since the article says that it HAS been implemented, and rather widely.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
What I have thought would be an interesting use of FastLane data is real-time traffic monitoring. Assuming that FastLane users are a representative sample of all drivers (which may or may not be the case), a system like MapQuest could know what the true current average and dev. speeds were on major roads and give predictions accordingly, etc... There are dozens of good ways the data could be used.
--Ben
Even without EZ-Pass or FastLane, the ticket you get when you enter a toll road is time-stamped so the same issues exist with the ``old way''
--Ben
"Someday we'll be able to just switch off those retarded SUV drivers on the freeway with the push of a button!"
If more than X people in a certain time period type in your plate number to some little keypad, then your car is alerted that it has recieved a "Time Out". You have 5 minutes to pull over and turn your car off. After giving you a few minutes to think about what a naughty boy you've been (or load an AK), you can start driving again. You could get the system sponsored by "Survivor". It would be huge.
-B
A big piece of aluminum foil wrapped over the GPS unit. Problem solved. Big Brother has been been 'foiled' again.... :)
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
Red Light cameras are very popular in the UK, most intersections in London have red light cameras. There are also bus lane cameras (UK doesn't have car pool lanes yet).
When I moved to California I was shocked to see the number of people who jump red lights (and I'm not talking about right turn on red - these are mainly left over busy intersections) and I quickly realised it is because of the lack or red light cameras.
I understand that some states in the US belive these aren't legal - I don't understand why that can be the case you were clearly breaking the law and in many cases intentionally doing it. What is unconstitutional about getting caught by a device rather than a policeman ?
texas has that law, double the fine if it's a work zone, but i've noticed that recently they've been adding a sign to the bottom of the warnings that says "when work crews are present".
this is just a placeholder till i send back my real sig from the future.
Come on guys. The guy was going 90 MPH. Unless he was the only person on the road, he was endangering countless lives other than his own. He was also endangering ACME's minivan. I would feel for the guy if he was boned for going 56 mph three times. But I will never feel sorry for a guy who was flagerently violating the law. He was also flagerently violating his rental agreement.
Also note, the article in no ways indicates the guy is disputing the fact that he was going 90 MPH. His only complaint is that he didn't know it would cost him so dearly.
If I owned the rental car company, I would look into this system. Not to track every car going 5 mph over the limit, but to prevent people from going 30 mph over the limit.
quack
Because smoke detectors don't track my movement through the hotel, nor do they report back to my wife if I bring a girl back to my room.
>Good. And neither does this device.
um.. yes it does. It told ACME exactly where he went and how long he was at said locations...
If he went to a strip club, that information was easily gained via the data that ACME picked up.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
/*Why not buy your own radar gun and "pull over" drivers who speed, and charge them $50? How is what ACME doing any different? */
Because, unlike your "random motorist", ACME owns the car you are renting. They have a right to ensure that their property is being used in a manner that they deem fitting. If they don't want you to speed (for whatever reason), then they can stipulate it in the contract and then enforce it via a method they choose. I think GPS is too crappy for it, maybe trucker-like blackboxes would be more accurate. However, those suckers are expensive and would probably offset any insurance deductions.
Yeah, it fucking sucks, but if you don't like it, don't rent from ACME.
Oh, and the pulling over scenario, I honestly can't say this is true, but from what I understand, a citizen's arrest is very much what you're talking about. Now, getting the asshole to pull over might be different and traffic "crimes" may be different than others. See your local police department for details on how to go about performing a "citizen's arrest".
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
The only way to raise enough interest from the public to get stupid laws repealed is to make people obey them. Here in MD we have TONS of 6 lane divided highways that are posted 55mph. That's ridiculous. *Nobody* drives below 70-75 on these things. It's just another way the cops have to pull you over anytime they feel like it. Posted limits are for the most part far below the real limits of the road and modern vehicles. But nobody complains because nobody is really being forced to drive that slow. Cops have passed me when I was doing 75 on one of these 55mph roads before without so much as a glance. For the most part, they don't do anything unless you're doing 80 or above. I just resent the fact that I have to drive what everyone on the road considers a reasonable speed in fear of getting pulled over by the random guy in blue that's having a bad day. I'd much rather the limit be bumped up to 75 and then *really* get a ticket for doing more than that. Until the laws are enforced as they're written, however, people won't complain in large enough numbers to get things changed. Maybe more stupid ideas like the one being discussed in this article will finally get people off their asses and start writing to their representatives to get things changed. And yes, before anyone asks, I have written to my representatives. But as I mentioned, unless LOTS more start doing that, nobody is going to take notice.
I don't believe you should hold the store liable just because the product sucked. They don't manufacture printers, they just sell 'em.
You probably were pissed just because you failed to research the product beforehand. That's no reason to be an ass about it.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
I was referring more to the way you said you handled the situation. Restocking fees are pretty standard, and are there to help cover the costs involved with returns. You shouldn't have to pay a restocking fee if the product was actually damaged; in your case, if the printer wouldn't print at all, or left nasty streaks all over the page, or something like that. Returning a product just because you decide it isn't sufficient for your needs is a very different situation. The store did nothing wrong...they didn't sell you a broken printer. Not only that, but most likely the only reason they waived the fee is because you bitched long enough that the cost of having employees sit there and listen to you began to outweigh the fee.
If you're going to be a stickler for good customer service, pick better battles to fight.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
Most places I've seen that primarily deal with electronics and computer equipment charge a 10-15% restocking fee on returns...but only if the merchandise is being returned for reasons other than damage. If CompUSA is charging a restocking fee on *damaged* merchandise, then that's bullshit and it should be changed. I have no problem with restock fees for "whim" returns (I didn't like it, I realized I couldn't eat next week if I spend that much, etc). The reason you gave for your return falls into this group.
Customer satisfaction hasn't been the ultimate goal of most businesses for quite some time, especially chain retail stores like CompUSA. Speaking from the experience of someone who has worked for companies that'll bend over backwards to keep a customer happy, I can say that it severely affects the bottom line if you always say "Yes, sir, that's fine, whatever you say." The customer is not always right.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
Did you hear that they made it illegal to smother a child to death with blankets in Colorado? Now, what would we do without those thoughtful politicians to help us? Doubtless, this law will be used at some point in the future to arrest a political dissident for tucking his/her kids in bed at night.
Traffic laws have a purpose and are useful, but like so many other things they get bastardized by the politicos. Studies are revealing that town that install those red-light cameras are not shortening the length that the yellow-light stays on. The bastards don't have the balls to tell people that they can't have everything in the world without someone paying for it and then either raise taxes or cut 'services', so they try to raise money by making people 'criminals'.
Whenever you hear that politicians are quarreling instead of 'getting things done' or 'going about the nations business', drop to one knee and thank whatever diety you pray to. Personally, I think they should pull the air-conditioners out of the Congressional Building and all the state legislature buildings. That way the bastards would go home in the summer and have less time to think up ways to fuck us all.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
I'll try and dignify you with an answer just in case I'm mistaken:
I was simply asking a question I found intellectually interesting. If cars are required to have these GPS devices in them, how would one get around being moniterred by them? I believe everyone has a right to this knowledge. You are correct, some people will use this knowledge to break the law. But remember there is a bell curve. On the other end are the people who use this knowledge to stop the people who break laws. And in the middle are the vast majority of people, who either know and do nothing, or don't know and don't care. I'm simply saying that those people in the center have a right to know.
I was in no way advocating breaking laws, I was simple asking a question which piqued my interest.
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"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
When they fine you, will they also notify the police that you were speeding?
