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Intelligent Transportation Systems
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.
Remember, your right to total privacy ends the moment you step out of the house. Your car already bears a linkable-to-its-owner token in teh form of a license plate. Many of us has willingly added another intentifying device in the form of an electronic toll payer such as EZ-Pass.
In the ideal traffic network, everybody would drive at approximately the same speed with a fair cushion of space between each car and faster traffic in the left lane. That careful balance is destroyed with the first SUV driver that's constantly swerving from lane to lane trying to get an extra five or six seconds cut off the trip (not to mention that these large vehicles generally clog the road even when driven normally.)
To improve traffic, we need to continue putting the emphasis on low-fuel consumption and on quality mass-transit. At least until we get robotic cars that operate according to some sort of centralized traffic planner.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
No more people on the freeway that don't understand that if you merge as a zipper, traffic continues to flow smoothly.
-- Sex Toys...
The problem isn't with when the police have a warrant, it is when they DON'T have one.
You know, like with the boxes attached to cell phone trunk points that allow the FBI to record any phone call. SUPPOSEDLY they need a warrant, but I've had several telco CO techs tell me there is no method for checking that. The FBI guy shows up, punches in numbers to his black box and they pick up the tape later. No one checks.
Even if they asked for a warrant, they aren't qualified to tell if one is fake or not. Hell, a Japanese language insurance form may do the trick.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Personally I'd be happy with traffic lights that were just a little bit smarter. Like:
1. Not turning yellow when there is ONE more car remaining to make a left turn.
2. Trying to prevent cars from waiting multiple cycles in general.
3. Doing very short green lights when there are only a few cars waiting.
4. Adjusting timing based on time-of-day and traffic patterns.
There have been attempts to "smarten up" lights here in Austin, but half the time they just end up misreading the situation and doing something wacky like giving a special left turn green for 30 seconds when there's no one waiting to turn left. Couple that with some of the nation's longest red lights, and you get one of the nation's highest rates of red lights being run.
Even a good web-based feedback mechanism where the public can point out poorly timed lights would be a huge benefit.
Imagine a world in which employers could only hire people within walking distance of the company. The quality of the workforce would go down and many people would be stuck in jobs that suck. Imagine a world in which the only goods you could buy were those found at tiny neghborhood shops within walking distance. The selection and pricing would suck.
The farther people can comfortably commute to work, the better the match between employer and employee. The farther people can comfortable travel to find goods and services, the better the selection and economies of scale. Current transportation systems (cars, buses, etc.) let people travel greater distances, but introduce stresses and uncertainties (traffic jams). If Intelligent Transportation System can increase the average speed of travel or reduce the uncertainties in travel times, people will enjoy less stress in life, find better jobs and find better goods and services.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Sometimes I feel like the Right to Privacy groups infringe on my right to enjoy and take advantage of some truly incredible technology. If we can put together an intellingent roadway system that saves most of the 42,000 deaths a year, I am all for it. I am not trying to flame the discussion and I truly do understand the issues at hand. However, some of this technology is pretty good and we should consider, thoughtfully, the advantages before stomping the life out of it.
http://www.busyweather.com/
As for the privacy nuts, recall that you have this little thing called a license plate that police can already use to pull down your life history from their cruiser, and this plate is being photographed already to stop red light runners etc.
Instead of a highway that communicates with the car, which would mean the car could only auto-drive on intelligent highways, I would rather put the money into making the cars smart enough to drive anywhere and let the roads be dumb.
This goes along with the idea of making wheelchairs that can walk up and down stairs, and giving them out to handicapped people, rather than building freaking ramps everywhere.
No more people on the freeway that don't understand that if you merge as a zipper, traffic continues to flow smoothly.
Huh?
If the lane bein merged into is already "full" (the spacing between the cars is the minimum safe spacing for the current speed) any additional cars entering the lane will result in a slowdown no matter how you merge them in.
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.
Translation for the car industry lobby-unaware:
Many roads are filled to capacity. Most people don't have the physical ability to react quickly enough if they were asked to drive closer to each other, to cram more cars per mile and more car passages per hour. As a result, we auto-makers have lobbied the powers that be to start a program to develop a system to take away control of their vehicles from their human owners/drivers and into the hands of the car computers, or the USDOT's central computer.
