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Aussie Speed Cameras in Doubt Because of MD5
An anonymous reader writes "A speeding case has been thrown out in Australia after the Roads and Traffic Authority admitted that it could not prove the integrity of speed-camera photos. 'The case revolved around the integrity of a mathematical MD5 algorithm published on each picture and used as a security measure to prove pictures have not been doctored after they have been taken.'" I wonder if Australian police are as (radar gun) trigger happy as they are in certain parts of the U.S.
Because U.S. cops aren't just plain trigger happy, are they?
This will make for a nice backlog in the courts. Although an interesting defence none the less. :-)
American traffic magistrates (at least in WA) would not even understand what an "algorithm" is. They will just see another glib speeder trying to scam the county out of $162.
(Warning for visitors: WA has one of the most zealous state highway patrol forces in the nation. Just don't exceed 10 over the limit here.)
Isn't the way you are supposed to do this is that the camera signs the picture with its secret key? Or it signs the MD5 hash of the picture with its secret key?
I don't get why you'd just use MD5 -- then you'd doctor the photo and recompute the MD5 hash.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
and you don't get caught...
That sounds like a loophole. However I am not in favor of automated law enforcement, I like to face my accuser.
Many of those red light tickets were dismissed in the US for various reasons, some technical, some through loopholes, and some through plain old dishonesty in the ticket system operator. They had lowered the yellow light timing below legal standards to make more money. Outrageous if you ask me.
Law enforcement is supposed to be run by government employees, who have no axe to grind and nothing to gain by dishonesty. I like it like that.
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There are speed camera's everywhere and where I live its zero tolerance (too bad if your speedo is slightly out). Not to mention some of the readings are so wrong that the car isnt even capable of doing particular recorded speeds (eg. an old beatup 1970 ford doing 170km/h)
They are trigger happy - they set up traps everywhere.
rm -fr
MD5 is sufficiently secure such that nobody will bother trying to mess with their ticket by generating collisions.
On the flip side, red-light cameras themselves are controversial simply because people don't like them. Here in san diego there was a huge row over them because some of the fines gathered went to Lockheed Martin (camera maker).
Personally, I just put those glass frames that make my license plate unreadable except from direct frontal view, and stay frosty.
Australia (and New South Wales, the state under consideration) has a network of fixed speed cameras. These operate 24hrs every day of the year picking up every speeding car that goes past. They even converted then to digital and networked them to send the piccies back to base so they wouldn't interrupt the revenue stream by running out of film. No triggers involved.
I live in South Australia (thats the name of the state, they werent that original when the pohms came here :)
Anyway, we now have speed cameras on traffic light intersections and any random car parked on the side of the road *could* be a speed camera.
In Victoria (where Melbourne is), they are even more tough. As soon as I cross the border to Vic, I don't speed at all.
So the answer is "yes", they are very very trigger happy and in a lot of cases, there was no trigger, just an automated photo.
Can your karma go above being Excellent?
I've experianced speed cameras in both Queensland and Victoria and I have to say that by far Melbourne is the dodgiest of the lot. They claim that the cameras are there to save lives however they are little more then revenue raisers.
Melbournians are subjected to hidden cameras looking over overtaking lanes. The cameras are privatised so people get paid more the more cars they catch. The situation there is terrible.
Queensland is somewhat better because police are required to have a sign out saying that there are speed cameras in use, however this sign is usually conveniently placed behind a bush or behind the car with the camera in it. Queensland is also better off because the police do not rely so heavily on the revenue that their cameras drum up, it seems at times the only thing paying for Melbournes police is speeding offiences.
One thing is certain, these cameras do not save any lives. I remember clearly once in high school a Policeman came to give a talk on vehicle safety he showed us a big graph with a stedily declining death rate over the years, he pointed out the huge drop after the introduction of seat bealts, then one after they banned drink driving, and a smaller drop after the introduction of airbags. My hand immediently shot up and I asked him when speed cameras were introduced, my teachers just laughed and he never answered the question.
Just to make it clear, this guy didn't prove something was flawed in their system, so much as the courts didn't bother to find an expert witness.
Officer: Please sign and initial box A, put your phone number and address in box B, please confirm and write in this 32-digit md5 hash in boxes C and D...
Did you know subscribers can see articles in the future? Holy shit!
Heisenberg was driving down the Autobahn whereupon he was pulled over by a policeman. The policeman asked, "Do you know how fast you were going back there?
Heisenberg replied, "No, but I know where I am."
How about we source a reliable news source? The Telegraph is for people who find it hard to read.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Apparently in Melbourne they'll nab you for 3kmh over the limit, thats less tham 2mph for those in the northern hemisphere. Here in Perth, WA we can usually get away with 10kmh before being busted :)
I live in Victoria, Australia (the state Melbourne is in) -- these refer to cameras in New South Wales (the state Sydney is in). There's been a rather strong backlash against speed cameras here; the margin has been lowered to 3kph. If you do exceed the speed limit by more than 25 kph, you lose your license for a month; more than 35 kph is six months; more than 45 kph is twelve months. The fines are harsh: $131 (Australian) for less than 10kph; $210 for less than 25 kph; $278 for less than 35kph; $377 for less than 45 kph; and $451 for more than 45 kph.
There have been cases of cars being clocked at speeds greater than they are physically capable of doing, and a great brou-ha-ha about how travelling "five kph above the speed limit" doubles your risk of crashing (with some people extrapolating that to an exponential curve). (For the record: the research is five kph above the prevailing speed of the traffic, and it's not exponential.)
If speed camera evidence is deemed untrustworthy, you can see a large chunk of government revenue fly out the window; they'll be onto it as fast as they can get their snouts out of the pork barrel.
I wonder if Australian police are as (radar gun) trigger happy as they are in certain parts of the U.S.
Hello? have you ever been to the UK or to France? there is a friggin' *network* of automated speed cameras that track you every-bloody-where and send you the bill directly by mail. There is almost no place where you can truly go over the speed limit. The US is a relaxed, friendly place compared to those countries...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
If you don't speed, then you won't have any problems at all. Keeping that in mind, I actually did get a photo radar ticket year ago for going about 15km over the limit. It was a area that dropped from 60km/h to 40km/h. I wasn't too happy about it, but in retropect, I've never received another one since that time.
So, basically, don't speed, and you'll have no worries. Also, don't go through red lights, either. That's just crazy!
I live in Melbourne (Victoria, Australia) and speed camera's are so rife over here that the state government has actually contracted out the speed camera work to a private sector contractor!!
So you have the situation where ANY car parked on the side of the road is an automated speed camera. The operator sets up the speed camera and then sits in the car reading a book for an hour or two, then moves onto the next site.
I haven't seen a policeman or policewoman with a radar gun in 5 or 6 years...
Slightly off topic, but one of my favorite jokes...
So there was this guy driving through town one day, he was going about 100 in a 35, he crosses over a bridge and not too far past the end of it he sees the familiar blinking lights behind him and pulls over. The police officer comes up to the window and asks him where he's trying to get in such a hurry, and the guy says he's late for work.
The cop says "what job do you have that you have to get to so urgently?" and the guy says "I'm a Rectum Stretcher"
The cop looks a little funny at the guy and says "A Rectum Stretcher? What does a a Rectum Stretcher do?"
The guy says "well, first you start with a finger or two, work you way up to a fist, and keep going until it's six feet wide"
The cop looks absolutely amazed and says "Well, what do you do with a six foot asshole?" and the man replies
"You give him a radar gun and stick him at the end of a bridge".
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/motorist-wins
I.e., it wasn't thrown out because MD5 is suspect; it was thrown out because the government couldn't find an expert witness to be cross-examined, for some reason we don't know. In fact, I'd read that statement as meaning that the magistrate wanted to examine the entirety of speed camera security, not just MD5.
That part of the story is just a lawyer's opinion, not a fact. "Successfully", in the context of the previous quote, just means that his argument was unopposed in court.
My understanding is that it is easy to generate multiple messages that have the same MD5 hash, but only if you get to choose both messages. It's still very hard (i.e., an infeasibly large number of CPU cycles for most of us) to generate data that yields the same MD5 hash as some other, arbitrary document.
It all sounds to me more like a case of blinding a magistrate with science, than some kind of victory for common sense. (Well, lawyers are involved, so commonsense isn't relevant, anyway.)
The state of the art in exploiting what is known about generating MD5 collisions relies on generating executabe content with colliding checksums, and causing that content to behave differently because of the distinct blocks. Making two meaningfully different images that have colliding checksums is much, much harder. The best technique currently available for doing that is still brute force, which is just about on the edge of practical for a single pair of photos given a massive distributed effort - perhaps a ten or a hundred times more work than distributed.net's RC5-64 effort.
It's not proof in the mathematical sense - no real-world assertion admits such a proof - but I don't think one could entertain reasonable doubt that someone had gone to the effort of forging an MD5 collision in order to stick someone with a bogus speeding fine.
Xenu loves you!
OK, I'm partially responsible for people seeing applied attack against MD5, so I'll comment for a second.
.md5 file as well. (Files on multiple servers are a little different, because you can go elsewhere to see the deviating MD5 hash.)
Basically, in 2004 Xiaoyun Wang released two different files with the same MD5 hash. This has been predicted since around 1996, when Hans Dobbertin showed the hash was broken -- but it took a while for the actual attack to show up.
Alot of people said there were _no_ applied uses. Not true. For instance, the following two pages have the same hash:
Lockheed Martin
Boeing
What's important to realize about the above content is that both web pages are included in both links; the difference between the source files (which MD5 is blind to) is just used to determine which page is displayed. What that means is that, for forensic purposes, it's trivial to rule out the best known attack against MD5 -- just look at the content being hashed.
Thats not to say we should keep using MD5. It's broken, we need to move on. But attempts to claim that MD5 is broken, so we have no idea of any link between hashed content and real material -- that's just ridiculous. We have plenty of idea, especially with human-guided forensic operations.