Eh? Just seems shady to me. No speeding ticket, the police don't get notified, and the rental company gets paid. And as a bonus, if you get pulled over by the cops, you get to pay both the police and the rental company. What an amazing business plan guys!---
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"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
I got a ticket in the mail with a nice picture showing my car, license plate prominent, going through a red light in Brooklyn.
It's damn hard to contest when you actually did it and they have you on film doing it. D'Oh!
Of course, there are ways to fool the system. I know people who started shalacking [sic] their license plates with some reflective coating, so that when a picture was taken, all that one could see was a bright blur.
So the question is how would one get around the GPS sytem if it were imposed? Because even if you could somehow keep the GPS system from telling the central station that you were speeding, you'd now be the only person on the road going above the speed limit, making it very easy for a cop to spot you and pull you over. I guess the trick would be to have the GPS system tell the station that you were a different car, and then you could go marginally above the speed limit without being stopped. I don't know. And I'm really rambling nonsensically now. So I'll stop.
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"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
if 50% of the drivers on the road used the override button, lots of paper work will be generated that no one can be prosecuted!
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
Driving at the posted 55 (say) in pissing rain or 20feet visibility fog is theoretically legal
I don't know about other countries or states, but here in California we have the Basic Speed Law, which states that it is illegal to drive faster than is safe for the current conditions (e.g. pissing rain or heavy fog), no matter what the posted limit is.
(I used to think it also meant that if it was clear and dry and there was no traffic, you could drive 100 mph if you thought it was safe. The judge didn't agree.)
Can you imagine the outcry if you were to disqualify any group of people from driving in the US?
Problem is that driving licences have been abused into being general ID's. IIRC In some parts of the US there is even legislation endorsing this perversion. Let alone the bizare idea of someone losing their licence for something unrelated to driving, but possibly keeping it even for causing death or serious injury with a motor vehicle.
I would amplify this statement. Anyone who claims that "speeding" is dangerous, but going under the speed limit isn't, has obviously not spent much time driving in the real world.
When someone is going 10 MPH over the traffic flow, they are no threat to me as long as they don't tailgate or swerve around traffic. Both of which are serious traffic violations in their own right and not directly related to speeding.
But someone going 10 MPH *under* the traffic flow causes traffic to back up behind them. This makes it much more difficult for vehicles to merge in or out of traffic since there's a solid wall of vehicles. The 'patience-impaired' will try to change lanes to avoid the bottleneck, often with insufficient regard to the possibility of high speed traffic coming up behind them.
If it's a $50 dollar ticket to go 10 MPH over traffic flow, I think it should be a $200 ticket to be going 10 MPH under the traffic flow without a good reason. (Bad weather, high glare, etc., are all good reasons. Just cause it's "safer" isn't.)
Even on surface streets, you can easily see problems with below-speed traffic. I live at the end of a dead-end street, and occasionally encounter drivers who think 15 MPH is "safer" than the standard 25 MPH.
That sounds great... if you're near the entrance. If you're at the end of a half-mile road, though, you're bored out of your skull and pay a lot *less* attention to the road. After all, this is about half of the regular (and customary) speed.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I think you were responding to more than just me... but to answer the on-point issues
1) I'm not urging frivilous rejections, but a lot of companies are leaving consumers no other option and the courts, CC issues, and other agencies know this. Besides my CC war stories, I can give you a good example in the local cable TV franchise. I told them, repeatedly, I had changed banks and they were to cease auto-debits.
They kept agreeing, then tried to charge the account anyway. Since the bank refused it, I got hit with a $25 NSF fee.
My former bank also charged me initially, until I explained the situation. They could not legally refuse the bank drafts, due to some insane federal regulation. But I could sign a document that the charges were fradulent - and they were, since the company had been informed, repeatedly, that they were to cease such withdrawals.
For close to a year they kept trying to debit the closed account. It is undoubtably a coincidence, nothing more, that it stopped shortly after I became so frustrated at their continuing debits and refusal to identify the appropriate franchise agency that I wrote the state's Attorney General to inquire whether this constituted criminal fraud. I sure as hell would be facing a criminal prosecution if I floated bad checks for a year, and here was a company doing the same thing then demanding I pay them $25/shot for their failure to update their own records.
I'm NOT painting your company with the same brush, just pointing out that these complaints may carry a lot more weight than you would expect since many companies are clearly attempting to intimidate the poor and ill-informed into paying outrageous bogus charges. If the CC issuer is presented a bill for an after-the-fact-charge-with-no-appeal, they might not be quick to assume the customer is at fault, even if the contract would seem to support the claim.
It's worth noting that it appears ACME is *not* informing customers of this bill when they return the car, something that should be trivial to do by reading the GPS data as part of the check-in process. They didn't even bother calling him. They just yanked the money out of the account without his knowledge, much less consent, and then said "sorry, no appeals." THAT is unnecessary and incredibly abusive - the charges should either be made when the customer signs the final paperwork, or after he's been given reasonable notice. Not this "two days later" (or whatever it was) crap.
2) Of course the number and type of violations matter. Three separate incidents over 500 miles, say, is serious. I exceeded 80 MPH only twice over an 8000 mile trip, and both were for unusual circumstances. (The near collision near Seattle, and heavy Friday evening traffic out of Los Angeles where there was literally no alternative road through the dessert.)
3) Keep all the records you want. As I said, I have a clean driving record. (Well, I was just in a 2-mph accident at a poorly constructed intersection, but that was the first accident in almost 20 years, and the first non-PR ticket in nearly as long.) If somebody really is a dangerous driver I don't want you renting to him either!
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
You say that the contract doesn't need any way to appeal a charge, since it's not a court of law?
Guess what? YOU WILL END UP IN A COURT OF LAW with that attitude. All the vict... customer has to do is sign an document claiming that the $150 "surcharge" was fradulent and very few (read: no) bank won't take it seriously. The charge will be reversed and it will be up to YOU to prove to a court, not the bank, that the charge is valid and enforceable under the contract.
Once you're in a real court you'll have to deal with real issues. E.g., the last time I hit 90 on an interstate it was because some asshole in a SUV was busy chewing out his children... and his foot pressed down on the accelerator as he twisted around in his seat. I was in front of him, and blocked by traffic and the K-bar from changing lanes. I had floored the accelerator, and was literally bracing for impact, when the wife (I believe) finally let the driver know that he was about to kill them all.
To this day I think I made a mistake by not immediately calling the *DUI on my celphone. Maybe he wasn't drunk, but he was just as dangerous as he drive down I-5 in heavy traffic with no attention to what was in front of him.
Let's say this gets to court. On the one hand is ACME saying that the contract requires a $150 fine for excessive speed. No exceptions. Technologie uber alles.
On the other hand is a breathing human being with a clean driving record. He testisfies that he felt the choice was simple: speed, or be rear-ended on a busy interstate at 65+ MPH. At best, the rental car would be totalled. (And it would NOT be chargeable against the vehicle renter since he was rear-ended while driving in a safe and legal manner.) But there was enough traffic that this would probably trigger a chain reaction and many people would be seriously injured or killed.
That's an absolute no-brainer, and if ACME's lawyers were stupid enough to actually take the case to court a judge might decide that the ENTIRE contract is unenforceable because it shocks the sensibility. You can't claim that the fine is "for safety" while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge that in rare conditions (this was the first time I've experienced this in over 20 years of driving) it's critical to avoid a deadly collision.
The author of a contract might try to ignore this, but a court of law deciding enforceability of a contract will not. And if the contract is invalidated, the company has much more to lose. (E.g., do all current renters suddenly become de facto owners of their cars? They paid money for the car, after all...)
