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Road Marker Marks You
If you could make a reflective road marker (a "road stud", in the jargon) that contained a small solar cell and battery, you would be able to: A) power a LED at night to provide lit lanes, not just reflection; B) monitor for fog or water on the road surface; C) monitor the temperature to detect ice; D) use infrared ranging and embedded cameras to detect and report the license number of anyone speeding on the road; E) All of the above. If the company can make them cheap enough, they'll be everywhere in a few years.
Here come the "Soviet Russia" jokes.
In Capitalist America, Road Marker Marks YOU!
How about, if the company can make them cheap enough then think up some ingenious distribution method to replace the reflectors on millions of miles of roadways they'd be everywhere?
Banaaaana!
5mm? 70mph? What if I'm driving in a quarter inch of water at 115kph?
Mom says my
FWIW, the correct term for these items is RPM, or "Raised Pavement Marker".
F) Drive along with a truck and a shovel, collecting enough solar panels and batteries to power your house.
then we could start a company that tore the markers off the road then sold them back to the Company. We will be rich! Or maybe we will make Marks to Mark where the road markers end up... there is an Idea for you.
- Your stupidity got you into this mess, why can't it get you out? -Will Rogers
Here.
We all know that by the time this catches on, we'll all have those flying cars that Avery Brooks is so fond of. Some of those features might assist with the landings though.
This way to the egress...
Lets just get it out of the way
F) CowboyNeal
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
Except for those of us who live in an area which requires snow plowing. I don't care how cheap you can build them... they still won't be cheap enough to replace them all every year!
Snow plows. Granted, you can embed them in a track in between lanes but that gets expensive over large sections of roadway. Cool idea, though, will probably be most useful in areas that don't get enough snow to warrant plowing.
Quintus malus puer est.
I, for one, welcome our [Free Registration Required].
In Soviet Russia, online newspaper registers YOU!
Step 1) Nip Soviet Russia joke in bud by including joke in story title
Step 2) ??
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Imagine a Beowolf cluster of [Free Registration Required].
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these..
this
In a Road That's All Eyes, the Driver Finds an Ally
By IAN AUSTEN
ABOUT 12 years ago, Martin Dicks was trapped in dense fog during a harrowing four-hour commute to his job as a firefighter in central London.
"Virtually all I could see on the road was a cat's-eye reflector every now and then," Mr. Dicks said, recalling his trip down one of Britain's major highways. "I figured that if I could make the cat's-eyes more visible, I could probably save more lives than I could in the fire service."
A back injury forced Mr. Dicks out of the fire department shortly afterward, giving him the time to pursue that goal. His training as an electrical engineer provided the necessary skills.
Now, after perfecting illuminated markers that are embedded in the road surface to guide motorists through bad weather or warn of dangerous conditions, Mr. Dicks's company, Astucia Traffic Management Systems, is going a step further. Its latest creation is an embedded stud equipped with a camera that catches speeders, monitors traffic for criminals or stolen cars and even checks for bald tires on the fly.
"Nobody knows it's a camera or a speed trap," Mr. Dicks said of his latest creation.
Mr. Dicks's original idea was quite simple in concept. He wanted to create an illuminated road marker containing its own power source, a solar cell. At night or in bad weather, light from approaching vehicles would generate enough power to light up the marker, which consisted of light-emitting diodes. An illuminated marker would be more visible than a plain reflector, and the idea was that a car passing over the markers would cause them to stay illuminated long enough so that they would provide a warning trail of lights for any vehicles close behind.
The trouble, at first, was the technology available in the early 1990's. Photovoltaic cells were not as efficient as they are today. And at the time, Mr. Dicks recalled, "the concept of a white L.E.D. was nowhere."
Working mostly with family members at first, Mr. Dicks produced a prototype marker within two years. He dodged the white L.E.D. problem by combining the glow from red, green and blue arrays. The group not only overcame the limitations of solar cells, but also managed to engineer markers that turned red to warn when the gap between two cars was dangerously small.
Mr. Dicks said the technology both impressed and alarmed British government highway officials.
"They were frightened about everyone using the product on roads from one end of the country to the other," he said. "They thought it would make their budgets disappear."
The first markers cost roughly twice the price of conventional embedded road studs. As a result, their use was restricted at first to especially fog-prone or dangerous sections of roads as well as crosswalks, including some in the United States.
Mr. Dicks was not the only person with a desire to illuminate to road markers. After a friend struck and killed a pedestrian in 1991 at a crosswalk in Santa Rosa, Calif., Michael Harrison developed a system that uses flashing L.E.D.'s in the road surface to make crosswalks more visible. The company he founded in 1994, LightGuard Systems, now has about 700 installations in the United States.
A study of 100 illuminated crosswalks by Katz, Okitsu & Associates, a traffic engineering firm based in Southern California, estimates that adding the blinking L.E.D.'s to crosswalks can reduce pedestrian accidents by 80 percent.
The original Astucia markers were glued onto the road surface. That left them vulnerable to snowplow blades and to constant pounding from car and truck tires.
Mr. Dicks wanted to put the markers into holes drilled into the road surface. The key, he said, was finding self-healing resins for the top lenses that would be flush with the surface and subjected to much wear and tear.
"It's like running your fingernail on a rubber sheet," he said of the plastics' behavior. "The mark it leaves goes away."
A
As long as my car can auto sense the speed limit and auto-adjust its speed to avoid tickets I'll be fine - otherwise I'm going to get tickets every day..
The thought of the road markers being lit by led though sounds great - too many foggy nights when its hard to see them and this could help a bit.
Apparently, they are now doing full page hijacking ads.
Reg-Free, Straight to the page without hijacking link.
...if I run it over with my truck? :)
-Malfaetor
If you could create solar powered monkeys to fly around you could monitor the same things plus benefit from the other simian effects.
Is the question whether these things are a good idea, or is the question whether it's practical? What advancements in solar cell durability and price have occured that mark the change from this sort of thing being a good idea to having serious potential?
Privacy? That just inconveniences those who are trying to protect us. Volunteer for the next step now: Take off those annoying doors. What, you got something to hide?
Those little studs are great. There's some newly paves roads in our area that have long curves with steep dropoffs and the painted lines really don't show up well on rainy nights.
They placed the road studs on one of these roads and they practically glow compared to the paint. If the self-illuminating kind become readily available and easily placed it would be great for areas that see a lot of inclement weather.
Might cut down on the number of oncoming cars that drift into my lane on during the commute home as well. Now if we could just jam cell phone use in cars.
is if the government started putting leds embedded into the pavement and they could send you messages (eg. accident up ahead, work zone, speed limit changed to XXmph, etc) to you while you're driving having the message pace with your car.
Also, you could make lanes that are dynamic during the day and night. (They already have those with changing street signs).
Real time stopping distance approxomations (are you following too close?). Lane change "handoffs" (the road infront of you goes orange because someone is turning into that lane.)
It's would be the same technology used for those rotating led clocks.
Of course, it'll all be moot when people finally let computers do the driving for them.
-- dK
The jargon of *who*, exactly? Leatherboys?
On another note, at least mention the fact the article is New York Times.
Now for on topic stuff... I like the idea of flashing lights for crosswalks, but not so much the cameras. It's sort of messed up to think that every single reflector in the road can be a camera.
Also, at what point does this start becoming a distraction? Can I see the lights from my front window? Being LEDs, I would hope not, but it'd be nice to know. I also would be interested in seeing whether these things stand up to the weight of a Chicago winter... regardless of what the article says. :-)
-Rob
Marriage doesn't have to suck!
As I say every time this subject comes up, I'd much rather have my car know the max speed on a given road for a given set of conditions and not be allowed to go over the max speed, than I want fancy electronics to check to see if I go over the max speed, and if I do, take my picture, and send me a ticket. I'd rather pay higher taxes than fund police through tickets (and we wouldn't need as much traffic police either if the cars were smarter).
I claim that if no one could go over the speed limit, traffic would flow much more smoothly, and if the limit is too low (because you are expected to speed 10 mph), we will all complain loudly enough to get it changed.
Other aspects of this project sound interesting though.
Dara Parsavand
In the upper states (buffalo, etc) and many parts of Canada, they have a great deal of trouble with things like these. Snow plows simply pick anything not level with the road off. Even if they're dug down a bit into the pavement, they still get damaged and eventually get picked out. I don't think that it's going to work to well up here.
Now, figure out how to do all that in a paint and then you're a kabillionair!
rejected (19) accepted (0)
Is there a psychological term related to getting your stories rejected on slashdot?
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Remove all posts containing the word "Soviet" or "Russia" (including this very one) and the comment thread shrinks to 5 posts! Amazing...
while people will really like these if they do only the 'safety' tasks (illuminated, warnings for fog, standing water, ...), there's no way they wouldn't be vandalized instantly if they were used for speed limit enforcement.
-- the cake is a lie
I'm probably the only person here who is thinking this will suck, but the last thing I want driving at night is more light shining in my eyes.
It already sucks driving at night, in the rain,especially with glasses on.I don't think additional illumination is going to make it any easier.