That being said -- if you can doctor a photo, you can doctor a hash. This is one of the things that makes files hosted on a single server w/ MD5 hashes "verifying" them a little silly...if you can alter the file, you can alter the
If so many people are speeding why don't they just increase the speed limit?
Many studies show that the roads are the safest if everybody is travelling at the same speed.
Anyway what is this concern over speed? Consider motorways: these are the roads with the highest speeds yet are also the safest.
threadeds blog
I submitted and got rejected, and I thought if this wasn't a /. story nothing was.
My question is how long before this sort of defence gets used against evidence in the form of video surveilence in general? How long before a bank robber can argue that the bank's security camera footage isn't secure? Or is this simply a classic case of a judge that does not understand, and a roads and traffic authority too apathetic and sure of itself to provide what's needed for the correct judgement?
I have no love of the RTA. In NSW it's now 3 points off your license for going over the speed limit by a single kilometer/hour, and 6 points for the same if it's a long weekend or holiday period. So basically you can now lose your license for doing 1 kilometer over the limit twice over a 3 year period.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Speed cameras in Perth (West Coast for the punters) are a real bitch. I hear these contraptions pay for themselves within a week of indiscriminately snapping drivers going just 4-5km/h over the speed limit. That probably sounds reasonable in built up areas where you the speed limit is 40km/h (during school hours), but on the open road where 110km/h is legal, you're better off flicking on the cruise control to avoid the boys in blue. Pre-cameras, the cops used to book you for in excess of 9km/h in the country - at least then there was some logical wiggle room, not to mention it wasn't some impersonal surprise money earner turning up in your mail one day.
The extraordinary thing is that around the burbs, often I have to put my foot on the brake going down small hills just to ensure I don't edge over the limit. Perhaps sales of brake pads and cruise control equipment have increased substantially since the introduction of these fuckers. Both my parents have received speeding fines in the last few years, having gone for over forty years with a clean record.
As an aside, a few years back, one chap was flashed by the camera as he drove by and promptly responded by swerving into the offending machine, taking it out all together. Unfortunately, these cameras have a bunch of wire connected to a nearby van, which stores all the data. The cops simply lifted the last photo taken and arrested the guy. Though a tad rash in his response, I still consider him a legend.
I just like to drive so fast that the cameras see me as a blur.
That's why I want the government monitoring every keystroke I type on the internets. If you're doing nothing questionable, you have nothing to fear, right? Protect the children!
No one should be falling for scams like this in 2005. Want to make the roads safer, all you have to do is require a driving test that couldn't be aced by the average 8 year old. Hard as it is to believe, the guys setting up covert surveillance around you do not have your best interests at heart... not when their budgets and revenue streams are in question.
The real concern is when an institution supposed to be dedicated to the public good becomes parasitic on it, to perpetuate itself. Usually that's when the platitudes about protecting the children and ensuring your safety start showing up, and anyone with a brain should recognize them for what they are: bullshit. In the last 10 years, I've been hit three times by "trigger-happy" cops or their surveillance programs for absurd offences that just happen to require cash payments, to them; I've NEVER been hit by someone speeding.
Does anyone know if cameras in the UK use the same system?
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
This is just one problem with speed cameras in OZ. Many fixed ones have been causing quite a bit of strife here not just over the integrity of the images but more over inaccurate speed measurements.
They don't need to be "radar-gun trigger happy", Big Brother has cameras everywhere busting speeders, and surveiling the general population for no particular reason. No need for a radar 'gun' when an automated system does it for you.
If you go around the city in Melbourne, you're more or less on camera the entire time. I recently read in the paper that, on average, a Melbourne citizen appears on 100 surveillance cameras a day (assuming you go downtown, etc)
It's frightening, they're everywhere. Both government and private owned. Noone cares.
- A Canadian in Australia
If your caught speeding then you should pay up. Regardless. I think that the government should close this loop hole and increase the speeding fines to compensate.
They:s /index.html
-post on the website the location of all fixed and mobile speed cameras http://www.canberraconnect.act.gov.au/speedcamera
-have big signs saying "RED LIGHT AND SPEED CAMERA AHEAD" for fixed cameras
If you get nabbed with those conditions, you deserve your ticket.
How do they demonstrably connect a hash to an image?
I see no way the hash could be included IN the image (it would be recursive to hash an image of a hash, wouldn't it?)
Surely if the hash is just printed next to the image, there is nothing to stop you doctoring the image, recomputing the hash, and then doctoring the hash?
Sorry if this is obvious.
It sounds to me like an MD5 hash adds the impression of security, without actually offering anything of the sort.
In the UK the deployment of speed cameras is at the discretion of the chief constable (the boss) of the local constabulary (usually with the jurisdiction of the county they are situated in). Interesting one or two counties in the UK don't have speed cameras. Even more interesting is that in the last set of figures, those counties without them actually saw a drop in injuries and fatalities whereas those with saw a rise.
The thing about speed limits and cameras is that they are set an arbitrary value which, on average, appears to suit the road. But it's like seat belts, there are times when wearing one is worse than not wearing one but on average its better to wear one. My particular bug-bear is speeds on motorways. A nice sunny Sunday morning when the road is empty 100mph is not dangerous. 50mph in the fog in rush hour is. Speed cameras don't generally account for that. Speed doesn't kill. Inappropriate speed kills.
There is one section of one motorway in the UK that has it right. A section of the M25 has adjusting speed limits and cameras to suit. I would like to see them on all motorways, moving from 30mph at the lower end to 100mph at the upper end. (Why 100 because that's the top speed of some small cars and having cars with differing speeds is also dangerous).
In the Province of British Columbia, every police officer has a payscale to use when they hand out driving infraction tickets. When speeding, the scale here starts at 20 KM/h over the limit and higher. So if you were to do 10-15 KM/h over the limit, the officer cannot properly give you a ticket.
In Alberta, where photo radar prevails (it was abolished in BC), the camera only triggers at 15 KM/h over the limit.
To be honest, photo radar is stupid because people here just avoided it by claiming they never got a ticket. Eventually the government got tired of people sitting on tickets and scrapped the project due to the cost of sending police officers to each ticketed home.
"MD5 algorithm published on each picture"
Perhaps they calculate the md5 and overlay it on the picture, losing the original image. Now the md5 is drastically different and they have no way to prove the original image (without the checksum printed on it) matches the checksum.
It would be quite a trick to incorporate an md5 into an image that hashes to that md5.
"No, but I knew exactly where I was"
No offense to Aussies, but it's not exactly a "major" nation, is it?
Why don't we ever see as many stories from important countries such as Germany or India?
I cannot believe it's because nothing of interest happens in those places, and I don't buy the "language difficulty" line either.
So come on Slashdot editors, ditch the favouritism and xenophobia: if we have to see story-after-story from a small nation such as Australia, how about some from other small nations, and even better, more from more important countries?
They could not provide an expert witness to explain MD5.
Big deal
G
Simply drive REALLY fast like 70mph or something and the camera won't be able to capture it properly ^_^
Bwaha
Was that this is a KNOWN property of hashes. Your hash is smaller than the thing you are hashing (in cases like this). Thus there cannot be a unique hash for every possible source. If you are using a 128-bit has, that gives you 2^128th totall possible values. A 640x480 8-bit greyscale image requires 2,457,600 bits to store, giving it a total of 2^2457600 possible values.
What happened with the receant "cracking"m which is an incorrect term, of hashes was that it was shown SHA-0 was easier to find a collision for than random chance should dicatate. They've also shown this for MD5, allegedly, though I didn't see the research on that one. It's still outside the ream of possibility to generate a collision that's meaningful.
Since hashes are non-reversable, meaning you can't take the result and get possible sources, you have to just try it. Generate a value, hash it, see if you got what you want. In a case like this, it'd be additonally hard since the value you generate has to misrepresent what you want and look like it was shot by a camera, it can't be all out of whack.
Basically the lawyer threq out a bogus technicality, however this is a courtroom not a place with computer experts, so without testimony the judge could find that as a reason to doubt it.
I wonder if Australian police are as (radar gun) trigger happy as they are in certain parts of the U.S.
Yes.
And I'd rather have a fine and a few points on my license than a murder conviction for running over a pedestrian at 90km/h in a 60km/h zone
It's simple. Don't be a prat and speed, and you won't get fined!
What the hell is so hard about that...
You have something connected to it that gathers the MD5 hashes, not owned by the people that own the camera. Maybe a seperate box, maybe a net connection, whatever. You store the hashes in a seperate place, with a party that doesn't have an intrest in collecting the fines. Then, if an image is called in to doubt, it is checked against the hash for that shot. If they differ, it's been tampered with.
Now perhaps these systems are stupid enough to store everything internally, but there are plenty of good designes for security gear like this where an external device monitors it. Now that doesn't protect against the device itself being tampered with and modifing things on the fly, but that's harder to do and in that case you can get devices that are physically secure, in that they'll throw alarms if their case is messed with and so on.
There's no perfect solutions, but nor are there with analogue photos. Those can still be staged or doctored. You look at the quality of some of the stuff they put on the movie screen, take effects like that to grainy analogue security footage, I bet people'd be hard pressed ot tell it's fake.
It's all about making it hard enough to circumvent that people aren't likely to try, and if they do you are fairly likely to catch them.
Yes, I do drive. I am from Tasmania. I'm sick of hearing these half-arsed excuses.
;)
Yeah but it's quite a bit different in places where you can't walk across the state in a day! This is like a 15th century welshman commenting on speeding tickets. You have no frame of reference. Up here, us car drivers (not horse and cart drivers!), speeding is much easier.
And for the mods on crack: yes, I'm kidding. Just some friendly cajoling between two fellow aussies
The motorist's defence lawyer, Denis Mirabilis, argued successfully that an algorithm known as MD5, which is used to store the time, date, place, numberplate and speed of cars caught on camera, was a discredited piece of technology.
