Slashdot Mirror
Britain to Pilot GPS Speed Governors
Rich0 writes "In a new twist on traffic speed enforcement, The Times is reporting that Britain is piloting a new device which will use GPS to actively prevent speeding. The device will initially be offered in conjunction with discounts to the London congestion surcharge." From the article: "A study commissioned by London's transport planners has recommended that motorists who install it should be rewarded with a discount on the congestion charge, which tomorrow rises to £8 a day. The trial Skodas were fitted with a black box containing a digital map identifying the speed limits of every stretch of road in Leeds. A satellite positioning system tracked the cars' locations. "
Seems pretty obvious.
In response to the earlier Slashdot article which argues that innovation has slowed down...there is now a risk of Skodas exceeding the speed limit. I'd call that progress.
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
What if for some reason you need to get somewhere in a hurry? I know I wouldn't give a shit about speed limits in such a situation, especially since no one obeys them anyway.
Maybe it's different in Britain though. I imagine there is less road there.
in police cars.
I can't even begin to count the number of times I've seen police in the US get away with speeding because they're the police. For some reason, I can't imagine it being much different elsewhere around the world since government corruption doesn't know geographic boundaries.
They'll come up with excuses like people trying to track law enforcement or something like that and that's why they won't be on the grid.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Plus, everyone's seen school buses with their regulators, going 60mph on the highway. No one wants to be like them/
So what will happen if your GPS doesn't work? Maybe someone uses one of the commercially available GPS jammers, or homemade ones: http://www.phrack.org/show.php?p=60&a=13
Will they not give you the congestion charge discount? Will they slow down the car until the GPS signal is re-acquired?
I've NEVER seen an unreasonable speed limit anywhere in my travels.
That's only because you have a maladjusted sense of what "reasonable" is. That, or you drive a huge top-heavy truck.
Speed limits have been intentionally set 5-15 mph too low in all but the most settled areas, where a low speed really is a safety concern.
But on many, many, MANY of the roads in this counry, a halfway incompetent driver can still be as safe at +10 as they are at 0 or -10 (relative to the current posted speed limit.)
Why are the limits set where they are? Not because it makes drivers safer--it doesn't, those that die in high speed will ignore whatever limit you set--but because it generates revenue for the local court system.
Who says the GPS device needs to be going the same speed as my car? How are they going to ensure that I didn't leave my GPS device in my garage while I take out my minivan for a street race? I predict that later GPS will replace human police in the seeking of speed limit violators. Go too fast, and the GPS connects to a violation reporting server and uploads your tracking number and the type of violation (exceeding speed limit for area, failing to stop at a stop light, etc.) Of course, I am sure there will be ways to crack it, but what if insurance companies start using GPS data to calculate your risk factor based on where you park your car (in front of a pub, at Wal-Mart). Don't take me too seriously though, I have a tin foil cap embedded in my skull. ;-)
Powered by caffeine and sugar; BSD
If you want to get your testosterone rush on, then play GTA.
Or go to the track or drag strip. There are places where it is legal to drive at fast speeds in real cars.
still think you're free? fear fear fear, they'll whack you over the head with it over and over, give away your power, let the state protect you, it's children. the prison without walls is still a prison. sheep, slaves, call it whatever. this is bullshit, and the sad thing is that people will probably take it lying down. back to sleep sheep, we'll install more televisions and strobe lights and what-not to keep you entranced... oh look tom cruise, football. wakeup ppz
If you thought congestion was bad before, what if it accidnetly limits you to 40kph in a 100kph zone?
What does one have to do with the other? Anyone who can speed in Central London during congestion charge is pretty fortunate.
I really don't like this sort of thing. can we lose the attitude that driving past the speed limit is the be all and end all of road safety. There is never a speed at which driving abruptly changes from "safe" to "dangerous".
As I understand it the 55mph speed limit is still the most pervasive, and that it was set as a fuel conservation measure. With current cars and arrival expectations, I don't consider that a reasonable maximum limit, especially on a road like I-285 around Atlanta. The listed minimum speed is 40mph, but it's more accurately 65mph or you're a statistic.
Xbox reviews.. We think they're funny.
A report on a driver convicted for doing 30 in an adjacent 20mph zone due to the resolution of GPS being reduced with the outbreak of another war. A police spokesperson said "GPS, like biometric ID, is known to be infallible - that's why we use them to catch the terrorists and prostitute traffickers." The driver is due to be sentenced next week.