--Tsiangkun
1.) Sensor in car detects distinctive LED light
2.) Triggers High power magnetron, under car chasis
3.) Sensor fries
Later:
1.) First person busted with Sensor killer makes National news
2.) Overseas companies start producing them by the thousands (ala Cell phone jammers)
3.) Sensor killing problem becomes national and widespread.
I suggest an infrared source detecter coupled to a directional EMP Generator. That should be capable of taking out every single marker on a stretch of road in notime flat!
You'd need a candle truck full of these to be useful.
-----
Pretty Bad Privacy (PBP) Public Key
6
let's see... apply one screwdriver or chisel with a bit of force and *pop*... something new to play with since the CueCat has gotten old.
yeah, good for residential, highways, and school zones, but what's wrong with a little saturday afternoon, back-country, open road speeding? then again, when is the last time i saw a road reflector on a country road?
and what about scenarios of quick acceleration, causing you to go over the speed limit, but necesary to avoid a collision? flaws, flaws, everywhere are flaws. just put more cops on the streets, it would solve a lot of problems and create some jobs. they're more expensive, but they can do a lot more than make you slow down.
now that i've ranted, i'll go RTFA.
...Is for them to flash in sequence, so you see little ribbons of light flowing down the freeway.
Trouble is, for it to look interesting, the lights would have to appear to be moving at about three to four times the speed limit. Which would encourage a certain class of Stupid Person to try and keep up with them.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
This all ties into the "Smart Road" which has been in development at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA for several years. Including monitoring of road and weather conditions along with sending advisories to drivers.
Sig removed by order of FBI Patriot ACT
...ever since I saw embedded reflectors in the UK. Problem is, where I live, we get large amounts of snow and ice building up on the roads. Sometimes when I'm driving on the highway, my mind will turn to the notion of holographic lane markers... or some equivalent system that would interact with the windshield of the car to visibly plot lanes etc... How about it, physicists of /.? Any brilliant ideas?
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
In a pretty recent issue of Spectrum (the IEEE "trade" mag), there was a piece on a sensor network being used on an island off Massachusetts to study birds that lived on an island in that region.
The sensor were about the size of golf balls, and had sensors for info like temperature, humidity, etc., were battery powered, and capable of creating their own network along which they could relay info.
Here, sounds like they're trading size for range of functions - but that's to be expected. Sensors, sensors, everywhere, and where does all that info go ...
This would start an entire market for products designed to foil these things. Let's see: james bond style license plate rotators. Those defraction grating thinies that mean you can only view the plate from head on, not from an angle. You could speed as long as you don't change lanes. I'm sure someone can come up with an electronic device that can burn out the dots. I bet all of these products would be sold by the company that sells the dots. It would be another arms race just like the radar detector detector detectors.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
Ya know, when I first read 1984, I wondered, How the fuck did people let their society get that way?! Now, I know.
My first reaction is:
LED lit roads - good
Roads that track you everywhere you go - Bad
So why does such a good idea have to become "real-world bloatware"?
What post? The one you're carrying inside your rusty innards!
And if you want an abundance of those slowdowns to monitor, just also use the device's ubiquitous radar/camera feature to rigorously enforce posted highway speed-limits during peak travel. (...at least on those highways where traffic still currently flows.)
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
The more I think about it though - it might be a good thing..... then cops could worry about real crimes.. hehe
So they'll be densely scattering batteries all over our roads? Batteries have such pleasant chemicals inside.
I am all for it. Once everybody starts getting tickets for speeding, the limits will rise to sensible levels (or are abandoned entirely).
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
-b0s0z0ku
Also, I expect these sensors to read the RFID tags embedded in tires.
new technologies being created and people using them to make life more convient. Then - Wham! - someone uses it to control society.
Actually, the original name for them is "Bott's Dots" after a guy named Mr. Bott who worked for CalTrans (California State Road Agency) way back in the day. I read awhile back that the state of California was actually fazing them out for state maintained roads and highways in favor of divots and shoulder grating (so it makes that nasty sound when you drift over at high speeds).
In deference to Mr. Bott, their inventor, we should refer to these things as "Bott's Dots". Isn't credit what we belive in in the open source community?
-Mr. Bott's heir
"We all break the law regarding speeding," Mr. Kerridge said. "The system may leave a bad taste in motorists' mouths at the beginning. But when their insurance starts going down and stolen vehicles start getting recovered, the benefits will overcome that."
My insurance has never gone down with the same company here in CA. I have to switch providers for a $100 break, then it goes up, up, then I have to switch again. Perfect record.
Smash 'em flat.
sulli
RTFJ.
TOP SECRET FACT:Most modern cars have tracking transponders!
:
Spy transmission chips embedded in tires that can be read REMOTELY while driving.
A secret initiative exists to track all funnel-points on interstates and US borders for car tire ID transponders (RFid chips embedded in the tire).
Yup. My brother works on them.
Your tires have a passive coil with 64 to 128 bit serial number emitter in them! (AIAG B-11 ADC v3.0) . A particular frequency energizes it enough so that a receiver can read its little ROM. A ROM which in essence is your GUID for your TIRE. Multiple tires do not confuse the readers. Its almost identical to all "FastPass" "SpeedPass" technologies you see on gasoline keychain dongles and commuter windshield sticker-chips. The US gov has secretly started using these chips to track people.
Its kind of like FBI "Taggants" in fertilizer and "Taggants" in Gasoline and Bullets, and Blackpowder. But these car tire transponder Ids are meant to actively track and trace movement of your car.
Taggant research papers
http://www.wws.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/byteserv.prl/ ~ota/disk3/1980/8017/801705.PDF
(remove spaces in url from slashcode if needed)
I am not making this up. Melt down a high end Firestone, or Bridgestone tire and go through the bits near the rim (sometimes at base of tread) and you will locate the transmitter (similar to 'grain of rice' pet ids and Mobile SpeedPass, but not as high tech as the tollbooth based units). Sokymat LOGI 160, and Sokymat LOGI 120 transponder buttons are just SOME of the transponders found in modern high end car tires. The AIAG B-11 Tire tracking standard is now implemented for all 3rd party transponder manufactures [covered below].
It is for QA and to prevent fraud and "car theft", but the US Customs service uses it in Canada to detect people who swap license plates on cars when doing a transport of contraband on a mule vehicle that normally has not logged enough hours across the border. The customs service and FBI do not yet talk about this, and are starting using it soon.
Photos of chips before molded into tires:
http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:TAQIKjBI01g C: www.sokymat.com/sp/applications/tireid.html
(slashdot ruins links, so you will have to remove the ASCII space it insertess usually into the url above to get to the shocking info and photos on the enbedded LOGI 160 chips that the us gov scans when you cross mexican and canadian borders.)
You never heard of it either because nobody moderates on slashdot anymore and this is probably +0 still. It has also never appeared in print before and is very secret.
Californias Fastpass is being upgraded to scan ALL responding car tires in future years upcoming. I-75 may get them next in rural funnel points in Ohio.
http://www.tadiran-telematics.com/products6.html
but the fact is... YOU PROBABLY ALREADY HAVE A RADIO TRANSPONDER not counting your digital cell phone which is routinely silently pulsed in CA bay area each rush hour morning unless turned off (consult Wired Magazine Expose article). Those data point pulses are used by NSA on occasions.
The us FBI with NRO/NSA blessings, has requested us gov make this tire scanning information as secret as the information regarding all us inkjet printers sold in usa in the last 3 years using "yellow" GUID barcode under dark ink regions to serialize printouts to thwart counterfeiting of 20 dollar bills. (30 to 40 percent of ALL California counterfeiting is done using cheap Epson inkjet printers, most purchased with credit cards foolishly). Luckily court dockets divulge the existence of the Epson serial numbers on your printouts... but nobody except a handful of people know about this Tire scanning upgrade to big brother's arsenal.
YOU MUST BUY NEUTRALIZED OR FOREIGN TIRES!!!!! Soon such tires will become illegal to import or manufacture, just as Gasoline must have "Taggants"
What next? Crosswalks that take a picture of you when you jaywalk--even if it's midnight and there's no traffic?
Heh. I get it.
Google does not index anything in your signature. If you really want to get some links to your site, put them in the actual comment body, even as a "fake sig", like this:
--
nigritude ultramarine
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
...A back injury forced Mr. Dicks out of the fire department shortly afterward, giving him the time to pursue that goal. ...
How original - the standard route to an early retirment and fat state pension. By the way I have one of these flashing cats eyes, at a high speed corner, near my home (U.K.) and frankly it`s highly distracting and I`d rather it wasn`t there.
uhm whatever that link is it is not informative, it didnt load in firefox for some reason it did crash my browser though, the title was enough though somthing about having to be 18 according to their lawyers. i dont think clicking on this is advised.
I can think of another use (although it would take some ingenuity and time to implement it). You can also use it to measure the distance between two cars. If it's too short in relation to the speed they're traveling at, the system could signal to car that's to blame to slow down by signalling to a transponder in said car. I don't think anyone would be really happy with his/her car suddenly slowing down, but many accidents are caused by people failing to keep proper distance. History has shown that you can't trust motorists to properly gauge distance, so I for one would welcome such a system.
