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Smart Cars Tell You About Road Signs
Roland Piquepaille writes "There are many systems designed to help car drivers and to improve safety. In this article, New Scientist focuses on a system developed by the National ICT Australia lab (NICTA). This new driver assistance system uses three cameras, one to look at road signs ahead and two to check what the driver is looking at. The images are transmitted to a computer which decodes the road signs and the driver's reactions to them. If you're driving above speed limits, you will be alerted. Same thing if you're about to pass a stop sign without reducing speed. You still can choose to ignore the warnings, but if you're caught speeding, you'll have to tell the police officer why you refused to slow down. This system is currently being tested and appears to perform well especially in poor lighting conditions. Read more for other references about similar helping systems and to see how the road signs are analyzed."
What happens when we all have road range when we hear "Warning. Warning. You are traveling at 63mph in a 60mph zone" over and over again
A speakerectomy will work just as good then as it does now.
With the way Aussies put up road signs, you need this.
In Melbourne, they tend to have one sign indicating what the next exit is so if you miss it, your out of luck. Maybe that explains so many people making a mad dash towards the exit and the resulting wrecks.
Street name signs are even worse. On three lane roads, they use small signs that you can't read until its too late to indicate and then turn.
If your on a side street you better know the major roads because there won't be any street name signs when you cross larger roads. They also insist the the sign be on the side of the pole that the road is on so it sort of points down the road. Of course that means that 25% to 50% of all street signs are hidden from some place on the intersection where people might want to be able to read the signs. Sometimes it seems that they look at an intersection to find the one spot that won't be lit up by a street light and choose that to be the location for the street name signs.
Add in lack of lane ending signs added with the habiit of ending the slow lane on the highway. When there is a lane ending sign it will be a white with words. Not the yellow diamond picture warning signs that cost less and follow the rules about sign colors.
And maybe he/she will have to explain why they use speed "enforcement" as a means of generating revenue and a means of generating an excuse to search people's cars.
MA did a survey of traffic stops and found overwhelmingly black drivers were stopped, searched, and issued tickets more than white drivers. White women had the absolute lowest rates as well. There was one notable exception- the MA state police were almost dead even for all races, genders, and age groups. Town police departments were the worst "offenders".
Speed enforcement is just an excuse for getting into your wallet, and your car. It's extremely selectively enforced; the cops don't pull over everyone(next time you're on the road, look down at your speedo. Notice the car in front of you and behind you and all around you- they're all doing the same speed), they only pull over who they want to. It's extremely abused and results in gender, age, and racial profiling. It has absolutely nothing to do with safety(number one cause of highway deaths? Drunk driving).
Oh, and those laser speed guns? Guess who put them in the hands of your friendly local police officer? Geico. No conflict of interest there, no sir, not an insurance company giving police officers a device that, every time it is used, causes someone's insurance rate to go through the roof, despite no evidence speeding causes accidents. What a great money maker. No increased risk, but lots of increased revenue!
Please help metamoderate.
Read before modding, guys.
The point, I think, is that a system like this won't stop someone from speeding, but it will make it easier to bust them. If someone disables the system, it can be seen as admission of guilt since you don't need to disable it unless it's hassling you often, meaning you're speeding often. It's definitely not to stop people from speeding.
It would be interesting to see what would happen if everyone did stop speeding for a significantly long period of time, say three years, to compare accidents and fatalities. I don't think it would make a very big difference; It's true that vehicles are harder to control and more deadly at higher velocities but people who can't drive can't drive at any speed. You can usually tell you who they are because they don't signal and they can't park, either.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My conclusion is that parent poster is underestimating the effects of inflation.
Which is just the sort of thing the working poor can do also.
The working poor don't have any money to save. According to our own government, the majority of them need assistance just to cover basic expenses, like food, rent, and heat in the winter.
What you're talking about is the working lower class.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Depends on the state. When travelling in Oregon, there are no hard speed limits. The "LIMIT" part off the sign wasn't just a cost saving measure on the part of ODOT, it's just a posted speed. It mostly exists to advise drivers what the safe speed under normal conditions is (in western Oregon, it's typically tuned to poor visibility on wet pavement in the rain, the kind of weather that you're expected to have lights on 24/7 for). If you're exceeding the posted speed and you're passing most of traffic in the rain or any traffic on ice, you're going to have a hard time explaining why you don't deserve a speeding ticket to the judge. If you're doing 75 and everybody else is doing 70, and the posted speed is 60 and it's a totally dry day with good visibility, the state trooper or county sheriff in his air conditioned cruiser is going to sip his soda, sit on the shoulder, and wait to radar the idiot doing 90 or a large vehicle tailgating a smaller one (exception: You'll probably get a ticket for going faster than 10 under the limit if you can't move to the next lane (or failing to move to the next lane when you can) when passing a police car, wrecker, ambulance, guy changing his tire on the shoulder, or similar situation where it's likely to have someone on the freeway under the Oregon Safe Distance Law.
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