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
From previous article:h tm l#433
4
http://slashdot.org/articles/00/01/04/1024239.s
Also mentioned in some debate about this:
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/21.23.html#subj1
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
Yes, you claim, but there will be a market for the one firm that provides cars with no speeding restrictions. Really? What if there isn't quite that much demand? What if their insurance company refuses to insure their cars? (Well, everyone else limits their speed, so your cars are obviously more liable to accidents now...)
What next? Do you set up your own rental company, and an insurance company to insure it?
I hate it when people spout off their infinite faith in capitalism without thinking through the consequences... The companies are out to get your money, and they don't give a damn about your liberties or rights or anything. Just something to think about. And I won't even bother to extend my analogy to casual genetic screening, for example.
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
ACME had better have itself some damn good lawyers....
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Hell, they can even nail you if you're traveling at or under the speed limit, if everyone else is going faster. They call it "obstructing traffic." You're damned if you do and damned if you don't, if Smokey hasn't made his quota yet.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Because smoke detectors don't track my movement through the hotel, nor do they report back to my wife if I bring a girl back to my room.
Be careful with this approach. There are formulas out there for determining how long the yellow phase should last in relation to the speed limit of the road they are on.
In other words, city streets with a speed limit of 25 or 30 have much shorter yellows than a boulevard with a speed limit of 50 or 60. This topic is discussed from time to time in the misc.transport.road newsgroup.
There's a number of problems:
Unfortunately this case is in small claims court. If the guy's lawyer is any good, that list, plus a few other items, will come out in court, assuming a good judge who doesn't limit the time for arguments to 5 minutes. Acme could get bitch-slapped on this one in a regular court, but I believe american small claims courts have a limit of $500. The guy will get his $450 back, and ACME will have to pay court costs. Nothing to discourage them from continuing the practice.
The AirIQ device is one of a number of commercial devices available to trucking companies to regularly track their fleets. They use a GPS to monitor position, and send the data back through a low speed satellite connection to the AirIQ office, which then offers real-time maps, lists of speeding drivers, and other services to companies.
Here in Europe many companies are starting to use them to track the contents of shipping containers which are being hi-jacked by organised groups and transported to eastern europe or re-sold within western europe. I saw some demonstations of different units at the last CeBit, amazing how small they can make the units, and the techniques they have for getting signals in and out of steel shipping containers.
I can understand trucking companies wanting to know when a driver has exceeded his maximum awake time, or gone too fast on the autobahn after taking 4 hours for lunch, or tracking the contents of a hi-jacked truck. But when such technology starts to filter into mainstream society, its time to raise a large fuss. This court case will hopefully start the fuss going in the US.
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
The French Gendarmerie used to do this, but enough tickets were successfully fought in court to limit their use to the most heinous offenders. In France, the police have to actually witness you performing the crime to write a ticket, and with just two timestamps, it wasn't enough evidence for the courts. But for the worst offenders, if there happens to be a Gendarme patrol at the exit plaza, they can be signalled by the toll booth operator.
I've known people who have done Paris-Lyon in 2.2 hours, which puts their average speed at around 200 Km/h (the autoroute limit is 130), and didn't have any problems at the toll plazas. But I've also been stopped several times pulling out of toll plazas by Gendarmes who stand behind the toll booths and randomly pick on 1 out of every several cars. Mostly just breath tests, or to check the papers of the car for insurance. I never got a ticket, though.
They are testing a new system in France (north of Paris, mostly on the A1) where they are using airplanes to catch speeders and dangerous drivers. To avoid loopholes, they put a judge in the plane, and he radios to a judge on the ground with the complaint when you get pulled over. So you now have the sworn testimony of a judge d'instruction to fight in court (or maybe you are judged on the spot, IANAFL). Plus they have a stabilised video system in the plane for evidence. They are showing it at Le Bourget this week.
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
Don't worry about it. I used to develop GIS applications, and we did a lot of projects with GPS recievers. They're touchy as all hell, and you always lose connections here and there. It would be EXTREMELY EASY to disable the (requrired) antenna, either with a switch or via electronic means (coupling noise, etc). This makes it unfeasible. You could even get slicker than that and spoof your signal, anyhow.
I don't think it'll ever happen. I wouldn't stand for it, that infringes on my freedom to the point where I'm willing to stand up in front of a judge, and I think a lot of other people (in North America) feel the same way. Safe speeds on freeways are often 20-30km/h above posted in traffic.
..don't panic
Or, if your speed decreases from, say 50 mph, to 0 mph within 1 second, (and perhaps the same happened to another car very close to you) perhaps they can automatically dispatch an ambulance or something.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I was on a long trip across the country and I kept noticing that it was taking me longer to get there than I had calculated. Turns out my odometer was 2% fast, meaning that it was reading 2% farther than I actually went.
When I talked to the dealer about it, I was informed that Honda actually designs their speedometers to read 10% faster than your actual speed! Sure enough when I measured it, the odometer was 2% fast but the odometer consistently 10% fast!
My problem with this is that I tend to drive right at the speed limit, mostly out of habit, and come to find out I'm actually driving 10% UNDER the speed limit. So around here where interstate speed limits are 70, I actually have to drive 77 just to be at the speed limit!
I'm not a journalist, but I play one on slashdot
...but I still wouldn't do business with them.
I'd file them right next to companies on the piss list.
Sure, an employer can require a drug test, but if any prospective employer asked me to piss in a bottle, I'd say "I'd rather piss all over your desk. What, you find that offensive? Okay, so do you get the point?"
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
They didn't cite him. They just charged him $150 per occurrence, as per their rental agreement.
Personally, I think the rental company's being more honest than the cops -- most speeding tickets are handed out to enhance city revenues, not enhance motorist safety. At least the rental department's being honest about it. ("It's got nothing to do with the police, we just want the money")
I agree with your original point (speed differential is dangerous, not absolute speed per se), but take issue with you on one point:
If the rest of the drivers in California were trained as well as the drivers on the Autobahn, it wouldn't be deadly at all.
If you ever get a ticket for running a light in this manner, go back to the intersection and time how long the yellow light lasts. There have been more than a few municipalities shortening the length of yellow lights at intersections where they have these camera ticket systems setup. If you can show that the yellow light didn't last a sufficient amount of time to allow you to either safely clear the intersection or come to a safe stop then the ticket is bogus and ought to be thrown out.
Yeah. But if a yellow light lasts 2 seconds on a road with a speed limit of 50mph, it's pretty obvious that the yellow wasn't long enough.
That would be true if the *current* speed limits were consistently enforced. Of course, the current speed limits have very little to do with safety and much more to do with revenue generation. I would rather see speed limits increased to a level such that you are clearly driving dangerously by exceeding them (maybe 80-85 on interstates, 50-60 on main roads, 35-40 on residential). You would still have people violating the law so the revenue source wouldn't dry up, but it would actually be dangerous drivers paying the fines, as opposed to the negative lottery we have today.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
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> Everytime you speed, you run the risk of killing someone.
Bullshit.
You can run the risk of killing someone while driving BELOW the speed limit. (i.e. rainy or winter driving conditions, etc.)
Speeding != driving reckless.
Speeding is a VICTIMLESS crime, which should NOT be illegal.
Now, reckless driving IS indangering someone else's life, which SHOULD be illegal (and it is.)
Um, please read what i wrote. I said apartment, not house. I certainly didn't own my own apartment.
And you seem to miss the point that IT IS ILLEGAL for them to get into the speed enforcement buisness at all. It doesn't matter if its in there contract if its illegal for it to be there in the first place!
Move to a state where the speed limit is over 70mph. :)
Taking into consideration that the standard formula for driving is 20 over Posted... I typically get away with between 90 and 100, and people are still passing me.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
7,500 gallons?!?! Are you smoking crack? That's 0.4 miles per gallon. Take a real belcher, like the Ford Excursion. It gets 24 highway.. That's 125 gallons.