Of course, this will be ruinously expensive both to the government, to equip thousands of miles of thoroughfare with computer trackers (or whatever it'll be) and to the consumer, to equip their new "auto-autos" with the right tech wizardry, not to mention new raised roadtaxes etc... BUT BUT... we get to manufacture more cars, which means keeping jobs in the US and keeping the economy going (yeah, right...) and, more importantly, keeping the cash flow in our auto industry CEOs going.
Hint: cars that drive very very close to each other, and follow a road to a tee, and consume very little compared to today's automobiles, and don't need a parking spot, and bring you right into most major cities, already exist: they're called a train, and they've been around forever.
Europe, and most of the world proves that moving people by train is convenient, ubiquitous, and quite livable. The United States proves that lobbying from powerful industries can kill viable, more sustainable transportation solutions very effectively.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
From the way that article was written, you would believe that tin-foil is staple in that author's fashion wardrobe... Semi-Intelligent Transportation is a definate need for the future and the expanding populace desires to keep driving personal automobiles... Just how would this author suggest a realistic approach to the automation of high-density traffic routes to improve safety while reducing or maintaining timeliness? seriously now... "They'll know you're due for a transmission repair and that you've neglected to fix the ever-widening crack that resulted from a pebble dinging your windshield." Transmission repair? Cracked windshield? WHO CARES IF ANYONE KNOWS THIS CRAP.
My fantasy involves a direct connection from my computer to my skull.
Exactly. People are able to quickly process unforeseen occurances and compensate for them. Computers can't. They only run code, and if something's not in the programming, they either lock up or return an error code. They don't come up with ideas.
I'm not saying it would always move at max speed, but it would flow much smoother.
If you have ever seen what a freeway looks like from altitude it starts to make sense. I have seen the 405 in West L.A. from one of the near high rises and it moves a lot like an inch worm. Mostly because of the people making irratic lane changes and refusing to leave room for a car to merge into.
-- Sex Toys...
Smart cars and roads can easily track movements, but what I want is to do away with most private vehicles in favor of many, many automated buses and taxis. Have a request button at city hubs and intersections. Have some sort of anonymous payment system.
Every time I am on the highway, it seems like an awful waste for all the cars going one direction. If the passengers piled into fewer cars or buses, it would do a lot to help reduce emmissions and road costs. Having the cars automated lowers the operating cost.
In fact, we could already emulate this model to a certain extent if hitch-hiking was socially acceptable. Need to go to a city a few hundred miles away? Head toward the highway and hitch. Give the driver a few dollars to cover gas and the inconvenience.
If hitching was socially acceptable, it wouldn't take any time at all to find a ride, we would save the environment, and maybe make new friends.
Too scared to hitch or pick someone else up? Are you too scared to ride next to someone on a bus, train, or plane? The only difference is there is a person with the responsiblity of piloting the vehicle. Smart cars could remove this responsibility.
That's got to be one of the most paranoid articles I have read in a while. I work for my state Department of Transportation in the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) division. And yes, there is a national architecture. Virtually every state has a state or regional architecture based on the national architecture. And while there may be those who have thought of the "snooping" potential, that certainly isn't the goal. You claim there is no public pressure for it. Well, there is a constant stream of complaints about the traffic conditions and weaknesses in the transportation system. ITS is an attemt to improve that and respond to the growing demand to improve our nation's roadways. The use of ITS technologies has a significant impact on increasing the capacity of existing roads, and reducing accidents. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, and dozens of lives are saved annually through the use of technology on the roadways in my city alone. Not to mention the reduction in polution and saving travelers like yourself time by keeping the traffic flowing. This isn't some clandestine attempt by the government to find out whether you've had your windshield repaired lately. Extreme care is taken to ensure that these systems are not used to identify and monitor individuals. Let's face it: technology is becoming an increasingly central part of our lives. It isn't going away. Let's not fight it. But let's work together to ensure that it is used responsibly and effectively.
