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NTSB Recommends Black Boxes For All Cars
linuxwrangler writes "Officials at the National Transportation Safety Board are recommending the government require data recorders in all passenger vehicles. David Sobel of EPIC says his group has privacy concerns - especially when drivers are unaware of the presence of the devices. Auto black-boxes have been covered here before."
They're not recommending that anyone try and install a black box in my '85 Gemini. Also, I'm Australian, but the point is that since new cars know a lot about what's going on, it should be logged. Are there any IT professionals out there who don't want to log stuff when things go wrong?
Fortunately Big Brother's motives always so obviously have our best interests at heart...
policy analysis and political satire
they assume I'll crash my car.
PS: I don't have a car..
I don't see why not? I mean if you never break the law then why be bothered with it? Ok they will always know where you are going, but they can also just follow you by car and get the same results. This way criminals and terrorists can be caught and I think this is more important than being against something that will probably never influence you live.
they should remove drivers out of the equation all together, especially if there senile 86 year olds!
I remember when we first started hearing about the idea of black boxes being put in passenger vehicles... The first thing all the supporters said is "Your car already has one! You know... your check engine light, etc." Other supporters realized how a black box would help them if a drunk driver hit them & it was his word against them. The black box would tell the truth.
Then the opponents of black boxes mentioned that sooner or later, insurance companies & Big Brother(tm) would be pushing for mandatory black boxes.... and not just for noble purposes! They reasoned that a new insurance policy could introduce some new limitation clauses - like if you were going more than 3 mph over the speed limit when an uninsured motorist collided with you, your uninsured motorist coverage would be voided.
Well, here we are, a few years later and NIST is recommending mandatory black boxes.
Skeptics: 1
Naive Technology Connoisseurs: 0
absolutely! imagine all the cost savings and benefits that could come from advanced notification of prostate cancer!
The privacy issues need to be worked out, but black boxes are the next real step towards fully autonomous vehicles. We've got great nav systems, and proximity sensitive cruise control (on the super luxury cars). Next we need a good account system for the cars (black box) for precisely tracking location. then we need high res tracking and freeway data. After that, we can sit back, play doom 3, and let the computer drive us to work.
How 'bout we set up the following system:
1) The black box will register things such as speed, acceleration, position of the steering wheel, gear shift, pedals, emergency brake, etc.
2) It will not monitor stuff such as GPS
3) It will loop every [30] seconds or so (just a suggestion, maybe a little more)
4) Data will only be available following a crash in which injuries or serious physical damage resulted or with the owner's consent.
5) Optionally, this information will not be available to insurance companies or for prosecution in either civil or criminal cases. I think that the data should be available, but I can see valid objections to this.
That way the safety people get what they want -- a system that will provide information about what happens in a crash -- while not acting very big brothery.
Any black box recording technology has the ability to be abused, but the potential for abuse flies in the facce of this:
Jeff - Killed in 1987 by a drunk driver.
Carole - Killed in 1993 by a wreckless driver.
My HS Prom King and Queen - Killed in 1984 by drunk driving.
Peter - Paralyzed from waist down in 1982 by an elderly person who could no longer drive.
Tonya - Scarred over 80% of her body by a car fire started when rear ended by a speeding car.
Lisa - Killed in 1996 by a driver who lost control while speeding around a curve.
There are many more I can recount, both dead and alive who have been victims of people who had no business driving a car. The little black boxes might help get them off the road and save lives. As far as using them for anything else. We (the people) will allow it to go just as far as we are ignorant. I am certain it can be abused in so many ways. I am not certain the deaths and maimings it would be able to prevent (or the simple correct assignment of cost of damages) would be that light a reason to install them.
I can not think of any reason to be afraid of a black box unless it pinpoints you being somewhere that you should not have been. (I may be being naive). Black boxes record only enough data to determine what caused an accident to happen. Driving habits could be incorporated, as could other data. Would it be worth it if it cut the number of people killed and maimed on our roads in half?
InnerWeb
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
Offtopic ~ If health insurance companies really consider your life to be worth a million dollars, why don't they provide life insurance?
...that black boxes on the plane are in fact not black but orange?
Such black box info is already discoverable in civil and criminal cases in several states. Why make it unavailable?
Seems like it would be easier to ascertain the truth in court with scientific readings, rather than with two parties' lawyers arguing with each other.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
... when they can no longer make out in their cars without the fear of someone listening into their doings.
While this may come off as a joke, I'm being %100 serious. I wouldn't be surprised at all if this has some implications on exact when these black boxes do function and when they don't. (IE: they only work when the car is in motion, etc)
Sunny Dubey
...and just agree to be encased in styrofoam at birth, tagged with RFIDs at birth, and have video cameras installed throughout the land.
That's where this is all heading at this rate. If it's not the "well reasoned" tech connosieurs pointing out how the new technologies will benefit us, it's the "terrified of terrorists" crowd crowing about how terrorists need to be stopped at all costs.
Baby steps to 1984. Or is it brave new world? Either way, liberty and privacy are slipping away like sand through our fingers. Yeah, black boxes could do alot of good things, but you have to believe in Santa Claus at this point to not think this isn't going to be used against us.
Think for yourself, destroy your television.
1.all cars with black boxes must state clearly somewhere that the device is fitted and what it records.
2.the owner of the vechicle must be able to get access to the data (i.e. dump and read it, not change it)
3.the only other people who should legally be able to read it are the police with a warrant. (or e.g. the NTSB or some other agency, again with a warrant)
4.It should be illegal for anyone else (e.g. mechanics) to dump the data without permission from the owner.
and 5.they should not record any information that would link the car to the location the car was at at the time the data was collected.
These devices are nothing more than recorders after all, nobody could remotely get the information off them. I also doubt they would be used for convicting people for speeding offences, just look at the issues people already have with unreliable speed cameras! I say we go ahead with this technology, not just in cars but other vehicles. Imagine what use this could be in aeroplanes - the data gathered before crashes could be lifesaving in the future!
Making the moon less necessary since 1998.
However if we look at the biggest crash in the world involving black boxes (9-11), the only evidence we have is that they all failed.
If we look at the biggest crash in the world where the vehicles already have the potential to be safely controlled and they where not used in a way that could save lives.
Still, these infalliable devices are here to save lives, it's ONLY an added bonus they can track and tax the population on their movement. Only co-incidental that the black box information could be used in a court to verify evidence, except of course when the government doesnt want it to.
Seems every government is obsessed with logging everything. Like most things of this ilk, there's maybe one good use for the data, and a thousand bad ones.
It won't make people safer. It won't stop people speeding. After a week drivers will forget the thing is even there, till someone somewhere uses the data in it to fuck them in the ass. (Metaphorically.)
We all commit traffic violations, however minor. Once the population are all criminals, they're *so* much easier to control.
The pros are simple. Lets make it go a bit further and install a box in very car that records exactly what the car is doing at all times. Furthermore if a car is found driving without a box the police will know instantly and can stop it.
What will happen? Well a sharp drop in car thefts, kinda hard to steal a car that is constantly reporting were it is. Tech like this is already in use and it is helping.
Currently hit and runs are on the increase. With such a system the offending car could be easily traced.
Fewer high speed chases. Police can just hang back and see where the car is going to end up.
People disabling the device would have the problem that the car "winks" out on a certain spot. Very easy for the police to then raid the shop were the device is disabled.
No more need for speed camera or police resources wasted on policing the roads.
So a clear win eh?
After all what is on the CON side?
A lot whining, oh such a black box means I can't lie about an accident anymore. I can't speed anymore. I can't use my car in a crime anymore.
Yeah well guess what, society depends on people not doing these things. So the only ones hurt are criminals and who cares about them.
Any person that raises privacy issues and names one of the above points is an enemy of privacy and is probably being paid to undermine the real privacy advocates.
The real issue with any system like this can be illustrated by the following question. IBM once was asked to setup a system that allowed a certain country to register the religion of each person and that of their parents. Pretty harmless right? Right, read up on the holocaust sometimes and more importantly read up on the time between when the registration took place and when the gas chambers opened.
The problem is not how such a black box will be used now. The problem is 10-15-20 yrs from now. When someone totally different then the current goverment may be handed a tool that tells them exactly where everyone is.
Sadly this issue will get overshouted by all those who don't want to be fingered by their own car in an "accident" who don't want to get a fine because their car reported it was speeding. The criminals protesting are in fact the advocates for introducing such a system.
Personally I am undecided. Cars seem to get more and more out of control with the drivers somehow loosing touch with basic human values. SUV's are expensive gas guzzlers wich are hard to park, don't fit on roads, are unneeded and have a far higher chance of killing in an accident (pedestrians don't stand a chance and small cars get crushed) and yet SUV's sell like hot cakes.
For some reason when people get in a car they seem to need the state to watch their every move or they won't behave by the values they themselves told the state to enforce.
Perhaps the greatest enemy to privacy is human nature. Give a human anonimity and he won't human anymore. Just play a round of CS or chat on freenet and you will see what I mean. Perhaps we need a big brother/community watching over us.
Hell, test youreselve, read /. at -1. No? Then you want a police webstate.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
For alot of the people complaing about invasion of privacy, what about the data is only kept for like 3 days, that way it can be used to determine who is at fault for an acident, without exposing their entire history of draving habits (eg past speeding, etc).
Black box needs to breath analyze and monitor alcohol and drug usages too !
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
With this raising such a big red flag when it comes to privacy concerns, and as these start to become more widespread, I'm sure we will eventually be able to find detailed instructions on the web on how to disable these devices, perhaps even in such a way so that they appear to be broken "by accident", so as not to arouse a lot of suspicion.
;)
Then it's just a matter of figuring out how to install Linux on them.
Lets put it differently, what would you call someone who is charged with rape and ordered to donate DNA for investigation and then says NO because it may finger me in previous rapes I commited?
I think current law is pretty clear. "THAT IS THE WHOLE POINT DIPSHIT".
So claiming this black box will stop you or at least catch you at breaking the law IS EXACTLY THE REASON THEY ARE TRYING TO INTRODUCE IT. They should send you a card thanking you for making their point.
The police using technology to prove criminals have broken the law. Yeah that is abusive, how dare they stop that. I got rights!!!!
Please can the real privacy advocates kill you off? You are hurting the cause. It is the system mis-used to capture non-criminals that should be alarming. Would be very easy to link car->license->nationality and then stop any car near a "sensitive" area belonging to say an Arab. Or have a poor persons car tailed by private security when it enters a rich area. Those are the real fears, not your petty speeding ticket.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
At least in traffic jams?
Sig. No Sig.
Kinda like ehm, the life jacket of the black box. The orange bit is the protection, the insides (the real black box) is, /me looks at box after aircraft crash photos, kinda charcoalie.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Black boxes instantly give the impression that a box can be removed and the data grabbed post crash.
Most of the modern tracking devices available in the UK upload their co-ordinates at the end of the day, some can be tracked realtime using non exactly health conscious mobile phone technology.