This is of course a misunderstanding. Denis Mirabilis is a latin term used in courts roughly meaning "claiming something that is plain to see to be untrue or at least not evident".
Just so you know it's pomes, as in Prisoners Of Mother England.
When expanding the acronymn to an Englishman you always get a reply "but hey you're the prisoners!", at which point it's customary to point out that they're still stuck there.
__Adult funny clips updated!
A constant barrage of government propoganda asserting that speed cameras are perfectly reliable has dulled peoples outrage of the fact that "blackbox" style machines are generating a massive amount of money for state governments.
There has been major incidents where;
1. In victoria many cameras were proven to be faulty, showing trucks, busses and old beat up cars doing absolutely rediculous speeds.
2. Just now 180 speed cameras in Queensland have been withdrawn, because they are faulty.
3. Speed camera operators have been shown regularly ignoring the usage guidelines and parking in spots that will provide improper results, near signs, suburban areas where there a metal garage doors in the line of sight of the radar, on corners, etc.
How many people have lost their licenses because of faulty cameras, or been hit with massive fines? (in NSW it's $1400 for 40km/h over the limit). I mean if you're a young mail (under 30) you wouldn't have a hope in hell of disputing one of these, the judge would laugh you out of the courtroom.
As another poster mentioned many states have these operations outsourced to private companies, private companies with profit as a motive to fine people. I would enjoy hearing the rabid free marketeers argue that that having a private company with little oversite and no accountability to the average person is superior in this case.
Finally for some fun reading, it does read a bit "there out to get us", but the information and statistics seem reasonable. Showing that speed cameras have done very close to nothing in Australia to prevent road deaths.
it should be bourne in mind that this is being reported by australia's most despicable reporters, a curret afair. (i'm sure you have the same type overseas, you kow this guy's a con man, that guy's a welfare cheat) they'll pick up on any slight problem in an area such as this.
Let's assume this is the protocol:
- camera takes snap shot, uses signing key on tamper-resistant chip inside camera to sign a hash of that photo (with the time, speed, etc. concatenated onto the end of the photo before hashing)
- send bill to speeder (possibly including hash of picture or in some way "committing" to that particular md5sum)
Then, the problem the bad guy has is to find another picture with that same hash value. This is a preimage attack [find another photo that outputs this hash value] and the weaknesses in MD5 were collision weaknesses: particular collisions found and an algorithm for generating collisions. But collisions are just two messages that have the same hash value, not a particular hash value of your choosing.If the protocol doesn't have a way to securely associate a hash with a photo (e.g. doesn't sign it), then it doesn't make a difference if you're using MD5 or SHA-1 or SHA-256, the cops can still just doctor photos at will and only produce the hashes of the doctored photos. So this line of "attack" has nothing to do with underlying cryptographic weaknesses.
[Note also that the weaknesses in MD5 don't affect the security of HMAC-MD5]. Hell, the case should be thrown out since the defense atty had the temerity to issue this stunning (even in buzz-word-addled tech) mischaracterization: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/motorist-wins
It is not clear from the article what they actually did with MD5. It could be something like that the camera maintains a log of hashes of the pictures taken. As many have already pointed out, this by itself doesn't lend much extra protection against willful manipulation of the picture if that said manipulation is done by the people who are in physical possession of the log.
If you have reason to suspect that the camera operators are manipulating the pictures (maybe they get a percentage on the fines, whatever), then you have to introduce a trusted third party that can vouch for the authenticity of the pictures (or at least that they were not altered after some point in time).
On the other hand, if you have no reason to believe that whoever controls the cameras willfully manipulates them, then you only need protection against accidental alterations, and the said hash log will be just fine.
I was just busted 10 minutes ago on my way to work by a speed camera in Queensland, I get in, load up Slashdot, see this article and feel a little better...
Task Mangler
Remember kiddies! Speeding tickets are another term for "random toll road fee". I've paid my dues lately. It's just a matter of time before you do as well.
Now then, just sign on the dotted line....
Life is not for the lazy.
Yes. We call them "budgie smugglers"...
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
This is the exact point. An MD5 hash doesnt provide any security.. If you doctor the photo or details, just add a new MD5 hash.
In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
I'm genuinely curious when you think it would be appropreate not to wear your safety belt.
Basically, the same applies to simple camera devices. They prove that the car in question did, indeed, pass by a camera, somewhere, at some time. They don't really do much beyond that.
MD5 hashes, in themselves, don't verify anything. Not only can an image be altered to make the has the same, the image can be altered and the hash recomputed (as many have already noted). You really also need to use a method of photography which eliminates any doubt as to the actual speed. Printing the speed on the image just proves that an image can contain text.
A better method would be to have three cameras. Two would be linked to do stereoscopic time-lapse photography, the third would take a long-exposure photograph. The time-lapse would give you a clear image that could be used to identify the vehicle, the long-exposure would verify the relative speed, and the stereoscopic setup would verify that the vehicle in question in both sets of images was the same.
At that point, there would be very little question as to the accuracy, as it would be significantly harder to tamper with all three images in a consistant way, such as to produce fake evidence of speeding.
You would ALSO need cameras further down the road, in a similar setup, which could then associate the speeding car in question with a specific driver. However, as tinted windshields are fairly common, you would need to pick and choose the frequencies the additional cameras worked at.
THEN it would be doable and pretty provable. It would also be so expensive as to be almost unusable.
I don't particularly care what speeders do to themselves - that's their business. But they are a risk to others, and I do have a problem with that. The sole quesion I can see is how to deal with the problem effectively and equitably. What I don't see - from law enforcement OR any other particular pressure group - is a real desire to find good solutions, only quick ones.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
http://www.anythingchat.com/
WARNING! Police in Washington enforce laws... that generate a revenue stream!
Personally I have no problem with Police enforcing laws, it's just when they go for the easy, (relatively) harmless, money-grabbing ones to the detriment of rapes, murders, assault, criminal damage, etc. that I have a problem.
Yeah, the problem is pretty bad where I live, too. Cops whoring themselves out for speeding fines when more serious crimes go reported and with no police response for hours or days.
F*** them.
You get the above nonsense from whingers every time this issue comes up. You only have to make a casual observation of the roads to realize that there are a substantial number of people driving too fast in *inexcusable* situations.
Just two weeks ago I was first on the scene when a dickhead drove his BMW into a telephone poll. It was in a residential street street on a sharp corner and he was driving like it was the Le Manns. I was just about to walk down that street with some friends when a telephone call held us up. We heard him speeding down the road and then the screech of tires as he lost it on the corner. Lucky for him his airbag saved his life. However he wiped out 50m of sidewalk ( lucky nobody was walking there), crossed to the wrong side of the rode before crashing ( lucky there was no oncoming traffic ) Destroyed a wooden fence ( lucky there was nobody behind it ).
The first thing I felt like doing after I saw he was ok was hauling him out of the car and kicking his arse or possibly putting his head in the door and slamming it shut a few times.
Please people, get some perspective before you all start shitting yourself with this libertarian nonsense.
The bikini - security through obscurity since 1943
Idiot. Ever tried passing a truck doing 5 MPH less than the speed limit, on a two-lane road?
Passing said truck AT the speed limit is criminally insane. The objective is to get in-and-out of the oncoming lane as quickly as possible - and yes, that means exceeding the speed limit.
Just for one.
Stupic correction since it should have been in gernam anyway.
A thought occurs to me just now. Using the information available here, one could theoretically program a GPS device that had an open API (or something along that line) to alert you whenever you enter a speed enforced zone. Even if it's just a visual alert (ie: GPS device has no audible capabilities), you'd know exactly when to go exactly the limit, and when it was okay to speed.
As a side note for those of you that have been saying "just don't speed", have you ever driven a car with a manual transmission? I'm just curious as I drive both an automatic and manual, and whenever I'm in the automatic, I speed far less than I do in the manual.
On the 401, you can get a ticket for doing the speed limit.
rewriting history since 2109
Yes, I do drive. I am from Tasmania. I'm sick of hearing these half-arsed excuses.
Half arsed and two-headed. In Tasmania, it all averages out...
Driving home from work, I passed by a unmanned radar station (Set-up as a warning) that gave the speed you were allegedly going, it pegged me at 45, though I was only going 35. Out of curiousity, I looped around and went by again, but this time, I parked my car at the stop it took your speed, still said I was going 45mph .... nice
Seriously, given that in many areas, particularly in MD, cops are not required to be really educated, just a GED, should we really give place the level of blind faith in them that we do. A lot of other places aren't much better either.
Let's face it. Everybody speeds - even those idiots who say "police in WA enforce laws" and "speed kills".
We're all from Democracy's (except for the Americans where the corporations like the RIAA/MPAA/Disney/Sony make the laws) so if the norm is to speed, then surely we should just vote to have the limits raised?
I know there's *supposed* to be a scientific basis for the limits being what they are, but hey they've been calculated by civil servants, and lets face it, if you're hit by a car doing 65mph, being hit at 90mph isn't going to make much difference to you.
If the speed limit on a motorway/freeway was 90mph, then tha majority of us would no longer be speeding.
Think about it - you could instantly reduce the speeding figures - and simultaeneously bankrupt the private companies that put cameras around, or the insurance companies that subsidise them.
Hey we could even cut taxes by firing all the traffic cops - simultaneously putting a lot of donut companies out of business.
Anyway, can't hang around here all day, I'm off to read an article about how its been proven that speed cameras increase accident rates.
#include <sig.h>
Your question was answered by a Finnish study recently (only a Finnish link, sorry). The headline says "Camera control halved the amount of accidents resulting in death".
The article also states that "Camera control does not affect the number of accidents but the accidents are less severe than before. For example, the amount of fatal accidents has been reduced to less than a half."
I'll rather believe an official study than your so very logical proof: My teacher laughed at my question --> cameras do not save any lives. :-P
Apparently, including the lawyer.
