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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...
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".
What kind of a moron would rent a car from ACME when they have this kind of policy in place?
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.
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.
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.
Ban Arby's!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
"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/ .
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
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
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?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
> 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.)
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!
Exactly! In some ways, I wouldn't mind if speed limits were -consistently- enforced. The way it is now, it's tacitly accepted that you go 10 over. But it's definitely illegal, so basically cops have the right to pull you over whenever they want because, hey, you WERE speeding.
It happened to me the other day. I was driving down the road and apparently I looked like a teenager who was "Cruising," so the cop, who started off very gruff and confrontational, relaxed substantially when he discovered that I was over 21 and NOT drunk. None of that changed the fact that I was going 10 over, but that's not the real reason he stopped me; I was getting passed by people who were clearly older than me.
Maybe it's naive to think that consistent speed limit enforcement would lead police to stop pullovers in which there was no probable cause. But at least, if speeding tickets were automatic no-brainers, it would be painfully obvious when a cop made a bullshit pullover, like DWB ("driving while black" in chicago) for instance.
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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".
"Not exactly...."
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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.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
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.
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.
Taking into consideration that the standard formula for driving is 20 over Posted
I agree. Unfortunately, *every* time I tell a police officer this, I get slapped with a ticket.
Jeez
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
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.
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.
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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This was back in 1998 when the posted limit was 65 night, 55 trucks, Reasonable and Prudent day. I've heard they've changed it back to posted daytime limits since then.
Oh well. The trooper was a nice guy. If it was a Mass State trooper I'd have had my ass handed to me in jail for going 99 MPH.
If it makes any difference to the story I was in a Mitsubishi Mirage trying to see it pinout at 120. We don't have roads straight enough in New England to get up that speed and then slow down before the curve.
In any event, you can bet I'm never going to get a car with GPS or OnStar. In fact I'm kind of suspicious of Fuel Injection. Give me Dual Carbs any day.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
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?
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
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
Andy Green would probably have something to say about me smashing his record though.
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.)
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