Ford Testing a New 'Traffic Monitoring' Device

Poletown writes "The Detroit Free Press put out this article today about a new vehicle based 'traffic monitoring' system that Ford is testing. It will report your speed, the road temperature, whether or not your wipers/headlights are active, and even if you've used your anti-lock brakes. Initially, the system will be tested on Ford-owned and municipal vehicles."

Comments

is that all??

[freerecords]

it does all that but it doesn't drive yet!??
but seriously, what use is a traffic monitoring system - if you live in an area REALLY hit by traffic (i live near Central London, UK), there is usually almost no way to avoid it! what's the use unless you're a long distance commuter, or want to decide whether to use subway/underground or car

Can you access it?

[stephenb]

This would be cool if there was some way to hook up your own home PC and access the data. You could write cool python scripts to visualize your commute to work, etc.

Ah, crap.

[lukewarmfusion]

When I have kids, I'll expect updates on all their cars' data at regular intervals.

I can't decide whether to praise this kind of "innovation" for the convenience, or to complain about the possibilities for abuse. I know we'll hear plenty of both - but I'll lean toward praising this for now. Technology will always be abused, and complaining about basically harmless things and their potential for evil is not generally productive.

Standards & Protocols

[aacool]

This is a big opportunity to reduce traffic jams, said Thilo Koslowski, vice president and lead automotive analyst at Gartner Group, a technology research firm. "The challenge is to get enough cars with these devices on the road to collect enough data."

This can potentially further clog the microwave/radio spectrum, depending on the range of these sensors. Also, unless some standard exists/is applied, competing manufacturers could select different protocols, leading to a babel of messages, and more traffic jams rather than less

It could have some good use as an anti-theft device.

No comments on the Orwellian overtones of the original post

Driver monitoring

[Rorschach1]

On a related note, check out the sample videos at DriveCam.com. So long as you're not at fault, this would be great to have. I was thinking of using a single-board computer with a couple of USB webcams under Linux and a solid state accelerometer to do the same sort of thing. I think I'd add a manual trigger to catch video of the idiot who ran a red light in front of me or cut me off, though.

Jerks on the road

[October_30th]

Good for us.

Hopefully this will help getting the speeding jerks off our roads. Quite frankly, I wouldn't mind having completely remote-computer controlled cars in our lifetime.

Re:Jerks on the road

[balthan]

What are you *talking* about? That's the *speed limit*. There's nothing at all wrong with driving the speed limit. It's the maximum speed you can go. You can decrease your speed, but don't call someone following the law a "jerk". If you want to break the law (and don't hurt anyone else) that's generally your deal, but hassling people because *they* aren't breaking the law to facilitate *you* breaking the law is ridiculous.

Thankfully some state legislators have half a clue and don't agree with you:

"Illinois is one of 20 states that now have some sort of prohibition on driving in the left lane. Basically, the rule is this: You can drive in the left lane for as long as you want, unless you are holding up traffic. In that case, you must move to another lane within half a mile or be subject to a $75 ticket. In California, you can be cited for impeding traffic if you are not keeping up with the flow of cars. The recommendation of the California Highway Patrol: If faster-moving traffic is riding your rear, move over no matter if you are doing the speed limit."

Traffic monitoring in the ground

[Wayne247]

Here in Montreal, they buried a bunch of sensors into the ground under the major highways. These sensors track in realtime the flow of traffic, so you can have an instant glimpse at the entire network's traffic status, and find out where to avoid. For now it's a small portion of the roads, but it's already proven to be very effective. Can't wait until more roads have that and the map! See it here.

New source of income for car rental companies

[veranikon]

Rental car agencies are already exploiting GPS tracking devices for uncapped profit (eg. bouncing a $250 rental fee to $3.4k). I wonder how long it will take them to exploit this one so they can charge penalties for ... oh ... not using your blinker, leaving the dome light on when the car is off, and perhaps even for not flipping down the sun visors. Y'know, 5 minutes of harsh sunlight can really wreak havoc on unprotected automotive uphostlery, and possibly increase the maintenance cost for a vehicle by a full $0.000000005!!

Re:Good idea that will never work

[jomegat]

Can they really write you a ticket if they know that your vehicle was speeding, but they don't know who was driving it?

Apparently they can. Gene Weingarten wrote an amusing piece in the Washington Post last week that describes his failed attempt to get out of just such a predicament using the defense you have suggested. It didn't work.