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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.
If you're name is Amadou...
The Big Yuan - tracking mainland China
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.
.
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.
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.
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
Australia (and New South Wales, the state under consideration) has a network of fixed speed cameras.
;)
Probably not the best term to use, considering fixed can mean "rigged to not work properly", as in they'll report you as speeding when you aren't
Or Suzie Marie Peña.
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".
So *you're* that guy with that crappy '70 ford!
"Zero tolerance" is a bit of an exeggeration surely. I've been past that camera at slightly over the speedlimit and never had a ticket. I thought they were set to monitor only the top 10% of speeders or something.
While you are complaining, did you notice that the FA said that the harbour tunnel toll cameras hadn't been working for 3 years?
Zilch.
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
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
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.
I think anyone that wanted to fight it, easily could. Just grab a document saying speedo's can have a margin of error of 10%. They might have to provide evidence that their car is out by that much, but then you can just concede defeat and pay the damn fine.
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
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.
Slashdot has a policy of trying to keep an even allocation of stories per continent. Come on you Antarcticans, get up to some technological hijinx. You are ruining the numbers.
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
That's why there are so many penguin stories. It is to keep the Antarctican quota!
This is wrong, wrong, wrong! Privatising enforcement of the law is a TERRIBLE thing to do.
Do you think that's different in other countries? Well, it's probably unique that US policemen need up to a few hundred shots to kill their victims. In Austria (page is in German, sorry), one shot is usually enough (e.g., to "accidentally" kill the "putative drug dealer" Imre B).
Georg
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.
And most of them are really well sign posted with (normally at least 2) big signs before them saying "Speed camera ahead" and afterwards a big sign pointing out that your speed was just checked.
So if you get caught speeding by one of those cameras then you're an idiot.
Actually, I kind of like the idea that enforcement of the law can be, in some circumstances at least, automated. There would be very few cases where speeding can be justified and, assuming that all equipment is working properly, it's a binary test: either you were over the speed limit or you weren't. There's not a lot of grey area there. I know a lot of people complain about them with arguments about revenue raising, but I have no problems with them whatsoever.
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.
Obviously, you haven't played an online game before. Australia has superpower status. The slashdot admins can dis the Europeans without repercussions. But they'll get waxed bigtime if they cross the Australians.
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)
A "Current Affair" can be more accurately described as a "That guy's a welfare cheat, therefore all people on welfare are cheats"-type of infotainment show. I am more concerned at the lack of action from the RTA than the possibility that a precedent has or has not been set. Oh - The ABC reports on the issue, it must be true. http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200508/s14344 78.htm
-----
I haven't been caught by a speed camera since I sold my car.
Driving slow sucks, it's boring and takes too long. I like hearing my tires squeal as I go around turns and my engine roar as I go down a straightaway...Best of all, I love the looks of fear on the pedestrian faces.
No offense to Aussies, but it's not exactly a "major" nation, is it?
This is what we've been trying to tell the world for years. Nobody listens.
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
On the 401, you can get a ticket for doing the speed limit.
rewriting history since 2109
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>
Note: I said that it was a binary test asssuming all the equipment was working.
I actually have faith in our legal and policing system not to introduce corruption into something as simple as speeding fines, i.e. I wouldn't expect the police to invent speeding tickets. I know there are plenty of instances of corruption, even in Australia, but I've never heard of speeding tickets simply being invented. And it's good that we have the courts to fall back on in case things do go wrong. I'm all for watching the watchmen and using the courts to challenge dodgy decisions, but laws concerning speeding are there for the public good and I'm happy for them to be enforced, even through the use of automated speed cameras. I never understood why there was so much uproar about them...
And I wouldn't be caught dead voting for Howard.
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.
And it is you and your type of people that give me high insurance premiums.
Grow up. The road doesn't exist solely for you.
His name actually IS Denis Mirabilis. (Perhaps changed his name because of the latin term?) He's known as a sort of "troublemaker" to the police here, as he loves taking on this sort of case.
He works for a law firm called "Nyman Gibson Stewart" if you want to look it up to confirm this.
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.
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
Actually, only in NSW are there permanent cameras with sign posts. So if you get caught in NSW, then yes, you're and idiot.
In Tasmania, the cameras are inside unmarked police cars, or camoflaged (sp?) in bushes on the road side and you can't see them. No signs to warn you.
You just don't speed, if you can help it. But then there are the set-ups (at bottom of a hill, or a crest, say) where it's natural to increase speed without noticing, unless you pay close attention to your dashboard instead of the road ahead....
“Our opponent is an alien starship packed with nuclear bombs. We have a protractor.” — Neal Stepnenso
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?
