Slashdot Mirror
UK to Put Monitors in Every Car?
wackoman2112 writes "The Sun is reporting that the UK government has plans to put a computerised spy in every car. This "spy" will record every single time a motorist goes slightly over the speed limit, into a bus lane, or stops on a yellow line! It will report this information to roadside sensors and you will soon receive a fine in the mail."
It seems to me that people *need* a certain amount of flexibility in the law.. Something this rigid is bound to fail...it simply goes too far against human nature.
Do you have any fucking idea what "The Sun" is?
Implied: why bother linking to any of their crap?
No way... Are people's liberties going to be trampled that bad? Would we have to explain every single infraction? "The truck was on my arse so I had to speed up" or "I swerved into the bus lane to miss the dog". The possibilities are endless. And that's just for having legitimate excuses for every time you "break the law". What's scarier is that this is even a possibility. This just paves the way to have video cameras mounted in every car "to ensure your personal safety" or whatever. Kinda frightening if you ask me.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Cool! All you need to do is swipe a sensor from the side of the road, reverse engineer the signals in your garage, and sniff your neighbor's/enemies' signature, and you can bankrupt them with traffic tickets!
There's a reason human beings do this in the US- one because it's always open to interpretation, and two- we have to have a job like traffic cop for the jerks in our society.
Overreaction, as usual, by the Sun. I'm not even going to finish reading this diatribe, I don't buy it, not even for the UK. All of this is easier accomplished by roadside cameras, and has the same basic flaw - it wont hold up in court.
At any rate, you have the right to a day in court, and to face your accuser. Unless this tattler box can show up to testify against you, your case will be thrown out.
So once again some loudmouth says something stupid or sarcastic, and the Sun jumps all over it like its the next big story. Those guys are almost as bad as slashdot when it comes to fact checking.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Here's a wacky idea -- how about you stop burning red lights?
Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me
It would take approximately 2 hours after this passes for an entrapenuer to board and airplane and set up shop in Mexico.
This shop would produce circumvention kits, which would be banned from import, yet be strangely available via flea markets, and some "grey-area" mail order catalogs.
It would eventually require the continual inspection of automobiles to verify that the devices haven't been circumvented. And in the US, a car has become so much part of the identity of "being American", that people would consider even inspecting the system an attack on their civil liberties.
But then again, should the US Gov. indicate that it is necessary because suspected terrorists could be using vechiles (aka cars) to plan their next grocery store outing, I'd fully expect it to pass with full approval.
Cynical? No! Not me! hahahahaha....
"what exactly is wrong with this proposal?"
They'd spend billions before realising that it won't work as a concept, car thieves routinely circumvent it and the law hasn't caught up to the idea of RFID tagging as evidence. FWIW, quite a large number of traffic lights in this country are already equipped with cameras, and we have several hundred 'GATSO' cameras by the roadside. Unfortunately they don't provide identification of the driver, just the car and by inference the owner, but they can't prove the driver. A small loophole.
The other problem is that in 2000, they granted the police wide ranging powers to request information of telecommunications providers...we're still waiting for the rules governing the requests to actually be written.
The current labour government has a track record of trying to lever itself into the position of being a data nexus...the largest personal identification database is run by Envision for TV licensing, but it's not actually registered with the Data Protection registrar. As a result, I don't trust the UK government to actually get stuff right.
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
just so that big brother can a.) fine me for going a little over the speed limit ...
b.) can years hence accurately tell where I am right now or where I was on a certain date at certain time.
You know, Bob, I usually don't fuck up bad on the road but hey...
Let's start by putting one in every car driven my a Government minister, Member of Parliament and policeman, and by their families. If that works, we'll extend it to media people and sports stars.
If they approve after that, we can extend it to the peons.
Welcome to the Turing Tarpit, where everything is possible but nothing interesting is easy.
GPS fears are paranoia. If you're really afraid that the government is out to get you, you'd better avoid cell-phones entirely. You're walking around with a fairly powerful radio transmitter. There are companies which sell software that triangulate the position of a cell-phone based on the surrounding cell towers. GPS doesn't add any new capability in terms of tracking that they didn't have before.
Every advanced driving course you can go on will teach you about appropriate use of speed. If I'm overtaking a slower moving vehicle on a single carriageway road the safest thing for me to do is overtake as quickly as possible, speedlimit be damned. They call it "time exposed to danger" for a reason. In your ideal little world I would have to stick to the letter of the speed limit, which would increase the danger to me, the vehicle I'm overtaking and other road users.
Do you honestly believe that people fixating on the precise speed they are doing, staring at their speedometers, at least when they aren't looking out for the next speed camera, are driving safely? I've given up, now I drive to a speed reasonable for the road conditions, my vehicles condition and capabilities, and my level of alertness. Sometimes that means I'm over the limit, sometimes I'm under. I spend my time looking out of the window where I'm going, or in my mirrors, where my eyes should be, not fixed to the speedo. The only times I actually look at the speedo is when there is a speed camera. Now, ask yourself again, would you rather be on a road where everyone is spending more time looking at their speedos than the road ahead, or one where everyone was paying attention to their driving? We seem to be heading rapidly towards a society where the latter is in prevelance.
What the government should be going on about is increasing driver training. If you really want to reduce accidents on the roads every driver should have to take a practical test every 5 years (say). By this I do not mean a little 20 minute drive, I mean a really good, in depth examination of your driving skills. If you fail then you have to go on a course of some kind to sort things out, you have say 6 months to complete this and take the test again (perhaps an abbreviated one).
You can pick up bad driving habits even without realising it. Take me, I considered myself a good driver, I've been on a number of driving courses (off road, rallying, track sessions, skid pans), yet I went out on a "Performance Road Car" course and got picked up for a number of bad habits. None serious, but enough to make me stop and re-evaluate my driving style again. Look at what real "Advanced Drivers" (see http://www.iam.org.uk/) go through, and you will realise that these guys are an order of magnitude better drivers than most people on the roads. I'd rather be in a car with one of these guys at 120MPH than most people at 60MPH.
None of this is rocket science, none of it is surely beyond the whit of anyone of average intelligence, yet the Government hasn't ever made even a single move in this direction. The reasons for this are plain, to do the above, whilst very clearly achieving their stated objective of improving road safety, does nothing to line their own pockets. So instead they focus on the mantra of speed, because this means they can tax^H^H^H fine motorists easily and cheaply. That this has been shown to have very little effect on accident rates, and indeed some speed cameras INCREASE the local accident rate, is brushed off. Actually genuinely improving road safety in any reasonable manner would actually cost them money, so they aren't interested.
The same is true when it comes to
Stealing a rhinoceros should not be attempted lightly.