So, will the devices upload realtime or will they just be available for post crash analysis? How will the data be transferred? Will the information also be used to tax the vehicles based on distance? will it also give automaticly speeding tickets after it is linked with GPS and works out speed between two points? If the health organisations advise against mobile phones for children wont adding millions of high frequency devices be a potential cancer time bomb?
1. if every car had it then it would not need to be labelled just as cars currently don't carry a label "contains engine". It would be taken for granted. Cars without would be labelled. 2. Dump it? So after an accident I hit erase? Kinda defeats the point doesn't it? 3. YES YES YES. ONLY the police with the normal investigation tools should be able to access it, NOBODY ELSE. The police can already examine a car at a crash site or get the car confiscated if it is a suspected hit and run. A black box would be just like examing if a light was burning before it broke or checking brake marks. 4. Related to 3. But also needs to be very clear what is dumped, how fast a car was hit may be nice to know for repair but not were the car was. 5. Depends, if all the above are observed it doesn't matter, worse it will be recorded anyway. How? Because the car will know how far it drove in wich direction. So if you know the starting point you can work out the destination. 6. Timelimit, obviously if it is going to be usefull just recording the last 60 seconds or so is useless. Hitting and killing a pedestrian may not have enough of an impact on a car to trigger a recording. Adding the location would help in catching hit and runners but leads to privacy fears. Then again we all use mobile phones without fear so if only the police can request them with a court order then it is a limited risk. Just like DNA testing has made it harder for rapist, black box will make it harder for road killers.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
US need a MUCH MORE rigorous drivers training program - most other country with a large road network has one: Japan, Germany (I think most of europe), heck even China. Black boxes may convict the dangerous drivers, but it won't stop people from being killed.
At least support something that will solve the *root* of your problems: doing away with generations of bad drivers teaching their kids who turn out to be even worse drivers.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Since these proposed devices are likely to be digital in nature... won't the DMCA require that they include copy prevention warez? If so, at least one interpretation would be that once the data's in you're not allowed to get it out and store it anyware else.
Yeah, let's try that one out in court.
My office has been taken over by iPod people.
My main concern with black box data being used to determine fault, etc. is that currently they have little to no security other then a proprietary connector. There is nothing to prevent tampering with the "evidence". Even if the box data is encrypted, etc. you can still tamper with the vehicles sensors. I have no problem with technology being applied to enforce the law, but we can't take human judgement out of the equation. I can think of lots of situations that could unintentionally cause the computer to report bad data, not to mention malicous tampering. Also the kind of information reported (speed, direction of wheels, braking, engine status, etc.) can be interpreted to fit a preconceived notion. Sadly cars are turning more and more into a consumable good like electronics, to be used then thrown away, or turned over to a manufacturer's repair facility. Part of this is due to an inherent increase in the complexity of cars, but a lot of its because people can't be bothered to do things themselves (and thus demand servicable cars). Ever try to work on a car in the driveway of your home, in the suburbs? Won't be long before the neighbors are bitching and calling code enforcement etc. to breath down your neck (all but the poorest areas of where I live are becoming like this).
People worry about privacy issues with a blackbox that saves like 30 seconds of data, but they don't care about happened to privacy after 9/11.
Does this really get in the way of my privacy? Nope. I don't think the Black Box is going to read my mind and broadcast my thoughts for all the world to see. It's not going to track everywhere I go through GPS and inform some insidious 'Shadow Government' of my whereabouts.
Nope, all it should do is contain crash data. I don't see anything wrong with that.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
They came to that determination without testimony from the driver, George Weller, who refused on his lawyer's advice to talk with the investigators.
OK, so he says I push on the gas and ploughed over people BY MISTAKE. Since the BLACK BOX could not READ HIS MIND I fail to understand how such data would straighten this case out.
There are, however, many cases where a black box could help. In fact as we understand it, much of this data is recorded allready by airbag circuitry.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
Well certainly it is theft, and you'd obviously have a case against whoever stole your car assuming you could figure that out.
But insurance companies aren't there to mimic the law and to pay up simply because you were a victim of theft. I'd never agree to insure you if I knew you left your car unlocked with keys in the ignition all the time, and why should an insurance company? You get an agreement when you take out your policy about what's covered, and it's completely reasonable for an agreement like this to say that you should be taking reasonable steps to protect your property.
If you looked hard enough then you'd definitely be able to find a company that would insure you under the terms you're suggesting, but you'd be paying one hell of a lot in premiums. Not unreasonably, either. It would simply reflect the fact that you car is much more likely to be stolen if you constantly leave it unlocked with the keys in it.
If the insurance company's going to lose billions of dollars per year from paying out to people who can't be bothered to protect their own property, they clearly wouldn't be in business.
My 97 Cavalier has one. In fact this year a case of dangerous driving causing death was proven with the black box.
0 04 0414
Many Canadians became aware that late-model cars are equipped with "black box" technology during a recent high-profile trial in which a motorist was jailed in the death of a university student in Montreal.
Black box data showed that Eric Gauthier was driving at 157 kilometres an hour just seconds before he struck and killed Yacine Zinet. The trial marked the first time that car data recorders have been accepted as evidence in a Canadian courtroom.
Source www.canada.com
http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2004/04/14/blackbox_2
Now if Americans would only turn on your lights when driving. It let's you be seen better on the road.
I don't have any expectation of privacy in respect of how I drive my car on the roads. I'm in a public place, controlling a lethal piece of machinery, I should be held to account for my every action.
Besides the advantages I don't support this at all why? Supposing the insurance industry got involved with this and started pushing for black boxes in all cars. No hear me out: supposing the insurance industry started by slowly giving discounts to individuals who would install this AND perhaps present the "black box" once a year or so to prove that they have not been speeding/driving recklessly and charging the same exorbitant prices to everyone else who doesn't fall in line, how long do you think it will take for this to be law De facto rather than De jure?
Don't have one - high premiums don't show up with one for recording- higher premiums. Where does this end us all? Cowered dogs in our own cars. Then the government will announce that black boxes in cars are saving lives, preventing over speeding, reckless driving and keeping insurance premiums low. Then it's made law.
Good point, Timbo, but everyone concentrates on how we get tracked on the move. Isn't the real danger the databases that all this information is feeding into. Scares me. Check out http://www.computing.co.uk/specials/1153206
===
There was a recent accident in Noord Holland, car overtook, misjudged, 4 people killed. Now the black box advocates are suggesting that they got the solution and you are their prime example.
===
And the driver of that car survived and went unpunished because there was no black box to prove he was speeding?
If not, I do not see your point.
The black box stopping people from speeding will only work if they force retrofit ALL the other cars with these things.
I would not feel safe going down I-75 at 65 Miles Per Hour, why? Because everyone else is doing 80. Just stands to reason that if I am going 15 MPH slower than everyone else, I am the hazard, and I'm likely to get rear ended or cause an accident.
The police know this, and thus don't pull people over for going 80. They do however pull people over for going 45 or less.
Well, if you want to end all traffic deaths, simply hang a sign that says "Speed Limit - 0 kph".
Driving slower is ALWAYS safer. But at some point society has to say that in order to get things done, a certain amount of risk must be tolerated.
The instant you raise the limit from 0 to 1 kph, you'll cause deaths. Not many, but there will be some. Does that mean that we should all walk to any place that we go? You do realize that the increased walking will probably result in injured knees/etc from overstress in people prone to these problems, don't you?
Life is about taking chances. You take one every time you walk out the door. Sure, we don't' need to be irresponsible about endangering others, but speed limits are usually lobbied for by people who don't drive much, or who work for the insurance industry (which is based on collecting premiums and avoiding paying for accidents).
"Carole - Killed in 1993 by a wreckless driver."
If I was killed by a wreckless driver...I....I don't know what I'd do.
Imagine dying in a wreck that didn't take place!
"On the way back a drunken homeless man driving at 200 km/h hits her head on,"
I'm imaging this poor drunken sod, that has no money, no home, just enough for some booze, and he's magically doing 200km/h.
Is he falling off a building? Or did he just steal some bitchin' Nike's that he can go that fast?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
The Dept. of Homeland Security is recommending all citizens be retrofitted with black boxes too.
"...lower insurance rates for those of us that obey traffic laws, aren't the cause of accidents (even in no-fault states) I am all for it."
1) How does it know if you're obeying traffic laws? the only thing it could track is whether you're under the speed limit, and that isn't really the primary determination of whether you're a safe driver.
2) When has your insurance rates ever been lowered for any reason? I've been driving for almost 30 years, and they've never gone down. How will you know they've gone down? What will trigger a rise? You drove 61MPH in a 60MPH zone. Your insurance goes up at that point?
This does nothing except make the entire population more trackable and erodes privacy for no valid reason.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
These kind of laws are what we get out of giving 40% of our GDP (or whatever the exact figure is) to the government in the form of taxes.
In much of Europe, you have to go through the classes and pass a very difficult driving test. The thing is that this is abused, and the testers and instructors will mark you down for things you do not actually do but that are also entirely subjective such as jerky driving which is enough to have you failed. So unless you personally know someone in the police you need to give the requisite bribe. Poland is particularly notorious, but a German I know recounts the story of how the tester opened the glove box and waited. She did not put any money in, and was failed immediately. Her violation was that she did not look back before putting the car out of neutral. She did not even get a chance to put the car into gear, just failed on the spot. So if you thought the IL license for bribes scandal was something, you have not seen how Europe doe it better.
The government can't do all this stuff without money....
I see it as self-incrimination to hand over testimony of my actions that will be used against me in a court of law. In my heart it's a 5th Amendment issue. I can voluntarily be a witness to my actions that will be used against me or decide not too. The constitution provides I have that choice and that I cannot be compelled to incriminate myself.
My current car is old enough not to have anything like a black box. But, before I purchase my next new car I will investigate what black boxes or recording sensors the manufacture uses. I will also investigate how to turn them off or short them out. I'm a GM man but I will base my next purchase decision on my ability to disable these recording devices.
For all those who welcome this I salute you. I however, reserve the right not to incriminate myself. I cannot stop the insurance companies or whomever from taking the box, they'll come to the body shop and just take it, even without a warrant. They do it all the time. To protect my 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination, I only have one other choice. Disable it.
Give me a choice in the matter as I would in the witness stand and I'd leave it turned on.
Just my personal point of view.
Sure there are a number of accidents were the driver looses control (read went to fast around a corner) but they are alright since they only kill themselves. If you wrap your car around a tree I could care less.
If everyone drove the exactly the same speed on a road there would be far few accidents. That is, as far I been able to understand, the idea behind speed limits. It is to prevent the Porsche 911 driving 250km while a lada is doing 80km. If then that lada decides to overtake a lorry and the porsche is coming up behind you got an accident. Same with overtaking on smaller roads, if I see a pair of headlights in the far distance ahead I need to be be sure that that car is not doing a land speed record if I am to overtake.
Remember that java applet sometime ago that showed two streams of traffic crossing by carefully managing the speed? But I can do something better, just 1 stream of traffic, all driving the same speed resulting in zero accidents and zero traffic jams.