Even my old 1979 Camaro, which got 10 mpg highway on premium because of a variety of 'enhancements' would only need 300 gallons..
.sig: Now legally binding!
Can they prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he was indeed speeding? Speeding is technically a crime, so therefore would ACME have to prove to the courts that he was speeding, and if so, would it not be the State that collects the fine?
What a disturbing development.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
how true.
i had an experience w/ a stupid driver about 2 months ago, i was out picking up some grub at my local arby's, anyway, i was making a left hand turn (w/ my turn signal on) at a DEAD stop, and some dumb-bitch-with-an-suv-talking-on-a-cell-phone-an
thnx for listening.
E.
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This Post has been brought to you by the letter "E".
Damn, she hit you at 50mph? Damn, you are extremely lucky that you and your passenger only had minor injuries, could have been a lot worse.
i n-fucking-lala-land bitch, while at a dead stop waiting to turn left. My friend and I were out getting food at Arby's.
As far as cell phones go, I'm unsure what I think needs to be done. Personally, I feel that it should fall under reckless driving. I'm hesitant about asking for MORE laws, but correctly enforcing the ones we currently have sure would help.
Hmmm... Funny thing, about two months ago, I was riding in someone's car and we were hit, at about 50 mph, by some not-paying-attention-speeding-in-her-big-ass-suv-
His little corolla was totalled, but we both only sustained minor injuries. What a coincidence that you had such a similar experience around the same time!
That's not the first time I've almost been killed like that though. About 6 months ago I was driving to work, and some jackass on a cell phone, was just staring off into nothing, completely oblivious to his surroundings while going into a turn, crossed the center line, and comes within an inch of hitting me. We were both doing about 50 going oposite directions on a two lane road, he looked up right at the last second and swerved.
Then there's been countless times when people on cell phones swerved into my lane without looking, or just swerved because they didn't even realize they were swerving.
So yeah, people are pretty damn stupid when it comes to driving. WTF is so hard to understand about 2+ tons of metal moving at 60+ MPH being extremely dangerous and requiring ALL of your attention?
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
One: Counter to some arguments here, GPS still has the feature called 'Selective Availability', Clinton just had it set to ZERO introduced error. It could be restored in any time of need, even on a continent-by-continent basis (that's the Selective part). But even with the SA set to its 1997 levels, a good 12channel GPS receiver would calculate a typical Estimated Positional Error (EPE) that would STILL only introduce a variation of about 5mph instantaneous velocity at highway speeds. Now it's about 2mph error even if the sampled satellites are mostly coplanar.
Two, a lot of people are commenting about their GPS giving a freak "200mph" moment when the receiver goes under a bridge or around a rock. In the three years and 76000+ miles I've driven on Garmin GPS III and III+ receivers, I've never seen this happen. Good GPS units do some initial statistical smoothing: tossing out single obviously bizarre readings. Throw out anything with a magnitude of acceleration greater than a certain cutoff maximum, or throw out deviations that last less than a minimum overall time. And if the company's logging you, they can do even more smoothing. Sure, you hit 76pmh for 20sec, but if you're passing someone on the highway, that's normal. Obviously you didn't go from 55mph to 135mph in 0.5sec, just to return to 56mph.
Acceleration and position analysis can give the car companies MORE ways to judge your driving habits with their equipment. SURCHARGE FOR QTY (2) SPINNING "DONUT" MANEUVERS: $45 ea. SURCHARGE FOR QTY (3) SPRINTING MANEUVERS: $45 ea. SURCHARGE FOR QTY (5) PANIC BREAKING MANEUVERS: $45 ea.
Four, the obvious seems to have missed many people here: it's a contract, and if you don't like it, don't sign it. If they write in the contract YOU WILL BE BILLED A SURCHARGE IF OUR CAR DETERMINES YOUR DRIVING EXCEEDS SAFE LIMITS, then honor it. It's their car. They can do what they want to do with it, and put what restrictions they want to put on it. Almost all 4WD cars are rented with the provision: THIS 4WD CAR MUST ONLY BE OPERATED ON PAVED ROADS; OFF-ROAD EXCURSIONS ARE FORBIDDEN. They don't want to fix it after you break it. Same thing here.
[
The voter revolt that would follow would be quite amusing.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Several intersections 'round here are also wired to take your picture if you run the red light.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
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I'm sorry, but it's their property. If they don't want you using/abusing it in a certain way, then they have every right to hold you financially responsible when you violate their rules.
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The only thing missing was a recording of my mother's voice yelling at me to slow down! Later Tony
WTF? Over?
Buy a car that comes stock with 'Z' rated tires, and you get a car with no limiter, or a 149MPH limiter.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
I got a ticket in the mail with a nice picture showing my car, license plate prominent, going through a red light in Brooklyn.
This reminds me of a comedian who was talking about the police in L.A. putting up photo-speed traps. He said, "I got a picture of my car and license plate in the mail with a ticket, so I sent them a picture of $50." He said, "Two weeks later, they sent me a picture of handcuffs. I sent in the money right away."
"Not exactly...."
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/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
It's definitely a sad situation where the law is so frequently violated, because it tends to promote a casual attitude toward the law, albeit in a specific instance.
However, if I am generally permitted to modify my respect for the law in that particular instance, then why not another (such as $FAVORITE_VICTIMLESS_CRIME), and another ?
Conversely, why not make a whole slew of arbitrary laws and give the police complete discretion to arrest anyone they deemed fit?
I recall reading once in Car & Driver (a forum where speed limits are roundly thumped and criticized as infernal impediments to spirited driving) that some kind of study had been conducted (perhaps by the U.S. Department of Transportation?) indicating that the "best" speed limit was one which 80% of the drivers obeyed naturally.
BTW, commercial vehicles have lived under the yoke of GPS monitoring for some years. I once saw a setup in a dark room with a bunch of servers and a projection screen showing a map of the city with locations of passenger delivery vans equipped with GPS and radio transmitters. If any driver lingered too long on an unscheduled stop, the Powers That Be would know.
However, I think such monitoring evokes a love-hate relationship with the long-haul trucking industry, since greater fundamental efficiency is achieved by speeding (not to mention other less than legal behaviors, such as use of amphetamine and driving more than 16 hours/day.) I haven't heard of any GPS equipped truckers being turned in for speeding as a result of this monitoring.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
You hit resonance with that gripe.
After contending with, shall we say, less than ideal, "drivers" on the road, I've often thought it would be beneficial to have unmarked cars roving around with trained observers from the local motor vehicle authority doing real time grading of current driver's license holders.
Gleefully do I think of the consequences of such grading on my pet peeves, such as Joe Turtle slowing down at 0.1 nano-gees in the leftmost fastlane on a crowded boulevard to make an illegal left turn where there is No Fscking Left Turn Bay, while 15 cars pile up behind him. Joe, take 10 demerits and an increased insurance rate for driving in a manner to decrease safety and to decrease the overall efficiency of traffic flow.
Oh, and Patsy GottaGetThereNow who speeds past you, slips in just ahead of you in the nick of time so she can immediately and drastically slow down just barely in time to make a sharp right, treating you and your vehicle to extra braking and acceleration, when she could just as well have pulled in behind you and performed the same maneuver saving you the hassle at the cost of 15 picoseconds of her precious time. Five demerits, Patsy!
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Most traffic signals use induction loops to detect cars. Essentially an AC signal is sent through a wire loop in the pavement. Putting a big hunk of metal on it changes the impedance. Nothing to do with weight.
Now that the 55 mph speed limit is gone, I don't seen anyone saying "Drive 55 - it's not the law, but it's a good idea." In other words, their concern for safety turned out to be merely a slave's concern with obeying his master's orders.