----- One learns to itch where one can scratch.
Re-read the end of the article. Decreased insurance costs and fewer deaths due to traffic accidents means more money for other areas of spending for EVERYONE. I for one vote "Yes!" for this idea. Might even allow those of use with significantly lower rates of crashes or traffic incidents on our record to travel faster than those idiots without insurance (they can read the license plates with those little buggers) and allow the scale to be adjustable. Over 65? Better use the right two lanes buddy! Too many accidents in the past 7 years? Better get over there with the old-agers restricted to a 55mph max. speed limit on the interstates!
Whenever my friends from warmer climates come and visit, they always ask why we don't have raised studs on the roads here. When I point out to them that we have to plow snow off of our roads on a regular basis through the winter, they see that the raised studs would only last until the first snowfall. : )
Steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Is for them to flash in sequence, so you see little ribbons of light flowing down the freeway. Trouble is, for it to look interesting, the lights would have to appear to be moving at about three to four times the speed limit. Which would encourage a certain class of Stupid Person to try and keep up with them.
Actually, that's a very clever thought: if they could be set to sequence at exactly the speed limit, they'd be a great 'heads-up' speed (and speed limit) indicator - "if you're passing the little flashing lights, you're speeding."
Carthago delenda est!
Why on earth would you be outside at midnight? Sounds suspicious to me.
Hmm, well I recall hearing about this about 2 years ago in the UK. Does bring a new ultra stealthy way of catching speeders, just what is NOT needed, driver education is the best policy there. However, the monitoring of weather conditions is rather good. I recall seing developent studs that would show different colors for different weather conditions, very good idea. This is one of the things I dislike about driving in North America, a lack of "cats eyes" I know some roads do have them, but not all, and they should, especiallythe concrete multi-lane highways, when it's raining hard you cannot see the lane dividing lines in daylight, let alone at night, and these things would make that a bit safer.
My only concern would be with night time. Unless these would only be used on highways with street lights, I can imagine all sorts of safety problems with a firing flash bulb in the face of a speeding driver. Red-light cameras don't have this problem because they're usually positioned in bright light areas and are used in low-speed situations.
... do we start finding these on eBay?
Initial costs, reliability, expected lifespans. The conditions are:
1) Outdoors in extreme temperature ranges,
2) Very high humidity, and often corrosive atmosphere,
3) Physically very small,
4) Reasonably immune to physical damage (salt/sand sludge + snowplows do _nasty_ things to optical windows.)
Power has to come from batteries at night; what is the battery life under industrial temperatures (-20 to 150F, forex.) Concrete doesn't get quite that hot, but asphault does.
You can get away with powering LEDs with a supercap and a switcher, should have a better lifespan than a NiCD or SLA, but they're physically larger and not as robust (As well as pricey.) But that won't cut it for cameras or radios. So you have to replace the batteries every few years.
These are not traditional road studs. 5" wide?? These are huge; the normal installation methods won't work.
I'd like to see their business case. Almost certainly relies on questionable safety increases or revenue from being a speed trap.
My state is running a multi-year reliability study on more traditional road studs (including those nifty blue reflectors) on various roads around the area.
"'Tis great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults, greater to tell him his." --Poor Richard's Almanac
I think I'll see cops telecommuting, before I see them concerned with "real crimes". (n.b., I live in a ritzy retirement city in South Florida.)
I don't think theyre made by the same company, but the ones on the road from Eckington to Chesterfield in the UK look like ordinary cats eye road studs, but contained within each one is a small rechargable battery, a solar cell, a few LED's, and a microchip pic microcontroller. As you approach them at night, once they detect a small ammount of light from your headlamps, they light up pretty bright, and continue to shine for a few seconds after you have passed. They look pretty spooky when you look in the rear view mirror and see them still flickering away (they don't light up constant but instead flash quite rapidly like the LED puch bike lamps). I believe the ones on the test site on this road were developed by an ex fireman.
is having all sorts of commercials follwing you around on the road.
I guess the better option would still be to have the messages sent by wifi to the car's computer and displayed on its screen, so you can read them easily. Reading stuff off the pavement while driving is not exactly convenient.
Interesting point though. It will probably happen, too (in one form or another), but not very soon.
>While I'm willing to applaud better-lit roads, why incorporate speed traps?
Because driving slower kills fewer pedestrians, and no matter how many times we *ask* drivers to obey the law, they won't. So we have to make them.
>I mean, I guess it could be argued that if you obey the law you have nothing to fear
Yes, you could argue that.
http://milkshake.dexy.org
Driving above a reasonable speed is not good for safety, so speed limits are a good thing. The problem is, enforcement is so spotty that speed limits are set very low, mainly to provide revenue for the police department. Since the speed limits are rarely enforced, people just put up with it.
If these things make the speed limits enforced 100%, then speed limits will go up and actually start to reflect the concept of a maximum safe speed. That might not be such a bad thing.
US Made markers are cast iron based in a triangular shape (snowplow-able). An automated truck mounted machine (at least in Ohio) grinds a depression in the road, drops the reflector in the hole with a nice goopy base of heavey duty QD epoxy, and voila. There is no reason you cannot do this with electromagical gizmos. I would expect a replacement removal/installation system to be similar. Having them write traffic tickets would make 'em self-funding.
I can imagine this will make road repairs a real joy, because now you have to *carefully* pry out all these electronic studs before you can repave (or even just reseal) the road surface.
Remember, freedom is slavery.
I hate sigs.
I've seen these all over in the Pacific Northwest. The problem is less of the snow covering the roads than it is of the snow removal equipment. If the plows are scraping so hard that they kick up sparks, they'll bust up the reflectors pretty quick.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Because driving slower kills fewer pedestrians
Will these things light the interstate up red if a pedestrain is walking there?
Those pedestrians shouldn't be walking along the interstate! That is just asking for a Darwin award. I know it would suck if you had a flat or ran out of gas, but really you shouldn't walk on the shoulder of the interstate. You should be off the road entirely if you ever need to walk there.
You know, there's an ironic thing about the speed limit. I don't think that police really want to strictly enforce it. If they did, what would happen? There would be a tremendous flood of tickets issued at first... There would be serious outcry from the majority of people who feel the limit is too low... They would probably raise it slightly, but not enough to really matter...
It's just like the weekly poker night that I host. I tell people: "Show up no later than 8:00, or cards will be dealt and your hands will be folded." Now, we don't really enforce that rule, but there has to be some rule in place, just because, otherwise, if I said, "Show up anytime from 7:00 to 9:00," then the first guy would show up at 9:30, and the game would start sometime around midnight.
There has to be some speed limit, but strict enforcement just isn't good for anyone -- especially the police.
If you want to identify who's driving where. Ignoring the obvious privacy concerns, it's not that bad an idea. For example, my uncle got hit biking by a hit-and-run. Shattered pelvis - never able to bike again. At least with RFID tags in the license plates that would have been able to track down the truck that hit him.
When your father is on his death bed in a hospital 40 miles away and you and your siblings want to get there to see him before he passes, I'm sure you'll want your car to be stuck doing the speedlimit...
I also didn't buy a car with a 4.6L V8 to be hampered by built-in speed controls. Some people find driving fun you know.
Sorry, but my last attempt at posting this went wrong somehow... Gotta learn to use that preview button I suppose.
Anyway, this is definitely fascinating stuff. Medium-sized town Veerhoeszjen in The Netherlands has actually been trying these devices out for the last few months, and a href="http://69.93.68.74/article_view?id=291
Username: asspants
Password: streetmeat
Enjoy.
This is why it will never happen. People would actually quit speeding if they know they will be caught every time, and cities will start to lose that revenue stream. Also, cops would much rather spend time busting harmless speeders rather than confronting dangerous criminals. Too many peoples' livelihoods (and police retirement funds) would be at stake with a system like this.
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If they start to pick up licence plate numebrs then some enterprizing individual will simply mount a blade on the underside of his truck and rip them out of the pavement.
Sometimes those involved with enforcement go a little to far in their search for more ways to pick the pockets of those they purport to serve. We generally know their objective is to serve themselves... serve themselves our money right?
I'm told that in Germany the road bumps are known as "katzenkopf" or "cat heads"---why they would want to think about the sadistic killing of small animals while they drive on the Autobahn I can only guess...
Premature optimization is the root of all evil
Besides the insurance benefits, I can imagine a deeply, um, theoretical benefit to having roads that monitor the cars passing over them:
1: Elect some really technocratic executives/legislators.
2: Enact laws which raise the speed limit when there are fewer cars on the road, with these monitoring studs used to report the traffic density. Then you can have them change color to indicate that the speed limit is raised And they could also report the data to some data network, letting road signs or even your dashboard indicate the raised speed limit.