Speed limits are about optomizng the flow of traffic and to stop the speed differences between the slowest and fastest to become to big
Handling characters of modern cars have nothing to do with them. For no other reason that not everyone is driving a modern car, and many of those who do are not very good drivers.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Full Disclosure: I break the speed limit *EVERY* time I get in my car. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that 50% of I get behind the wheel, I will, at one point during the trip, travel at twice the posted speedlimit.
In almost +10 years of driving, I have never gotten a ticket or had an accident.
Now for the kicker: I live in Japan. In Japan, the police do not police the population for the sake of, how shall we say it?, "revenue enhancment"... but, if I cock-up big time, the penalties are *HUGE*. I like it this way.
In my previous 10 years of driving, in America, I experienced nothing but problems with the traffic cops of the USA. Any little bullshit thing will get you pulled over. I've had my car searched, been pulled over for having out of states plates, been profiled for being the "typical drug buying suburban white boy on the wrong side of town" and a whole host of other shit that just doesn't fly where the Police like to maintain the moral high-ground that citizens respect.
I suspect the entire situation has gotten orders of maginitude worse since 9/11 and I've got some really amazing news that most American's might not realize: America is *NOT* the the most advanced, civilized, democratic or free place on planet Earth! There are far better places to live. Get the fsck out of your country while you still can! The USA is essentially run and owned wholesale by Corporations at one level or another. If your guilt is necessary for company profits, so be it!
I'm not sure of the details (being a recent immigrant) but here in Eire the insurance companies are starting a scheme by which young / recently qualified drivers can opt in to a black box scheme (recording speed, at least) to get lower insurance premiums. (Irish insurance premiums are very high; possibly unaffordable for some young drivers.) Presumably the insurance is invalidated while speeding.
The problem is that speed limits are set locally. The benefits of a lower speed limit accrue disproportionately to the residents of a town, and the costs on outsiders. As it is, towns also get to choose how they enforce their laws (often that means targeting those with out of state plates).
Although speed limits might seem like a local issue, having the state or federal government set speed limits, fines, and enforcement procedures would get rid of the NIMBY attitude that towns have towards outsiders.
So if you had been flashed you could have used the black box to show what really was happening. Wich is why track measuring (where speed is measured over distance) is better anyway since it allows you to overtake fast then slow down again if needed.
The problem with your claim that your a good driver is that everyone claims to except me (I am not, I keep looking for the right peddle to press wich kinda freaks out the examiner) AND PEOPLE ARE NOT. Not 24/7 not in difficult circumstances and not in a car wich you delayed having put new tires on.
I am not saying I like it but neither do I like the number of people killed on the roads. Something needs to be done. Two options. People start driving safely of their own free will OR we use a big stick. Personally I don't think the first is going to happen. I don't want the big stick either but we better come up with better arguments then you wanting to speed.
Let me ask you this. I use public transport and in Amsterdam we didn't use to have conducters. Now I usually buy a ticket even without conducters to check but you know sometimes money is really thight and I need the money for food/computer games. Shall we get rid of the new conductors that are forcing me to obey the law?
The liberal, let people police themselves, has been tried. Didn't work. I don't like the alternative. We know got cameras and conductors in trams. Why should car drivers not be watched?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Clearly no one responding thus far has actually worked in the government. The police have so many things to worry about and are so under-funded that the "black box" would be of little value. Even if it had the ability to transit location via gps think of how many cars are on the road in a big city. The computer in the police car (as some here see this going) would be flooded with too much information. I think providing them like they do for airplanes would be the best fit. Despite this I am still not in favor because of the potential for abuse. There is so much data floating around in the government today that they have no idea what to do with. It's still a bad idea.
Yet another motivation to keep my 13 year old Civic on the road. You can keep you Black Box totting, Airbag laiden, Power windows-locks-seats-mirrors-break-clutch-hood release, remote entry monstrosity on the lot. The only Power I've got is breaks and that's the way we likes it. If they really want to track my position, they can damn well follow the oil trail I leave behind! And now, time to get baby girl a new clutch!
It is interesting to observe, in the aviation world, the gulf between the FAA (law enforcement), NTSB (safety investigation/improvement), and civil law.
In a single accident, the NTSB may determine fault based on their investigation, the FAA my lay charges, and a civil suite may be filed for a court to award damages. Nothing says that they all have to be consistant.
When it comes to safety improvement, determination of causes and changes to make driving safer, I think I'd trust the NTSB.
None of this will help so long as we continue to be a culture of carelessness.
You can legislate in all of this new legal overhead, yet nothing will change until people WANT to care. I don't see that happening anytime soon.
Using one of my favorite examples, what if an Excursion-driving soccer mom hits a small car due to inattention? She chose a weapons-grade vehicle, she chose to be inattentive, yet even if she kills and maims, our culture does not consider this to be more than an "accident". If she were waving a sword around carelessly and beheaded someone, that would be criminal. How is that different than waving a 4 ton vehicle around?
No, black boxes won't fix anything. people will just pay the fines and go on with life. Only a shift in culture will change things and the government is not very good at that.
Granted it is bad, just not completly rotten yet. You have inquiries about the investigation of WMD? We got the same lies and no investigation yet.
Lets see what do I get for my taxes. Roads, public transport, school, hospitals, police, the army, work safety inspectors, food safety inspectors, fire service, unemployment benefits, care for the weak, prisons for the strong :P, trash collection, etc etc etc.
I do not have the typical american view that goverment is only there to screw you. Perhaps that is the problem with privatasation. Here it is the state that collects tax and runs the trash collection with it. In america I believe you got to pay a company to do the same. Both cost money but over here we at least feel the goverment does something with the taxes.
I can think of many arguments for or against black boxes in our lives but taxes is not one of them. As for not having laws because having laws makes people brake is the road to anarachy. Anarachy is the rule of the strong and I am not strong.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
...This idea isn't gonna stop accidents, GTA and vehicle related crime, it just (in theory..) makes it easier to catch the responsible people. Its exactly the same as the speed camera issue, here in the UK we have thousdands of them, the idea is to catch you speeding, not prevent it. We have the technology to prevent a vehicle speeding/tailgating etc but we dont use it because the police earn way too much out of speeding fines. The black box is not a way to prevent crime, just a way to catch people doing it. People are still gonna die in accidents, punks are still gonna steal cars for robberies/ram raids etc.
why dont we all just drive safely & courteously & stop trying to cut eachothers throats at every turn?
to hell with the black boxes, i want mandatory boxes in all new cars that plays soothing jazz music & nothing else. the world would be a much nicer place if we were all listening to Sonny Rollins.
-- accident free since 1993
You have to have an expectation or privacy to have privacy issues. It is pretty-well settled rule that you have no privacy rights in public places. To travel on public roads, you have already given up a certain degree of privacy (e.g., requiring a breathalyzer test or loss of license for refusal, DUI checkpoints, camera monitoring for "traffic" purposes, etc).
Black boxes cut a very fine line on privacy. The issue not being whether you have any expectation of privacy about when, where and how you travel on public roads, but what kind of information is an invasion of privacy that a black box installed inside your car can provide?
Just some of the questions that will need to be answered regarding black boxes in our vehicles are:
(1) What information will the black box be able to provide Big Brother? (Obviously!)
(2) How will Big Brother be able to access that information? (i.e., will they need a warrant or will being in an accident be enough that a police office can pull out a PDA, plug into the black box in your car, and download the information he needs regarding your speed, G forces, when you applied the brakes, etc.).
(3) What civil liability or criminal charges can occur for an individual who disables a black box?
I started reading your post and started thinking, "Another annoying young kid talking about driving fast and how good a drivers he is," but I was pleasantly taken a back. Yeah I am a father of two, soon to be three. I drive conservatively. But I could not agree with you more. Most of the time obeying the traffic laws is what to do, but on very rare occasions situations like yours do turn-up. I had a long dry spell of no incidents with the big rigs, then just last week I had two in one day! One was an oncoming truck zooming past a red light while I was turning. I just braked and ceded the right of way and don't think I broke any traffic laws. The other one was an inattentive truck driver that did not notice a light that just turned red. I was stopped at it and I noticed the truck not stopping behind me. I blew that red light hoping to get by the cars on either side before they got into the intersection. and sped out of the way. To add another moving violation, my tires squealed. If there was some automated system for catching people that go through red lights, I would have been nabbed, but considering the fact that I drive a little hatchback and had an eighteen-wheeler behind me capable of running me over and pushing me into the cars that would be soon coming from the drivers side, I think I acted prudently. That is after the fact of course, back then it was all adrenaline and a flight response...
And yes I too have sped to avoid a truck merging into my lane on the expressway. I remember the sound of 7000 RPM and hope I never have to hear that again.
But of course nothing is going to stop insurance agencies from demanding their own boxes. Same as nothing prevents them from age discrimination. Just try being 18 and getting insurance :P
Anyway say such safeguard were in place and the data from your black-box could only be retrieved with a court order. What is going to stop a new goverment in say 10 yrs from changing the law? Kinda like the RIAA tries to change the laws on court orders in trying to find out the addresses of file sharers?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
A little black box? (cue to scene of lawyers laughing their heads off).
I can't believe I haven't read a single post yet in favor of this. If you get in a car crash, you can tell if you were speeding. If you were doing 100 in a 35 and hit a kid, you should be in jail, and the black box can make that happen.
http://www.rustyrazorblade.com
Open your eyes and close your mouth:
The boxes are already here...
The highway safety agency says between 65 percent and 90 percent of 2004 vehicles have some sort of recording ability. About 15 percent of vehicles have data recorders. Different models collect different amounts of data. Some record nothing more than how fast a vehicle sped up or slowed down, while others collect a range of information about the driver's actions and the condition of a vehicle's mechanical systems.
Data have been used by the highway safety agency in safety research and by law enforcement officials investigating car crashes.
The reality is that there are just too many bad drivers out there and that's what needs to change. There are some people who will NEVER be good drivers yet these people keep trying and trying to get a licence until they succeed. Doesn't it bother anyone that someone could try fifty times and fail and then get lucky one day? Scares the crap out of me.
And it's like that for a reason - because people think they have a god given right to drive. There are so many back doors in the system because if you remove them then people get angry. And why? Because a huge number of drivers know they shouldn't be behind the wheel. Sure, they're quick enough to attack other drivers for their sloppy driving but it's just another way of saying "My driving sucks, but it doesn't suck as much as that guy's"
My view is that good solid standards should be applied, the bar should be raised (at least slightly), - and here's the killer - licenses should expire after ten years and the driver should have to reapply for a license. How can it be right that someone can past a test when they're twenty and still be driving under the same license sixty years later. Laws will have changed, signs will have changed and the persons ability to drive will have changed. It's not just eyesight that can affect someone's ability to drive but their mental condition too. If drivers have to reapply for their license then it's more likely that the bad driving that results from any changes in the drivers temprament could be caught and disaster averted.
I can see good reasons why people would not agree to black boxes, but I see no reason to argue against regular testing. Funny thing is, I reckon most drivers given the choice of black boxes or regular checks on their driving will vote for boxes every time.