This joke may need to be explained to us Yanks. ;)
Ah yes. As an Atlanta resident I can confirm that driving the speed limit here can be hazardous to your health.
That's fine just as long as you stay the hell out of the left lane.
please, just stay in the right lane then and allow those of us who are comfortable behind the wheel pass.
We'll all be going much more slowly once all the oil runs out. Those of us who haven't starved to death in the ensuing famine and political upheavals.
Bitching about intrusive government limiting the speed of your luxury vehicle will seem utterly petty by around 2015-2020.
And besides, they invent a device called a "governor" and then expect the government NOT to put it on every vehicle? Who couldn't see this coming??
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Dude, that's stupid. There's a little something called "flow of traffic." You're blocking traffic if you're going 55. Sure, it may be the law to go at the speed limit (55 around where I live), and you _can_ get a ticket for going with the flow of traffic if you exceed the speed limit, but that does _not_ mean you don't have a responsibility to be mindful of the environment around you and your fellow drivers.
It seems worthwhile to point out that after RTFA, the pilot was held in Leeds; the scheme is now being tested in London. For those who don't know, Leeds is about 200 miles from London.
It was held in Leeds because the study was conducted by the University of Leeds, where I'm a student.
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It was still a tremedous delay, even with traffic moving at the posted maximum speed. And other such protest attempts have resulted in the leaders being ticketed for obstructing traffic by merely following the posted speed limit. So unless this were to occur across the board thru the whole US at once in every vehicle I don't see it happening. Not to mention that there is zero interest in removing that revenue stream from to local and state governments.
Perhaps in a situation where everyone else EXCEPT you is speeding, and a fast moving car comes up behind you from over a hill and has to suddenly brake hard, causing the car behind him to have to brake hard, etc... Sooner or later, somebody's getting rear ended.
Also worth taking into consideration is a scenario in which someone is trying to flee a violent crime... Or perhaps rush a seriously wounded person to a hospital...
Personally, I normally set my cruise control right on the speed limit. I'm getting a little older and more mature, and paying speeding tickets just isn't as entertaining as it once was. Still, I can imagine several scenarios in which exceeding the posted speed limit would not only be justified, but the right thing to do.
I'll not be turning that decision making process over to an automated system, voluntarily, any time in the near future.
I haven't RTFA yet, but unless this system allows for some sort of "manual override" by the driver, I think it's a horribly bad implementation of an idea that wasn't all that good in the first place.
I have avoided two major accidents in my life by punching the gas to squeeze through a shrinking car/car or car/wall gap. If I was already doing the speed limit [which I was in both cases] and the vehicle was prevented from executing a sudden and dramitic increase in velocity I would have been caught in both resulting in unknown injuries [one of those accidents I avoided did have fatalities...]. The lack of this abiltiy may not have 'caused' the accident, which was the thrust of your question, but in both case I was clearly not part of the ongoing accidents because I was able to immediately accelerate and avoid them [I really miss that car....]. This idea sucks ass.
Congrats on achieving total faith in the infalibility of all transport authority figures, it's a rare and difficult creed. Not one in a hundred million match your devotion. BTW, your turn signal's been on for the last ten miles.
Considering how many mouth breathers
As opposed to what, people who breath through their ears? What on earth are you talking about?
I follow the speed limits to the letter becasue I've NEVER seen an unreasonable speed limit anywhere in my travels.
Come to the UK. There isn't a single reasonable speed limit in the country. It's the same outside a school at 3pm as it is on a long, straight deserted road in the middle of nowhere at 6am. All the speed cameras are in non-dangerous places, where the speed limits are much lower than the sensible driving speed, so the whole argument that speed limits are for safety is destroyed: they're revenue collectors for the police.
Sorry folks, but the roads are for people like me to get safely from one place to another.
No, the roads are for people like me to get from one place to another as efficiently as possible, not for people like you who can barely see over the steering wheel to go at 20mph on the motorway on the way to bingo.
Folks- speed doesn't kill, and this is something few people (especially the "won't someone please think of the children" types) fail to understand. They point to statistics where "police site speed was a factor". It's not the speeding itself- it is usually a lack of judgement (very often obliterated by drugs, including alcohol) or experience, or going too fast for conditions. It is compounded by a driving public that has, for the most part, absolutely no idea (much less experience) at controlling a vehicle near its limits, or regaining control of an out-of-control vehicle.