You claim that 'speeding' is unsafe. If a man drove 70 mph every day down the same highway from 1970 to today, it would have been 'unsafe' in the 70's and 'safe' today because we've raised the speed limit.
It doesn't happen often, perhaps once every few months or so, but when it does I can go a mile or two in just a second, and in that case would I be speeding?
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Free Mac Mini
He should have known about this before hand. He didn't read his contract. It's his own damn fault.
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Free Mac Mini
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Free Mac Mini
The proposed system in England is a active system. If you're in a 30 zone, then you can't go above 30. If you're in a 55 zone, then you can't go above 55.
I work for a transportation research laboratory. One of our scientists just came from England, where there's a project to limit the speed of vehicles. Here's a link to information on the project.
but if they could have one for failure to use a turn signal, I'd be all for it!
Kinda funny you mention it. Just today, I was sitting in traffic and I thought to myself; If I was a cop, I would become known as the 'turn signal cop'.
I would spend my entire traffic duty pulling over people that do not use the signal for lane changes and turns. I would also follow all cell-phoners until they do something stupid and then pull them over for that...
I never make space for someone to come over to my lane if they neglect to signal. But if they signal, no problemo. It is unfortunate that where I live, people are so aggresive that if you do use your signal to change lanes, people will speed up just to block you...
The hell "it isn't about the money". Add another risk to using a debit card to rent a car! If he had used a credit card, he could dispute the charge. Since he used a debit card, the rental agency was able to take the $450 without giving the renter a chance to dispute the charge. Sounds a bit like a scam to me. I'd want details - like a complete log of my speed and location during the period the car was in my posession. If they couldn't produce that, I doubt my credit card company would argue with my dispute. Oh, and about the "transmission to satellites" thing? GPS doesn't but the tracking device they use may very well uplink location information to a satellite. That's how they find those stolen trucks so fast.
Although.. If you make sure there's a car beside you when you speed under a camera, there will be two cars on the picture, and will get discarded, because they don't know which one was speeding.
You can also of course just ruin every camera you see, a sport becoming more and more popular in the Netherlands, for obvious reasons.
Leto.
<grub> Reading
The main purpose of the system is to quickly locate and recover rental cars that don't come back. But it has many other uses. One is that it allows rental companies to rent to non credit card holders. Another is enforcing travel-area restrictions.
Law enforcement apparently hasn't discovered this yet; it's too new. But that will happen.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
yeah, those damn propagandists! Using the real world consequences of your childish selfish actions against you. Why, the actaul truth of what inevitably happens when people drive drunk is just so intellectually dishonest. Bizzare ramblings about slippery slopes and camera's in your bedroom and OH MY GOD IT'S 1984 ANY MINUTE NOW!!!!! are such a non emotional, rational way to hold a debate about actually enforcing public safety laws.
Do you have any idea how rediculous you sound to someone who isn't a fellow paranoid libertopiest? Honestly, you're probably a politically savy libertarian's worst nightmare. "emotional stories of people getting killed" and violation activated traffic camera's are gonna lead to big brother in our homes? And you wonder why you aren't taken seriously...
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
OK, if this whole driving at night/motorcycle thing is a real concern, and not just a smokescreen agaisnt the idea (which is what the orriginal message really looked like), its not a big deal.
1) if the sensors for the light change can't feel your motorcycle, why would the ones for the camera? I would think it would be easiest to use the same sensor.
2) even at night, no matter how deserted you assume it is, you must still stop at the light at least long enough to look both ways. To do otherwise is selfish, dangerous and stupid. This isn't "Night of the Comet" there are plenty of other people out there who like to go driving (and walking) late at night too. So if you hear about these starting in your area (and you will hear about it if you bother to keep up with your local politics) write, call or go to a hearing and recomend that all lights that are rigged with these cameras also be upgraded with late night triggers as well.
3) failing that, in some states I believe it is legal to treat a red light as a stop sign under some conditions - if you have come to a full stop and can see clearly in both directions and see no oncoming traffic, you can cross. Find out what the guidelines are on this in your community and argue that those sort of exceptions should be accounted for in the enforcement of camera tickets.
Anyway, these are pretty small exceptions to a IMHO really good idea. Where I live, cars are running lights in busy pedestrian intersections in the middle of the day. If I was lucky enough that one of these programs started where I live and people started bringing up these "sob stories" I'd either laugh at them, or suggest the above solutions, depending on how obnoxious they were being. And anyone bringing up the "big brother" schtick would get a response that would likely sprain my condesension gland.
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
No, he wasn't, but you're coming pretty close.
Maybe you really were just asking out of intelectual interest, but the general climate on this newsgroup has been that people have some god given right to break the law and endanger other people. Just look at the other responses before you shoot your mouth off.
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
Maybe the solution for you would be to stop crossing on the red, or is that too revolutionary?
You can't handle the truth.
Once again, someone fails to realize that just because we CAN do a thing, it doesn't necessarily follow that we MUST do this thing.
This article is so full of horseshit, it makes me want to laugh... The rental agent claiming that it's about public safety, and not money? Is $150 what most people would call a mild deterrent?
Then there's the fact that it tracks you across state lines. Even a state trooper doesn't have the right to ticket you for speeding violations just across the state line.
Also, the article mentions that the system allows the agent to set a particular 'safe' speed on each car. Suppose the agent decides 55 is the safe speed... Do they fine you for going 65 in a 70? No mention is made of whether ACTUAL speed zones are linked to the GPS data to determine if you were ACTUALLY breking the law. That could be even scarier, since speed zones change and data in geographic systems can sometimes be incorrect... How many times a week does a site like MapQuest steer someone wrong?
Yes, we're that much closer to big brother, and once again, we see that it is the corporate world who will bring him to life. Even if we disregard, for a moment, the threat to the constitutional right to privacy and the issues of contract law, the government by rights SHOULD step in NOW in a BIG WAY to put a stop to this. It usurps power from a countless number of state and municipal authorities. Then, supposing you DO get a 'real' ticket from the local PD, you get home and you're fined by the rental car agency? Can we say 'double jeopardy'?
These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
but stupid drivers do.
I'm not sure I like the fines for speeding; but if they could have one for failure to use a turn signal, I'd be all for it!
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
and...it works.
Several points have been brought up, which need to be addressed:
1. There's "no appeals process". Wah. This is not a court of law, this is a contract. We agree to let you use a car. If you use it in a means against our contract, you owe us more $$$. Don't like it? Pay the higher rates to rent from some other agency that is busy paying high overhead because all of their cars are getting stolen.
We get sued, every day, by people who have been injured by people who have rented cars from us, and that's WITH our stringent qualifications. Think the machine goofed? Sue us. We'll bring the records to court. People wreck our cars, EVERY SINGLE DAY, people try to steal our cars and take them to Mexico, EVERY SINGLE DAY.
2. We are a private business, protecting our interest. However, I would vehemently fight any government effort to use this technology to keep track of citizens. For those people who have been getting "red light traffic tickets", I don't know about other states, but here in Arizona we have a bunch of those monitoring things (photo radar, etc). A lot of people throw the mailed tickets into the trash. Why? They have a lot of threatening language on them, saying "you are subject to arrest if you don't respond, blah blah blah", but they don't tell you that superior/civil & city court rules here mandate that certified mail, regular mail, etc, DO NOT CONSTITUTE service of the complaint - to be valid, the ticket must be given to you by a police officer, officer of the court, process server, etc, within 120 days of the date of the incident. Consequently, in Maricopa County you can throw those tickets away because they can't afford to send process servers after everyone (although Mesa has tried it a few times). Don't believe me? Fine. Go read the court rules on what constitutes service of the complaint yourself.