I think the only people that have issues with this are eitehr criminals or your run-of-the-mill speeder. I fall into the latter catagory.
However I have been in numerous accicents, all but one of which were not my fault. However two of those incedents the insuance companies settled with a mutual fault decision.
I think having the data logger would very clearly show what exactly happened, and in those two cases, save my insurance rates.
Now, big brother can watch you, or they can watch your back for you. Unless these black boxes have unique identifies and wireles signals, I'm venturing it'll be watching your back for you technology. As long as someone has to get into my car (get physical access from the box) and plug a reader in, the only time I'm going to allow that is under court order or if I am innocent. If police start black-box checking at road blocks for speeders liek the do drunks, then I would not be for this. However I do think it is an impractical scenario.
Now as moore's law applies eventually they wil be able to store 100,000 miles worth of data. Not only that but an on board accelerometer can establish your every lane change and turn. You can then coalesce the data and come up with every place you've driven to.
The easy way to fix this is just to limit it to the last 5 minutes or 5 miles, which is done easily enough.
Now on the subject of speeders. Every speeder has to admit that if speed was a factor it should be known. After all we know we do speed. However if speed is not a factor because of a larger violation (failure to stop, etc) then I doubt any court will see your minor speed infraction as relavant. But if it is a major speed infraction, then you can have unclean hands, because mostly likely you would not have caused the accident.
If you are so concerned about speed, then get off your butts and change the laws. And I think that is the reasonable and right way to address your concerns. If we all speed, then that is civil disobediance on a wide scale and the laws need reform.
Remember only criminals are afraid of the truth (in an accident).
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
"This is just one step away from the monitoring devices they are tagging onto convicts these days."
And you don't want convicts monitored, why?
In addition, driving a motor vehicle on a public road is, by definition, A PUBLIC ACTIVITY that is witnessed by hundreds of eyes. Therefore, one CANNOT HAVE ANY EXPECTATION OF PRIVACY WHILE DRIVING A MOTOR CAR ON A PUBLIC ROAD.
Hence, a black box in a car is perfectly acceptable.
And no one bitches about black boxes in aircraft, locomotives, trucks and buses whose drivers have to fill-in log-books. So why should a private motor-car be treated any differently???
Driving slower is ALWAYS safer.
You've obviously never had to deal with people driving *half* the maximum speed on a highway. They are definitely causing potential accidents as much as people speeding at 1.5 times the maximum speed.
Mandatory Black Boxes are clearly a violation of the constitutions prohibition on self-incrimination. Even if they were mandated... I would be surprised if they were admisable.
If my car had one the first thing i'd do is take it out and hook it up to 120V AC for 10 minutes.
-- $G
I'm not sure about all vehicles, but Chevy trucks have a continuous monitor that records the last 5 seconds of data for your vehicle. In the case of an accident the information can be downloaded to see how fast you were going how fast you were accelerating/decelerating, if you were wearing your seatbelt and tons of other information.
-Mike
Whine, bitch, whine, bitch. That pretty much sums up the posts on here. Surprised I am? No, not on here.
If you look at the black boxes already installed in cars (and had RTFA) you would see that the only thing that is being recorded are the conditions of the car prior to an incident. Speed, brakes, etc are what is being monitored.
Further, the boxes out there only record the information for ~5 seconds prior to an incident. They don't record everything in perpetuity.
The people who are whining now are probably the same ones who whined when cops began putting cameras in their patrol cars. "They can erase the tapes so there is no evidence!" "Why should they need to record me?" Blah, blah, blah.
Guess what, the black boxes, like the cameras, are a neutral third-party. Whatever happens, happens. You can claim you hit the brakes to avoid rearending the guy but the black box will have recorded whether you did or not.
You're on a public thoroughfare in plain view of everyone else. Your right to privacy in this situation is zilch. This has nothing to do with "If I'm doing nothing wrong why should I have to have this?"
Before anyone tries to claim that I'm one of those who doesn't see the slippery slope about privacy, you're wrong. I routinely go out of my way to keep my privacy whenever possible (false phone numbers to clerks, false zip codes, etc). This, however, is not about privacy. This is about helping authorities determine why something happened.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Every day I review incidents about people doing something stupid in their car and then trying to blame the car and/or company. A great number of drivers refuse to read about how to properly operate their car, ignore its warnings, them blame the car when it does not deliver on their unrealistic expectations. Another group of drivers are just plain ignorant about cars and don't understand why you can't stop on glare ice or why you need to perform routine maintenance. And what happens when there is an accident??? The person sues the car company and gets millions of undeserved dollars. The black box is the only way the car companies can protect themselves against these apathetic and ignorant drivers. If these people will not take responsibility for their actions, someone has to do it for them. It's just too bad all the other drivers have to be subjected to this type of "babysitting".
drunk driver, wreckless (sic!) driver, drunk driver, elderly driver, speeding, speeding
I think you are wrong. None of these accidents would have been prevented by a black box, and I don't think any of them would have been prevented either.
I am a driving instructor. According to what I have been told (caveat emptor), drunk driving is not affected very much by either the risk of being caught or jail time. You are drunk. If you had been thinking straight, you probably wouldn't have grabbed the keys in the first place.
I can see no good reason for the elderly person to be deterred by a black box. He or she probably tought she could drive safely. This is something that must be handled by medical personnel, even if this makes for a difficult hurdle in a patient-doctor relationship. If you are unfit to drive, someone should arrange to have your license revoked. No black box can tell if your vision is impaired, and a simple visual test should be able to determine this _if_ you have an accident. The black box wouldn't be much good.
Reckless driving or speeding are the only two cases where a black box may have some effect. Sadly, I think the only effect would be satisfaction for the people who are left behind when a loved one dies.
The only thing that demonstrably works is educating drivers. You need (yes, I am certain that you are not perfect, either) to learn that things hurt in order to become a good driver. You need to learn that you have limitations that no amount of airbags can help. Then you need to learn how to drive better.
If that doesn't help, by all means, cut the bastards' balls off with a dull knife. A black box won't help.
A friend of mine (also an instructor) let a sled with a bundle of clothes on run down a small hill in front of a car that regularily speeded down the road to the local kindergarten. He had observed this woman doing this a long time - and she had her kid in the back seat. She was delivering him, and was always running late.
You would assume that she would be able to confront herself after having smashed the sled to bits, and then found out that there was no kid on it - this time. Instead, she was furious and called the cops because she got a dent in her bumper. When the cops arrived, they couldn't quite see her side of the story.
I don't think this woman was very special in this respect. I have met very few drivers who have not had an inflated opinion of their own driving skills. But you aren't one of those, right? Right?
"If the APD wants my DNA to see if I raped a girl on my way to work, and I know that I didn't, then I can go ahead and give it to them."
You seem completely willing to trust
-- that your DNA will be **requested** only for purposes you approve (and not for things like investigating dissidents in the guise of investigating crime)
-- that your DNA will be **used** only for "honorable" purposes
-- that your DNA, AND ALL INFO RELATING TO OR PROCEEDING FROM IT will promptly be eradicated.
Despite the actual historical evidence from police behavior in even the most "liberal" of countries, you retain such trust.
How sweet.
It's really depressing to be reminded of the number of people who are seduced by the argument which says, "If you're doing nothing wrong, what have you to fear?"
Some famous person said, "All that is required for evil to triumph, is that good people do nothing."
"If the APD wants my DNA to see if I raped a girl on my way to work, and I know that I didn't, then I can go ahead and give it to them."
You seem completely willing to trust
-- that your DNA will be **requested** only for purposes you approve (and not for things like investigating dissidents in the guise of investigating crime)
-- that your DNA will be **used** only for "honorable" purposes
-- that your DNA, AND ALL INFO RELATING TO OR PROCEEDING FROM IT will promptly be eradicated.
Despite the actual historical evidence from police behavior in even the most "liberal" of countries, you retain such trust.
How charmingly naive.
It's really depressing to be reminded of the number of people who are seduced by the argument which says, "If you're doing nothing wrong, what have you to fear?"
Some famous person said, "All that is required for evil to triumph, is that good people do nothing."
Just not on the roads. The concept is called Personal Rapid Transport.
e.g.
http://www.atsltd.co.uk/
Why PRT?
1: It avoids roads. Roads are congested, you can have all the cars you like driven automatically but if they are all on the road at the same time you are going to be just as stuck. The average speed in London is 9mph for cars, 5mph for buses.
2: On demand, it's there when you want it, doesn't run on a schedule. Conventional public transport is only fully utilised during rush hour, otherwise it's largely empty which ultimately makes it only marginally more efficient than an unshared car.
3: Cheap. Because of the light weight requirements, a PRT system is cheaper than building new roads, far cheaper than rail or tram systems, literally a fraction of the cost.
4: Grid based rather than hub based. You can travel from any point to any point non stop and no changes, substantially more attractive than route based transport.
It's the only solution to today's transport problems, you can throw as much technology as you like at cars but fundamentally you are still going to be sitting waiting in traffic.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Has much thought been given to the quantity of data involved and how long it will it need to be archived ?
Accidents happen very quickly and so, to be useful in accident analysis, readings would have to be taken many times a second. Readings would probably include wheel position, accelerator position, braking state, grip, suspension movement, temperature, weather(!) as well as all the internal readings from inside the engine. This could amount to a considerable stream of data.
How would this data be stored ? Solid state or hard drive ? Would there need to be a mandatory minimum size for the log? One week's data or one year? Could it be an offence not to have enough capacity?
Would the on-board log wrap round or would it get reset? Could the driver reset the log? Would it be an offence to reset the log immediately after an accident?
If the log was used for maintaining the car would the garage doing the servicing have to download the log? Would they have to pass on details to the police? Would you be allowed to carry out servicing at home or only at "authorised" garages?
In imagining uses for this log it is interesting to note the differences between the US and the UK when it comes to the use of aircraft "black boxes". US airlines are required to record a minimal set of parameters and then these are used as part of any crash investigation. UK airlines, on the other hand, are required to record hundreds of parameters and each log has to undergo computer analysis after every flight. This analysis looks for values (or combinations) outside normal ranges and is used to trigger preventative maintenance and more detailed safety inspections.
Paul
www.opencouncil.org
Open
After installing these things to record everything that happens in your car, why not go the next step? Install recorders in your house. Full audio and video. That way, whenever anything happens (domestic dispute or similar), the police and prosecutors can tell exactly what happened. No need for fancy, expensive forensic work or long drawn out court cases. It's all recorded on tape.
After all...if it saves one life, right?
All GM and Ford cars already have this, and they make the data available in the event of accidents.
Does anyone know if any of the other large manufacturers (e.g., BMW, Toyota, Honda) do this? Is there a list somewhere?
Here is a link to see how the data is being used from GM and Ford vehicles.
Well described here:
http://www.safespeed.org.uk/rttm.html
The 35% reductions they are talking about are spurious.
HTH
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
In Nation(s) such as the USA where the Citizen has the rights and they are leased to the State by a Constitution, the authorities must have "Probable Cause" to bring a warrant.