-------------------- the list is long. dirac angestung gesept
Streetdot epoxy is among the strongest glues I know of for good reason. They are practicaly impossible to remove without removing a large segemnt of asphalt. I've tried collecting street dots, and the only way to do it is with a pickaxe... and you try going in the street with a pickaxe and playing a game of collect the dots.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
How about popping them out the road and gluing them down like a curve where there's not a curve, Wiley Coyote style.
Would it be a good idea to just lynch companies that are trying to make products like this before they make it to market?
Perhaps Kerry can come up with a way for the rich to pay for these instead of raising their taxes. THen they get a tax write-off and still pay for something to benefit the general public.
Just keep in mind that even the presidents who have not raised taxes have changed deductions and benefits so that you get much less back. It's the same thing as a higher tax, but it gets hidden as "No new taxes!!"
CalTrans FAQ on Bott's Dots
It might be good to prepare for the commute going into the Holland Tunnel. Makes you think of the smell, too.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
There are a bunch of these things embedded in the sidewalk on Vassar Street between Mass Ave and Main Street to mark the bike lanes on the newly-renovated sidewalk. They look pretty cool at night. (As far as I know, they're just plain solar-powered white LED lights, without any monitoring)
-------------------- the list is long. dirac angestung gesept
Right. Force. Like pounds. ;-)
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
(Well, except for the tracking part...)
I had an idea like this a few months ago, but not for the lighting. Instead I was thinking of deer. Here in Iowa, its a huge problem. Lots of people hit deer in the highways.
My idea was the have these boxes spaced along the roadway mounted on reflector poles (many highways already have those in place). Then, when it detected an approaching car, it'd shine a light and/or a sound burst to startle the animals. It would also trigger a number of boxes farther up the road ahead of the car to do the same. So in front of each car there would be a moving sound/light effect to scare away the animals before the car gets there.
If they could incorporate some system to keep the roads clear of larger animals (like deer) it'd make it even more of a sure-sell.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
If these things make the speed limits enforced 100%, then speed limits will go up and actually start to reflect the concept of a maximum safe speed. That might not be such a bad thing.
:)
Heh heh heh, thats a good one. When's the last time you heard the government (any government) say they'd like to collect less money
What about up-skirt pictures?
I doubt they will be everywhere in a few years. Just because it's a good idea doesn't mean they will be everywhere. We could have solar lamp posts right now, but they still run on electricy.
At least older cars (mid-80s) would have a gentle alarm go off when exceeding 100km/h, the highway speed limit in the country.
With currently technology, they could easily modify it to be aware of the real speed limit for a section of road. It'd beat the signs that people ignore or don't see if your car announced every speed limit for you by vocal, and had a gentle alarm to backup when speeding.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
iPaq with GPS & iGuidance software- my setup uses a Bluetooth GPS unit I velcro to the dash, and then I velcro my iPaq to the steering wheel.
Link to iGuidance Software
It's not perfect though- for some reason it's reporting standard Washington speeds based on Road Size in Oregon. This can lead to trouble- it's about 5mph over on the freeway, and 5mph under on side roads, plus has no understanding of current conditions (i.e., no cops or traffic for then next 5 miles vs raining, foggy, and in bumper-to-bumper under 10 mph traffic on 217 in Beaverton). But for an early start at what you were talking about, it seems to work nice (especially since cops don't ticket in Oregon for the first 10mph over).
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Maybe if yo had read the article you would have discovered that they are EMBEDDED in the road, not on top of the road. They're level with the pavement.
PS your mom is a fat gay whore.
How much labor does it take to install one of these things? I see the guys painting the stripes on the road going 45mph. Can they install these things while riding in a truck going 45mph?
Or if they do, they won't last past the first snow. Along comes a snowplow, and *pop* *pop* *pop* there go the reflectors, smart or not, right into the ditch. Along with the odd hunk of concrete that was sticking up, unlucky mailboxes, small cars...
Nice idea for SoCal, tho.
Use your cruise control.
Did you know these are also known as "Botts dots"? (Named after their inventor.) Read that in, of all places, a Playboy story...
Back to normally-scheduled programming...
If you can't see a reflective road stud, maybe you can try this: TURN YOUR FSCKING HEADLIGHTS ON!!! The relective ones are dirt cheap, easy to mount, easy to replace if they get stripped off by a snowplough and they are quite bright - if you have your headlights turned on.
Their solution to snowploughs is to mount it below the road surface. No matter how well you seal it, the sealant will wear off, creating a space between the marker and the pavement for ice to get into and create a pothole. Tacking a little steel tag with a reflective tape on it (those are the road studs normally used in Alberta) takes very little effort, (a little bit of well directed air or gunpowder to drive the spike in, as opposed to drilling out a well for the light, mounsting it, and sealing around it) does not create the a hole for water to seep into (the pavement surrounding a spike that is driven is exerts a fair amout of pressure on the spike which will keep the water out, as opposed to the pavement surrounding a well for the light exerts no pressure on the light, allowing water to pool inside and freeze), and easier to replace (drive a new spike in rather than either fixing the old well and reusing it or drilling a new well and filling the old one with tar).
Sometimes the simpler solution is far superior.
- Thomas;
___ This sig is in boldface to emphasize its importance!
Vernor Vinge hypothesized in his novels that when a society attains ubiquitous law enforcement, perfect and inescapable, it collapses. Looks like we're well on the way to testing his idea.
And I will drive on them every opportunity I can, hoping that eventually doing so will beat them down into the soft asphalt.
I am reposting this, within 30 min. of it's previous post by another AC it got modded down. Since it is obviously insightfull and ontopic I can only conclude either massive idiocy on the part of modders or deliberate supression.
:
TOP SECRET FACT:Most modern cars have tracking transponders!
Spy transmission chips embedded in tires that can be read REMOTELY while driving.
A secret initiative exists to track all funnel-points on interstates and US borders for car tire ID transponders (RFid chips embedded in the tire).
Yup. My brother works on them.
Your tires have a passive coil with 64 to 128 bit serial number emitter in them! (AIAG B-11 ADC v3.0) . A particular frequency energizes it enough so that a receiver can read its little ROM. A ROM which in essence is your GUID for your TIRE. Multiple tires do not confuse the readers. Its almost identical to all "FastPass" "SpeedPass" technologies you see on gasoline keychain dongles and commuter windshield sticker-chips. The US gov has secretly started using these chips to track people.
Its kind of like FBI "Taggants" in fertilizer and "Taggants" in Gasoline and Bullets, and Blackpowder. But these car tire transponder Ids are meant to actively track and trace movement of your car.
Taggant research papers
http://www.wws.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/byteserv.prl/ ~ota/disk3/1980/8017/801705.PDF
(remove spaces in url from slashcode if needed)
I am not making this up. Melt down a high end Firestone, or Bridgestone tire and go through the bits near the rim (sometimes at base of tread) and you will locate the transmitter (similar to 'grain of rice' pet ids and Mobile SpeedPass, but not as high tech as the tollbooth based units). Sokymat LOGI 160, and Sokymat LOGI 120 transponder buttons are just SOME of the transponders found in modern high end car tires. The AIAG B-11 Tire tracking standard is now implemented for all 3rd party transponder manufactures [covered below].
It is for QA and to prevent fraud and "car theft", but the US Customs service uses it in Canada to detect people who swap license plates on cars when doing a transport of contraband on a mule vehicle that normally has not logged enough hours across the border. The customs service and FBI do not yet talk about this, and are starting using it soon.
Photos of chips before molded into tires:
http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:TAQIKjBI01g C: www.sokymat.com/sp/applications/tireid.html
(slashdot ruins links, so you will have to remove the ASCII space it insertess usually into the url above to get to the shocking info and photos on the enbedded LOGI 160 chips that the us gov scans when you cross mexican and canadian borders.)
You never heard of it either because nobody moderates on slashdot anymore and this is probably +0 still. It has also never appeared in print before and is very secret.
Californias Fastpass is being upgraded to scan ALL responding car tires in future years upcoming. I-75 may get them next in rural funnel points in Ohio.
http://www.tadiran-telematics.com/products6.html
but the fact is... YOU PROBABLY ALREADY HAVE A RADIO TRANSPONDER not counting your digital cell phone which is routinely silently pulsed in CA bay area each rush hour morning unless turned off (consult Wired Magazine Expose article). Those data point pulses are used by NSA on occasions.
The us FBI with NRO/NSA blessings, has requested us gov make this tire scanning information as secret as the information regarding all us inkjet printers sold in usa in the last 3 years using "yellow" GUID barcode under dark ink regions to serialize printouts to thwart counterfeiting of 20 dollar bills. (30 to 40 percent of ALL California counterfeiting is done using cheap Epson inkjet printers, most purchased with credit cards foolishly). Luckily court dockets divulge the existence of the Epson serial numbers on your printouts... but nobody except
D) use infrared ranging and embedded cameras to detect and report the license number of anyone speeding on the road;
States rely too much upon the fines for speeding. They have optimized their income with the current system. If speed detection was made 100% reliable, no one would do it and the states wouldn't make any money off of it.