3. Back to AirIQ - on several occasions, we've had cars stolen, turned off the ignition remotely (rather, we set it so that the car can't be started again once stopped - it would be a Bad Thing(tm) to shut off a speeding vehicle with the requisite loss of power steering confusing an already drug-addled car thief), called the cops, had them circle the car, and take them away. We get our car back, the bad guys don't know what happened, and dozens of innocent pedestrians are happy instead of being smashed to pulp during a car chase. More boring for the TV news copters, but oh well.
4. We get reports when these things cross into Mexico. We then stop renting to these people, who try to cram 20 illegal aliens into a minivan and drive them across the desert.
5. There's a lot more to this system than the GPS crap. As stated previously, we can also shut the car off remotely.
6. Have you READ our contracts? There's tons of stuff in there, but it boils down to:
a. don't drive it drunk
b. don't loan it out to other people
c. don't drive incredibly recklessly
d. don't take it off road or to Mexico
e. don't rob any banks
f. you are responsible for the car (if it gets wrecked, damaged,etc). if you have insurance, great. but, we're gonna bill ya if anything happens, or if we have good evidence that you violated the above terms.
Don't like these terms? Fine. Show us a way to make money without them. We can't. Unlike other products, we're not just giving you something, we lay our asses on the line, liability wise, every time we do a rental.
AirIQ is wonderful for protecting our assets, and if you don't like it, rent from some other company. I say this as someone who works occasionally with a rental car company. As a private citizen, I believe that this level of detailed monitoring would be inappropiate for privately owned property that you own - i.e., the government should not be allowed to do this.
We routinely send notices out (we don't actually bill $$$) to people who exceed 90 MPH for 60 seconds (we understand that sometimes people have to speed a LOT to pass) saying, "do it again and we won't rent to you anymore".
We don't bill them, it's not worth the trouble for us, we just put them on the do not rent list. We do, however, have the right to put charges on the credit card, i.e., cleaning fees.
A company can put any charge they want on your cc if you sign a contract allowing them to.
7. Someone mentioned "this would make the rental car company an accessory" - not true. Speeding is generally a CIVIL violation, although there is also criminal speeding; however, the rental car company in this case is not enforcing a law, but rather collecting a penalty for violating our contract. The action may have violated a civil law, but an entity is not obligated to report civil violations. And, there is not enough evidence to file a criminal charge! You see, when you sign our contract, YOU are agreeing to be responsible for OUR card! WHATEVER our car does, you are legally responsible, TO US, for...however, from a legal standpoint of CRIMINAL charges, it would be very difficult to prove that YOU were driving at the time of the criminal violation. We know our car was speeding, we know you signed a paper agreeing to ensure that you would take care of the car. Thus, you owe us money. We cannot, however, go to law enforcement and say, "this person was speeding" because we have no evidence of WHO was driving the car and you can't file criminal charges against a car, only a driver.
As a practical matter, the cops would laugh at us if we tried.
Hope this clarifies some things.
That's pretty funny. They did/tried that in DC. The only problem with it was it was fairly visible and in the rougher parts of DC, the drug dealers on the corner started shooting them out so they wouldn't be on film.
SealBeater
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
I have a friend that always says my car isn't "loaded" because it doesn't have a navigation system. I've always told him that even if a navigation system were an option for the car, that I wouldn't want it. He thought it was ridiculous when I told him that GPS will enable people to be given instant speeding tickets. Well, I guess I've been proven right, even if the speeding tickets aren't coming from the government yet.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
Just today, I was in my car doing about 55-60, but my GPS -- a Magellan 2000 -- said I was doing 580 mph. It also said that I was 700 miles away from the town I was headed to, which in reality was only about 10 miles away. And this wasn't a temporary thing either...it kept it up, fluctuating around those values for at least a minute and a half until I turned it off.
I would HATE to think what the fine would be for that. And no, I am not making any of this up or bloating the values...it really said that I was doing 580 mph (in an 84 Oldsmobile??!?)
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DOOR!!
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
You missed his point. I don't give a rats ass what you do with your time, just don't ask me to pay for it. Too bad your state didn't go all the way and just plain old ban medicaid. Government has no business providing healthcare, fighting poverty, or anything else. They'll just fsck it up anyway.
Examine the US govts track record (I'm not familiar with any other, but I'll bet the trends are similar):
The Daily Build
Wow, what a completely invalid analogy. The car is a rental. The company you rented it from owns it, and has a reasonable right to expect that you will take care of it so they can continue renting it. If you abuse it, expect to pay the cost. The guy didn't bother to figure that out and had his ass handed to him. This doesn't raise any issues with me at all, since I drive a car as if I want to live to see tomorrow, and I treat a rental car as if I'm borrowing it from someone else. I also have this habit of reading all the pieces of paper I sign. I don't know, something about fucking common sense. Sympathy=0.
I'm not sure I like the fines for speeding; but if they could have one for failure to use a turn signal, I'd be all for it!
When I took driver's ed, oh, a couple of decades ago now, I'm pretty sure they told us that you could be fined for failure to use a turn signal. I admit I was distracted by the hot blonde next to me, but I did pass, so I don't think I was hallucinating that part.
That argument might be appealing. Except the last time I heard it, it was from a serial killer.
__
I'm sure, while this may not be illegal per se, you WOULD go to jail.
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Hammer of Truth
Better idea that doesn't invade privacy... Put a GPS on every telephone pole. Send an ambulance if the telephone pole accelerates from 0 mph to 50 mph within a second.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
It needs to be stated that this case belongs in the larger category of excesses by private police.
Many of the U.S. public seems to feel that their safety and well-being requires handing over the public police service to private corporations that operate like the businesses they are. And the increasing false reliance on technology instead of people operating under the law.
Witness the privatization of everything from the sidewalk cop (replaced by a private security guard) to security cameras to prisons and schools.
Does all this privatization really increase safety and this use of technology really secure our rights? Probably not--it is increasing apace even without any scientific studies of its effects--it has a political agenda of its own--to make money for the businesses that are free from the controls that public forces are.
I don't know if his "debit card" would do it (and since when does a rental agency accept a debit card??), but any credit card I've had would do a chargeback on any charge not explicitly authorized. Then ACME would have to sue him... and good luck to them, in front of a small claims court :)
Solution to keeping the GPS system from knowing:
Stop it from acquiring position. Encase the antenna in something that will keep it from acquiring. Or pull the antenna plug from the receiver.
There's a number of problems:
Plus, there's the obvious issue that, in order to effectively vote with their money, consumers need to be informed. This story is helping to serve that purpose.
I do agree that it's Acme's car and they may stipulate how you use it. But that doesn't mean I'm particularly happy with the manner that they went about it. Furthermore, it's possible for them to be engaging in legal business practices that're still considered deceptive in nature.
I guess I'm showing my age when I say what I'm about to say.
Remember when the United States Congress lowered the speed limits "to save gas"? When the standard top speed for the Interstates was lowered from 70 mph to 55 mph? And how long (and how many tickets and revenue) it took for the people to make their displeasure known and to get the speed limits raised to something reasonable?
Oh, the rationale for doing it was great. The fuel consumption difference between a "standard" car running at 70 mph and running at 55 mph was significant, and the traffic safety "experts" also predicted that traffic deaths would go down when the speed limit went down.
The "standard" car has for the most part been consigned to the junkyard or the crusher, and the cars on the road have better gas milage and design so that the difference isn't all that great. Further, when the speed limit was raised from 55 to 65, the actual results confounded the "experts" by not going up, and in some places traffic deaths and injuries went down.