And perhaps not including the judge.
The designers probably just included the MD5 just to scare the defendant. Whether or not that was their intent, they've proven themselves unqualified to be building these.
The red herring of the vulnerabilities aside, the only way you could really make a non-reputable speed camera work is to have the speedometer constantly broadcast the speed and a public key permanently assigned to the car (or perhaps the driver or the license plate?), and the camera would have to record the radar speed and the license plate (and the car, just to be sure) and hash all of it with the camera's private key, and hash it all again with the defendant's public key.
But that kind of gives the lie to the whole project, because the defendant would have to produce his private key to prove that the photos are not faked.
Ergo, this is requiring the defendant to testify against himself.
I had an interesting happenstance once. I was in the military, taking a fellow soldier to his boy scout troop for their weekly meeting. I came upon a 4 way stop with 5 cars stopped ahead of me. I stopped also. Some nut went by us all, ran the stop sign and sped on. Guess who got the ticket for speeding? The MPs were on a hill, a 1/4 mile away taking those radar shots from the side. None of this works as such nor is it accurate. I got the book throwed at me by the commander who was convinced I needed to be made an example. Eye witness or no, nothing was allowed in my defense. Fortunately for me, the first sargent talked the the eye witness. I was put on special duty somewhere out of sight for two weeks. When I came back, the commander had been transferred, my fines, reduction of rank, and all paperwork was mysteriously lost. To this day I have no faith in radar, as it is up to the officer as to just how honest radar is.
I could have been driving the tunnel for free?!?!?!?
NOOOOO!
by the police if the hardware (the camera) is in full control of the police? There's no way but to trust the police presenting evidence. MD5 or whatnot is irrelevent.
17779 eligible voters in a district, 17779 'vote' as one. This is Russia.
There are more deaths on Australian country roads than city roads, yet almost all speed cameras are positioned in busy roads with relatively low death tolls.
Since the introduction of speed cameras in Victoria (second most populated state), the road fatality rate has actually risen, which is against long time trends in car safety.
Speed cameras net enormous income for the state governments in Australia, the highest earning speed camera(sydney harbour tunnel) target area has been enlarged to include the entire tunnel. As a result earnings have improved dramatically.
The speed camera argument is similar in most nations, they are revenue raisers, as a speed camera does not pull you over and stop you from hitting that pole or pedestrian, instead it fines you 3 weeks (or here sometimes up to 7 months later) in your letter box. When you can have long lost your life or license.
In Hong Kong there are designated places where automated speedcams are installed and well known. It's huge and neon orange so as to discourage people from speeding at places the transportation department deemed dangerous to speed.
So yes some of them could even be fake. But imho, I think these things are actually fatal. I've seen countless sudden brakage at besides these erectile things and how a 18 wheeler would choke behind this vespa cycle because there's an orange pole coming up.
Now I am just waiting for an accident to happen right there to prove it. It's really scary if you see it. New drivers are also unaware of these poles because sometimes they're behind trees and bridge columns. So you're going 80km/h and all of a sudden this car in front of you can slow to 50 with no car in front of him.
Back in toronto everyone speeds by 10km/h on streets and 20km/h on highways, it's nice and smooth.
Also, the freeways in L.A. are the worst made roads in the world. Sure, I haven't travelled on every single road in the world, but I can't easily imagine anything worse, even as a hypothetical.
For reference, the average number of road fatalities per year in Australia is roughly 9 per 100,000 people. In the U.S.A., it's closer to twice that, at around 15. See this blog. Up to date stats for Australia also available from the ABS (Australia Bureau of Statistics); can't find a U.S.A. equivalent.
The biggest problem with Australias roads, imho, is that idiots can get licenses, while good drivers can easily luck out and fail license tests. The number of young drivers I know who have *never in their entire life* parallel parked, or reversed into a parking spot, is just embarassing. And I know a number of people who've failed license tests because, for example, they braked suddenly to avoid an animal on the road (a dog, from memory). Well, that might be the right thing to do, they're told, but that's an automatic fail. Sheesh.
Then again, for whatever advantage we have in road safety, we make up for it with one of the worst public transport networks imaginable. Today, for example, I had to wait 45 minutes for a tram (which, ultimately was a bus chartered as a replacement), because the power was out over the last 7 or so km of the line. Fine, that happens. The annoying thing was that no one had any idea what was going on. There were at least half a dozen people from the tram company there, and none of them had any idea what was going on, excepting one had heard some mention of a bus. Or something. He only said anything at all after being prompted.
That's the third time this week I've had to wait an obscene amount of time for a tram. And it's not even Friday yet. But at least I get to rant about it. :P
I don't like automated cameras for speeding tickets--I think they are frequently being abused by police for raising revenue rather than sensible policy enforcement.
Having said that, throwing out evidence because it "only" uses an MD5 checksum is ridiculous. What is the attorney suggesting? That the police doctored the photo in Photoshop, specifically to implicate his client?
However, because the designers went the extra mile and added some security - some goose can come along later and say "A ha! Your product is defective because it uses a security model that's not effective".
Other great examples:
Imho, this person should have to either proove that it's been tampered, or proove that there was at least motive from someone to tamper it. Evidence againt him: theres a photo of him speeding. Evidence for him: none - just the possibility that said photo was faked.
what a load of bollocks
Believing something doesn't make it true. Not believing something doesn't make it false.
Where is this "Western Australia" place? Is that in the Valley?
The best speed camera is one that doesn't catch anyone - obviously it would be working. You'll find that "safety partnerships" or whoever won't pay attention to this.
The big question I have is why are speed cameras never outside schools?
The verb tenses are the same in English and German, since they are relatively closely related languages. Thus, the correction is sensible. On the other hand, it may have been silly for another reason, which is left as an exercise for the reader.
I don't think so. I think you're right they aren't there to catch everyone that speeds. I think they are there to make everyone think that they might get caught, and thereby curtail speeding whether or not the camera is actually turned on. In other words, they are there to make it look like they will catch everyone speeding. It's just elaborate PR.
Why should any speed camera read my license plate ?
,it's money.
I obey speed laws, I obey traffic signs. I do not want anyone to electronically read anything about me, my car, my speed, my license plate number, no photo's no nothings.
It's an invasion of my privacy.
Sure, if a cop catches me speeding I'm fair bait, but I don't, so camera's are an invasion that I will not accept.
Brits : You should be aware of this : On a recent trip, I was appalled by the speed camera's. It's not "public safety" and you know it
You should pull them down, or render them useless. privacy is a basic rigtht, and it's being abused.
Wake up.
The reason you hear so much about Australia is because so much happens here. Australia is one of the three most importnat nations in the world today.
One reason we dominate Slashdot so regularly is because we lead the world in the field of information technology. Australian IT professionals are better trained than just about everyone else, and have more experience on a greater diversity of systems.
Besides IT, Australia produces the best athletes and other sporting performers. If an Australian isn't world champion at something, then it's not really a sport worth worrying about.
And Australia possesses and produces more minerals and other resources than anyone else. We are a world leader in many, if not most, industries, and we'll dominate almost all of them within 10 years or so. Again that comes back to the immense calibre of our workforce.
On top of all that Australia is without a doubt the most beautiful place on planet Earth. Our beaches alone would cement our place in that category, but they are only a small part of the magnificance that is Australia.
When you couple all that with the fact that we have the highest standard of living in the developed world, and the finest cities, finest and most varied cuisine, and one of the best artistic record, Australia really is the Lucky Country.
In all seriousness, Australia is likely to eclipse the USA this century, once our population level grows. Right now most Australians wish to live and work in the United Staes, but the flow will reverse, and already many Americans have emigrated here.
So go fuck yourself, you stupid envious moron.
How does 4kmh over in 110kmh zone fit with Australian Design Rule 18? I thought ADR 18 said that speedos had to be accurate within 10% of the true speed of the vehicle.
Why do people want to drive at, or more than the speed limit. It's a limit, not target!
It's funny and sad to see all my fellow Australian's making referance to their, 1 of 7, states but use of geography or landmarks such as major cities.
eg
I come from New South Wales, that state with Sydney in it.....You know, the one that held the 2000 Olympic games......no not Greece.....Australia, the big landmass in the southern hemisphere.
Oh for gods sake, we are 12049 km's South West of America.
Whats sad about it is that many of our international friends have very simple and sterotypical views and limited knowlege of our wonderful country.
Sure we are happy and very friendly people, but let me give you a hint. Koalas live in the wilderness, they are not poisonous, and many of us only see them in Zoos. There is no such thing as drop bears, i could count on my fingers, if i done the research, the people that have wrestled a crocodile and survived. The largest possible majority of the population lives on the southern seaboard in major cities and works in service industries such as accounting and management.
And most of all we DO NOT drink Fosters.
Alas, we are friendly, but dont be suprised when you step off your international flight and find yourself in a jungle of 3 million people surrounded with sky-scrapers rather then wild animals, because the best most of us see of nature is our front lawn and maybe our pet dog or cat.
Since I saw a joke here I will assume it is allowed.
A farmer was stopped by a cop for speeding. While getting the ticket the cop kept swinging a flies. The farmer said "Those are circle flies."
The cop asks, "What are circle flies?" The farmer answered they are always circling around the tail end of a horse. The cop then asked, "Did you call me an a$$hole?" The farmer said, "No but you just can't fool them flies."
That reminds me and old joke:
It's easy to prove that the probabilty of a crash increases with the time you spend in the road, so, the faster you drive, less time spend in the road, less accidents you would have.
PS: sorry for my english
as opposed to the current system of selective enforcement.
Besides, I figure 20% of all drivers are ticket-proof because they are cops, judges, politicians, or related to same. I'd like to see some of those arrogant snots live the same way everybody else does.
If every single speeder got a ticket today, the revolution would begin tomorrow.
Your fuel economy is best when your engine turns at the lowest rpm it can operate in your highest gear. Optimum power is basically irrelevant as far as fuel economy goes.