Except that recently, all of your rights went out the window. It is only a matter of time before bad things creep into your criminal and civil case files.
If an attorney will subpeona it, and your car is in a tow lot or in a police impound lot, there is a judge somewhere that will allow it. At that point, just getting it into the courts will set a precedent. It will happen. Pretty soon they will be passing laws that say that you cannot tamper with the device and when you get emissions tested you have to download and check that it works.
At that point... the attorneys will all eat us alive.
And you don't want convicts monitored, why?
Monitor convicts all you want, just don't monitor me until you've convicted me of something.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
This is why most Americans feel that driving needs to be a right instead of a privilege.
My new
I seem to recall that Holland "recently" implemented speed measurements over distance. I've driven from A'dam to Rotterdam several times while my girlfriend was working in the latter (Hotel New York is really nice, btw); people followed the speed limits fairly meticulously, but the moment a tiny wet patch appeared on the road, drivers had an ugly tendency to slam on the brakes in waves. Italy has the same system on various highways (at least between tollgates from time to time.) I've seen it lead to people careening down the motorway, and then slamming on the brakes and waiting in big groups by the roadside before passing the toll gate.
My claim to be a good driver is not, I admit, relevant. I believe I am, you may not, it has no bearing on the discussion (no accidents in 15 years is kind of an indicator though, I think.). My point was that there's breaking the law, and there's being a dangerous fucking idiot. Look at Germany, and consider what's more dangerous: someone in a decent car going 180, or some asshole in a souped-up Fiat tailgating on an 80 stretch? I've seen too many police checks in completely harmless areas, looking for minor infractions to hit with crazy fines, while ignoring dangerous infractions, to believe that it's not just a money-maker for traffic police from time to time.
Nobody's asking anyone to police themselves. As I stated, speed cameras fine, police fine (no pun intended.) What people are objecting to is handing the gub'mint a fairly powerful amount of data that they may or may not use responsibly.
As for the trams, yes, I live in Zurich and we have excellent public transportation (except for the goddamm 13 tram which never comes.) I buy tickets, not because they have spot checks (they do) but because I think it's fair. I think people should. But I don't think your comparison is fair; they're thinking of installing cameras on commute trains to catch idiot football fans lighting seats on fire and mugging old ladies, not fare jumpers.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
You seem completely willing to trust
No. I'm completely willing to accept that ALL of those things won't happen.
I'm also willing to face the consequences of my actions, and I am not afraid to stand up and say "that's wrong!" This is what's commonly referred to as "being a responsible citizen."
It's really depressing to be reminded of the number of people who are seduced by the argument which says, "If you're doing nothing wrong, what have you to fear?"
What about "we have nothing to fear but fear itself?" Or to go back further in time, "what is whispered in shadows will be shouted from the rooftops."
Some famous person said, "All that is required for evil to triumph, is that good people do nothing."
Yes, exactly. And by giving into fear and denying this tool rather than dealing with its consequences, you're doing nothing.
AKA "Mandatory Sentencing" and "Zero Tolerance".
I'm calling it zero brain policies, as their only purpose is to remove the requirement of the enforcers to use their brains. You make a maximum for an offense, for cases where the judge feels the need to "throw the book" at an especially dangerous or habitual criminal. The judge retains the option of "going easy" on a person who doesn't need the harsher sentence.
Sure-this system could theoreticly be used to issue tickets. However, unless they removed all speed traps or rewrote the laws, they might violate the double jeopardy rules (only tried once per crime).
Not to mention that without some very sophisticated systems (costing thousands?), you'd have a hard time seperating out: emergency maneuvers, private roads/racetracks, out of country driving, previous owners, and other drivers. Will you have to insert a drivers license to drive? Or will it take a picture, say, every five seconds, that useful for detecting sleeping at the wheel?
I don't read AC A human right
Je hebt een groter vertrouwen in gezond verstand dan ik - je hebt van de week hoop ik in de krant dat artikel gelezen van die dame die, omdat haar huurverhoging 8 cent over de huursubsidie-limiet ging, haar huis uit moest? Leek erg weinig gezond verstand aan te pas te komen..
It's to the point where drivers should have to start going through a similar process that pilots go through. Heavy penalties for disobeying the rules, re-certification every few years and zero tolorance for aggressive, intimidating and deliberately dangerous driving. Get caught trying to shove people out of your way by tailgating, honking and flashing brights, weaving in and out of traffic at high speed and other similar things? No license, 2 years.
There should also be more unmarked cars out to report aggressive drivers, especially at rush hour and black box data (should have enough storage to hold a year's data) should be downloaded each year you renew your plates, analysed for aggressive driving data (heavy swerving, excessive amounts of speeding) and if there is too much of it, you are brought in to explain the incidents, your license suspended until you can do so.
Why? Because so many people drive like selfish jerks. It's gotten way worse over the last 20 years as well, a LOT worse. Especially SUV drivers.
A. Problem 1: general public's lack of driving skill and situational awareness. Solution: a much more difficult and thorough driver licensing program nation-wide.
B. Problem 2: Speeding and all of the comments brought up by everyone going the same speed - all the time, versus some going slow/fast. Additionally, we've had the same speed limits on highways for decades now. Cars can travel faster now, both comfortably and economically. Solution: nation-wide mass-transport system that goes at a high rate of speed - similar to the one in Minority Report. To the speed junkies (myself included), race tracks are still out there (which are a blast to go to and have fun driver ed events (not a normal driver ed 'class' but a race-around-the-track one). Other potential issue is transportation of large goods, but such a system is years/decades away. Ramble off.
C. Random Observation: Used & older cars will not have this. Result: used car market gets another boost in my mind.
I don't think this will sound surprising, since I assume most people noticed that, whenever there's a problem, the inevitable solution adopted by the US government is to resort to the "wonders of technology".
Why does this happen ? because it's cheaper than imposing some cure that requires training and human labour.
In US, on the eastern coast (especially), the traffic can be described as heavy and the drivers are un-educated. This is not surprising, as it is not required to take driving lessons prior to taking the driver's licence exam.
However, after taking the knowledge test (I'd say written, but it's administered on computer nowadays), the potential driver is given a permit which can be used to drive around, as long as an experienced driver (3 years+) is in the passenger seat.
This is one of the main differences between US and most other countries in the world, where driving school is mandatory and it usually consists of 15-40 hours of driving in various conditions of traffic.
In particular, the US system insures that the "skill" is passed in the family and we all know how that works: some have it, some don't. Unfortunately, unpleasantly many don't have it and they also don't have the intelligence to compensate for the lack of skill. But I digress...
Lack of driving lessons also leads to a (more or less slow) drift in behaviour. For instance, in New Jersey there are a number of common problems which hardly appear outside US: signalling for a turn has become virtually optional, using just the short range lights is more and more un-common, the preferred solution being long range lights and fog lights (even when there's no fog), the requirement of driving in the first lane is ignored, because it's poorly specified in the law.
What are the reasons ? The driver manuals here mostly focus on fines, penalties and definitions of drunk driving (DUI, in general). There are preciously few pages on driving in general and almost none at all on traffic rules (such as yielding right of way).
Imposing mandatory driving lessons with an authorised instructor would be a good solution, albeit of somewhat longer term. Administering a more complex driving test (prior to issuing the licence) would be a good idea too. Currently, the test mostly consists of driving around the block, stopping here and there, turning a couple of times, then parking. There are no tests on car handling (and this shows on the roads, where frequently there are idiots who cannot keep their lane, especially in a curve), on proper road conduct, etc.
Then, there's the problem of a more complex driving test. A more rigurous driving licence test would risk to be accused of being discriminatory . Why ? For whatever reasons, racial (sometimes social) profiles do apply to drivers. Chinese are cautious to the point where they are so indecisive that they become dangerous. Black people (mostly the males) clearly don't know the rules and they are especially prone to not respecting stop signs or checking their mirrors before changing lanes. 4x4's (SUV's here) are commonly driven by imbeciles who believe the road is theirs and who tailgate you even whene there's no place you can move out of their way. The same about pick-up trucks. These last two mostly refer to men. Women are usually quite a bit more curteous and more predictible drivers (except in parking lots, when they'd stop the whole traffic, just to get a bloody spot closer to the entrance).
Most people born and raised here see the car as an extension of their home, so they interpret it as a "safe environment" where one can relax. Everywhere else in the world, as far as I know, the car is seen as a relatively dangerous way of transportation, which requires a lot of attention.
All these categories should fail the driving test for one reason or another. However, all these matters could be solved if more rigurous training was imposed.
Such a solution costs quite a bit, definitely a lot more than imposing some stupid bl
We don't need crash data recorded in order to help build better roads and vehicles. We don't need to obey posted speed limits, because those 'bastards' that follow those posted limits cause the accidents of those that don't obey those limits.
Reality check...
Reckless driving is reckless driving.
If you are on a cell phone, checking a map or doing something other then driving, you are reckless driving.
If you are disobeying the speed limit, you increase your chance of getting into an accident, even if in your mind it is caused by someone obeying the speed limit, because you have to swerve or otherwise attempt to avoid hitting them.
Speeding is reckless driving. If these black boxes cause people to consider their driving. Well, that's a very good thing.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Ok, we've all seen them. We've all followed them. It is not a big secret that there are at least some percentage of old drivers on the roads who simply do not belong behind the wheel of an automobile. I watched an elder woman go so slow on a two-lane road that she was passed by a fully loaded LOG TRUCK. And then of course she was passed by the hundred or so cars that were following the log truck... Yes, perhaps she was driving a bit too slow. But the question comes down to "Why was she driving so slow that every car on the road passed her?" It was because she did not feel safe driving any faster and thus she realized her reaction time did not permit her to react properly at any higher rate of speed. Driving slower is not the solution. If you are incapable of having a reaction time which approximates your fellow drivers on the roadway, you ought not be driving. The same is true if you cannot see the roadway as well as your fellow drivers.
Law makers are afraid to touch this very volatile issue. The NTSB and bodies such as this KNOW that lawmakers will not touch this issue because it is political suicide. So what do they try to do instead? They try to curb everyone's right to privacy, in hopes of achieving at least part of their objective. Black boxes are NOT the answer. I for one would simply take them out of my vehicles. I'll put carburetors back on if it comes down to that! Unfortunately most people will never see this happen and it will go mostly unnoticed until they get into an accident and the black box is used against them in a court of law... By then it is too late.
Russian Russian Russian RussianDollSig DollSig DollSig DollSig
The main problem with this, as with most electronic data gathering, is that it doesn't tell the whole story. It can tell people what your car was doing at the time, but it can't tell them about the dog in the road, or the reckless behavior of the idiot who forced you out of your lane before speeding away. There's always more to it than just the vehicles that were physically involved in an accident.
Any government-mandated black box should be readable using open standards and protocols, and not require paying an "accident reconstructionist" to read out the data as is currently the case.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
What about my old 1960's collectors car i take out on the weekends?
Or if i build my own from scratch.. They going to tell me what i can do with MY car, when it doesnt actually effect public safety?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Does it log when your having it away with your other half in the car?
