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Intelligent Transportation Systems

Posted by michael on from the red-ball dept.

An anonymous reader sends us a link to this story about the U.S. Department of Transportation working on Intelligent Transportation Systems, a long-range plan to build various sorts of intelligence into the national road system. Likely this will result in better traffic monitoring, lots of traffic planning data to analyze to help prevent traffic jams, and less privacy for everyone. The article has a paranoid bent; although they're not wrong that the system will likely facilitate privacy abuses, I wish the author had been a bit more hopeful about possible system designs that would still help alleviate traffic problems without enabling snooping, because obviously such a system could be built if the political will was present to do so.

5 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. White House by MikeMacK · · Score: 3, Funny
    a shadowy government agency that doesn't respond to public inquiries about its activities is coordinating a plan to use monitoring devices to catalogue the movements of every American driver

    The White House?

  2. Unintelligent Idiot Systems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    see also: Slashdot

  3. Doubt it by StevenHenderson · · Score: 2, Funny
    Call me cynical, but they can't even sync up the stoplights in my city so I don't get stopped at every damn light.

    Fix that nuisance, and maybe I will believe something greater can be pulled off...

  4. driving slow in the passing lane, turn signal on by mcmonkey · · Score: 2, Funny
    the U.S. Department of Transportation working on Intelligent Transportation Systems, a long-range plan to build various sorts of intelligence into the national road system

    Instead of building it into the road, how about putting some intelligence behind the wheel? What we really need is *HONK* HEY! Watch it buddy! I'm trying to /. here!

    What was I saying?

    80% of Drivers think they are Above Average

  5. Re:Gotta take the bad with the good sometimes... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny
    Imagine stopping your car at the stop line on the way to the major highway, and simply inputing into the car that you'd like to be dropped off at exit 32A, and then relaxing as the car waits for a suitable break in the traffic flow to bring the car into the stream, and then at a rapid speed taking you to the exit while you're free to read a newspaper.

    That truly would be quite an experience to be able to relax/read the newspaper and not have to worry about driving. You could further imagine that we could put all the cars on a single track to make it easier to control them and allow them to go even faster. Accident fatalities from this method of transportation would be almost zero, and pollution would be decreased. In big cities, we could even put these tracks underground so that they don't interfer with other traffic. Imagine how fast one could travel about a city! If only we could overcome the technological hurdles to make such a system. A "rail/road" system, if you will.