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Satellite-Assisted European Road Tolls Next?
Roland Piquepaille writes "In 'Pay-as-you-go motoring just around the corner,' the European Space Agency (ESA) says that "road tolls could be made fairer if satellite-assisted distance pricing is implemented." Experiments are currently underway in Ireland, Portugal and Germany, before a possible extension to other countries. Potential benefits of such a road tolling system would be fairer implementation of charging on a 'pay for use' basis. All these experiments are using the US-operated Global Positioning System (GPS). But in 2010, when the system is fully implemented, it will use the Galileo satellite system."
If you manage to remove the black box from your vehicle you can avoid the road tolls.
How are they going to stop this?
If that's the case, a simple solution would be to fine anyone who does this heavily. It won't actually stop the abuse though, it'll just destroy the lives of the few who get caught.
A much smarter method, in my opinion, would be to check vehicle mileage of registered vehicles, and tax based on that. Most new cars use a digital odometer that isn't able to be rolled back by a mechanic with a screwdriver, so it would be much more secure to tax on that, and I haven't met too many people willing to tamper with their car's computer. Of course, simply removing the speedometer gear from the transmission and plugging the empty socket would take care of that on a mechanical level, but then the factory speedometer doesn't work either, so that isn't necessarily the greatest solution.
Any tracking technology that requires devices to be on the user's side can be disabled or circumvented. it's just a matter of making it hard enough and punitive enough to not comply, and easy enough to comply, that people generally comply.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
There are some toll-systems in place now that give speeding citations if you cover the distance between two toll-booths in too short a time
Who would have thought that the Mean-Value Theorem would someday be used to give fines. They don't know WHERE you were speeding, but the theorem is clear, there exists such a point "c". Damn.
Because turning off his car while it's travelling at 95 MPH is going to do something other than flipping the car off a highway embankment.
.mil domains? Don't you think there's a bit of a potential for abuse here? If you want to talk about cyberterrorism becoming a reality, what if a 15-year-old Saudi Arabian can shut down the cars of every man and woman in America, bringing them to a dead halt? I think I'll pass. Billions on defense, or an iota of common sense? I'll pick the latter, thanks.
And even so, this could possibly work in Europe -- but what about the US, where the government had an unprotected, unpassworded page for registering
I agree. I live in Illinois, and we have our IPass system for the tollways. The Tollway Authority logs when and where you pass each booth using this system, and mantains those logs indefinitely. An Authority official was interviewed on the news one evening saying that they would release that information to any authorized government agency (which apparently means anyone that wants to know.) There have already been several subpoenas issued for that information, and it is nowhere near as precise as a GPS-based tracking system would be. Still, people are correctly up in arms about it. Regardless of the desire to bend the law (and you're right about that) the historical truth is very simple: increased governmental monitoring (even with good intentions) invariably leads to reduced civil liberties. They can keep their spyware and I'll keep dropping coins, thank you very much.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
What scares me is having money fly out of my wallet while I'm driving along happily minding my own business. Why do we need tolls when we have taxes? Since we're going to have tolls for public services, some kind of tax ought to be reduced. (I know the story is about Europe, but the U.S., in which I live, has them too.)
The government knows it's much easier to impose taxes/tolls/fees if the people don't have to physically hand over the cash or write out the $$ amount on a check. They just make it so you never see it. That's how income taxes are taken. No gain, no loss, right? If people actually received their gross pay, and then had to fork over the tax money, I think taxes would be a lot lower. People would revolt. The same goes for tolls.
Since people are already paying a tax on their gas usage, they shouldn't have to pay tolls. Governments argue that the roads need to be payed for, but roads are such a help to the economy that the cost should be the responsibility of ALL taxpayers, not just the ones that use them. Think of the last ten things you've bought and try to guess how many of them did NOT use a highway or freeway to get to the store. Roads are the backbone of any nation.
DO NOT WRITE IN THIS SPACE
okThe current US-operated GPS system only allows this type of accuracy for military purposes. I feel it is a little irresponsible to give civilians (including criminals and terrorists) access to such accurate targeting systems. Maybe ESA wants to have a marketable advantage over GPS but it may go to far IMO.
I'm not trolling for replies concerning irresponsible military uses, that is another topic...
Where the Music Matters
You apply accurate positioning over time and you get:
VELOCITY!!!
I can just see phase II involving "speeding ticket as you go without even incurring the inconvenience of pulling you over". And no bothersome checks, they can just deduct the fine from your account. How nice!
In phase III they can watch for cars leaving bars at 3AM. Of course if those cars speed, they'll get pulled over in person. That is until the in-car breathalizers are installed to see if your are drunk and then auto-drive kicks in and drives you to jail. Of course that would be after your sentence is determined via an online forum on the way there.
Think I'll throw out my bread machine and stick with coin toll booths.
Hunger is the best sauce.
In the SF Bay Area, we've been using the Fast Trak system for a while. These are wireless transponders that allows you to drive through toll booths for the bridges around the bay without having to stop to pay. The transponder identifies your car as you pass through, and they just bill your credit card.
They recently expanded this program by embedding sensors around various highways. The sensors track people with the Fastrak transponders as they drive by. What they use this for is for tracking how fast people are going. You can then log onto a website that shows the average speeds of people traveling at different points along the highway. This tells you not only if there's traffic, but how bad the traffic is.
When they started this program, they sent me a letter telling me that they wouldn't use the information for any other purposes than traffic monitoring. They also included a foil pouch into which I could put the transponder if I didn't want them to track me.
It's actually pretty cool. I log onto the website and check the commute before I leave home or work - and I know the rate of speed at different points along the highway I'm traveling.
You just don't get it. the road usage charge we are talking about IS NOT MEANT JUST TO COVER THE COST OF REPAIRING THE ROAD. It is meant to improve the quality of life.
In rural areas, traffic is not a problem. It may cause wear-and-tear on the tarmac, but it doesn't result in excessive pollution, noise, danger to pedestrians, delayed journeys. These are all factors which not only affect people living in cities, but cost the economy lots of money. (Billions of dollars in productivity are lost every year due to people & goods stuck in traffic.)
The money raised from these schemes should be ploughed back, not into roads, but into better public transport and local facilities so that people don't need to use cars so much. That way you create a virtuous circle reducing car use and improving quality of life.
I live in central London. Since the congestion charge started 6 months ago (five pounds to drive in central london during the working day), traffic outside my window has dropped dramatically. Noise is down. Pollution is down. The number of people getting run over is down. Money raised has been used to buy more buses and subsidise bus fares, so I can buy a day bus pass for less than half the price of the congestion charge, and be reasonably sure that the bus will arrive quickly and on schedule. That's the point.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.