What about the problem with "rubbing," where trucks and cars are going at different speeds? Well, in Nevada and California I don't see any difference in speed between autos and trucks, and I don't see the NHP and CHP pulling speeding trucks over, either. I guess the *HP prefer lower traffic deaths to slavish adherence to bad traffic laws.
Rental agencies may be bastards (consider the CDW for example) but they're not that stupid!
sulli
RTFJ.
People could get around it the same way they get around emissions laws (in PA at least). Apparently those huge mufflers and pipes that people like to add to their Hondas won't pass inspection, so people just make sure they take it off for inspection. You could do that with GPS, just reconnect it for your inspection.
The whole speeding and safety thing is sort of a twisted argument, after all, even driving at 55 as compared to 65 is going to kill some people in accidents. So then you have to ask what your acceptable "death rate" is, which seems sort of cold. And what about when the speed limit goes up from 55 to 65 (as happened over the past decade), was it "killing people" before to drive 65 but now its ok? Or you can recognize that just b/c its a law doesn't mean it is correct and maybe the speed limits should reflect how most drivers feel comfortable driving on a stretch of road.
Some backwards states (PA comes to mind, and I live there) have been pretty slow about putting the magnetic sensors on, so there are thousands of lights still on timers. I never go through them at night, I am too paranoid about cops, but it is very frustrating, especially since DE next door has replaced nearly all of their timer lights.
I live in Delaware County. Its about as backwards as Philly :) The roads suck in many respects here, not just for the sensors.
US Small claims courts handle up to around $5000 and do not allow attorneys to represent the parties.
Doesn't this agreement violate state laws about police powers? If you don't get a speeding ticket, regardless of GPS reading, how can you prove he was speeding? (if a tree falls in a forest...) And lastly, I know enough about GPS that there are occasional errors that could send your readings flying at an impossible rate. I wonder how much in excess of 90mph he was going? 3372mph?
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Just wait until EZ-Pass sensors are placed over many roads; I heard this might happen in order to monitor traffic congestion. Presently, they use radar (I believe) for this purpose.
my friend and I were actually discussing something like this...if GPS becomes accurate enough, will the government begin to make auto manufacturers integrate these in to every vehicle, making it so they can just mail you a ticket any time you exceed the speed limit?
Just a thought
How Jaded Are You?
http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/archive/ images/dilbert2004061210620.gif for those worried about goatman.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Try driving at the speed limit in highway traffic sometime. Really. Even in the slow lane. Go 55 while everyone around you is going 70, 75, 80. That 55 driver is FAR more dangerous to the situation than the 80 driver is. The key is NOT speed, it control and sense.
There is NOTHING more inherently dangerous to driving along at 80+ MPH just as long as you're not weaving in and out of traffic and you can keep a safe distance from the car in front of you.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
I could not agree more on the red light issue. There is no promise, ever, in running a red light. My friends laugh at me when I stop at lights that have been yellow for a while. I continue to do it.
Everytime you speed, you run the risk of killing someone.
To the extent that every time you get in a car, you run the risk of killing someone, this is true. But increasing speed does not necessarily increase the risk of accident. The death rates on the unlimited stretches of the Autobahnen in Germany have almost identical death rates to American highways. Death rates on surface roads are generally higher than on highways. When the federal speed limit was dropped, the 41 states that raised their limits saw an aggregate decrease in deaths; the nine that didn't saw an aggregate increase. This is certainly not black and white; there are statistics to back both sides, but the trite "speed kills" argument statistically doesn't wash. There's more to it than that.
Speed doesn't kill, bad driving does. And don't tell me that because you parallel parked on the test, you know how to drive.
-db
I don't see any "Big Brother" thing here, if everyone voted with your wallet, offensive companies would go out of business.
Burn Hollywood Burn
He signed the contract before he drove the car. He gave his consent.
Burn Hollywood Burn
The govt current does NOT have the right to "monitor your location simply because they own the means of transportation".
But to answer a modified version of you question, "should individuals or companies have the right to monitor what you do with their car, including but not limited to 1. location 2. speed 3. what was in it 4. what you did in the car..?" I would answer yes. You have no expectation of privacy once you enter my property, especially if I notify you how I expect you to treat my car. End of story.
If you don't like those terms, use a different car. Welcome to a free country where you can make choices.
Burn Hollywood Burn
"More important is the issue of due process," says Keyes. "There's no system for challenging this fine. At least when you get a ticket, the court system allows you to contest it." She claims the speeding charges are constitutionally invalid and go against public policy
Riiiight.....I got news for this fellow, in the US, individuals are constitutional protectioned is exactly zero ways from companies. Zero. This is a clear cut case of contract law, nothing more nothing less.
The only civil rights laws I know of that deal with companies have to do with equal treatment and access based on Race, Sex and Disabilities. Last time I checked, lack of technological prowness was not considered a and technogical access is not a basic human right.
The fees were in the contract, he signed it. The only arguement is whether the contract was valid or invalid. This has nothing to do with rights.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Stop breaking them! Everytime you run a redlight, you run the risk of killing someone. Everytime you speed, you run the risk of killing someone. I personally have been hit by a car that ran a stop sign while riding my bicycle. I lost a friend who ran a stop sign and got side swiped.
You would think you had a right to break traffic laws or something by the way you people bitch.
Burn Hollywood Burn
I agree totally. I'll stop speeding when people quit useing exits as 3rd lanes and then cutting back into the real lane. Or driving 10 under the limit in the left lane when the right lane is going faster. Or a million other things that cause more traffic and accidents than speeding ever does (cellphones).
I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.
Andy Green would probably have something to say about me smashing his record though.
I think they have a new theme song.
I can't drive Fifty-FIIIIVE!!!
Almost all cars made or for sale in the US have speed limiters which cut out your accellerator when you go faster than 125 mph, anyway, even though you could technically go that fast in certain portions of Montana and not disobey the speed limit.
... do you have enough spare time and energy to challenge it? Or were you really breaking the speed limit and knew it, in which case, do you have any ethical defense?
But since GPS is fairly faulty and jumps a lot, this is likely subject to a court challenge and quite winnable - unless you're going in a straight line from one city to another and stay there for a while.
I used to have a GPS on my Saturn SC2, as part of a pilot project for one of those talking map things, and it would fry out in extreme heat or cold - you had to press the manual reset buttons (which they hid) to get it to work again.
But
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
A very obvious example of a company charging you money for breaking the law is your auto insurance policy. The more laws you break, the more they charge you.
Another example would be pageant winners, who often must return the prize money if they subsequently behave badly.
In any case, I do not see any cogent argument as to why a company shouldn't be able to write a contract where you pay money if you break the law, other than the fact that you don't like it.
And furthermore, the person wasn't being charged for "breaking the law", they were being fined for traveling at a high rate of speed. The fact that both the legal system and the rental company don't like this is immaterial. The legal system doesn't like it because it's dangerous to others. The rental car company doesn't like it because it wears out the car and increases their insurance cost risk. There are plenty of things which are illegal and also may be injurious to various parties that have their own means of redress.
Private parties have no obligation to provide "due process." You can't file an appeal if you lose at Keno in Vegas. You don't get a hearing if you're kicked out of a hotel pool for rough-housing. Your mother is not required to provide you with legal representation prior to sentencing you for failure to clean the garage.
Read the story again. It was mentioned in the contract the renter signed.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
According to the article, it was in the contract. In any case, it's not going to be a secret forever.
Huh? Of course you will. Traveling at higher speeds puts more stress on moving parts and accelerates their failure.
The safety gain comes for me as another road user. Traveling at speeds in excess of 90mph is unsafe if only because the majority of drivers aren't, and therefore it's a disruption in traffic flow. And in the case of a collision, there's more kinetic energy transferred to the collisee.