An example- a high school kid in my town got a Mistubishi Eclipse when he passed his driving test. Two friends in the car, he's doing sixty down a local road. That's pretty damn fast, and yes, too fast for a country road with limited visibility. How did he crash? His friend at the last second yelled "turn here!", and the guy tried to do a 90 degree turn. At 60mph. Instead of just keeping on the road. Speed didn't cause the crash- stupidity and lack of experience with what the car was (and was NOT) capable of did. A huge number of accidents are caused by people being very reactionary, like risking taking a short space to turn, instead of waiting 5-10 seconds for a much longer one.
It is similar to the lack of distinction between "accidents" and "collisions". If an asteroid hits your car and you crash, that's an accident. Pretty much everything else is driver error.
Most people don't have the foggiest idea of how to control their vehicle. The simplest concepts, such as weight transfer, basic cornering technique, or friction circles (which describe the capabilities of a tire) - aren't taught or tested at all. Most people also have a "I put gas in it and oil, that's all I should have to do" mindset to car maintenance. When I'm talking to someone about car maintenance and I ask how old their brake fluid is, they a)can't remember and b)ask why. Brake fluid is like a dessicant- it absorbs water from the atmosphere. When it does, its boiling point drops substantially (brake fluid should be changed at a minimum of every 2 years, and that means flushing, not just siphoning out the reservoir).
Improving driver education would be a huge step in the right direction. Teach people what maintenance is required typically, and teach them HOW TO CONTROL a vehicle!
Please help metamoderate.
Cameras in public aren't too threatening - after all, it's public, where expectations of privacy come only from one's incompetence at spotting voyeurs, or their incompetence at staring. Embedding spies in private vehicles is across that essential line, even if it starts out voluntary. Only rich people will be able to speed, or even just afford to avoid the surveillance. Until the "nondiscount" fees are unaffordable.
The real invasion of this system is that the raw data will be used not only to trigger a GPS speed limit. No, it will inevitably be used to halt cars driven speeders, then suspects of other crimes, then any "person of interest" to the police, or their political bosses. The stored records will be used to track people wherever they drive. The entire population will be tracked everywhere we go, and people's sense of privacy will go extinct.
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Passing another vehicle on the road is perfect example. You have to accelerate to pass the car that is in front of you. A legal move.
A car that decides to cross a road at a moment you are going through that road. In certain circumstances, the car could t-bone into you if the driver "assumes" you will continue to go faster. To avoid this, you speed up to miss him from hitting you from the side.
While probably very rare, if you are at a railroad crossing with about four tracks, and the speed limit there is 15 (I've seen areas with 5-10MPH signs near train tracks) and the gates start closing in on you, you can't accelerate to get out.
One time, a police officer sort of gave me "permission" to speed. It was an area where the highway forked, and traffic on the right side was at a standstill, and I was the only one of the left. Over the PA he gave me a "go ahead" to go faster than so he could get through to the other fork. There was no shoulder for me to turn off onto, so this was the only option of him to get by.
I'm sure there are a lot more examples where speeding is necessary on the road. Its the careless speeding that needs to be enforced. People that go 100+ on a highway of average 65-70 MPH drivers.
What the device should do, is somehow gather the average speed of cars in the area, and limit speed to the average so there are no careless speeders.
Bullshit. The speed limits havn't changed since the 50s, cars have.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Most people survive being hit by a car going 30km/h. Most people die being hit by a car going 50km/h.
You probably survive if you have a frontal collision at 65-70km/h in a modern car. You will probaly die in the same collision if you go 150km/h.
These are the facts, taken from accident statistics.
You got it - we should all celebrate Freedom (tm) by dropping to our knees in front of Big Brother in compliance with his Speed Tax!
Cameras in public are also nearly useless. They've only rarely, if ever, proven useful to catch a crime in progress, and are not particularly useful in court. They're a massive subsidy to the camera manufacturers, and that's about it.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
How are they going to police compliance though? even if they caught me on camera but my gps didn't register, there could be many valid reasons for it, gps coverage in cities is patchy enough.