To keep moving, your car has to fight its internal friction, tire friction and deformation, and the wind resistance. Of those, internal friction is mostly a constant, tire resistance is mostly linear, and wind resistance is cubic. That is, roughly speaking, F = AV^3, or Force = (total surface Area) X (velocity cubed). At highway speeds, velocity is all that matters.
The actual formula is more complicated, using the integral of the change in the angle your car forces air to take as it passes over each area times that area, but it's dominated by your car's profile and the velocity.
Changing from velocity (x) to velocity (x - 5) near the speed limit results in about a 3% fuel savings.
Me, I just like to drive fast sometimes. If you do, too, don't kid yourself that it's for your engine's sake.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Only works with programs which can read the file. Its vary obiviously (both documents encoded in same file).
What is the logic of stopping on a red light if there is no one coming?
What is the logic of stopping on a stop sign if there is no one coming?
The answer: places that could have an yield sign or a yellow-flashing light have stop signs and red lights so the government can make a quick buck.
Man, the yellow light time has diminished from 20s to 5-10s all over my town. This really pisses me off.
So, IMHO, red lights shouldn't be mandatory (they should be like yield signs: you must yield to someone in the rest of the crossing, but not stop if there is nobody there.)
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
1st week: Speedcam painted over with black spray paint. 2nd week:Cam away for cleaning/repairs 3rd week:Someone had punched the lens, possibly with a hammer... 4th week:Cam away for cleaning/repairs 5th week:Cam away for cleaning/repairs 6th week:Cam returns, after 2 days, it is found staring straight onto a barn....yes, someone had brought a really powerful vehicle, possibly a tractor or a truck, and bent the whole pole it was sitting on so it was watching a barn. 7th week: Repair. 8th week: Cam returns, but is found bowing in shame observing what could have been it's own feet if it had any feet, which a cam doesnt have. 9th week: The cam is hauled off, possibly to a less hostile location, if it had been a living creature i know it would have cried as it's torn from its only friend; The barn. Sense moral:People may very well drive legal speed, but they dont wanna be watched doing it, just as they dont want to be watched going number 2 or polishing the gherkin. A bit of direct action is all it takes to send a message!
Yep, it's the lowest common denominator approach.
In the UK our quoted braking distances for various speeds are still based on a Ford Anglia, a car with drum brakes. It's obviously a worst case scenario approach.
A modern car with full disc brakes and ABS would perform much better.
The parent is almost right, but mainly because for residential roads "everybody is travelling at the same speed" means choosing a speed limit that pedestrians and cyclists can manage.
So this really means "everybody is travelling at walking pace" which would slow down the traffic and make collisions completely avoidable.
...that seems to verify this thought. Here
is just plain difficult if they artificially slow the traffic to 40km/h in a Highway, just for the revenue. You come at 65-75km/h (below the 80km/h limit) and then bam! a 40km/h sign and a camera.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
"Well, what do you do with a six foot asshole?" /. slashdot users!
you put a picture of it on the web and allure
Millions of lost revenue from faulty speed cameras
Bertrand Meyer
Sat, 01 May 2004 14:44:42 +0200
Given the attention this story has been commanding in Australia, I was surprised to find no record in RISKS. The country is proud of its strictness in enforcing speed rules, sometimes fining motorists for driving one kilometer above the posted limit (however absurd that sounds). The state of Victoria has numerous speed cameras. Last year their accuracy was questioned after reports that a truck with a maximum speed of 140 km/h was caught traveling at 164 km/h, and other similar incidents. After the first such report the Assistant Commissioner said (Melbourne Age, 11 Nov 2003):
but he later had to change to: The state government then ordered tests of all the cameras in the system, and had to suspend fines from all fixed cameras. According to the Age of 29 April 2004, the problems were supposed to "take six weeks to fix" but: More than 40,000 fines notified to motorists have been suspended until the results are in. This represents a total sum of over six million Australian dollars.For details:
http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/04/29/108322451 6563.html
(30 Apr 2004)
http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/04/28/108310355 1024.html
(29 Apr 2004)
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/10/10683 29487082.html?from=storyrhs
(11 Nov 2003)
Bertrand Meyer
ETH Zurich / Eiffel Software
http://www.se.inf.ethz.ch/ -- http://www.eiffel.com/
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
There is almost no circumstance in which wearing a seat belt is more hazardous than not wearing one: it's a poor example. Despite movie scenes of people getting caught in seat belts and needing to be rescued by heroes as the car is about to explode, it just doesn't happen in real life.
Getting "thrown free of the car" means getting hurled through the window at 50 miles an hour, breaking bones cutting you with the glass shards, then tumbling to a stop on the pavement. It's bad for you.
Please don't use that example: it encourages unsafe behavior that wastes lives and money trying to repair people who need not have been hurt, or hurt to anywhere near that extent.
That is why it is so important to have a MD5 attached to your sig!
~~~Please pass the salt, I hate unsalted MD5s
if you took this to court and didn't have a sample picture for evidence the case would be thrown out... so media, if you are going to try and present me with the case, how about a god damn sample picture. this is the internet... if it would be too hard to incorporate into your print media, well, i think that's saying something about your print media.
I'm not familiar with Australian law, but lots of laws have the phrase "beyond reasonable doubt" plastered over them in the UK.
Just because someone can't _prove_ MD5 is secure wouldn't discount its use as proof, if breaking it is possible, but widely regarded as impractical.
Of course, given that the side which supplies the image also supplies the MD5 hash, anyone with access to all parts of the speed camera system could fake an image with a genuine MD5 hash without breaking MD5. Of course, the onus would be on the offence to prove that the entire system is "reasonably" secure, but I wouldn't expect that to be too hard if it has sufficient checks and balance-type controls.
The folks at Top Gear did a test of a speed camera in the UK. They needed a car going ~140mph in order for the camera not to successfully get the picture, if I remember right.
Speed doesn't kill. Inappropriate speed does not kill. Deceleration kills.
- If you hash the digital photo and then print the hash on the photo don't you change the hash?
- Does the system only take into account the pixels around the place the hash will be printed (i.e. excluse a corner)?
- What stops someone just making a new hash after a photo has been doctored? Maybe a HMAC with a private key? If so how is the key secret from those likely to doctor photos?
Seems to me there are better questions than the integrity of MD5.yes there is a very good reason. you hit someone at 30mph, there's an 80% chance they'll live. You hit them at 40mph, theres an 80% chance they'll die.
In the US, the speed limit is a legal UPPER limit, not lower.
(Don't be fooled by normal driving habits of the residents.)
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
Usually a lot of systems that are supposed to have extra security features are plagued by the fact that the people who made them aren't experts in security. It's easy to slap on some hash algorithm to a photo after it has been taken to "verify" it, and to the average person that would seem "secure." The problem I've noticed is that it actually takes a good amount of experience in security/cryptography to actually design something that is secure, because someone with more knowledge than the designer could easily break the system.. Like modifying the photo and regenerating the MD5 hash.
Queensland is somewhat better because police are required to have a sign out saying that there are speed cameras in use, however this sign is usually conveniently placed behind a bush or behind the car with the camera in it. Queensland is also better off because the police do not rely so heavily on the revenue that their cameras drum up, it seems at times the only thing paying for Melbournes police is speeding offiences.
One thing is certain, these cameras do not save any lives. I remember clearly once in high school a Policeman came to give a talk on vehicle safety he showed us a big graph with a stedily declining death rate over the years, he pointed out the huge drop after the introduction of seat bealts, then one after they banned drink driving, and a smaller drop after the introduction of airbags. My hand immediently shot up and I asked him when speed cameras were introduced, my teachers just laughed and he never answered the question.
I see people go through the most insane and convoluted justifications for why something preventing them from speeding is bad.
Why on earth just not speed? I've never gotten a ticket in my life or worried about "sneaky cops" or "rigged cameras". I use the simple expedient of not speeding. It's not that big a deal. If you're doing 85 mph in a 70 zone, for example, you're getting there 21% faster -- big deal. In exchange, you risk the lives and property of others, your own life and property (which, I guess, is up to you to do if you want), and have to worry about speed traps constantly.
I know, I know. You're a "skilled driver", and the speed doesn't affect you at all. Everyone's a "skilled driver" in their own perception. When you hit someone, it still jacks the impact damage way up.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
1- If it really is an emergency enough for the doctor to HAVE TO speed, then he won't mind risking (paying) the ticket. If paying the ticket isn't worth it, then it wasn't a real emergency.
2- "the cop, having heard that old story a dozen times, not believing"
That's why I never want to be a policeman. Who wants a job where you have to listen to people lie to you all day long to avoid the consequences they deserve. Being a college teacher and hearing the lame excuses from my students was bad enough.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
That these speed cameras have been in use for fifteen years.
I'd be very willing to bet the technology has made its way across the pacific to the United States. So all those who like to juice it a little, keep this article handy.
WRT speed killing people if governments diverted revenue from speeding tickets into road repair I wouldn't have an issue with it. But our legislators divert collected fines to their own pet projects.
Until the governments financial house is in order, I say no to speed cameras. Let the police focus on more egregious behavior like red light running, stop sign running, failure to allow merge, etc. instead of going after easy money. And in the case of red light cameras, no monkeying with yellow light times to drive up revenue.
FWIW I agree. The corrector is a div.
I have a pysics teacher (also in WA) that drives as fast as he wants. Then when he goes to court for the speeding tickets he dazzles the judge with science and calculus until the ticket gets dropped.
Does this involved FTL? (faster-than-light)
I have a friend that has gotten out of each of his tickets from cameras. When he shows up to court - as his right - he asks to face his accuser. The court is unable to do this - so case is dismissed. He is a former member of law enforcement and knew the loop hole...and subsequently abused it. I do not know if he is still doing this, but I do remember him doing this many times over...I think more just to prove a point to the courts, and to be an ass
Just taking it one beer at a time...