This is a part of the reason why interlock devices aren't placed on all cars at the factory. Everyone hates "drunk driving", but they make so much money off of it that they don't want it to completely stop.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Ahh, good counterpoint. The law enforcement *controlled* cameras may be unnecessary, especially considering the potential for abuse, however if the camera's were used for more worthwhile purposes then they are definitely worth having around.
/. commentors (not including yourself) seem actually afraid of any technology that has the inkling of increased control. Freedom? Oh yeah! They're all about that. But more reliable technological control over somewhat flawed processes like driving, law enforcement, or terrorist attacks? No way! (Note that I am in no way condemning some of the lame-ass ATTEMPTS at solving some of these problems legislatively, like the DMCA or the Patriot Act, so I hope you get my drift)
I find it interesting that for being such a technology site, so many
They did reflectors in NH one summer and we just walked around and ripped them off the road for fun one night.
I'm just going to say this: all you people who even think for a second that the insurance companies are going to lower insurance rates and highway speeds will increase are hopeless optimists. At least...not in your lifetimes.
The insurance companies have a racket they're not about to lose. They set the price for your right to drive, and nobody really actively regulates this. Since the markets have stable growth, you won't find insurance providers suddenly "dumping" excess inventory like say, in the DRAM market. The insurance industry is more like the music industry in terms of stability...and if the RIAA's failed promise to lower prices on CDs is any example, we're never going to see a red cent.
As for highway speeds, they're only beginning to reflect what they were before the federally-mandated 55mph speed limits were introduced 30 years ago. Maybe we can dance for joy when the states finally approve speed limits over 70mph 30 years from now for roads that can easily handle 90mph NOW.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Something that's prety much completely overlooked in these discussions of "auto ticketing for over the limit" is that setting one speed limit for all vehicles ignores the differences between vehicles that are based on physics and manufacturing quality.
:-> ) is the overloaded minivan going 85.
In my Z3, I can (safely) take corners at speeds far in excess of the posted "recommended" limits. Indeed, I frequently don't actually need to slow down for the corners. That's because the car's center of gravity is extremely low, the wide tires provide huge contact patches, and the car is almost perfectly balanced (50/50 front/rear). Add to the mix the outstanding OEM suspension, and it is completely safe to take the corner above the recommended speed.
In my sisters Ford Excursion, however, a speed below the posted recommended limit is necessary to keep the behemoth between the lines. It has a high center of gravity, a terrible contact patch/weight ratio, and bad front/rear balance. Plus, being made by Ford, the suspension feels like a pair of overstretched rubber bands. The posted recommended limit is too high for that thing.
Impossible, but I'd like to see speed limits take into account the physics that control how safe a vehicle is at speed. Much more frightening to me than a sports car travelling at 100 mph (not me
That'll probably arrive right after the IQ requirement for driver's licenses.
Dan D
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Sweet, how cool will it be to scrape a few of these off the road and turn them into my own sensor array. And I dont even have to pay for it. sweet!
More competitive? Definitely.
Record companies, on a per-product basis, don't compete with each other - you want a Celine Dion CD (let's forget a moment that you should be shot on sight), there's only one record label to get it from. The record company doesn't have to pass the CD manufacturing cost savings onto the consumer, because it's not like some other record company is going to be able to sell Celine Dion CD's for less by passing on those savings.
Now, if you want to insure your '93 Volvo Wagon, you have hundreds of insurance agents and tens of insurance underwriters to pick from. If your current carrier doesn't pass cost savings onto you, you can switch to another insurance carrier who will.
paintball
I went to the manufacturer's website and found it interesting. Some of their ideas are great -- particularly the tailgate warning feature. In general, the products actually described on their web site are great ideas and would definitely make driving safer.
However, none of those products seem to involve cameras or any kind of specific-vehicle identification. I'm disappointed in that, as I was really curious as to how they supposedly accomplish licence-plate captures. I've worked on a number of Electronic Toll Collection projects, including the world's first high-speed system, and setting up cameras for capturing images of vehicles moving at freeway speeds clear enough to read the licence plate is not trivial. Granted, the proximity to the vehicle would help -- most of the systems I work with use a camera off to the side, which requres taking images of vehicles some distance away to compensate for the angle -- but to mount those kinds of optics into a package that small... I'd have to see it to believe it.
in addition to its other capabilities, it would be pretty cool. Tell the car where you want to go and it figures out the quickest/safest/shortest route and drives you there.
Heck, if it's already going to figure out whether the road is slick or not and what speed you're going at, a little more computing power and a transmitter would allow it to communicate with vehicles going near them.
Does anyone else seem to think that these 'SolarLites' are useless as soon as a few dozen diesel spewing tractor trailers pass by?
Mars Rover teams are/were worried about dust on the panels, what about smoot on these? (Anyone who has seen black snow on a highway knows this would be a huge problem).
I'll bet if you got lots of people to drive over them in snow, they'd stop working due to the Slushdot effect.
Luckily, there is actually a law on the books in jersey prohibiting photo-based speed enforcement.
Even if there weren't, how could you issue a speeding ticket based on a license plate? The driver gets points in their license, and you can't give points to the registered owner of the car if they weren't the one driving.
People who say "money does not buy happiness" are just people without money trying to make themselves feel better.
You mean like first responders trying to prevent terrorism? Hmmm?!?
- They hide Old People Sex so I won't go blind while driving down the street (and mask the sound of wrinkly liverspotted skin rubbing on wrinkly liverspotted skin).
And if they're elderly terrorists, plotting while doing it? We'd never know until it was too late!
- They provide us exercise by making us get up to let cats/dogs in/out.
Pet doors did away with that years ago. Oh, and terrorists tend to exercise...oh, never mind.
I see snow plow blades becoming popular placed it doesn't snow...
Since they can also form packs, they can turn into a revenue center for municipalities either by extorting money from homeless people in the neighborhood or by breaking them up for parts.
Version 2.5 will include the ability to self-assemble, leading the end of life as we know it. Personally, I salute our new artifically-intelligent speed bump overlords!
no they are called BOT dots after the gentleman who came up with the idea...
n /7 61/event=view
h tm
http://www.womanmotorist.com/index.php/news/mai
http://www.sae.org/automag/techbriefs_05-00/04.
sorry about the crappy html, can't seem to post a link correctly through the work firewall...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
...for the people that make 'em.
Everytime it snows, the plows come out and scrape 'em off the road. That's what happens to those crappy plastic reflectors now. It is what will probably happen to these too.
Not as much as people would like to think. The vast majority of accidents occur at intersections. On a per-mile basis, the accident rate is the LOWEST where people drive the FASTEST - divided multilane restricted-access (interchanges, not intersections) highways. Fatal accidents on those kinds of roads are rare, and generally limited to fog, severe weather, and drunks.
A bunch of cars going in the same direction at the (roughly) same speed, even if it's 90 MPH, is safer than cars going in opposite directions or perpendicular directions at 30 MPH.
paintball
Doing even license plate recognition right is a bit tricky, in terms of both sensor quality and calibration. Setting them up to do this will make them on the costly side.
Of course several cities have used camera/photo systems that automatically record speeders. As fun as it is to be able to speed, I even think it's a good thing on balance. It's only a matter of time until such camera systems become ubiquitous on the road, even it the costs are acceptable at present.
Unfortunately, the invention is here in the UK - where there are already cameras all over the streets, Internet monitoring etc etc for "our safety". People will get pissed off and revolt in the streets... but that's never stopped our government before.
Now we know how to remove them if they become problematic.
Thanks!
>>they'd be everywhere
Fortunately, so will people like me with cans of spraypaint, or, other more plausible methods of rendering them inoperable: "Gosh, officer, I didn't realize that snow chains weren't necessary during the summer in Florida, and I *do* so apologise for running over those little markers. Sorry 'bout that. Won't let it happen again."
The article talked about video feeds going out on a cable. Why not bluetooth or wifi. In fact, if these things are close enough together, they would form a completely connected redundant grid. Imagine little radio packets bouncing along the dotted lines til they get to their destination (or out to a backbone).
As long as everybody's going nearly the same speed, which is typically near the "natural" speed limit (official speed limit + ~5-10mph), you're fine. A 65 mph road becomes much more dangerous when people see a cop and decide to drive 50 instead of 70, which causes cars to bunch up close together, at a speed significantly slower than cars approaching from behind would expect. Cops are a traffic harard, I tell ya.
Remember SeaQuest, it used to be on NBC and was on Sci-Fi for a while. In one of the season premiers, the captain was speeding along on his motorbike and on the side of the road was a speed detector that would scan the license plate and then send the info over to a sort of driving offence center, which would immediately call the driver and deduct the offence amount from their Social Security. Thats the future folks, .
"Nobody knows it's a camera or a speed trap," Mr. Dicks said of his latest creation.
Hmmm, I think the CAT is out of the bag now!
When's the last time you heard the government (any government) say they'd like to collect less money :)
When there is a good chance some official will not be re-elected.