As for being above the law, my cousin is a police officer. Her boss (also a police officer, obviously) was disciplined for speeding in a police car. The boss is the assistant chief constable of that police force. There must be only about 30 officers of that seniority in the whole of the UK, so it's probably safe to say that the British police are not above the law.
On the other side of this coin, a couple of weeks ago there was a newsworthy court case where a British police officer was prosecuted for speeding, and the court let him off, basically on the grounds that he needed to do what he did.
I've never driven on Germany's autobahns, but I've *been* driven on them... and it was a scary experience!
Only two lanes (compared to a three-lane UK motorway with a 70mph limit), trucks zooming down both lines like mobile walls, and the nearest thing to 'lane discipline' being "Hey, my car will fit through that gap! Woohoo!"
Now I love driving fast, and I'll freely admit that given a chance and a stretch of empty motorway I'll top the ton. But my German drivers cheerfully exceeded that on busy roads with other cars whipping out of junctions right in front of them, and frankly it scared the shit out of me. No wonder the world's best Grand Prix drivers come from countries like Germany, Italy and Brazil, where driving is treated like combat!
You must think in Russian.
WTF?
1. It's not a tracking device. Its a one way GPS system with a map. That 'satellite positioning system' thats tracking the cars movement. Its in the car, not the sky. Tracking the car against a map is a fundamental part to make the system work.
2. What about when I need to speed to avoid an accident? Once again - WTF? Maybe if you were following at a safe distance and speed you wouldn't get into situations where speed was required to get you out of it. (There are extreem exceptions I know, but there are thousands of acciedents a day where less speed is a good thing).
3. It's a research trial. I think its great that somewhere has finally managed to implement a system that many have wondered about, finaly give a real trial. Yes, results can be manipulated and misinterpreted to a politicians viewpoint, but as long as the reseach, methodologies, and results are sound, I'm all for research.
4. People will just remove them. Well, concidering it is volentary at the moment, I guess that's the idea. If they were mandatory, removing them would be illegal. Ahh, Just like it is illegal to speed right now. Police would be given powers to check if you are breaking the law. And they could hand out fines and court dates. Just like they do with speeding today. Its an interesting system.
You clearly have not driven in Massachusetts, where Rt 128 (aka interstate 95, but real MA people will never call it that) is marked at 55 Mph, and it's suicide to drive under 65 on that road. Most people go 70-80.
Bullshit. The speed limits havn't changed since the 50s, cars have.
How about human reaction times?
That's fine just as long as you stay the hell out of the left lane.
Whoever modded you "Funny" needs a beating with the clue-stick.
Dolts who insist on "driving the limit" in the fast lane are an enormous traffic hazard. The OP's got that self-righteous tone that really leads one to suspect that he is a member of that particular group of mental defectives.
It doesn't matter what you think of the speed limit, camping in the fastlane is like arguing theology with a tsunami. All your protestations won't make a bit of difference to that 6-ton SUV hurtling down the road at 90mph, and if you are in his lane you are increasing the risk not only to yourself and the SUV's driver but to everyone else on the road for miles. That is on top of whatever risk the SUV's driver causes by going 90mph in the first place.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
If the pilot proves that the technology works they should make these devices totally optional, but not actually have them govern the speed at all. Instead they should reward drivers for not exceeding the speed limit. So if you don't exceed the speed limit for the month you get your £8/day and if you do you get zip... or maybe make the payout on a weekly/daily basis. Anyways, with this option more people would sign up and maybe you'd end up having a greater net effect on speeding.
Well he said "I can't write a P2P application because someone might swap music" but he can write a P2P app if he wants. It's not (yet) illegal in the UK, or the US.
/. groupthink; I can't speak for the mod(s).
Also, I haven't the time to check, but I seriously doubt that anywhere near the majority of cars sold today kill someone in their lifetime, so saying "a 200mph car that will probably kill someone" is wrong; it probably won't.
That or he went against the
sig
I follow the speed limits to the letter becasue I've NEVER seen an unreasonable speed limit anywhere in my travels...Sorry folks, but the roads are for people like me to get safely from one place to another.
So old timer how's life in the motorhome? Tell us some stories about vacuum tubes and punch cards.