I wonder if Australian police are as (radar gun) trigger happy as they are in certain parts of the U.S.
I wonder if Australians drive as fast in as people do in certain parts of the U.S.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
I wonder if Australian police are as (radar gun) trigger happy as they are in certain parts of the U.S. Only if they spent to much of the petty cash on donuts.
maybe we should all go back to driving model T's right? The speed limit is not a dividing line that separates "good" people from "bad", or "safe" from "unsafe" for that matter. If you spend all your time checking your speed and looking for speed limit signs, and cursing every one around you who doesn't then it is probably you who is the "unsafe" driver. Lighten up a little, once the "law" is omnipresent you WILL find your self on the "wrong" side of it.
Slightly off-topic, perhaps, but since any speeding related story ends up in a debate over the virtues of the system, let me suggest a couple reasons for it. First, it's not uncommon in the US for criminals wanted on other charges to be caught on traffic violations. If you consider that the average citizen is pulled over once every five years (I just made that up) then traffic violations allows law enforcement to keep tabs on citizens without over more compulsory or invasive means. Second, whether we pay in taxes or tickets, law enforcement agencies need funding. Tickets are just a voluntary form of funding. Don't want to finance your local police dept? Don't speed. Third, the ultimate cost of a ticket (ticket amt. + increased insurance + time wasted) may be worth the time you saved in speeding. Probably not, but then again you may get paid a lot more hourly than I do.
On Massachusetts highways, I find that if I drive less than 75mph, I don't keep up with the flow of traffic. Somehow the traffic flow finds its own safe speed, which is definitely not 55 (or 65).
It helps that the police don't enforce the limit too strictly; I drove 80mph past troopers chilling in speed traps many times, and they just didn't care. I hope they are waiting for the assholes that tailgate and weave at 110mph.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
A police officer just needs to say they saw you speeding, and that's enough for a judge to find you guilty of a traffic violation. If you say "prove it", you'll just get laughed at. Speeding fines have been dished out for almost a century without officers being able to prove a thing. In this case, you can just assume the camera wasn't tampered with by some person who has nothing better to do than fabricate flawless photos of your car speeding and use a supercomputer to match the MD5 hash, while still producing a jpeg image which has no superfluous random data in the comments or at the end of the file, because 99.99999% of the time the photo will be authentic and it's just a traffic violation.
I never understood why speeding was a crime or why we have laws that establish speed limits.
Giving someone a ticket for speeding is like giving someone a ticket for having a razor blade because they might slit their wrists with it. In my view, its not a crime until you crash, damaging property, or cause someone bodily harm.
I want to live in a society where laws are based on what you do and not what MIGHT happen out of it. I think it imposes on our liberty and freedom to have laws which attempt to protect us from ourselves or predict what might occur to others based on actions.
Seriously- car accidents still happen without speeding. So lets just give people a ticket when they get into a car because they might just have an accident. I speed daily, and knock on wood, there have been 0 accidents as a result. By contrast, my wife was hit in a parking lot by someone backing out and not looking.
The country I want to live in doesn't have laws against drugs. It doesn't has speeding laws. It doesn't meddle in your personal affairs. But if you in any way tread on someone elses freedom, that is when you pay the fines and do the jail time.
So for instance, if you were to block the entrance to an abortion clinic, you would go to jail. If you were a member of congress and attempt to pass a law that say, for example, gives the government the right to take someones property- this would be a federal crime and they'd march right into congress and drag you to jail. If you are blocking the fast lane on the freeway, you should be pulled over an ticketed for not yielding to faster traffic- there should be cameras that catch that!
Get the jist? Its respect others' rights. If we had a society that did this, I'd be a very happy man. As its stands today, we have religious fanatics trying to tell everyone what to do and senators attempting to legislate common sense.
I sometimes wish there was a western world to escape to, like the puritans and early settlers did. Don't tread on me. That has been forgotton.
Often it's not the speed that's the problem, it's people leaving inadequate distance between their car and other people's cars. This especially applies to vehicles which are less maneuverable, like SUVs.
Texas is full of people who think it's OK to tailgate at 65mph in an SUV. I've even seen people tailgate 18 wheeler trucks at that speed.
You also see a lot of abandoned vehicles at the side of the road, and a lot of accidents. Go figure.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
This is part of the principles surrounding why we fought the British in the first place.
Nobles aren't "more equal" and the government does not derive its authority from the king, whose authority is claimed to be a divine right. Astute observers will note that the British never quite fixed this problem with a proper constitution -- notice Blair's recent rather single-handed crackdown on clerics -- what would be a constitutionally protected right in the U.S.. I can't say I blame his impulses, but as a libertarian I have problems with it. I don't know what the tax exempt status of religious institutions is in the UK, but it strikes me that a better tool would be to retroactively strip tax exempt status from any religious group advocating political goals, seize their assets on tax grounds and deport their leadership for tax evasion. Same end result, but this way you can still say whatever you want provided you're not relying on the government to pay for it through tax exemption.
Well, duh. It's Florida, you're supposed to enforce justice yourself by shooting back. Quote:
So long as America keeps passing dumb laws like that, what do you expect the police to do? They won't be able to prosecute the guy for having the gun, or even for firing it. Analysing ballistics information to try to get a match is expensive, and nobody was even injured, so it's not worth spending the money.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
There are a few towns here in South Carolina that their sole source of revenue is speeding tickets. Springdale, South Congaree, Elgin, and several others WILL give you a ticket for as little as 2mph over the speed limit. The judges will NOT reduce the fine either. I wish we could argue the authenticity of a camera photo. Unfortunately, judges usually take the word of cops over civilians.
I'm a Canadian here and I was in Australia (NSW) last year around this time. One of the things that I definately noticed was that they seemed to be a fair bit nicer on the traffic issues:
Traffic camera had 3 warning signs before you came up on them. Slow down for that third sign buddy!
Traffic cops were supposedly not allowed to "hide" but rather be in a non-concealed place.
Rather than accumulating points are you do here, you start with points (12 I think) and lose them depending on the severity of an infraction.
Aussies seemed to be a bit more aware of what they're politicians were into as well, not sure if they had any more control over it, but more awareness.
p.s. For those considering holidays Aus is a beautiful place to visit once you get out of the cities (and even within).
I have heard of American courts ruling that speed limits that were routinely not enforced were no longer valid and could not be selectivly enforced(but this was a long time ago.
In Germany many driving fines (if not all) are a percentage of the violators income based on how important the infraction is. A logical penalty that makes a fine as much of a deterant to higher income as lower income. Drivers licenses are also more expensive and can be lost easier in Germany.
"He's a real midnight golfer"
The problem with this argument is that a "stable, well maintained car with good tires" may be plenty safer to drive at 85 MPH, in terms of your ability to handle the car. But, it does not matter how stable your car is, or what condition your tires are in, if a little old lady comes out of a blind intersection in front of you; then it's mostly down to reaction time - what kind of car you're driving is largely irrelevant.
:)
Every car has limits, but every driver has limits too. Most anyone could drive a well tuned car at insane speeds around a closed circuit, and this tends to make us overestimate our own limits. Driving on public roads has really very little to do with your ability to handle an automobile, and more with your ability to deal with the unexpected. (And you have a lot more time to deal with the unexpected at 55 MPH than at 85.
You can argue that a good driver in a good car can get out of a tight spot much more readily than in a poor car, but then you can argue that, again in terms of driving on a public road, a "good" driver will avoid the tight spot to begin with.
Now, that said, there are certainly roads around here where I think 85 would be a perfectly acceptable speed limit, especially since average traffic speeds rarely fall below that anyway. The problem is that speed limits are generally set by politicians instead of traffic engineers. The problem with ignoring speed limits is that then the speed limit is STILL not being set by traffic engineers, but by the general public, and that's even scarier.
I agree. The problem in TFA appears that the government agency couldn't find an expert to explain why the MD5 hash on the photo made the photo authentic. The title should not be "in Doubt Because of MD5" since that leads people to believe that a SHA-256 hash would've stood up in court.
Ever have a deer run in front of your car? I wouldn't want to hit one at 85mph. Over 70% of vehicle deaths are caused from unimpaired drivers. The problem is that human beings are generally incapable of driving automobiles. Neither 55 or 85 is safe, but you're going to get a lot less in a slower collision.
There's a popular myth that speed cameras won't get you if you're going fast enough, because the electronics won't react in time to measure the speed and snap the picture. This is, in fact, true.
But you need a car with some cojones. A driver for BBC's Top Gear got by a camera undetected with a TVR Tuscan S doing 171 mph. Any slower than that and you probably won't make it.
Animal rights activists must love you, because you are very likely to kill yourself swerving into a deer. We have deer in our neighborhood and have had a few drivers severely injured hitting deer at 35 - 40 mph.
A lab tech at my university once went into a big lecture, in a voice closely resembling Boomhauer from "King of the Hill", about animals you should and should not swerve or break for:
Avoid: Deer, cattle, pigs, your neighbor's children..
OK: Everyhing else.
"You get that pig, I tell you what, he get up under your car, un humm, and wham! I tell you that pig'll flip yer car uh huh you get flipped and Bam! I tell ya that pig'll get right up under your car and Boom!"
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
AND my taint.
I've also heard that leaving your windows open on the highway going moderate speeds (~60mph) is about the same as having your air conditioning running full blast, gas-wise.
Not true, or at least, not for most cars. The AC takes 2-4mpg, and having the windows all open takes off less than 1mpg, unless you go really fast. There's not that much drag.
Think of sticking your hand out the car window a few inches -- you can "fly" it, right? But you can't do that at all inside the car with the air coming through the open windows.
Put another way: the driver can feel when the AC is on, having to compensate with the accelerator. The driver doesn't notice the windows being down at all. What if only one side were open? You'd have to compensate with the steering.
sigs, as if you care.
Given that most people speed, you are actually creating more peril for the average driver than someone going 85.