This would help to solve one of the problems with an auto driving car, as witnessed in the DARPA grand challenge: vision. If the roads were implanted with these with an rfid tag (uniquely identified for each road/lane) it would be easy to reckon your absolute position relative to the road and detect things like an upcoming dip in the road, etc. making it much easier to drive a car autonomously. Cruise control that adjusts speed according to the traffic ahead of you is already present. The only issue is what would happen in fail safe mode where there were markers missing or burnt out/ slashdotter vandalized.
The insurance industry is more like the music industry in terms of stability
Except that it's a fairly competitive industry. Let's see, how many labels can you buy a particular CD from? That's right, just one. In contrast, auto insurers generally compete on the basis of price (as witnessed by the annoying commercials).
As for highway speeds, they're only beginning to reflect what they were before the federally-mandated 55mph speed limits were introduced 30 years ago.
No shit, Sherlock, that's exactly what I said. The thing is, everyone ALREADY drives 90 when there is a 70-mph speed limit. There are two problems with that. First, you have a small but nonzero chance of getting arrested. Second, some also drive 110 or 120. If speed limit enforcement was more effective, speed limits would have been raised a long time ago.
Ask your local legislator how much of your local police force's budget comes from fines. Then you'll know why making these buggers into money makers *will* happen
Turn our roads into a supercomputer.
Great, more garbage. Do we really need these? Aren't we going overboard with the safety-concious techno gadgets? Items like these will exhaust the landfills soon.
And we get snow and ice. The conventional markers are mounted in little rubber mounts that pop them under the road surface when a plow comes by.. i've never seen one that's been torn up.
I have also seen ones that change colour (to blue i think) in freezing conditions, but it starts to get too confusing. Unlike the US, british motorways use red, green, white and amber 'cateyes' to mark the sides of the road, lanes and exits. Adding more colors to the mix gets complicated.
What we have on a stretch of the M90 are markers on little posts by the side of the road that (iirc) blink blue when it's freezing and red when there's an accident ahead.
Okay, not all the detection stuff.. but the permanently lit road studs (we traditionally call them 'cats eyes') exist on a few roads in the UK, and are being tested. It's pretty weird, because most English roads have reflective studs, but I was driving along and these lights were on permanently, it makes the road look like a big Christmas tree.
Anyway, if you're on the UK and wanna go see, drive the A24 dual-carriageway section south of Dorking.
I've never liked reflective road studs. It seems to me that if you can't see the road far enough ahead to follow it, the proper response is to slow down until you can. Lighting the road doesn't help you see what's ON the road. Encouraging people to drive faster when visibility is poor seems like a bad idea.
I don't have any statistics to back that up. This story inspired me to spend a good ten minutes searching google, and I can't find any statistical evidence as to the efficacy of road studs in increasing road safety. Since I *have* found all kinds of people, governments, and manufacturers praising the idea, the absence of any evidence that it's any good leads me to suspect that my initial reaction is correct: Road studs are a safety hazard.
If anyone has evidence to the contrary, please enlighten me.
... or is the vigilante in you pretty worthless?
/. long enough to help out in any meaningful way, is it?
It's a safe bet your local PD doesn't have the equipment, budget, manpower, or training to go after all the serious evildoers in your community. But that's not worth you dragging yourself away from
No, it takes the serious problem of sensor-equipped road studs to make you act like an asshat "for great justice!"
Please never fight crime in my neighborhood, Batman.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
I have seen solar-powered blinking cat eyes (the small -about 15 cm. in diameter- reflective studs embedded in the tarmac) already in use in Saigon, where I used to live.
I believe they were testing them for further deployment. If I am not mistaken they were French built.
How many will be picked off by curious geeks with screwdrivers in the middle of the night? A high-tech road marker would be a tasty thing to play with, provided one could kill any internal tracking capabilities.
...the information highway slogan. :-)
Seriously though, here are the flaws I see in this:
1. Dirt
2. Rubber rubbed off from tires
3. Cracking from weight
4. Cloudly days
5. Abrasion from sand, rocks, etc...
6. What to do about the huge number of boxes which want to transmit information? If each of these things is trying to send information - how do you sort out where the signal is coming from?
Some ideas:
1. Make the flow of information be one direction (so all of the red sides have to face way from on-coming traffic) on each side of the road.
2. Use TCP/IP to be able to send packets.
3. Make the boxes take turns. (This can be done by having Master boxes which tell each slave in turn when to transmit their data. The slaves transmit back when they are through so the next box can go. Sort of like how multi-system rendering of pictures is performed.)
4. Use the spare bandwidth to allow other TCP/IP packets to be sent over the line. Thus making broadband available to everyone across the nation who has a road with these things on them.
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
We've already got these in the UK - some roads have cat's eyes with LEDs in them and they're great. It makes driving so much easier.
However, they do have the side effect of making drivers go "Ooh! Glowy cat's eyes!" and switch off their headlights to see them better... hence, they're statistically rather dangerous!
PocketGamer.org - For the gamer on the go!
I've seen some sensors that are used for highways. They are anything but cheap. A single in-road sensor that can:
a) monitor for water on the road surface
b) monitor the temperature at and below the surface
c) detect ice on the surface
d) monitor snow height on the surface
costs around $1000. That is for one sensor that has life expectancy anywhere between 1 and 10 years.
There is also some additional electronics needed to provide useful data. A single monitoring station with weather, fog,wind and temperature detectors with two sensors (one for each lane) can cost more than $10000 without the costs of on-site construction, connection to electricity and communications.
You also need some customized software for making predictions for your part of the road. Because it's too late when you already have ice on the road, you need to know at least 3 hours in advance.
... is gorgeous, I was there in December. And I know you folks get snow too. What you don't get (I don't think) is a layer of snow and ice that STAYS on the road. For months. See above.
Gotta love Skye, though. It didn't tug, it WRENCHED at my highland genes. Cheers!
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
Whoa.
You do know that the majority of speed limits are set to MAKE money. Plus, hey it's the LAW, you should follow it, others do, why are you special?
From my years of driving in 2M+ person cities, I've had time to observe what slows down traffic flow.
Three things: braking (slow spots), inattention/under-limit driving, and fear.
- Slow Spots
What slows down traffic flow most is people braking when they don't need to, or braking more than they need to. The problem is that in congested traffic, once one car slows in one lane, a wedge of cars behind him slows, and behind them everyone slows.
Then when that one driver speeds up (and it takes much longer to speed up than slow down), the next cars THEN speed up. They don't speed up exactly when the lead driver does because it takes them time to see the change. This carries on behind them.
This creates a slow spot on the freeway. Once a slow spot is created, it only goes away once a gap backwards in traffic is large enough to allow the slowed vehicles to speed up to normal speed before the gap is completely closed by the approaching traffic.
- Under-limit Driving
This is obvious. Left or center lane driver drops below speed limit, cars behind have to slow (often they use their brake instead of coasting down), and you're in the situation above (slow spot).
- Fear
Car needs in another lane. Most drivers, if there is room ahead of the vehicle beside them, will still brake and try to fall in behind the neighboring vehicle. The following vehicles in that lane may not be friendly, and may not allow that. So fearful driver brakes even more, hoping to eventually get over. I've even seen some fools come to a complete stop in the middle of the freeway so they can hopefully work across 3 lanes to exit. They should have either sped up and pulled in front, or if that took too long, gradually worked their way over, missed their exit, and looped back.
These things don't mean you should never brake, or that you should always drive aggressively, but some middle ground approach would surely improve things. The time cost for a full traffic jam is enormous. 5 minutes times 200,000 vehicles is 11 days of time. In a perverse way that's a really significant amount of power that one driver can exercise. Create a good traffic jam and you've just wasted 11 days of your town's time.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
can the next version please make coffee too?
i live on an alternate planet
Interlocks are also a fucking pain in the ass. Both to use and maintain. They're nowhere near reliable enough, and have much too short a lifespan to stick them in a car permanently.
I know because I used to install the damn things.
They could also be RADAR transcievers for automatic navigation systems in cars and trucks.
The vehicle could send a ping which includes information about its destination or path, and the marker could send back a ping which contains information about upcoming hazards, speed limit changes, construction zones, road conditions, etc.
Thus the road edges and distinctions between lanes can be discerned by the nav system by simple ranging, and additional info can be trasmitted by the road itself to the cars using it.
Speaking for myself I'd that the reason why so many slashdotters are wary of such technologies is because we know technology well enough to know that it's not a panacea to all (or really any) social problems and we understand the potential for abuse that comes with any complex, secretive technology controlled by a group or agency that operate de facto without public oversight/control. We're also, as a group, less prone to take sweeping promises about what a new technology can and will do for us at face value mostly because we've heard so many that proved to be damn lies when the dust settled: "Face recognition cameras will only spot terrorists!"; "The new bomb scanners will make air travel safer and more convientent, and no false positives!"; "Peoplesoft is an easy to use and cost effective solution to your HR needs"; "The speed sensors are for your own protection citizen" etc...