When you notice that hazard, you maybe have a fraction of a second to decide that speeding up is the only away to avoid it. The time required to remember how to override the system may exceed that fraction.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law', because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual. -- Thomas Jefferson
"You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up
against -- then you'll know that this is not the age for beautiful
gestures. We're after power and we mean it. Your fellows were pikers, but
we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to
rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack
down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes
them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible
for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding
citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws
that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted --
and you create a nation of law-breakers -- and then you cash in on guilt.
Now that's the system...that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll
be easier to deal with."
Why go to such an expensive system?
We have a system here in Australia called Safe-T-Cam, which for the moment applies only to heavy vehicles like trucks (and maybe buses). Digital camera systems are placed at various points along major highways to photograph licence plates as vehicles pass and feed them to a central system where they are timestamped. Since the positions of the cameras (and hence the distance between them) is known, the average speed of a vehicle can be calculated by examining photos from two locations along the highway - if it's too high then the driver gets an automatic ticket.
It's cheap. It doesn't require retrofitting technology to existing vehicles. It ensures privacy because it can't be used to track vehicles (in the sense that you can't say "687-NWR is at this specific lattitude and longitude"). And it wouldn't be difficult to expand such a system to main roads in addition to highways.
There is never a speed at which driving abruptly changes from "safe" to "dangerous"
There's never an age where a child suddenly becomes an adult either... does that mean we should eliminate statutory rape laws, let 10-year-olds drive, and let cigarrette companies sell to grade-schoolers?
Laws are about reasonable compromise; there are always cases where the line seems wrong, but overall you just have to pick a reasonably good place. Likewise, something doesn't have to be the "be-all end-all of road safety" to regulate it. That's why we havea variety of traffic laws.
So we should all drive 30km/h (18mph!) any time there's a remote chance of someone being in the road? Seriously, you must be from Europe, where the EU has brought us the EURO-NCAP crash test for pedestrian safety. As Jeremey Clarkson on Top Gear put it, "There is an order for the people I care about in this world. Number one are my children in the back seat. Number two is ME. Somewhere, towards the bottom, is the bloke stumbling out of the pub into the middle of the road in front of me."
Nowadays I see signs slapped up all over my neighborhood- "we love our children, GO SLOW", "CHILDREN PLAY ZONE"(I kid you not), and so on. If they love their kids, why can't they a)supervise them when they're outside and b)pound it into their heads that ROADS AND CARS ARE DANGEROUS? Nevermind that in a state of half a million people, the only two kids to be killed in recent memory were both cases where parents backed over their kids(in #1, kids were playing/hiding in a pile of leaves; in another, the kid made a bee-line for the garage and ran behind the father's car right as he started to back up; both were truly tragic).
You probably survive if you have a frontal collision at 65-70km/h in a modern car. You will probaly die in the same collision if you go 150km/h.
70km/hr is 40-ish MPH. 150km/h is about 91mph. It should not be shocking that survivability at almost 26 MPH over the legal highway speed limit(in the US) is not so great as 20MPH BELOW. You've doubled the speed in both cases- no shit, there's going to be a difference. Stating "you're more likely to die at a higher speed" doesn't mean speeding is the primary cause of death in motor vehicle collisions, much less that speeding should be our #1 priority in traffic safety- which it pretty much is, because it earns revenue for police departments which are badly underfunded, especially since they've been forced to train/buy equipment to 'deal with terrorism'.
The problem is that anything over 5-10% is enforced like the world is going to end, and god help you if you're over 15-20%. You can get into a fist fight and get fined less than you will for doing 75 in a 65 zone- barely 5% over the 10% legal tolerance on speedometers.
Please help metamoderate.
Most people I know who read _Atlas Shrugged_, and liked it, went through a phase where they thought they had the key to fulfilling their greed: just do it, without caring how you're "fleecing the sheep". Those who happened to be successful during that phase tended to stick with the accumulation of power at the expense of others. Those who weren't, regardless of the useful contribution by Rand's philosophy, usually came away distrustful of those who do.
"These days it's all secrecy, and no privacy."
- The Rolling Stones, "Fingerprint File"
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I haven't read the book and I am not sure if I every will. I just happen to like that quote.
:)
As to AR's beliefs...well some are 'a little' intense and that is all I am going to say at this time
" after all, it's public, where expectations of privacy come only from one's incompetence at spotting voyeurs, or their incompetence at staring."
There are two kinds of privacy, and they're getting mixed up every time this issue comes up. There is a privacy that comes from not being seen or having one's presence otherwise perceived by fellow humans. You don't have this kind of privacy in a public place, granted. You only have it some kind of seclusion.
