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Spies Riding Shotgun
Slashdot has covered before the proliferation of black boxes - event data recorders - in modern automobiles, that automatically record data about what the car has been doing and make it available after the fact to police, insurance companies, and people suing you - just about everyone except you, in fact. We'll add to that with yet another story about the computerized spy riding shotgun in your new car.
..to the day when my every every bowel movement is recorded for the enjoyment of future generations.
"You can't shut it off, and you can't manipulate it," I had that trouble when I had a Ginseng and Viagra chaser.
This is an absolute invasion of privacy! Imagine: recording every questionable driving decision you make. I wonder where I can get one for my daughter's car?
I drive a '92 Honda Civic CX (nobody has them, they suck that much). It's a total hunk of junk, but i love it. It does precisely what i tell it to (at speeds of under 60 mph -- it don't accelerate too well), gets 35 mpg, and takes me from point A to point B. Now i have another reason -- because it's not looking at what i'm doing.
filter: +3. Hey, look! all the trolls went away!
This article quotes Erick Skrum of the National Motorists Association. It's a great political organization that fights multiple battles of interest to motorists, including black boxes.
Consider joining the NMA: http://www.motorists.org/
I NEED the ability to lie about the above two. Why? Because I live in New York City, where speed limits are set arbitrarily low in really stupid places for the express purpose of allowing cops to pick up people for speeding and feed the city coffers.
If anything, this technology SHOULD allow one to completely eliminate speed limits from the books. Exceeding the speed limit DANGEROUSLY can be called "reckless driving," so why do we have have to have extra laws for it in addition to reckless driving violations? For one reason only: those who make the laws realize that one can drive fast without driving dangerously, but if they let us do that they'd never make any money.
Driving at 85 mph in the rain on a twisty road in the middle of the night with cars on it? Yes. Your ass should be prosecuted.
Driving at 80 mph "in a 50" in the middle of the night, with not a cloud in the sky, on a completely empty, straight road? No.
+++ATH0
Being as how everyone is created equal, men have the same right as women to the front seat of the car. i.e. women don't own the front seat.
Man, this guy is obviously single.
What worries me the most is the small savings you get on your insurance for installing a tracker unit that gives the insurance company the right to track you (your speed, time of day, location, etc.). At first it'll be a small savings, then, most people won't care, and everyone will have one, and then it'll basically be a large fine if you don't have one. I guess I'd better continue with my plan of biking everywhere; it's better for me anyway :)
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
Oh, well, I suppose anything is better than what happened to this guy.
It's a Drivecam video - it records the last 30 seconds or so of driver video and only saves it if an accident occurs. The guy was probably kicking himself for installing it. It probably killed whatever insurance claim he had.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Amendment V:
[...] nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself [...]
But we're already compelled to give DNA, urine and tissue sample evidence, so paying for, maintaining and powering devices we own just to spy on us seems inevitable. That crazy old Constitution, with its quaint notions of human rights.
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make install -not war
The National Transportation Safety Board called for requiring standardized recorders in all light-duty vehicles after it was unable to ascertain what happened when an elderly driver plowed through a farmer's market in Santa Monica, Calif., last year, killing and injuring scores of people.
OK, let me be the first to call it since the NTSB is a bunch of politically correct pussies who don't want to piss off the fucking geezers in the AARP. The guy who caused this accident was too fucking old to drive, OK! He was 86 years old, according to this article he had "... a medical condition called a "second-degree heart block" that can cause the heart to stop beating for several seconds.", raising the question of why we are letting someone who has a bad heart that can stop beating during times of stress drive a motor vehicle. This guy's reflexes were gone, he couldn't adequately control the pedals because he had had hip replacement surgeries he might have had cognitive deficits as well as severe visual ones. He was just too fucking old to operate a motor vehicle, and guess what! There's millions more like him out there. Old folks are incredibly dangerous behind the wheel. We don't need black boxes in every car, we need annual vision, reaction and cognition testing for all drivers over 70 years old, and those who don't pass lose their licenses right then and there. While we're at it we can strip the licenses of anyone who has more than one DUI or who causes an accident where someone loses life or limb, this would go a long way towards making our roads a lot safer.
Does this suck if you're one of the old people in question? Well yes it does, but I find it interesting that the people who whine about restricting the driving privileges of the elderly have no problem with restricting the driving privileges of teenagers. Admittedly teenagers are bad drivers, but they're going to get better as they age, someone who's 16 years old will probably be a better and safer driver in 10 years when they're 26, the same cannot be said for a 70 year old. And while it might suck for elderly drivers to lose their licenses it kind of sucks for the rest of us when they lose control of a vehicle and kill 10 people and send 63 more to the hospital or in my case fail to yield right of way on a sunny day, plow into my motorcycle and cost me my left leg below the knee.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.