The roads are public space. If you want to behave as you please without regard for the rest of society, do so on private property. If you are going to reap the benefits of social organization (such as fine paved expressways) then your behavior while using these resources must not be damaging to others. Society does, and should, take measures to ensure your compliance. Otherwise we have anarchy, which rewards only greed and unpleasantness, and on a scale far in excess of the odd $150 fine.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
"Hell, they can even nail you if you're traveling at or under the speed limit, if everyone else is going faster. They call it "obstructing traffic." You're damned if you do and damned if you don't, if Smokey hasn't made his quota yet."
In practice I've NEVER seen this happen, not once, or ever heard of it ever happening where I live...
For one thing, such a ticket would be harder for a judge to stomach, even the usually horribly biased traffic court judges.
But mostly because, in any area, there are too many easy "spots" where the speed limits are artifically low as to make it too easy to not get lots of speeders.
And those tickets are rarely ever fought, and even less often sucessfully fought.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
"For all of you screaming about how it's a simple case of contract law and it's his own fault for signing it, you should keep in mind the following very important fact: Just because something has been stipulated in a contract does not make it legal, or even legally binding."
This is true. For instance, your employer can't slip in a "slavery" clause in the NDA they shove in your face.
In fact, many courts have been throwing out draconian employer non-comptete agreements. Those were contracts.
I think that many courts will frown on ACME's practice as well. If for no other reason than corporate vigilante law enforcement for-profit cuts in on the government's turf.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
Either way, I think it's a great idea, and a leap forward to the day when we can detect aggressive driving on the fly and deactivate the vehicle remotely. Someday we'll be able to just switch off those retarded SUV drivers on the freeway with the push of a button!
Yes, that's exactly what we need. Someone who doesn't know how to drive a car driving a 2 ton SUV who suddenly finds themselves in a position where their SUV stops running in the middle of a crowded highway. That sounds safe to me!
I honestly think that people haven't the slightest clue how to operate a motor vehicle. Especially the slow-pokes doing 55 in a 55 when everybody else is doing 75.
For all of you screaming about how it's a simple case of contract law and it's his own fault for signing it, you should keep in mind the following very important fact: Just because something has been stipulated in a contract does not make it legal, or even legally binding.
The other 'contract' probably isn't. The mere fact that a consumer scribbles their name on a document does not automatically create an enforceable contract. The list of exceptions is as long as your arm.
In this specific instance it does not appear that ACME made any attempt to bring the unusual contract clause to the customer's attention. That coupled with the fact that enforcement of traffic policy is a matter of public policy probably puts the rental agency in a less than optimum position.
If the notice was less than clear the mere fact that the company is trying to contest the case tends to indicate bad faith, otherwise a more reasonable response would be to put more prominent notices on future contracts.
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Clearly YANAL, neither am I but I have spoken at enough ABA meetings to know something about what I am talking about.
Most consumer contracts contain unenforceable clauses. Every cell phone contract in the US contains a clause that waives the customer's right to being a class action. The clause is almost certainly unenforceable, as indeed is any clause that disallows redress for negligence.
In my business we spend a lot of time considering what contract clauses a court is likely to enforce against a customer - in particular a consumer. It is not remotely as simple as being able to hold the consumer to the writing on the page.
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In the EU all trucks must by law have a tachometer fitted that makes a continuous record of the speed of the truck. It is used to monitor the drivers hours and stop them from driving when they are too tired. Given that the accidents caused by heavy goods vehicles can kill ten or twenty people at a time this is a pretty good idea.
Anything that discourages HGVs from tailgating has to be a good idea. It would be even better if SUVs also had to have the same gear fitted, after all if they get the benefit of the light trucks emissions limits they should be taxed like trucks and have the same speed limiters.
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I moved back to New Mexico just before the big wave of Californians began moving into New Mexico (which begin in the early 1990s). As bad as New Mexican drivers are, it was easy to spot California drivers because the Californians were much more aggressive, drove faster and changed lanes much more frequently. It was easy to confirm they were Californians because they still had California license plates on their cars.
I moved to Texas in 1993, and to East Texas in 1994. In East Texas, drivers like to slow to about 5 mph a block before their turn and then make a 90 degree turn, even if they are in a 40 zone. The first time a Texas woman rear-ended and totaled my car, it was as I was stuck behind one of these slow-moving turners (the SMTs often don't indicate why they are slowing until they get much closer to their corner; by then, it's too late to change lanes). East Texans also don't like to make right turns on the red light, even though it is legal at most intersections.
Now, I'm in the Dallas area. The drivers are too aggressive, and not terribly bright. Red light runners are the leading cause of traffic death in the area. I see a traffic accident on Loop 635 at the same spot at least once a month.
I recently took a trip up through Chicago, into Indiana and then into Michigan. I was only there for a week, so I didn't get much of a feel for the driving. Generally, I didn't have trouble, though I did photograph a woman in a van attempting to push a semi-trailer. For the most part, the traffic violations I witnessed were people driving over the speed limit.
when I was living in East Texas, I realized that I needed to begin documenting the crazy driving I saw. I have to film it! That is one of the projects on my to-do list; set up a rig on my vehicle so that I can videotape and photograph all the nit-witted things I see every day.
I saw a car on Loop 635, as we were all doing about 70 mph, that suddenly began fishtailing wildly. Smoke was pouring from the tires. Apparently, the driver hadn't noticed until the last minute that there were road construction pylons in his lane. He eventually went up the side of the offramp hill and onto a service street.
I don't have to go far to see crazy things, either. Right in front of my apartment complex, in a 35 zone, I watched a large panel truck attempt a U-turn. He could not complete the turn in a single move. The truck backed up--and would have put its back end through a car's windshield if the car hadn't swerved into the next lane at the last second.
Meanwhile, some people get upset that handguns are legal...
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
This poster is a professional. Please don't try this at home, severe injury may result, poster not liable for your failure to heed this warning.
--
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
The hokey explanations on the part of the ACME rep about the "need" to use GPS to track speed (not just location, which is all they require for their vehicle retrieval needs) indicate that ACME may have written that contract in less than good faith. If so, they're just begging for a judicial spanking.
(And as #18 says, a bit of aluminum foil over the GPS antenna and the problem goes away... at least in this incarnation of the system.)
--
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
That such a device, if accurate, would be an excellent deterrent to speeding, and perhaps goverors which would otherwise prevent exceeding the limit. However, the problem then becomes when the situation arises such that speeding is nessecary. What if you need to pass someone? Someone begins to threaten you on the road? Anything. I've always thought an "Override" button would be just the thing. You'd have to explain to the proper authorities why it was you needed to speed, and thus, by examining previous records, they would grant or deny the appeal.
the liberator who destroyed my property has realigned my perception
the liberator who destroyed my property has realigned my perception
www.quantumheresy.com
This article was obviously ghost written by a slashdot reader:
"The van was equipped with a Global Positioning System, or GPS, which transmits data via satellite."
Something that blatantly wrong could never come from a real reporter (could it?)
The question does arise, however, as to how it really works. The GPS signal IS received from a satellite, however a transmitter that could send back to a satellite from a moving car would require a directional dish antenna and... ya, stupid.
So how ARE they getting the data back? The easiest way would be to record it in flash and dump it after the car is returned. Another way would be to use burst-mode packets like 2-way pagers & LoJack.
Either way, I think it's a great idea, and a leap forward to the day when we can detect aggressive driving on the fly and deactivate the vehicle remotely. Someday we'll be able to just switch off those retarded SUV drivers on the freeway with the push of a button!
...a model of AirIQ that can detect when your daughter is having sex in the back seat!
Instant peace-of-mind!