But there is another kind of privacy - that comes from not being monitored and/or identified. From not being *watched*. Unless you have police or a private eye tailing you, in a modern city you're almost perfectly anonymous, even as you're being seen by hundreds of people, likewise anonymous to you.
I would argue that the latter kind of privacy is far more important and it certainly is the kind we're losing. This is the kind of privacy you lose when being monitored by CCTV, spyware, cookies, RFID, whatever technology does these days. Even if it doesn't identify you by name, it identifies you by a number of characteristics that's sufficient for purpises of marketing, law-enforcement and, if anyone wants, invigilation.
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
The one major problem with this that I see is that it actively slows you down. What happens if I need to go faster due to road conditions? What if going slower is actually less safe? What if I'm passing an 18-wheeler in the left lane, and suddenly he starts moving into my lane? With this system I don't have the option of accelerating to the speed I need to avoid the collision. Granted, the article did say that there's a hazard button on it. But frankly, if I'm in that kind of situation, I don't want to think about 20 different buttons to press. I just want to step on the accelerator and go 70 mph instead of 60 mph.
If you really want to stop speeding, increase the speed limit to say 90 mph on major highways, maybe 70 or 80 on minor ones. Basically, as fast as any reasonable person would attempt to travel on those roads. Personally, I wouldn't go 90 mph on any road unless it was basically straight and I had a good car. And I wouldn't break the 90 mph speed limit. Then, instead of having the police hide out with their radar guns, get them to find the people who are interfering with traffic and making problems.
Every time I see a police car, I hit the breaks automatically. Even if I'm going the speed limit. It's just a natural reaction now. That causes the car behind me to hit the breaks, and every car behind that one. This creates a hazard. If I didn't have to worry about the police, and the police stopped people who drive aggressively instead of people who stay in one lane and just go 70 instead of 60, you wouldn't have this kind of situation anymore. Also, they'd need to stop the idiots who go slower in the left lane than those the right lane is moving. But in general, instead of causing accidents they'd prevent them.
With regards to the argument made by those who appose this idea - that foolish drivers will abuse this trust - that's what the police are there for. Instead of stopping people who are just driving at their comfortable speed, they can be stopping idiots who aren't paying attention to the road or don't know how to drive well.
I don't know if that is an official term (probably not) but it's what I call it. Say you are stopped at a redlight, you and a line of cars. Light turns green. You can see the light change, but you can't go yet, you have to WAIT for the person in front of you to get going, and on up the line. it's nutz! People are looking at the back of the car in front of them, waiting for that car to move. You can see it happen, lead car gets going, then the next, then the next, etc., ie, the centipede effect. The result is a huge waste of time at a limited green interval just getting back up to speed, whereas if everyone looked at the light and just went, it would allow faster and more coordinated acceleration and smoother traffic flow. Drivers education would help here obviously, but it isn't taught like that.
Perhaps something like these speed governors, but timed with lights via wifi or something like that. Away from the lights you have normal throttle control, near the lights the speed sensors coordinate stopping and starting, so the line of cars could be smoother during the frustrating transition periods.
Everyone else understood my post, what's your problem? Cars have gotten safer. Brakes react faster and more effectively. Steering is more responsive and requires less to no physical exertion. Airbags, seatbelts, crumple zones and other safety features are now standard on every car produced. And that's just the cars. The roads have gotten better too! A law should be passed that states that all fines received for speeding will be deducted from the total amount of car registration paid by motorists in the region where the speed limit was violated. That way if you're speeding and I'm doing the speed limit I know that you may soon be reducing my registration costs. The end result would be a lack of enforcement of speed limits (as the local council would no longer see them as a revenue stream) and greater freedom for motorists on the road.
How we know is more important than what we know.
_The Fountainhead_ is better. Especially better than the 50-page grandiose rationalization, her "Objectivist Sermon on the Mount", at the end of AS. She was a great writer, but, though she redeemed selfishness from its benighted status as purely "bad", she brought it too far. Humans aren't as rational as she portrayed us, and we can serve others, while also being selfserving - contradictions are our form of balance. A biopic gives some perspective in understanding her vehemence about life. It's especially fun to watch it screened here in NYC, where her cult still lives, and packs the theater with both worshippers and snipers. FWIW, the Fountainhead movie was terrible.