:o
Logs:
Vertical Rear Suspension Movement..
Vertical Rear Suspension Movement..
Vertical Rear Suspension Movement..
Vertical Rear Suspension Movement..
OMG He's having a shag on public property
I'm surprised the NTSB didn't ALSO recommend mandatory driver skills testing for the elderly - considering their recommendations for a black box are based on an accident where an 84-year old couldn't figure out which pedal to brake with and killed 10 people.
Granted the NTSB only has federal authority, but the feds have been known to have some influence over states in these matters. I know when I'm old enough to be affected I wouldn't mind the occasional test of my skills (say every 3-5 years) as it would help maintain my confidence behind the wheel. Unlike so many elderly I see on the road today, going 10 mph under the limit and shaking because that's still too fast for their comfort.
Here in the UK drivers caught by speed cameras successfully claimed that it would be a breach of human rights (self incrimination) if they were to admit who was driving the car at the time of the offence.
Newer cameras now take pictures from the front and I believe the law was changed to get driver's details
Paul
www.opencouncil.org
Open
We have a few "problem" intersections where I live. The put up electronic monitors to capture photos of people running the lights.
While initially they did it as a test they now use it for enforcement. They issued over 180 citations in the first weekend alone. Needless to say as people gets these citations the number of people violating the lights is going down resulting in a much safer environment.
So while machines internal to the vehicle may not be the best solution to a problem external machines do have valid uses.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
She had her baby 7 minutes later. I have been in traffic in Fairfax County that would make an LA person weep. I would have taken the chance.
Sera
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
... I bought my dream sports car now. In not too many years, driving over the speed limit slightly or cornering too hard is going to result in canceled (or inflated) insurance, voided warrantees, and big fines. It won't be too long before these will be checked along with your safety and emissions inspections, and if anything is out of line, registration will be denied.
So for now, I can drive 130 mph in the desert back roads. But I don't expect to be able to do this for long.
"All that is required for evil to triumph, is that good people do nothing."
Which in your rape case above would be to quickly turn over the evidence to prove your innocence so the authorities can get out there and find the real rapist. Or you could bitch and moan and stall do nothing and let evil triumph as the real rapist strikes again.
I don't think you actually understand the difference between good and evil. Good is not self-serving.
memory is cheap. CF cards cost around $120/gig, and the 2-gig size is cheaper by the gig. How much bling would it add to the cost of your $70,000 escalade to throw a couple of gigs of compactflash in it, so that the NTSB could require the car to store information every tenth of a second about the last 10,000 seconds of operation? that's less than three hours' worth of continuous driving. Considering I get about 10 hours' drive out of one tank of gas, how many 1-gig CF cards would you need for 100,000 seconds? does anyone know how much space is taken up by one record in the black box db?
Think of a system where the state requires all gas stations to install the equivalent of a CF reader at the pumps. Before you can fill the tank, you have to let it scan your car's memory- no memory, no gas. Sorry! If you have been speeding, the gas station writes you a ticket, and you have to pay it with your credit card before you can fill up...
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
I guess he wasn't "wreckless" after that.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
This is just like DRM stuff running on your machine being made mandatory- here's software (heck, here's *hardware*), and the law prevents you from touching it (DRM has the DMCA). It's running on your property, on your dollar, and you even OWN it- but, it's illegal to modify your own property, because then the state's perfect witness would be in doubt.
Never mind that everyone who wants will have have a hack for this inside of a decade, and every drunken wacko will have it on *their* car. Ignore that- just like DRM, it only punishes the unlucky innocent and the stupid guilty.
I keep making the quip that government installed sentries on your property, of *any form, real or still sci-fi* (black box to record your driving, obfuscated code to block your digital freedom, camera in your bedroom, monitoring chip in your skull) should be illegal based on, in addition to the fourth amendment (illegal search), the third. I'm not entirely serious here, but a judge wouldn't be totally wacked in assuming that one of the reasons you can't quarter troops is because they aren't allowed to post distributed sentries in everyone's homes. Just because it's now feasible to have tiny electronic "soldiers" everywhere you can print them out or whatever doesn't make it ok.
But in seriousness, we can hope that this gets struck down by the fourth amendment.
The rightwing congresscritters keep mentioning lines like "the supposed right to privacy", and "the right to privacy that does not, in my opinion, exist...". The Constitution is a bit unclear on that. So where's our privacy amendment? Why do we always have to rely on clever judges to prevent 1984? Why is it them and the people against the two *elected* branches of government on this issue, constantly?
You could disconnect the blackbox, but then your car's computer would probably refuse to function.
Find a way around it and the DMCA cops will be knocking at your door the next time you take the car in for an emmissions test.
you can now insert the obligatory "overlords" comment here.
1984 is comming!!!!!!
Land of the free, right?
and I don't think you understand what *I* meant by good/evil.
The evil to which I referred, is the evil of creeping restriction of privacy and other human rights (e.g. reasonable evidence supporting a *warrant* for a search).
"prove your innocence so the authorities can get out there and find the real rapist"
you haven't spent much time observing police mentality.
It's like taking a dog for a walk: he wants to sniff EVERYTHING, in the hope of stumbling on something interesting, EVEN IF THE OBJECT WASN'T HIS ORIGINAL GOAL.
I once made the mistake of reporting a stalker, in real-time, whom I saw following a woman for a while (not just my opinion, he followed her all the way home, then she saw him reverse direction after he'd watched her go inside).
I waited for the cops to arrive, so I could point him out.
After they had ALREADY DECIDED that he was a legitimate threat which I did well to report, AND arrested him, they wanted to ***SEE*** MY ID.
Cops are like a neurotic Weimaraner I once owned, who constantly made chomping motions with his mouth, on the chance that his mouth might land on something interesting.
Yes, I give most cops credit for genuine concern for public safety, AT THE MOMENT WHEN they're in the thick of an investigation of violence. But they are NEVER -- not for a moment -- devoid of the mentality of, "is there a quick opportunity for me to rack up my score?"
The QUICKEST way for the cop to find the rapist, is to focus on the likeliest suspects, not a dragnet.
"I'm completely willing to accept that ALL of those things won't happen"
why?
"I am not afraid to stand up and say "that's wrong!" This is what's commonly referred to as "being a responsible citizen.""
And how is that noble goal advanced by yielding to the officer's demand, immediately and without protest? (which your OP seemed to favor)
"by giving into fear and denying this tool rather than dealing with its consequences, you're doing nothing."
I'm not talking about denying DNA as a tool, GENERICALLY.
I'm talking about not immediately dropping one's shorts upon any request from anyone with a badge or uniform.
If you do this when they don't have a STRONG preponderance of reasonable cause, you seem to THINK that it's a no-cost or low-cost option.
But you're wrong, because there's an invisible cost to ALL of us, every time that ONE of us does that.
Furthermore -- in view of this history of investigations, mistaken identifications, prosecutions, and EXECUTIONS which have gone horribly wrong --
if you were in the least respect the subject of a criminal investigation,
and you did ANYTHING except to immediately clam-up and demand an attorney,
then you'd be a fool.
Just wait until they reduce the length of the yellow light in order to "enhance revenue". All the safety gains will be out the window. Just google for red light cameras in California if you want to see what I'm talking about. It always happens that way.
Furthermore -- in view of this history of investigations, mistaken identifications, prosecutions, and EXECUTIONS which have gone horribly wrong --
if you were in the least respect the subject of a criminal investigation,
and you did ANYTHING except to immediately clam-up and demand an attorney,
then you'd be a fool.
So... by immediatly acting like a suspect, I keep myself from being a suspect? Bah.
DNA testing costs money now, and it will for the forseeable future. If the police want my DNA, and they're willing to pay for it, I'll make time out of my day to get it to them.
I'd also (gasp!) tell them who I am, where I'm headed, and the last time I had a drink. None of this makes me a "fool." It just means that I'll cooperate with the polie, for whatever reason I may have.
I'm not talking about denying DNA as a tool, GENERICALLY.
Yes, you are. If DNA becomes harder to get than fingerprints, the tool is essentially denied the police and reserved for the police.
And how is that noble goal advanced by yielding to the officer's demand, immediately and without protest? (which your OP seemed to favor)
Because there's nothing wrong with it, and we aren't diluting the red-button of protest by using it for nuciances.
The single worst thing you can do if you want a free society is treat the police as the enemy.
Yes, ALL cars should have them - including the police and government officials. Except the data from THEIRS would, by definition, be public domain. When the police DON'T show up on time, you'll be able to find out where they WERE.
Bet that's not going to happen.
If you really think these things will create 'automatic justice', just wait till someone in a Mercedes slams into you. Take a wild guess who's going to be wrong. Money = Power = Data. Your black box data will simply be 'adjusted' to fit the situation. Drunk congressman's kid clobbers you and kills half your family - he's wealthy and Republican. Amazing! Your black box shows you were driving erratically. Sorry, nope.
Just great when we're moving towards a police state on all other fronts.
These boxes will really be used a lot to help individuals, you may be sure. This is why organizations are pushing so hard for them.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
Here are two points to be made pro and con.
ONE - If the black box only records the 15 second before an accident then it can be helpful in that situation.
TWO - If the black box acts like a big brother that watches every action via remote (speed, GPS location etc.)
Then that is a violation of privacy.
Technology can assist humans to do the right thing, not enforce. To expect fear to enforce the right actions based on others opinions of ethics is childish at best. It is a novel and romantic idea to think that technology will fix all the problems and no human intervention will be needed. Technology is not infallible. Drunks will still drive and idiots will still cause accidents no matter how hard we try to prevent them. So get a grip on reality.
The point is if you as a "human" is to drive under a speed limit set by "humans" which is monitored by "humans" then it only makes sense to replace all three with technology. That way all blame for falling outside the speed parameters fall on the technology as well, no speeding, not tickets.
The day when big brother takes over our vehicles and starts ticketing all of us every day for exceeding speed margins via 1mph. Don't start your bitching when it comes back to bite your pocketbook. I feel that the day when this happens we also should get speed governors installed to keep from getting tickets too. That way human intervention (speeding and speeding tickets) is eliminated and a fraudulent cover for revenue is revealed.
let the flaming begine.
Do everything in moderation, including moderation otherwise you will never know your limits.
So claiming this black box will stop you or at least catch you at breaking the law IS EXACTLY THE REASON THEY ARE TRYING TO INTRODUCE IT.
First, you break the law. THEN you are accused of breaking said law, tried in a court of law, and either convicted, or deemed innocent, either by a judge or jury of your peers. You are presumed innocent until you are proven guilty. That's how it works.
What we are seeing is an increasing number of systems being put into place which presume guilt, and simply supply the appropriate data to law enforcement agencies when it happens. When this happens, the whole notion of due process is relegated to a mere formality.
"So... by immediatly acting like a suspect, I keep myself from being a suspect?"
...where I'm headed, and the last time I had a drink"
I think you know I didn't say that.