Going slower than the general flow of traffic creates an impediment to other drivers, who then must take action to pass you - it is at these moments that the chances of an accident goes up (if for example someone going to pass does not notice a car beside them).
When young I was in a traffic saftey class and they put forth the viewpoint that traffic flow is like water - you do not want to be the stick in the mud creating ripples.
Speeding beyond your abilities or going much faster than prevailing traffic is qually dangerous of course. But if everyone is doing 80 or 85 you are really better off doing that - if in fact traffic saftey is a primary goal instead of self-rightously following a law you have taken it on yourself to enforce.
In fact people taking it on themselves to block traffic they perceive as going "to fast" has led to laws in Colorado that fine you if you are in the left lane and not passing - even if you are going the speed limit. This helps prevent road rage.
I don't have problems with tickets either because I generally go the same speed as other cars or a bit faster when there are cars around. And I get there 15% faster (which over the course of a few hundred miles on road trips adds up). And I am not creating a problem for other drivers, so really why not get with the program and drive like the rest of the country?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
First, the amount of gas you waste is highly correlated to how often you brake. (This includes engine braking.) If you drive in a style that requires less braking, you will use less gas.
Next, the fewer revolutions your engine performs, the less gas you will use. A typical internal combustion engine is 30% efficient, meaning 70% of the energy in gas directly into heat. This indicates that the actual propulsion of the car is minor compared to the turning of the engine. Therefore, getting from A to B with the fewest engine revolutions tends to save gas. That means (1) idle the engine by standing on the clutch whenever that is practical (eg. going down a long hill), and (2) use the highest gear that can give you the speed/acceleration you want. #2 needs some qualification: I'm no expert, but I suspect that being in too high a gear will put you low on your engine's torque curve, and will actually harm efficiency.
Also, from experience, when I have a hole in my muffler, I get astonishing gas mileage (eg. 52 mpg in a '95 Civic DX). I suspect that is mostly because the exhaust flow improves, but I like to think it's also partly because it makes me drive in a style that minimizes engine noise, and that this corresponds to fuel efficiency.
Does anyone else have any hints?
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
The Speed Limit is designed to be a universally safe speed. This includes a half-blind old person driving a poorly maintained SUV during heavy traffic. It is not an actual "limit" on the safest speed.
Actually, it is. I think you need to think about tractor-trailer trucks when thinking about safe speed limits. Think in terms of slowing down for exits, turning on curves in the highway, etc. Now consider that most people need to be doing about the same speed as those trucks for traffic to flow smoothly and safely.
Also, on a well-maintained highway, at a time when there is little or no other traffic, with a good driver and a well maintained vehicle, the fact that a person is driving 85 in a 55 does not necessarily mean that he is presenting an unreasonable risk to himself or others.
Yes it probably does, just not right at that second. A driver who drives like that is in the habit of driving like that and will do so in heavier traffic. I know because I and many of my friends are or have been drivers like that. I'm older and wiser now that I've suffered economic consequences for that kind of driving.
Speed raises the lethality of an accident, and it's unexpected speed differences that cause most accidents and traffic jams on the highway. If the flow of traffic is 70 in a 55 (as is common where I live), then your person driving 85 in a 55 is driving 15 MPH faster than every car around him. This kind of driver is always an unsafe driver unless he has a clear lane in front of him. Otherwise, he'll mostly likely zip around other cars or tailgate rather than slow down and keep a respectable distance.
Speaking of unsafe drivers, let me use an experience of my own as an example for a little bit. Back in May of this year, I got in an accident that lost me a good car that I'd intended to keep for several more years. This accident was due to me speeding and being unable to react properly to an unattentive idiot driver on the road.
I was driving 75 in a 55 in the leftmost lane when the flow of traffic was 70. As I'm going south on this highway, there's an on-ramp which enters from the left side and continues as the new leftmost lane. Most people join the highway at around 45-55 and speed up until they can safely get over. About 1/4 mile after this on-ramp is an exit on the right side. In the mornings when the highway that crosses the one I drive gets backed up, people like to get onto the southbound highway and cross over the exit.
So, I'm driving along and this white van comes up from the on ramp going 45 (30 MPH slower than me). Before the on ramp fully joins the highway, he crosses the solid lines without signaling directly in front of me only two car lengths away. There's a car on the right side of me, and I do not have sufficient room to brake. My only option is to swerve into the lane he just left.
Now had I been going 65 or even 70, I would not have lost control. However, because of my speed, I lost traction, spun out, and totalled my car on the side wall of the bridge. Fortunately, no one was injured, but now I'm out $9000 after insurance and a new used car. I couldn't afford the car I'd been saving for, and now I'm going to be driving this one instead for several years.
The moral of this story is that if I'd been following the speed limit more closely, I would not have lost my car to the poor driving skills of another person. Driving slower gives you more time to react to other drivers. You never know when some idiot is going to enter the road and become a problem for you. Safe driving means assuming that that could happen at any time.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Never speed up. If you speed up when someone is riding you, then you will have someone riding your bumper at higher speeds.
Slow down and make them pass you.
If slamming on your brakes is a good way to beat the system.
Never confuse volume with power.
The point I see that you've made is driving slow causes more accidents. You said that the rest of traffic was driving at 15 miles above the speed limit, but no accidents happened, yet a driver comes onto the freeway at only 10 miles below the speed limit and he caused you to get in an accident. Maybe if you had of been paying more attention and realized there was an onramp next to you with cars traveling 30 miles an hour slower than you, you would have either got in the right lane or slowed down before the oncomers physically had a chance to merge.
This is just one of the many things you mentioned that had more to do with you crashing than your speeding did. Yah, if you happened to be driving 30 mph slower in that paticular instance, you wouldn't have had to swerve out of the way of that car, but there's a good chance someone would have crashed because you were going so much slower than traffic, plus what if the guy had of got on the freeway at 15mph when you were traveling 45? You'd still have had a good chance of hitting him.
Sure, the slower you drive, the more time you think you have to react, but hey, if thats the way you're thinking, you have an infinite time to react to peoples driving if you stay at home. Driving is about a lot more than reaction time, its about being aware of all the cars around you and how they're driving, having an escape route in case someone does something dumb where you need to get out of the way, and knowing the limitations of the vehicle you're driving.
Like another poster said, it is possible to carefully craft two files that have the same MD5 sum. This is true of ANY hash. The fact that you can do this with MD5 in no way means there is something wrong with MD5.
What is practically impossible is generating a file with the same MD5 hash as another already existing file.
And yes, if you can doctor the photo you can doctor the hash. As another poster said, to certifiy authenticity you need the camera to sign the photo+hash using a private key that is inaccessible to the cops.
Problem with the US is that nobody wants to pay taxes.
..
I would pay an extra $25/month.
Then, instead of tickets State Troopers deal out "on the spot" punsihment.
Speeding: Trooper gives violator one good punch in the gut for every 5mph over.
Wreakless Driving: A Bitch Slapping
Improper passing: One shot to the face.
and so on
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
Beat your red light ticket here
Good site for beating speeding tickets here
Other helpful links here
HAHAHA! If I only wasn't an AC and had mod points! :)
You are wrong in many levels out of ignorance. Thats ok, I will educate you:
Tire blowout: slowly decelerate the vehicle and come to a stop. You will have decreased braking and turning ability but otherwise the car is safe and manuverable. This is why you only drive fast on a straight away.
Pot hole: you may rip off a wheel but if you don't panic you should be ok. You will probably pop a tire or bend a rim, neither of those are catastrophic. If you do loose your entire wheel you are still probably ok. Similiar to the situation above, for instance: car and driver was driving 180 mphs on the autobahn and had an entire wheel hub fall off. They stopped slowly and pulled over to the side of the road. No injuries.
Rabbit: Who in this world would risk their lives to avoid hitting a rabbit?!?!?! You swerve to avoid animals that can *kill you* like deer, antelope, or horse, not a mouse or rabbit. A dog will severely damage your car but will probably not make you go out of control.
Just because you don't understand how to drive does not mean I am not a superior driver.
It's amusing and sad though to watch you jump to the defense of the other driver and put as much blame on me as possible to avoid having to admit that driving too fast might be dangerous to yourself and to other people.
I'm well aware of the on-ramp and how people often like to cheat on it. It was on my way to work after all. I was watching the guy as he came up the ramp; that's how come I didn't rear end him. However, I had never seen someone from that ramp so recklessly attempt a lane change without looking, without signaling, without waiting for the lanes to merge together, and without attempting to match highway speeds before cutting someone off like that. That's was my first point: You never know when someone's going to drive like an idiot.
My second point was that if I had been going a little slower I would not have lost traction. I would have been able to dodge at a better angle and with less momentum trying to keep me going forward thus overcoming my tires' coefficient of friction. That's just physics. A mere 5-10 MPH slower (still in the flow of traffic) would have sufficed.
Your absurd argument about 45 MPH vs 15 MPH show a lack of common sense. If it had been those speeds at that distance, I would've just slammed on my brakes in time. I never said anything about going as slow as the van driver. I just said that I pushed my car beyond its limit to deal with an impossible to anticipate emergency situation. This happened because I didn't know what its limit was and I assumed too much about the competence of the driver of the van.
Driving is about a lot more than reaction time, its about being aware of all the cars around you and how they're driving, having an escape route in case someone does something dumb where you need to get out of the way, and knowing the limitations of the vehicle you're driving.
Exactly! When have you tested your car's traction while making a sudden, unplanned lane change at 75 MPH? Have you practiced to see what your car is capable of in any emergency at highway speeds? Have you put your life at risk to see what you're capable of in a pinch? Are your tires at the same tread level they were at when you last tested? If not, then quit assuming that your car is some sort of magical Formula-1 racing machine and drive with a reasonable error tolerance. Don't assume that what your car is capable of in a parking lot or a country road is what your car is capable of on a highway. I made that mistake, and I paid for my overconfidence.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
A point that has been made repeatedly here in the UK, which will hopefully sometime start to sink in, is that the effect static cameras actually have on fatality rates is to push them up, not down.