Also, speficically regard objections to automated traffic enforcement scams such as this a lot of object because we know that the stated objective, "increased safety", and promised benefits, "lower insurance rates" are total bullshit. If increased road safety were the goal then stealth enforcement wouldn't be seen as a benefit, bright red flags and flashing lights would mark the intersections dangergous enough to warrant traffic spy-cams and people would slow down, thus saving lives. That and having traffic engineers set the speed limit to a speed that the road can safely handle, or better yet pump the money being tossed into spy-cams into smart roads with adaptive speed limits. So yeah I'm afriad of any revenue generating, control increasing technology marketed as a safety device.
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
What are the various laws your states have on ticketing by photo speed traps and such, the systems that sense speed, and then take a picture of your license plate etc. I'm asking, because I know the law in Utah, doesn't allow photo-speed traps, except in/for school zones. Do most states allow this sort of speed-trap?
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
My old 1991 Hyundai Excel had the same chime, except faster, for when you left the keys in the ignition.
;)
:)
Currently I'm in the process of transforming a 1984 Honda Accord into a decent replica of Takumi's AE86. The funny thing is that the Trueno he drives (83-86 generation) looks very much like the coupe version of the Accord (84-86 styling). The Toyoto Camry Sedan edition looks like the Sedan version of the Accord as well. The FR vs. FF, though, is a huge difference
Bronze 15" 8-spoke rims + rubber will be going onto the car this next week. There'll be some bodywork to get it up to snuff and repainted Panda style, and then my friend with a vinyl cutter will set it up with the apropos Kanji (we've been doing Japanese togther for a year). After that I'm putting a Prelude engine in, but that's going to have to happen after some saving.
My car likes cosplay
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Wow, someone posted an exact duplicate article, and after scanning all 500 responses, it appears that not ONE other comment mentions that this exact same story was posted yesterday!
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Then we should work to change the existing laws rather than keeping them on the books and fighting efforts to enforce them. That just results in them being enforced arbitrarily and unevenly. Too many people today (this doesn't necessarily include you) disagree with the current speed limits, but accept their existence as long as they don't get many tickets. Laws that everyone ignores or knows are bogus only serve to erode our respect for the law in general (that's certainly the effect it's had on me).
I'd rather be lucky than good.
as seen in someones sig:
The solution to 1984 is 1776
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
What if Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist does a guest column on Slashdot?
The laws of physics mean some cars are safe at speeds that are unsafe for others.
If your road marker could depress when driven over and spring back into place, you could use the force of the car pushing it down to charge a battery. This would assume that the marker gets driven over fairly regularly but has the advantage of working at night or in low light areas.
I believe many road markers already the action of a car driving over them to wipe the lense clean.
Elk Grove, eh?
Check this out
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
...and afterwards called in to see a friend. Before I knew it I was trying to cycle home at 4 AM while completely drunk. I don't remember most of the ride (approximately 10 miles) but I do recall that at one point I approached an intersection and was blurrily wondering what all the flashing yellow lights were for. Anyhoo, naturally, I rode on without caring much, even though I remember hearing some guys yelling at me, and then a mile or so later on realizing that the traffic signals were red (not much traffic at that intersection in the early hours, thankfully). Anyhoo, I somehow made it home in one piece, and went to bed. The next day, through a raging hangover, I noticed my bike was covered in white paint. A crew had been roadmarking at the intersection and I'd rode right through it. That was years ago, but if you look carefully you can still see my tire tracks there.
Such paint might also be nastily poisonous and an environmental no-no.
You're right. I recall a couple calls to my insurance company:
...
Me: Why are my rates so high? I have a perfect driving record.
Them: It's because you drive a sports car.
Me: I traded in the sports car for a VW Golf. Why did my rates go up even higher?
Them: You have a new car now.
Will monitor your thoughts.
In other news, the sale of tinfoil has been banned in the United States...
</tinfoil hat>
but really you shouldn't walk on the shoulder of the interstate. You should be off the road entirely if you ever need to walk there.
Yeah well, nice theory. Perhaps you should try it yourself sometime before shooting your mouth off from within your ass. In most interstates, away from the shoulder is full of mud, broken glass, knee-high weed and a ton of other trash and shit that most ex-drivers and ex-passengers are ill-equipped to travel on. The real question is, what the fuck are you doing driving onto the shoulder and hiting stranded people who are walking there? Hmmm? Moron!
These markers seem to be quite intelligent, so just program them to duck even further into the ground when a snowplow passes by. Any nerd worth his name can come up with this solution. :P
While the company you reference has some interesting things, Spot Devices (www.spotdevices.net) offers similar self powered devices that may be wirelessly activated and dynamically controlled based upon real-time situations in their environment. Wireless send/receive with Solar = super cool
or am I thinking of something different?
His "dots" sound like low-tech versions* of "cat's eyes" which were invented by a Yorkshireman in 1933 (20 years earlier).
* - not necessarily a bad thing as I'm sure they're a lot cheaper.
I don't know how widespread these are but there are flashing road studs on the Pricess freeway between Morewell and Traralagon in the Latrobe Valley, Victoria Australia. In the middle of the night they are anoying because they flash but they don't do it fast enough so it is kinda like looking at road markings through a slow frame rate camera.
I'd actually add a fourth, which is kind of your first but a very specific instance: merging traffic. Ramp metering helps somewhat, but not enough. The wedge of slow traffic caused by people braking to let a car in, and then that car promptly trying to weave over to the "fast lane" causes enormous problems on my commute.
Once you pass the four on-ramps where the bulk of the traffic comes from it is smooth sailing to work, regardless of traffic volume.
Why not integrate autopilot or some navigation system that can guide the vehicles steering also?
1. Create device that lights roads and has the capability to take a picture of your license plate.
2. ????
3. Profit!
Yeah, first the wave of panic; let's see if we can put a hole in that.
Think about it: millions of simple reflectors on the road, glued down to the pavement have been broken for decades...put something complex in there, and they'll be broken most of the time, too.
Sure, places like Chicago and New York will have teams to keep'em in place, but that'll just follow the population density.
And exactly what is it these people fear? Without running drugs/guns/etc or slaves, stealing cars or cheating on your wife while running for office...things considered wrong anyway...what's the problem?
Sure, there's the broken-sensor concept where someone goes to jail because the technology tagged someone erroneously, but it's beginning to look like there'll be so many sensors that it'll be an easy task to bear that out in court.
I know, I know, "Brian's just ignoring all the dangers", etc...but I've already went through the panic stage...and there's nothing that's going to stop this pervasion of technology into our lives. Heck, it's part of prophecy....so let's get past the panic, and get on with dealing with it.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
" if you don't get any tickets you might see rates drop"
Right. Sure. This is false on at least four levels:
1) That there is a link between speed and accidents. Never proven. Police routinely list "speed" as a contributary cause of an accident, but they mean this in the sense that "if he wasn't moving he wouldn't have gotten into an accident".
2) What is a safe speed anyway?
3) If I "speed" and don't get caught, I am not an insurance risk. Particularly if I've been speeding for 3 decades and have never gotten a ticket.
4) Pushing all that aside, your rates that you pay today are the *BASE* rates, therefore, insurance rates will only go up. I'll bet the insurance companies love this concept.
This is a fallacy like "we all pay for shoplifting" that doesn't stand up under the flimsiest of analysis.
Please try harder next time, but use logic.
Sorry to spoil the article, but we already do have them. I have them in the street outside my house.
I live in the South of England. They are made by a Dutch company I believe. They look very robust polycarbonate sort of plastic, but slightly rubbery.
The cell inside looks black from above and the LEDs
are white, but not very bright except for one angle.
The bend further down our road is an accident blackspot so maybe it got special treatment by the council.
First of all, if the road markers can snap a photo of my license plate, how is the info retrieved? Since they're solar-powered, I would assume that there are no plans to dig up the highways and run wire for power/communication, and I don't see how a small solar cell is going to provide enough power to light a few LED's *and* transmit several sufficiently-detailed photos via any wireless means. However, assuming I'm incorrect in that assumption, what's to stop each and every one of these from taking my picture? Even using OCR to quickly check my plates against a database of previously offending plates is only going to be useful *after* the picture has been taken. It just seems unlikely that there is any way to keep every single one of those markers from photographing the license plates of every car on the road. Any way you slice it, that sort of system would have to be horribly inefficient.
The company bets that you are young and strong and that nothing is ever going to happen to you.
You bet you are going to die tomorrow, and that your babies need some dollars quick.
Once you pass a certain amount of time with the insurance company without anything bad happening to you, they start winning.
Solution:
1) take out insurance
2) OW OW OW OW!
3) profit!
If no major insurance cartels control the market (like RIAA), and there is competition in the market, and insurance companies are operating on high margins, then it is quite feasible that some insurance companies may lower their prices (and profit margins) in order to try to increase their market share. This can spark price wars, which leads to a lowering of profit margins in the industry down to their natural minimum (and ineffecient companies who can't compete going under).
Not everything is like the RIAA or Microsoft. Competition still works sometimes. I'm not sure if it's the rule or the exception though.
New Zealand are using these on the motorways, although they aren't capable of detecting fog and whatnot...
