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Smart Cars Tell You About Road Signs

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the everybody-loves-roland dept.

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."

3 of 348 comments (clear)

  1. The USA is fast becoming a Fascist police state! by Anton+Anatopopov · · Score: 1, Offtopic
    Why should I have to explain anything to a police officer? If I choose to exceed the posted speed limit, sure I deserve to have the book thrown at me. But the idea that I can be forced to "explain myself" to the state seems absurd, and ludicrous.

    I thought our country was founded on the ideals of freedom, and liberty, not Communistic ideas like having to 'explain oneself' to law enforcement.

    I expect this system would have been declared unconstitutional before 9/11 but these days, almost anything that restricts our freedoms is seen as a 'good thing' and helping us to win the 'war on (some kinds of) terrorism'.

  2. Great! by aeroegnr · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Now we can get Viagra spam when we drive by billboards!

  3. Re:Yes, but... by Grym · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    ...This only stands to reason, that if a forced National I.D. and registration is in the works, where will hundreds of thousands of citizens be shuttled to be processed?

    Funny, and here I was thinking reason wasn't even a distant relative to your thought process.

    Not to criticize your extensive research methods, but in the process of finding all this information out, did you ever come across the fact that the United States has hundreds of millions of citizens?

    -Grym