The excuse in the UK is that cameras are traditionally placed in accident blackspots. In most cases this could be true: two that I pass through on my commute are placed at places where you could easily cause a bad accident if you came down the road too fast, as you have cars exiting estates from behind houses and hedgerows, into a dual-carriageway.
Thing is though, the moment I come up to these cameras, my first reaction is to look down to check that I'm on or under the limit, and most of my concentration effort while I'm in the danger zone is on my speedometer. This is exactly what I shouldn't be doing: I should be watching the road for cars exiting the estate into my path! But the camera is on a downhill, so I ahve to stay on the brakes and watch my speed. So consequently the potential for an accident is even greater now!
Cops in the US are quite happy to sit under bridges with their lights off at night. I'm sure that's illegal in most jurisdicitons, and the ticket would likely be thrown out.
Although to return to your point, it catches people driving without due care, since they'll probably not observe that the officer wasn't following procedure.
where they have been around about 1 year. They are part of a succesful attempt (that is, out of Corsica) by the government to bring people to reason regarding driving. But corsicans just shoot them with rifles! And yes, they get away with it, the island being mountaineous and its people observing omerta.
Let's say that of that money, 8 billion is potentially reclaimable. Because of normal Civil Service accounting, money that's been allocated generally can't carry over between years, but I would say that in a case like this, it would be reasonable enough for Congress to pass some exception to allow the DoD to keep whatever it reclaimed.
That's not a vast amount, in comparison to current operations, but would likely be enough to hold some bases open until the exceptional expenses of current operations declined.
To the best of my knowledge, this avenue isn't even on the cards. Sure, the DoD doesn't say everything it's doing, but given that their finances have been under scrutiny in the past, a solid bit of reclamation would be good publicity they could do with.
However, from all that I've been able to see, the DoD is letting the money go. They seem to be uninterested in reclaiming it. If 8 billion can so easily be cast aside, then I do have to wonder how much money it would take before they'd consider it a really serious problem.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Aussie speed cameras have a far more obvious flaw than the MD5 thing. They only take one photograph, so there is no way to independently measure the speed that the car was travelling. In the UK, speed cameras take two pictures, and the roads have fixed calibration markings painted on them in front of the camera. It's a simple matter to corroborate the speed that the camera says you were doing by simply measuring the distance the car has travelled between the two pictures (presumably the timing of the pictures is also independently verifiable). I believe the UK introduced this after a case was succesfully beaten by someone claiming that a single photograph could not prove he was speeding, as the calibration of the camera was not verifiable. I'm surprised that no-one has tried this defence in Australia.
+1 is too high for this drivel
On the size of your car and the size of the moose you may be able to make it under. Geo metro?
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
My driving instrutor said the same about pedestrians if they weren't in the crosswalk.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Hi All,
The number of posts throwing around terms like "safe", "dangerous", "risk" and "hazard" does not really surprise me - society at large do this with no real understanding or definitions of the terms.
Safe is an acceptable level of risk, but acceptable to whom? There is always a level of risk in any activity and zero risk is impossible. There is a chance (albeit vanishing small) that the roof above your head will collapse and kill you. The term "hazard" refers to the presence of a potentially damaging energy source, and may be chemical, electrical, physical, etc. A lot of argument occurs around what constitutes "potentially damaging", although people almost never realise this is what they are arguing. What is "damaging" anyway?
Safety is a science, not a human behavioural problem, to spite many companies putting there OHS personnel in the HR or insurance department. "Unsafe" behaviour does not injure, harm or kill anyone. Inevitably there is an energy source that changes the state of the target; this is physical fact that cannot be denied.
In the case of a car there is kinetic energy when the car is in motion. Combined with the mass of the car and we have an amount of energy that must be dissipated during a crash. It may be converted to heat in the breaks, or peel rubber of the tyres, of deform the body/chassis of the car, or absorbed by the occupants. The latter is to be prevented where ever possible and car companies spend billions to try and ensure this, as do road engineers. Driving faster means more energy and more damage in a crash situation.
This does not mean that people do not drive near the limits of their abilities, or inattentiveness is not a contributing factor. People are ultimately to blame in any accident, but this does not help us to prevent them. Many studies have been done on the reliability of humans - and we are not that reliable. It is far better to engineer the risks out of the equation where possible - these have a much higher rate of success.
Collapsible steering columns, radial tyres, bumper bars, seat belts, air bags, etc have had a far greater effect on safety than advertisement asking people to "be careful" will ever have.
I don't make predictions, and I never will.
Two comments after reading the posts:
On the utility of speec cameras:
On the Spit Bridge in Sydney's North a speed camera was installed to trap motorists speeding up a winding stretch of road. I remember riding my bike down to watch it shortly after is was installed and the flash was going off like a disco strobe - I am sure it bagged at least $50k that night alone!
Anyway after a few years it was found that the accident rate had increased after the camera was installed! It turns out that motorists were slowing to well below the speed limit as they went past the camera then accelerating back up to the speed limit up a steep winding road, thus causing accidents (especially in the wet).
So here we had irrefutable evidence that a fixed speed camera was increasing the accident rate - and what did the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) do about it?
Well they were drunk on the revenue weren't they and there was no way they were going to shut down such a great profit centre, so they just put another camera further up the hill.
Now the peak-hour traffic crawl through this area at 40kph and the traffic snarl is twice as bad as it ever was - congratulations RTA!
On the waste of police resources collecting fines for the governement:
I am reminded of an urbam myth which I think is worth repeating here. A guy is lying in bed watching TV when he hears the sounds of an intruder outside trying to break into his garage. He rings the police only to be told "we are too busy to attend right now, we'll be over as soon as we can". Shortly after the intruder starts to break into his house. He rings back the police and says to them "No need to come around any more, I've just shot the intruder and he is lyind dead on the front lawn". Sure enouch the police are there in minutes and arrest the intruder in the act. Nontheless a very angry Seargant confronts the guy and says "I thought you said you had shot him dead!" to which the guy retorts "I thought you said you were busy"...
The states of Australia:
South Australia
Victoria
New South Wales
Tasmania
Queensland
Western Australia
And the Territories:
Northern Territory
ACT (Australian Captial Territory.)
In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
Until he/she has a tyre blowout
Prithee, dyvulge unto us audiense, watt mannere of tyre this be, whether ye olde saxone tyre or rather yon scots tyre, or mayhaps off clime unknoan, that doth as thou sayest "blowout".
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Ive just been sent my third letter regarding a speeding fine that doesnt belong to me. It was in a car Ive never driven, on a road Ive never used, in a suburb I dont know at a time I would of been asleep in bed.
With each infringement notice you receive, you get a statutory declaration form to fill out if you were not the driver at the time. All you need to supply is the name, licence number or residential address of who you would like to blame. So, this means you can palm off a fine to anyone you know, and theres little they can do about it.
Ive tried three times now to prove it wasnt me, but how can I? Apparently, the owner of the car sold it to me, and said I owned it at the time of the fine. I rang the RTA (DMV) and now Im no longer listed as the owner, but im still listed as the driver at the time. I got a letter saying that the charge was dropped, and to accept the infringement bereaus apology for wasting my time. Cue to last night, and here is a big red letter saying I have unpaid fines in my name.
The problem is, I cannot find out who blamed me for the fine, because of our privacy act in australia. It stops the RTA giving me the information name/info of who did it without that persons permission, EVEN THOUGH they trust me enough (and therefore we know eachother) to drive their car at 5am in the goddamn morning on a weekday.
Speeding cameras do a fine job of catching speeders, but the crafty assholes just put in anyones information the stat. dec. form and get off scott free.
Ive also been at redlights when the car at the front of the queue has edged just beyond the line, and set the redlight camera off about 400 times in the 15 seconds hes been sitting there breaking the beams. Glad Im not that guy.
In New Zealand, where speed cameras are liberally used, the toll of dead and injured on the highways has been dropping more or less steadily ever since they were introduced. People do drive more slowly....and more of the arrive alive at their destinations. On a recent trip to Canada I was in a van where the driver was doing 140kph in the fast lane (on the 401 through southern Ontario ), putting a bandage on his strained knee....and drinking a beer. The camera wouldn't have done much about the bandage or the beer.....but at least he would have been driving slower......after the first 4 or 5 tickets anyway.
Only boring people are ever bored.
I'll start off by saying I don't drive (I'm old enough to get my L's but haven't gone for them yet)
It's suprising to see how many Australians are on Slashdot.
In the small town I live in (My parents are divorced, the towns they live in are right next to each other and probably consitute a total population of 5000 people), there are two roads which almost ALWAYS have a speed camera on them. One is a few kilometre stretch of wide, unstretched road, where it is easy to 'accidentally go over' for a short period of time - it's relatively empty, too.
The other camera is on a somewhat more major road, joining the two towns, and it is there almost every time we go past, and because that is atleast every week (on a wednesday, and at about 5 20 and 9 pm), even when it was pouring with Victoria's poor weather and hitting our coldest day in August. I think the 2nd camera is good though - people should NOT be speeding when it is quite obviously hazardouz conditions, and that road isnt very busy either.
and nothing more than a revenue tool used by propagandists whom wish to take a paid police officer out of the equation.
"tell us something we don't know."
I live in the ACT, and you see speed cameras EVERY SINGLE DAY here. So bad. . . >_
OK, so my question is, since the other driver CLEARLY made a highly illegal maneuver, why did you avoid him (since he was at fault, and the difference in your speed and his at collision point is CERTAIN to have been lower than the difference between your speed and the wall's)? Sure, it MAY have been worse overall (but I doubt it seriously), but you wouldn't have been out the insurance money, etc, etc. Not to mention my personal belief that idiots who make stupid driving maneuvers NEED to pay the price, which this driver clearly didn't!