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The carrot is that having the GPS speed limiter will reduce the (recently raised) congestion charge in London. The stick is that the UK government is hell bent on introducing pay-per-mile road travel. Introducing this technology under the guise of maintaining proper speed limits allows the charging system to be implemented by default simply by adding a mobile phone to the black box. If everyone had a black box and kept to the speed limit, then speed cameras would become irrelevant - therefore no revenue - therefore a new revenue has to be found - therefore pricing roads per mile.
The privacy of one's private property, like one's house, is much more important than any privacy in public. That's not to say that the right to be "presumed innocent until proven guilty" isn't also important. Nor is the necessity of "due process", where "reasonable suspicion", "probable cause", or other evidence-based causes for state monitoring, as judged by a judge, documented for defense, and rescindable.
But public places are, as you mention, defined by witnesses. Being seen in public means one's actions are public: knowable to anyone who "looks". The police shouldn't have any less access to the public than do private citizens. But they also shouldn't have the power to stalk people in public, just as private citizens don't. I think you are creating a right to privacy in public, that really is just the right to due process in obtaining surveillance, the right to freedom from stalking. If you try to claim more privacy than we actually have a right to, like freedom from cookies which document our activities in another person's private space - and which are under our control - then you're not going to get everyone to agree on the absolute boundaries of this fundamental right.
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make install -not war
A: A Speedbump
How about this. Speed limits on frontage roads (side roads that run along side limited access freeways) are typically 55 MPH around here.
Except... they are putting in new freeways now around Austin. Most of them are replacing older, regular roads, which had 55 MPH speed limits.
All of the new freeways are toll roads. Guess what speed limits their frontage roads get? You guessed it - 45 MPH. In other words, the same type of road in the same town goes from 55 to 45 when the road it follows happens to be built with private funds and has a toll if you use it.
I don't mind charging people to use the roads they drive on. I do mind artificially lowering the speed limit on neighboring roads to force more people onto the road that generates profit for the bigwigs that had money to invest in its construction.
Any speed limit set to create a profit, either for the city or private enterprise, is wrong. Speed limits should be set for safety alone.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
You did know that cops aren't legally allowed to break the speed limit when they aren't responding to a call or enforcing the law, right?
Who's going to pull them over?
Trying to legislate technology in some attempt to revoke the ability to do things that may or may not actually be illegal is... [*explitives deleted*]... well lets just say I don't think it's a very good idea.
I'll go you one better. In a free country, it's a necessity that EVERYONE have the ability to do something illegal when, in thier best judgement, it is necessary to do so.
"Of the people, by the people, and for the people"
NOT....
"Of the congress, by the president, and for the police..."
I agree that a system of law is necessary, along with the accompanying infrastructure. I'm also not advocating breaking the lay "just for fun", or anything of that nature. There are times, though, where specific situations arise where the letter of the law runs contrary to what the "right thing to do" is.
One example: 8 or 9 years ago I was out on a date with this girl. We were at a bar in her hometown, a town that I'd never been to before. When we left the bar and were on the way back to my car, I got jumped from behind by her ex-boyfriend. I beat him senseless, as my right to self-defense entitled me to do. He spent several weeks in the hospital as a result of that beating.
Here's the kicker, though. Even after he was no longer able to pick himself up off the ground, he kept mumbling threats about what he was going to do to her later. Even though I was, personally, out of danger at that point, I went back and increased the severity of his medical condition by several notches.
Was it wrong for me to continue to beat on a helpless man? To be honest, my gut reaction would be to say yes. At my trial, however, her testimony about the hell that this guy had been putting her and her children through for several years, and about how they had had a calm and peaceful life after what I did to him was enough to convince the judge to not only send me on my way, but to thank me for stepping up to the plate when the circumstances called for it.
By the letter of the law, I could have (and maybe should have) spent several years in prison. Thanks to the concept of "spirit of the law", I got turned loose, the judge actually THANKED me for what I had done, and a single mother and her two children now live a life free from constant harrasment.
So, no, I don't think it's a good idea to remove the ABILITY for people to choose to break the law.
(Don't even get me started on this "mandatory sentencing" bullshit....)