*Your* single act (of declining DNA without a warrant) doesn't make you not a suspect; but your consistent policy of always being similarly vigilant of your rights
(1) strengthens all our rights,
(2) prevents you from incriminating yourself on that future day when you REALLY don't like their request, and more strongly wish to decline (for WHATEVER reason), and
(3) eventually wears down their interest in maintaining such habits as ethnic profiling, thus "allowing & encouraging" them to conduct their investigations more fruitfully.
(Think twice before you answer that last point: I think I can anticipate your intuitive response, and I think you won't like where it eventually leads you.)
"I'd also tell them
There's nothing more I can say to dissuade you that this is innocuous, except to suggest that you casually ask some experienced criminal attorneys, especially of the Alan Dershowitz variety.
"If DNA becomes harder to get than fingerprints, the tool is essentially denied the police"
BEEP, error!
LEGALISTICALLY, fingerprints are already equally hard: they get them only if they arrest you, an act which requires justification as least as strong as we're already discussing for voluntary DNA.
"there's nothing wrong with it"
Well, I've already expressed what I think IS wrong with it. Repetition would be pointless.
"aren't we diluting the red-button of protest by using it for nuisances"
Well, that's one theory, but not one which I understand.
Counter-example: Washington was influenced a lot more effectively by the late-stage Vietnam mass protests, than it was by the early, small, infrequent actions.
You clearly don't understand the LEO mentality: the more which the public meekly accepts, the more they're encouraged to believe that you DON'T have a right to decline.
"treat the police as the enemy"
There's probably NEVER been a case of an LE institution becoming MORE considerate of individual rights, as a consequence of LESS insistence on observance of those rights.
And I'm not advocating throwing rocks at them.
I'm merely advocating being just as vigilant in maintaining your legitimate rights, as LEOs commonly are in exercising their legitimate powers. You would do no less if dealing with your child's school principal, or a doctor who was pressuring you to agree to surgery.
In fact, there lies what might be a good paradigm for discussing this:
how say you, if the policeman's target isn't you but your pre-teen child?
Maybe even better, your best friend's child, whom you're hosting while the parents are climbing K2?
Not 'on private property' - On *YOUR* private property.
If you own a 200 acre plot of land, and build a big loop of road on it, and want to drive drunk on it (with or without a license, even), I dont beleive that would violate any laws. As long as it was entirely self-contained, and your car never left your property, or put anyone else in danger.
I am certain it can be abused in so many ways.
It's pretty much a certainty that it will be abused. Ever wonder why your personal information is so freely available, and hence, why identity theft is such a problem?
I remember hearing airline pilots had the same fears at one time...but look how black boxes have HELPED! I think as long as proper procedures are put in place that allow for certain uses of the data (only admissible in court for certain reasons) then its a great idea!
I am very afriad of the future of the world. I mean look at laws the the patroit act in america and now this? The US is starting to look like the book 1984. Looking at many of these laws that ment to protect americans can also be used to harm the ideals of this country. It would be nice to think these new technology will help determain why a situation has happened but no one really looks into protecting the individuals rights. They should only use these devices to see if there was anything wrong with the car's hardware/software and then to rule out a malfunction. This technology should not be used to determain the users speed or how the car was operated. If you already rule out a malfunction you can assume it was the user without any other data. If the user was flying at 100mph other then giving him a ticket thier is not much you can do to correct the problem short of brainwashing and ticketing the person will do it regardless. This is my 2cents on this topic. Any slashdotters also agree with this way of handling this technology?
(3) eventually wears down their interest in maintaining such habits as ethnic profiling, thus "allowing & encouraging" them to conduct their investigations more fruitfully.
(Think twice before you answer that last point: I think I can anticipate your intuitive response, and I think you won't like where it eventually leads you.)
1: They'll profile with or without the profilee's consent.
2: A racial profile as a starting point in an investigation into a crime--i.e., who you ask first in the absence of any other clues as to who committed the crime in question--is entirely reasonable. At its most basic, we "profile" based on where you happened to be at the time of the crime.
3: You're arguing illogicaly. DNA testing, if anything, would make profiling LESS harmful. Rather than "it's a white woman stabbed, and most stabbings have been from black men, so let's look for a black man", it'd be "the DNA on the knife handle is of a black man. Let's find that black man, and ask him about this knife."
So, which one did YOU guess?
There's probably NEVER been a case of an LE institution becoming MORE considerate of individual rights, as a consequence of LESS insistence on observance of those rights.
There you go again, thinking that L.E. is on the opposite side of "maintaining rights."
They have a job to do, and they are people with real rights just like the rest of us. THEIR job, which we pay them to do, is made far easier if we do not see them as the enemy against our rights but as allies in our safety. They become more responsive when we say that they're going too far, and since they have to spend less tine following false leads, we become as a whole safer.
Fear--that is, not embracing them as fellow citizens but treating them as a thing apart from you--will get us in tyranny faster than capitualtoin ever could. And embracing them will do more to protect your rights and my rights than a lifetime of assertions.
In fact, there lies what might be a good paradigm for discussing this:
how say you, if the policeman's target isn't you but your pre-teen child?
If my child has done something so bad that the police are after him, then i would probably want to find him and ensure that, if he did what they say he did, he was punished for it--by the court if it's that bad, and if not by the court then by me.
I've read a lot about the iPod mini hacks. Everyone may not know this, but you can save a lot of money by doing the same thing with new cars! Just buy a new car and pull out the multi-terrabyte hard drive stored under the driver seat.
Replace it with your old 40 Gig drive. The system still works, but now it only records the last few days of driving, instead of the complete record.
It's almost like getting a free car!
Unfortunately, most people who have cars do not in fact own them, even when they have been fully paid up. If they don't have a loan (or have paid the loan off), they still don't have the original MSO (manufacturer's statement of origin), which is the invoice that proves the automobile is your property (this is not the same as the invoice you get from the dealer). The dealer sends the MSO to the state DMV. The only way I know of to get the MSO is to pay cash (or the equivalent) at the factory (ie, don't go through a dealer) for the vehicle.
At one time, licenses didn't exist - they were snuck in, under the Constitutional radar. But the fact is you do not need a license or the State to tell you how or when you can travel. Read up about the cases, check out the actual transcripts. You will find that this issue really riles judges, because they know they are trumped by savvy individuals and Constitutional lawyers, and there isn't a damn thing they can do about it (short of an amendment).
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Remember the National Motor Speed Law? 55mph everywhere, including on I-10 between Lordsburg, NM and Bowie, AZ? That law is dead now. What do you think killed it?
My personal opinion on this, for what it's worth, is that what killed it was excessive enforcement as a result of lower taxes. When you don't have enough tax revenue, you make it up somewhere else, and the police departments made it up by issuing more tickets. And because the speed limits were unreasonably low, this was an excellent revenue source - people were obeying the de-facto law instead of the de-jure law.
This is less true now - speed limits are much more sensible. In general, you can get where you want to go without worrying about getting arrested. This is because once the de-jure law started being enforced, the populace started writing letters and voting, and the law got changed.
So I would argue that black boxes are actually a *good* idea if you like your privacy, because if every car had a black box, and you got a ticket for going over the speed limit, the speed limits would be set reasonably. So you wouldn't have to look over your shoulder as you drove to work, and you wouldn't worry about getting pulled over by a cop and having your privacy massively violated by the state for being the unlucky bastard that they decided had to pay the tax.
Consistent enforcement is a _good_ thing, not a _bad_ thing.
"The news that they have nothing to fear is guaranteed to strike terror into the hearts of innocents everywhere."
At least, it should.
Do not touch -Willie
This might just get lost in the noise. But after having circumvented my DRLs and airbag this will be the next system that mystriously will not work on my car. Why? Because I dont need it. I wear my seat belt and turn on my lights when I want to. I dont need 'the man' sitting next to me taking notes so that when something happens he can recount it. I just dont need it. Just like any other system it can fail and it will.
1) The current EDR's (Event Data Recorders) that are installed on GM and Ford cars DO NOT store data about your driving history and habits. The store data in only two circumstances. One, if the car is hit hard enough to deploy the airbags, and two, if the car is hit har enough to "wake up" the crash detection algorithm, but not hard enough to deploy airbags.
2) The data recorded by EDR's can generally be recovered in other was that are NOT sbuject to privacy concerns. e.g. vehicle speeds and directions can be estimated from momentum analysis of the rest positions of the cars and the position of the point of impact (POI). Skid marks on roadbeds, stretch ans slide marks on seatbelts, crush depth analysis and observations by first responders can all be used to estimate vehicle speeds and pre-crash maneuvering by the drivers.
3) What the EDR can do is corroborate other evidence to ensure that accident reconstructionists, attorneys, and insurance companies are doing their jobs properly. Also, the black box data is used by the automakers to fine-tune airbag system performance.
4) The current thinking is that EDR data can be recovered at the scene of a wreck by the police. If the car is moved away from the scene, then a search warrant is necesary to get the EDR data. As private investigators, we have to get the vehicle owners' permission before downloading the data.
5) One side effect of EDR use is that it helps to cut down the incidence of claims fraud.
You can't have a battle of wits against an unarmed opponent.
Unless GPS coordinates are part of the record, the only real speeding data that would be reliable would be the speed on the road before you turned into the gas station. There are lots of intersections where you could turn onto a road from a different speed in each direction. It would take some serious backtracking to see if I sped anywhere on that tank of gas. What if I was driving from Boise to Portland, stopping in each little town and driving around a bit to catch the scenery, and moving on? That would be a huge nightmare to try to determine where I was at each data point.
6 ,L ,-3.5789,9.1353,-25,D,4500
Now if GPS was logged, they would have lat/long for each data point, which would very easily tie you down to a specific section of road. GPS coordinates only add a very small size increase to each record, at the decimal places reqired to get road-level accuracy. I get about 300 miles to the tank on my pickup, and if each record stored every second, that is a ton of records.
I drive mostly back and forth to work in my pickup, average speed 30 MPH. One mile every two minutes at 60 reads per minute is 120 reads per mile. Multiply that by 300 miles is 36,000 reads per tank.
A sample log line containing this info (CSV):
datetime,lat,long,speed,heading,brake pressure(percent), steer deviation (degrees from center),sig light status, side G force, front/back G force, tilt (degrees from level),airbag status,engine rpm
creates a line looking something like this:
200408031357,43N33.8055,116W31.8935,32.5,234,09
With that log, we are looking at a little under 10K of log every mile at my example speed. I am guessing that if every OSD sensor was included, it would probably be 3 times that. So we are looking at about 25K of data per mile. If I did my quick math correctly, we are only looking at about 7.5 MB per tank of gas. Want to read every 10th of a second? Multiply that by 10, so you now get 75MB per tank of gas.
With consumer USB pen drives being sub $20 for 128MB, that adds nothing to the price of a car, especially if you consider GPS and most necessary sensors being installed already because of OSD and OnStar. Even going to 256MB would be an insignificant cost.
Now go another step farther. Each person has their own key they carry car to car. The car is programmed to accept individual keys, rather than an individual key per car. The key has the storage, so every time you fill up with gas, you not only get a ticket if you sped in your current vehicle, but any vehicle you drove since the last time you filled up and read your key. Make the keys warn at 500 miles then fail to start a vehicle after 1000 miles to prevent someone from getting away with it for too long and wiping previous data out.
