RFID for Automobile Tracking

mindless4210 writes "The U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration has called on four of the largest RFID manufacturers to jointly develop dedicated short-range communications technology systems for a trial as part of the agency's efforts to cut road fatalities in the U.S. by 50% within 10 years. The DSRC prototype initiative is a prerequisite for introducing new roadway applications such as issuing alerts to drivers about impending intersection collisions, rollovers, weather-related road hazards, or warning a driver that his vehicle is going too fast to safely negotiate an upcoming curve. The FCC allocated the entire 5.9 GHz band to DSRC applications some time ago, making the development much more feasible. Any DRSC system would require DRSC technology to be built into new vehicles."

Comments

"it's for your safety"

[grub]

[...] such as issuing alerts to drivers about impending intersection collisions, rollovers, weather-related road hazards, or warning a driver that his vehicle is going too fast to safely negotiate an upcoming curve

Riiiiiight... they're wanting this system incorporated to protect you. They'd never dream of setting up receivers in traffic lights at (major) intersections to track the movement of people. Watch: it will be a crime to disable these systems, "for your safety" of course.

Yeah, yeah; I may need a tinfoil hat. Ask yourself, though, do you feel safer?

Is tracking *ever* ok?

[Infonaut]

This isn't a flamebait question. I always react negatively to news that the government is getting ready to implement some form of monitoring or tracking. But lately I've been wondering how much of this reaction is just knee-jerk fear of an Orwellian future that may never come to pass. For example, there are cameras all over NYC, London, et. al., tracking people as they walk the streets, go into businesses, and so on.

I guess my real question is this: when is it OK for the government to implement surveillance, tracking, monitoring, etc. in order to save lives? Or are we so afraid of own governments that we can't afford to allow such things?