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Texas Using WiFi to Encourage Driving Breaks
squidfrog writes "An AP article reports: 'To encourage drivers to take more frequent breaks, the Texas Department of Transportation wants to set up free wireless Internet access at rest stops and travel information centers. TxDOT, which says Texas is the first state to provide such free access at rest areas, began experimenting with WiFi hotspots last fall... Andy Keith, manager of TxDOT's maintenance division, said the state hopes to reduce fatigue-related accidents by encouraging drivers to stop more often.' Is public WiFi becoming a trend?" We previously mentioned this scheme a couple of weeks back, although not the motivation behind it.
Driving a while
Fire up your laptop
Welcome to the Texas State
Login : root
Pass : ******
The internet makes you rested? I never woulda thunk!
I'll just stay on-line all the time - just think of the time I'll save not sleeping.
Now the long-haul truckers will stay up all night at the rest stop surfing the web instead of sleeping.
Personally, when I go on long trips, I don't like to stop at the rest stops any longer than necessary. They are, for the most part, not terribly pleasant places to spend a pleasant afternoon. If I want to take a longer break, I'll find a restaurant or a park in the nearest podunk town.
This has got to be one of the most ridiculous things I have heard in a while. It really sounds like a push from some wifi startup or something to suck government funds.
What percentage of sleepy people are there going to be on the road traveling in Texas that have a computer on them with wifi access and really want to stop to use it? Dunno, but probably not many.
What percentage of sleepy people are there going to be on the road traveling in Texas that want to stop at a rest stop every once and a while that has clean bathrooms, palatable water (ie, not that recycled toilet water), and maybe a free, or affordable cup of coffee that is palatable? I'd guess about 100. Anything below 100 is for those that don't drink coffee.
I vote put the wifi in!
The only thing that hurts my eyes more than driving is reading a computer screen...
A rest stop in the middle of nowhere is really the last place you should lose situational awareness.
I don't like rest stops. They are usually pretty dirty.
Especially in the dirty, undermaintained rest stops, I don't feel safe. (Usually there isn't a staff person to be seen anywhere.)
I would not bust out my $1300 laptop and sit around in a rest stop to browse the net unless I was packing.
On the other hand, turnpike plazas are usually very nice. I would consider some web browsing there.
It's cool they want to do this, but I recall driving from Dallas to Salt Lake City via state highways in Texas (Dallas to Amarillo) and there wasn't a bathroom to be seen.
There was, however, a picnic stop every 50 miles. Didn't have the guts to relieve myself out those places, although I was tempted.
Remain lost in hidden worlds where I reign. Head engine and caboose in my toy train...
If someone had evil intentions, someone could really exploit free anonymous wireless access on a lonely freeway road. For example, say a person has control over a number of zombie machines on the internet; that person simply drives to one of these free wifi zones and begins launching DoS attacks. When/if these attacks are traced, they will be traced to an anonymous wireless network along some highway.
Also consider someone who is exchanging illegal files. You can trace their IP address, but what good is it if the only info in the logs available is a MAC address from a Linksys wireless NIC for a laptop?
Worst yet, consider how easy this will make spamming. Just take your laptop to one of these "rest stops" and send out 1,000,000 emails to unsuspecting users. Then when law enforcement examines the email headers, they see that the spammer was some guy who stopped to use the restroom and was gone.
I have to agree that this sounds like a useful idea and probably one worthy of the relatively limited investment required, but the stated goal is absurd. Yeah, I'm sure it will encourage sleepy drivers to pull over. And then what? They go to the jolt cola website and are instantly revived? Or maybe they visit their favorite pRon site and become zombified. The real, unstated goal is to provide network access to people traveling across Texas. Texas is large. If you don't believe me, you can look at a map.
Probably I am not alone with that, but I feel kinda spaced out every time I stand up from my 6-8 hours of screen-staring sessions and sit in a car ....
....
.... maybe free massages ... swimming pools ?
I can feel it even more when I ride my (motor)bike after using the computer for a long time
I think people need something "to not stare at" after a long drive
I doubt people will be too keen on the idea of using a government network to check email, IM, and surf the web.
So use SSH, VPN, or some other encrypted tunnel back to your home or office machine. Read or download email that way, and surf the web through a proxy.
Also, not many people just carry their laptop with them in the car. Most drivers want to get to where they are going as fast as they can.
I do. Even on vacation. And it's a bitch to find a feed on a two week, 5,000 mile road trip. But not as much of a bitch as being out-of-touch for two weeks (with those I'm willing to be IN touch with on a vacation, of course. B-) )
Truckers need to be in touch. So much so that the truckers often pay a significant charge at service plazas (i.e. Flying J) for internet access - either a terminal or WiFi to the cab. (Also: Many truckers live in their trucks for weeks at a time, so their recreational internet use depends on such feeds.)
Salesmen and other "road warriors" need it, too. Only place I know they can reliably find it free is Kinkos. They provide lots of free office-on-the-road service (such as free local phone and handy calling card dispensers) to small businesses and road warriors, to entice such people in. They make it all back with significant profit on printing and other office services they provide for a fee. (Also: Their T1 brings in big print jobs from the local businesses. So letting the customers plug into the hub and use the net is essentially free.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Whoever came up with this hasn't really done much long-distance driving. When you pull over at a rest area, you generally fall into one of three categories:
1. You're tired, and want to nap. Computers -- and the web/Internet specifically -- are great ways to kill time, but mean you don't sleep because there's just one more thing you wanted to do, so having WiFi is useless, or counter-productive at worst.
2. You are stiff, losing concentration, and generally fatigued but don't feel like sleeping. What you need to do is stretch your legs, move around a bit, breathe some fresh air, allow your eyes to roam and relax rather than focusing on the road and speedo, maybe have something to eat/drink, maybe visit a toilet. Sitting down and surfing the web or reading your email won't help you here, except maybe on the can.
3. You're a tourist or simply enjoying the scenic aspects of the trip, and stop to look around or maybe even have a picnic. People who simply cannot get away from the Internet are precisely those who will benefit the most from it's absence, whether they realise it or not.
Sure, there are emergency stops, but unless there are lots of these rest areas, emergency stops are at least as likely to occur elsewhere, and in any case, emergency services are all contactable by phone, not Internet.
There are other possibilities, of course, but they're so marginal that it's not worth wasting money on them.