You could end up with a system like on the Fifth Element. You get in your car, insert your drivers license, and it tells you how many tickets you have pending. That is when it gets scarry!
I don't mind black boxes if they do as many suggest, record the last 15-60 seconds of data at the time of an accident. But the more "tin-foil-hat-like" situations are not as technically difficult or expensive as many seem to be saying.
Jeremy
Although I'm not from Missouri, you'll still have to show me. Please quote the article/amendment number that gives us the right to travel. And thanks in advance to those who intend to quote Amendments 9 & 10. Even if you interpret 9 and/or 10 to include the right to travel, that doesn't mean you have the right to use the state's roads in an automobile to do it.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not a big fan of more surveillance. But this argument is extremely weak.
Sean
When I was driving down the highway with a non-functioning alternator and draining my battery, these instruments would still have been working fine and the computer recording the driving characteristics of my car. When the battery died, however, the speedometer dropped to zero, the odometer stopped turning, my fuel pump turned off, my oil pump turned off, and my power steering turned off (the last one is what really bothered me).
Now, I could very easily have been in an accident as I was going 80 mph without power steering or power brakes. Of course this computer system would have no idea what the condition and characteristics of an accident under such circumstances was.
What does all that matter? Simple. I don't think there should be and monitoring system in a car unless the instruments it monitors are more foolproof. Are these monitors immune from tampering by people who know what they're doing? No. I wouldn't want information from such monitors to be used in a criminal or civil case as evidence against me or anyone else. The government won't stay out of our bedrooms, out of our libraries, and now they want to spy on how we drive our cars.
Well I wasn't meaning to suggest that it would be the black box doing the judging. It's there as a tool to provide more data, to be judged by an actual person.
Computers do a much better job than any human could in collecting accurate data, though I don't (yet) trust a computer (more specifically, the AI logic currently available) to make an important judgement on the data it collects. That can be left to someone qualified who can determine the merit and meaning of the data provided.
One might argue that we're not yet able to trust people to implement and interpret data from a black box effectively, so we shouldn't try. That may be a fair comment, but I don't think it's the same as arguing that we shouldn't let a black box judge people. The black box is there to provide accurate data about what's happening.
We already use tools all the time to help people make judgements. This happens in road safety as much as anything else. Is this any different?
The privacy concerns would be adequately addressed if the black box could be turned on and off by a switch on the dash.
Rigid enforcement of speed limits will cause more accidents. For example, it's usually safer to match the speed of the cars around you, even if they are speeding. Going slower and causing them to try to get around you is a hazard. Also, how good are you at maintaining an exact speed without watching the speedo all the time? Wouldn't you rather a driver has his eyes on the road, than on the speedo constantly?
6. You can turn off the black box with a switch on the dash.
The real problem with pervasive surveillance is that everybody breaks laws all the time. There are so many laws on the books, who can know them all? And laws can have excessively literal interpretations or generously liberal interpretations. What does this mean? It means that if someone in the government doesn't like you for some reason, they can just go through the surveillance data on you and are guaranteed to find something to charge you with.
What if your gf/wife checked to see where you had been?
"NOTHING, we still have human judgement, in the case of the black box (it would have shown a short accelartion very easy to differ from real speeding) and in the case of a human cop. Both would have seen you speeded for traffic reasons, not because you wanted to speed."
Oh, goody, human judgement from a cop. Problem is, it may not be GOOD judgement. I was in a recent accident. The official police report was filled with errors (things like where the damage on the car was, the diagram at the scene was wrong, my statements were recorded incorrectly,etc.) I received a ticket for the accident (I was hit) despite obvious indications that the information the other driver gave was incorrect (his stated speed was simply too low due to the damage to my vehicle and the accident scene) and probably led to the accident. But the officer wanted/needed to write a ticket and I was the easiest target.
A black box on the car(s) would not have helped. The officer wouldn't have considered them. The court won't care (I have been to traffic court twice in my life-facts seem to be unimportant). Frankly, in my experience, most police officers are idiots, nice, but ultimately idiots. Having information coming from a computer (gee, it must be correct/the "truth") will only make things worse. Once an officer makes a decision, it is very hard to change that decision, even if you have the "facts".
Forget highway safety, I want a blue box in my car so I can jump around on telco switches!
Southeastern Virginia REPRESENT!
"They'll profile with or without the profilee's consent."
Which is no reason to reinforce the behavior.
"You're arguing illogicaly. DNA testing, if anything, would make profiling LESS harmful."
Now *you're* being illogical...
The act of profiling consists of selecting WHOSE dna is to be solicited. If the suspect is selected based on profiling, then the harm has ALREADY occurred at the moment the selection is made, before the DNA is even tested.
There's no way that the outcome of that DNA test can reach back in time and magically undo the harm that was comprised of the MERE ACT of profiling.
It's just like the discredited doctrine of "separate but equal".
Regardless of how the investigation turns out, NOTHING can undo the injury of having being detained for DWB.
"So, which one did YOU guess?" Actually, none of those.
"There you go again"
Shades of RR. And it still doesn't speak to my point, i.e.:
"There's probably NEVER been a case of an LE institution becoming MORE considerate of individual rights, as a consequence of LESS insistence on observance of those rights."
"thinking that L.E. is on the opposite side of "maintaining rights.""
Please speak to what I actually say, not to what you think that I think.
And it's not that they're on the "opposite" side: they merely place greater importance in catching perps.
For crying out loud, do you think things like Miranda simply came from out of the sky for no historical reason?
Do you even grant that Miranda is a good thing?
"they are people with real rights just like the rest of us".
I already granted that (see "legitimate powers").
"Fear--that is, not embracing them as fellow citizens but treating them as a thing apart from you"
You speak as though I came into the world with some kind of mysterious a_priori predisposition to mistrust LEOs.
Yes, they have rights too -- but THEY'RE the ones who have badges and guns, and powers which are sometimes abused.
My reservations -- and those of an un-ignorably sizable population of other human-rights activists -- are based on demonstrable historical patterns of LEO behavior.
It's all very well to speak of LEO's as perpetually maintaining the (hoped-for) dewy idealism of the new academy graduate, the Serpicos of the world.
But -- precisely because they ARE humans, with an incredibly tough job to do -- whatever "better nature" they once had frequently gets worn away by the daily grind of their experiences.
To put it charitably, think of them as "walking wounded" afflicted by PTSD.
And it's no secret that the profession tends to attract a certain populace with self-righteous militaristic personae.
I happen to know the kind of LEO you're describing. The father of my childhood best friend was that kind, an L.A. "beat cop" who rose to sergeant and never lost his original idealistic mentality.
But that type isn't the norm, at least not anymore.
"If my child has done something so bad that the police are after him, then i would probably want to find him and ensure that, if he did what they say he did, he was punished for it"
Wow. That's scary. And you don't even see what you just did: "the police are after him, so he MUST have done something bad" -- and "if he did" is an after-thought.
You don't even admit the possibility that his life might be ruined by a wrongful conviction, because *you* failed to protect his rights.
You seem adamantine in not conceding even the slightest validity to anything I've said.
I'm going to try mightily to resist the temptation to reply to your next post, and instead grant you the last word. Because I now think that we're speaking "from different planets".
I was going to respond to a few of a points, but since you're giving me the last word, I'm just going to point something out.
Please speak to what I actually say, not to what you think that I think...
And you don't even see what you just did
Your words, truthfully quoted.
My words, truthfully quoted:
If my child has done something so bad that the police are after him, then i would probably want to find him and ensure that, if he did what they say he did, he was punished for it
Read that again. You obviously didn't the first time.
* IF the police are after for him:
** THEN i want to find him and ensure that:
*** IF he did something wrong:
**** he is punnished
You better bet than when I FIND my child, I'm going to start off in the mindset that he did something wrong--because, no matter what he may have done, getting the cops to search for him is enough to upset his parents.
I would normally say something like "pot... kettle... black" here, but I'm going to say something else.
You weren't being hypocrtical; you were being close-minded. OF COURSE you think of the police as the enemy against your rights; you do not feel that they live up to the ordeal, and you've likely suffered some slight from them--even if it was just "DWB." And in many ways I am naive--I'm lucky enough to have never lived in anyplace nearly as bad as LA has been at times in the past two decades.
So, I'm not upset at the condescending slurs you've sent my way. I am, however, concerned that you are allowing yourself to be ruled by fear. If you must be ruled by emotion, fear is quite possibly the second-worse emotion to let rule yourself, second only to hate.
A far better emotion is hope, and the best soution of all is not be ruled by emotion, but rather to conciously work to see things from everyone's point of view and find a way to make everyone a little better if you can.
If these are impossible things in your world, then I am sorry for you and glad that I will never have occasion to visit your world. Mine is a much better place.
If that's too much typing for you,(without the ";" put there by Slashdot) yields: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2042884.stm
Recently (2-3 months) I saw in the news a man from Quebec was succesfully procecutes for speeding prior to a colision at a red light (which killed someone). The procecutors where alowed to use the information contained in the cars computer, I think it recorded the speed the car was going when the air bags deployed or something of that nature.
> People have the right to travel between the two cities and it can be argued that this right is being infringed upon by requiring a license(Priveledge).
That point can't be argued rationally. Say I live in Smalltown, and I want to travel to Big City. I walk myself to the bus station, buy a ticket, get on the bus, try to sleep, and soon, the bus pulls into Grand Off-to-the-side Station in Big City. I get off the bus, catch the subway to midtown, and visit Aunt Millie.
Now, would you care to tell me how not having a driver's license would prevent any of this? Or are you really trying to tell me that driving myself is the only way to travel, with no exceptions?
More to the point, though, I know someone who rode a bicycle from New York City to Seattle, and he never set foot nor tire on an interstate freeway. You need to do more research.
Virg
Commercial driving on government roads is a licensed activity, historically based on the control of commercial use of taxpayer funded facilities.
When I received my first drivers license, New York was still honest enough to print on it, "Chauffeur's License" as the original laws were written.
That is why you don't need a license to "drive" your bicycle, horse, tractor, baby carriage, roller-blades, or other such private things on the public roads. They're ours, we paid for them, and as long as we obey the rules of the road we have done nothing wrong.
Driving a car on private property requires no licensing, has no speed limits, no age limits, no requirement that any of the "legalities" of "rules of the road" be obeyed at all. Driving certainly is a "right", just like farting.
The fact that the laws on commercial use have been expanded over time to cover private use of private cars doesn't make it any less a right. It merely means that the State treats it as a privilege and enforces it as such.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
I do not mind having violent offenders monitored, but having to
.
.
.
wear a electronic leash for something as mundane as smoking pot ???
That is where it is heading
Ppl always think that each layer of eroding freedom is ok because
it does not effect them
The ppl of germany said much the same thing as Hitler took all
their guns away before the holocaust started
Those who give up freedom for the sake of security, deserve neither.
Benjamin Franklin
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"