No, not Ponch & Jon: My favorite app for these smart road studs is displaying spacers between cars in a lane, dependent on their speeds, showing necessary braking distance. Especially good in foggy and rainy conditions, with reduced visibility, that contribute to massive car pileups. The same app could even indicate a gradual slowdown zone, approaching stopped traffic from collisions or construction. It would offer the same guidance to any driver, regardless of their onboard equipment. Certainly worth the investment in savings in healthcare, throughput to economic productivity, and reducing various roadrage contributors.
--
make install -not war
can get away with it!
Any system that automatically catchers EVERY speeder or moving violations in general is going to completely devastate a huge source of income for a given municipality.
People have to believe they can get away with it so that police can stick some people with the fine.
Free market forces protect our liberties.
Catseye reflecting studs already line thousands of miles of highways, without such prohibitive problems.
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make install -not war
1) Build machine to wash the solar panels while driving at 60MPH.
2) ???
3) Profit!
How about throwing wireless access into some of these. Imagine a gigantic wireless mesh network for emergency purposes. Accident on Park and Tyrone intersection? The EMT will know within seconds to send a dispatch out to the location and even have a partial assesment before they even arrive!
Steal This Sig
Bangalore has been experimenting with such solar powered road studs for the last couple of years. They have been installed on a few of the major roads here as a road divider, i.e., they demarcate the traffic going in opposite directions. The authorities in their infinite wisdom have decided to set it to a flashing mode, i.e., the markers charge up during the daytime and automatically go into blink mode at night. I find the whole thing very irritating - a line of blinking lights - like one of those web pages where a lot of the content is in flashing text !
Then with that set of units you clearly must work for NASA.
Umm, those things that bigger vehicles always hit in construction zones? or line the streets of las vegas? Wow, thought the dot-com bubble had burst, but aparently some VC's are late to the party.
Night lights along the shoulders of roads (in cities mainly) can almost completely make the lines invisible--especially when wet. What sucks even more, when they patch every freakin crack in the road those can look like the lines too. I think this technology would be especially useful in the cities. Rual roads really don't need them, usually the reflectors work very well when there isn't an overhead light source... but if they're cheap enough... put 'em everywhere!
- Danny
D) use infrared ranging and embedded cameras to detect and report the license number of anyone speeding on the road
Ah, have a can of black sprary paint, will travel. it'd be so easy to screw these little buggers up. On that note, if it's illegle to speed and you can get ticketed for speeding and it against the law to speed, why doesn't the federal government regulate the auto makers like everybody else to make cars that cannot go above the maximum posted speed limit? Looking out for your own well being, no doubt. Granted, it's your responsibility not to break the law, but if so, why allow the auto manufacturers to build in features that break the law in the first place, ie travel at velocities over 65mph?
That's right. Your governenment hard at work to sabotage you so they can make ticket revenues. That black spraypaint will come in handy.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
I grew up in northwest Jersey (exits 4 & 12 of off I-80 btw :)
The last 20 miles of I-80 before you reach PA are absolutely beautiful. And a great section of interstate to drive on. It's a shame most people think of the highly populated and industrial areas when they think of NJ. There are a lot of really nice areas there. I'd never move back though. Too expensive and too many speed traps. You can't drive 10 miles without seeing a state trooper or something even in the rural areas.
Hmmm... where'd the number 200,000 come from? And, what logic suggests that 11 days is 5 minutes times 200,000? When I multiply it out, I get that 5 minutes times 200,000 is 694 days.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
I remember when I was a kid, I saw some person (a highway safety engineer?) on tv talking about those road reflectors. I think they were very new at the time. They referred to them as "Dummy Buttons".
In Japan these things are already *everywhere*. Well they don't have cameras but LED's, solar panels, batteries etc. and not just Red but also yellow, blue, green. At night there are times when there are so many its actually confusing as to which direction the road goes. Over kill of course, but then Japan and its roads are nothing else.
I've noticed new markers being installed on the highways. The markers in the opposite lane illuminate red, your lane is white, and the sides are yellow. I noticed the ones in the opposite direction aren't always visible though. any idea if this is related?
Sig: I stole this sig.
after being caught by one of these things they would be about 1 spray paint can from being out of comission. All it takes is one pissed off guy.
Some crazy motorcycle riders around here used to like to lean over reaaaal far in corners, and explode Bott's Dots with their footpeg....
Fun, I guess.
I'll just stick to spirited riding, and pass on the destruction part.
Now I can plaster fake numbers on my plates when I go speeding. And random citizens can get ticketed!
Who moved my sig?
This is downright scary!
I saw something just like these on Tomorrow's World ages ago. Minus the privacy issues, of course.
A) power a LED at night to provide lit lanes, not just reflection; I'm not really sure if we want more lights on out roads. I could see this causing some problems. C) monitor the temperature to detect ice; We already have sensors in some roads to do just this. The problem with road studs in colder climates is that snow plows pick them off. Therefore they are not used. I don't see the point in having a device that can detect ice that is only used in places that are unlikely to have ice on the roads. D) use infrared ranging and embedded cameras to detect and report the license number of anyone speeding on the road; This is crap! No way am I paying my tax dollars for road studs that will make me pay even more money to big brother.
These is a good idea, that should increase safety for bike riders and cars.
However, I'm afraid of the pollution hazard of batteries: most of them contains heavy metals (Li, Hg, Pb...).
Same for solar cells: they are very polluting to produce, and contains polluting compounds.
Increasing safety is good; however this very idea could lead to increaded pollution.
Confused?
Over very large parts of Scotland (and some higher level parts of England) I was puzzled for a long time by the absence of road markers (we call them "Cats Eyes" over here, even the new, plastic, corner-cube reflectors that look nothing like a moggy's ocular). Then one day, as I was hitch-hiking down a snowy road in Scotland a snowplough overtook me (not good hitching weather), and ping the shattered remains of a road marker comes flying up from the plough's blade to land in the slush beside the road.
That was that little puzzle solved.
I noticed the same lack of road markers in Siberia last summer and last month, but they do use them a little a road junctions in Azerbaijan..
I'm surprised that no-one from the colder parts of America has pointed this out. Maybe it's more fun putting on a tin hat? regardless, by the time the price of these has dropped to the extent that the requisite billions can be made and installed, the price of oil will be steady above $70/barrel and people will be strongly debating if they can afford to run that car.
(If you doubt that oil prices will go that high, and stay that high
- Malvinas play [a bust] in 1998,
- into the potential Tanzania play [tests continue] this year and next,
- and I'm on call-out for the West Greenland play [when it gets started. We guesstimate it needs $40/bbl or higher for a year to justify the exploration costs]
)"One bearded, computer-nerd geologist, engaged to a Siberian beauty."
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
There are several roads near me that have cats-eyes that light up by themselves (ie not reflective, actually emitting light). I think its done with that glow-in-the-dark material which they shape into various things to go into cereal packets.
Anyway, long story short; you wouldn't believe the number of people I've got into a conversation with which runs along the lines of: "Hey, have you driven down that road at night with your lights off yet?!"
So much for added safety
There was a show on TechTV that Highlighted these circa 2002. There were on test in the UK. Back then they just changed color from green to red if you were speeding. You could tell a car was speeding just by the color of the road markers around it.
There are already some solar/illuminated markers embedded in a few test spots near my house on the southern baltimore beltway.
How is braking distance not about physics?
Take 30 seconds and go look up the braking distance numbers for a 2597 lb. 2004 Honda Civic and a 7200 lb GMC Yukon. At three times the weight, the Yukon takes almost twice the distance to stop from 60 mph as the Honda.
The reason it's safer for the smaller car to travel faster is that the stopping distance (if there's a pedestrian or stopped car around the corner) is about 1/2 as long.
Of course there's visibility as a factor, but visibility around a curve (as opposed to over the tops of other vehicles, or a hill - which is why I chose this example traffic) is the same in most cases for an SUV and a sports car, so it's still all about physics.
blueZ3
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
And even on a motorcycle, with very few exceptions. swerving or breaking are the ways to avoid a collision. However, definitiely on a bike, it is an either or option, do both and you'll be lucky to feel the pain of road rash.
I live in a small town in oklahoma and they have one police car that is painted blue with POLICE in black letters on the side, and no lights on top. At night you cannot tell its a police car unless the lights are flashing. For a few years the Highway Patrol cars, except the ones that patrol on the turnpikes did not have light bars on top. Recently I noticed they have went to using thin light bars that aren't visible from a distance.
This isn't true in every state I've lived in, but it's half true in Washington. The RCW says that it has to be a very slow vehicle. If someone is going 5 under, you can not exceed the speedlimit just to pass.
Everyone has thought this will stop speeding, but what about the useless drivers out there that cause accidents and sometimes death through their lack of skills behind the wheel. Stop that and these little "lights" will r0x0r.
If I were a little camera in a land dominated by 5 Kilo Sledge Hammers, and Steel Spikes; I think reporting of speeding would not be high on my list of reportable items.
But in all seriousness, couldn't these devices be used in conjuction with some kind of 'inner-city' auto pilot system combined with traffic control for getting people to were they need to be?
I've not actually been to web forums for Initial D.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.