Infrastructure is a relationship between the vehicle and the medium, you really need both.
Whhat's needed is kids smart enough to stay out of the way of dingbat cars "avoiding" fixed objects.
AIK
Extreme care is taken to ensure that these systems are not used to identify and monitor individuals.
This is that part that the article's author was complaining about, and is something that is unavoidable. Consider for a moment how such a system will have to work, if it will track individual vehicles. Is it going to be tied to a license plate number? If so, it's trivial to trace it back to a specific person. Just a unique random id? Still not a problem, if you look at more than a few days worth of data on a particular vehicle, it would be very easy to come up with it's home, which gives you an address, and that links you back to a person. The only way that this can possibly not invade a person's privacy, is by not tracking individual vehicles, and I will bet that is not going to happen.
Now, this isn't to say that tracking individuals is all bad. As long as there is very strenious judicial oversight, and very, very, very (yes, I wrote that three times on purpose, let me add one more for emphasis), very harsh penalties for a breach of trust, it might actually do what it's being advertised for, without the privacy problem. Unfortunatly, considering that several large coporations seem to be hot on this idea, you can bet that the data is going to be available to too many people to actually prevent privacy intrusions.
Before I would ever allow this type of system to be in a car I own, I would need a lot of stuff to reassure me that it is more than just another way for the government and industry to invade my privacy.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
It amazes me that folks who work with people every day are so willing to trust their lives to them.
People are unpredictable, erratic, spaztic, emotional, and generally insane. And those are the good ones! I'd take computer controlled driving any day. Computers wont ride your ass at 95 mph flashing their lights at you (sorry, I was only doing 85 in the 55, jeez). They also wont change lanes without turn signals, forget to check their blind spots, and talk on their cell phones. It seems to me that the abolition of these last three annoyances would warrant a switch to automation.
"I am the Black Mage! I casts the spells that makes the peoples fall down!" ~8BT
People miss the point. All these laws chisel away at our freedoms. While a particular law may seem good on the surface, it's the not so obvious implications which worry me.
I see it as a game of chess- we may have a freedom such as freedom of speech guaranteed to us by the constitution, but over time governments begin to become corrupt and realize that having people speak out again them and/or overthrow them isn't in their best interest. So they write laws that don't outright ban your guaranteed rights, but they do impair them in an indirect fashion.
Cases in point are many of these laws passed after 9/11. Have you noticed that the goverment uses the threat of terrorism to scare people into accepting these laws? Laws such as the Patriot Act erode rights that we used to have. Now they just throw the possibility of "terrorism" into the charge to bypass a right you used to have, for example, "We had to break into your phone line and perform an (otherwise illegal) wiretap because we received reports of possible terrorist activities coming from this house. Sorry, we can't reveal the source of this tip because that would undermine national security"
These plans of tracking motorists just go along with the government mentality that it controls the people, instead of the people controlling it.
How do they enforce this among drivers of older cars? What if I drive a 67 Mustang, or a 89 Grand Am?
Phase 1: New cars have some "smart" features such as automatically regulating car-to-car spacing and speed and picking up GPS or other data. We are seeing the beginning of this today in luxury cars.
Phase 2: Some major arteries implement the equivalant of current "HOV" lanes you are forbidden to enter except with a new computer controlled auto-pilot car.
Phase 3: Some major arteries go exclusively computerized.
Phase 4: The entire highway system goes exclusively computerized, relegating older cars to side-streets.
Phase 5: Ban those old dangerous polluting vehicles from public roadways altogether. (They will tighten emmision standards on new cars along the way.)
Remember that they are planning ahead to at least 2022 in some of these discussions. A 67 Mustang would be 55 years old by then. There just isn't going to be much opposition to banning antique polluting death-traps form disrupting the flow on automated public roadways.
I'm not really worried about people tracking my every move, to be honest. I'm mostly worried about the government tracking how fast I'm going.
No, the *only* thing that will be available for the government to track will be your every move. Once you merge onto the automated roadway you will no longer have any control over the speed of the car. There will be no speeding to report because it will not be physically possible to speed (short of illegally "tampering" with your car's control and safety systems).
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