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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
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Pass : ******
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.
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 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