Thus, before the system is deployed, it seems likely that the boxes will accept data via some widely deployed wireless system. By adding a serial number to each box, a little software, and allowing the police to put a "set governor max speed to 0 kph and override the disable switch for device with serial # xxx for the next 2 hours" message in the download stream, it should be pretty simple to effectively disable a car whose registration is known.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Exactly my thoughts. As a driving instructor for the Porsche Club of America, the maximum safe speed for me, as a good driver in my track prepared Porsche, is way higher than any speed limit. I only obey the speed limit in residential areas where safety is an issue (and by obey, I mean within 5-10 mph). The rest of the time I'm not even close. I also pay the $155.50 "drive at a reasonable speed" tax about once every year and a half to two years to my local township.
Last winter, I found myself safely driving the 55 mph speed limit on a highway in my Land Rover at night with three inches of snow on the ground and more coming down. Something is definitely wrong with speed limits.
Speed limits are based on 30-50 year old equations and don't take into account better vehicles with more safety and control devices, better tire technology, better traffic control devices, etc.
Also somebody mentioned gas mileage; it seems most people are of the misconception that driving slower increases fuel mileage. That is not true. Generally speaking, the most efficient speed for a vehicle is in top gear (the most efficient distance / engine revolution), at a speed where air resistance and rolling friction are approximately equal assuming that speed is at an efficient engine speed. This speed can vary widely from vehicle to vehicle.
Sorry for the rant. There are just so many reasons why speed limits are set improperly (many of them political as well). People will inherently drive at a speed which is safe for them, and if we're all courteous to one another on the road there would be no problem at any speed.
When you're driving at speed, you maintain distance X from the car ahead. And, when you end up at the end of a line of cars at a stoplight, I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that you close to within X/20 of the car ahead. Once the light turns green, the safety margin you and everyone else sucked up to avoid stopping a few seconds sooner than you actually did takes everyone a few seconds apiece to reestablish.
For the "everyone step on it now" plan to work, everyone needs to either 1) slow down and stop the moment they see a red light waaaaaay off in the distance, or 2) the USDOT needs to deploy that autopilot system they've been testing that would make it possible for everyone to tailgate at 100 mph. I just don't want to be in that system when it goes south, see "The Gold Coast" for a sample of the result.
Back on topic, a possible near-term result of the London test will be more accidents. During periods when traffic permits, many drivers will be moving at the governed speed limit. When a situation evolves when someone needs to make a quick brake/accelerate/maneuver decision, the quickest reaction is to step on it, which won't respond. It will take drivers a while to internalize this. In the meantime, somebody's gonna get screwed.
Luke, help me take this mask off
The fine is not the biggest part of the profit made by Governments. Insurance companies *LOVE* speeding fines because it allows them to charge you more for what is principally not an increased risk (your rate of accidents is actually a more reliable indicator).
Who wins? The insurance company as well as the government because a part of that increase is tax.
That's why speeding fines and abuse of the system is here to stay.
Insert
If you try really, really hard you can close the door on Jehovas Witnesses.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
The question you need to be asking is why are they using Skoda's to test for speeding?
I mean, helloo? Why don't they test with a car that is actually capable of speeding???
29 mpg. YMMV.
Speeding does slow you down. Especially when it's significantly faster than the limit/traffic flow.
The reasoning is simple, there are enough people who don't want to get ticketed, die in a car wreck, ect. that when you are trying to maintain the high rate of speed you will eventually have to go around one of them, and sooner or later you will get stuck in the outside lane by one. The outside lane is called the slow lane for a reason. By the time you Unstick yourself the cars you were in front of in the other lane have already passed you.
Not only that but the spacing and cycle duration of red lights is such that you typically find yourself stoped at one for long enough that all those 'slowpokes' you left behind are now right next to you also waiting for the light to change.
And of course over the long haul the time you spend pulled over getting a ticket brings the average way down (as doese the wasted time on the bus when you finally loose your drivers license).
I average about 30k miles a year, mostly local travel on a few highways and local roads. And based on my experience a fast car is slower than a smart driver. I've frequently pulled up to red lights next to the guy who was so frantic to pass me (when I was already doing the speed limit) twice in about three years I've caught up to the guy made plain his discontent at my only doing +5 over on the highway, except he was pulled over and I'm shure I got where I was going well before he did. I've had idiots 'pass' me three or four times because thier in such a hurry they get themselves repeatedly stuck behind slower traffic.
Mycroft
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