Do this with the wrong judge in the US and you end up with an "Operating equipment unsafe for driving" or some such nonsense.
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.
Just for the record, even though I was being sarcastic in my previous post, I have never had or even caused an accident in all the years I've been driving. In fact, thanks to my ability to press the gas and steer rather than jam on the breaks and skid into another car I was able to avoid some idiot who made an illegal turn. The people who give you high insurance premiums are those who don't give the road their undivided attention and stupidly push the limits without know where they are and they *gasp* actually get into accidents.
Which group do you think gets other people killed more often? People who speed or people who do things that distract them or slow their reflexes. Even though I'm not crazy enough to speed on busy streets with plenty of potential accidents around me, I do know people who do and they get into less accidents than the average driver I know. Probably because they know a little more about how to handle a car than those who freak out when the need to make an emergency maneuver comes up.
Wise up, speed does not equal recklessness.
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.
the trick is to have your car be within safety regs. If the safety regs say 10% and you're booked for doing 63 in a 60 zone, you're safe. If the safety regs say you can have a margin of error of 5% and you do 63 in a 60 zone you're safe. In fact, you have to get down to a pretty small percentage (or a very slow speed) to have 63 not be okay!
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.
Not to mention the main reason the death rate outside cities is higher is because of how much longer it takes for help to arrive.
Yep, a troll for sure I'd say. BTW in the sports you mentioned, we do have a bit of an impact. Tour De France - Robbie McEwen won the green jersey in 2002 and 2004 and Baden Cooke won it in 2003. Both are Aussies. Stuart O'Grady came 2nd in 2005. There are a few others who are right up the top too. F1 we have Mark Webber who drive for BMW Williams. Baseball is one of those sports :) I think only Japan, USA and Canada really care about it.
Soccer we suck at.
The issue with revenue raising is actually bigger than you think. Once allowed to make serious money off tickets the entire mood of the department changes. The state patrol here got in trouble because they where not allowed to leave once they had pulled somebody over until a ticket had been issued. So if somebody 300 yards down the road started shooting they would get introuble if they didn't ticket the offender.
Add to that the "vauge" traffic laws and often people being ticketed just didn't have a clue what the law was at that time. In Salt Lake City it is common to only have one or two speed limit signs over a streach of a mile or two. Whats worse is that often the speed limit changes and no sign is put up. Where Fourth South turns into Foothill the speed limit changes and there is no sign. Where Foothill becomes I214 the speed goes from 40 to 65 with a minimum of 45. There is no sign for almost an 1/8 of a mile to notify drivers of this.
The worst abuse of "revinue collecting" is the highway cities in Idaho. The speed limit goes from 55 to 25 anytime you enter city limits and they make it a point to put bushes infront of the signs. Instand $130 ticket right there. Worst case is the sign going into Cascade. It got knocked over a few years back and it took a year and a half to fix.
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.
No need to apologise for the english, just apologise for the joke. ;)
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.
...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
Major or not it's the only country with the continent all to its self - they should just use it ship all the criminals from around the wor..
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.
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.
Yeah, the police are to blame for her father using her as a shield.
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.
- 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.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.
So this really means "everybody is travelling at walking pace" which would slow down the traffic and make collisions completely avoidable.
Sounds like Coronation Drive (Brisbane, Australia) between 4-6pm each weekday afternoon.
Takes me 10mins to get to work in the morning, and 40 to get home.
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.
They are now!!! Wall Street Journal Aug 3 reported that the police now have orders to kill suspects, just like the UK!! the list of things to suspect is ridiculous and can be exhibeted by many people. not to mention that none of these people saw "speeed" and have learned what a dead mans trigger is (it goes OFF (ie boom) when the person lets go or dies). they also dont think terrorists are smart enough to send someone ahead of them into a train station to see if it is one where ober meisters are going through peoples personal effects (meanwhile they can pack a laptop and the cops would let them on through.. or wrap it as a postal package... would you believe they are looking for "wires sticking out), chipping away at our rights to keep a few people safe. 70 years ago a few million people thought those same rights were worth dying for. now only a few understand that what those died for, they just gave away. shame.
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.
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!
It's an invasion of my privacy.
You sir, are a crack head. Your licence plate is publicly visible. The entire point of licence plates is to be publicly visible to everyone to uniquely identify your car. Your licence plate isn't private.
There are a lot of things wrong with traffic cameras, but privacy isn't one of them.
Web Design Tips
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.
Here we go again. I've heard this before. The claim that people who drive safe are unsafe because they spend all thier time trying to be safe whilst those people who don't worry about being safe are safer because they have more time to be safe. I even heard the more ridiculous. "It's safer to drive faster cause the addrenelin makes you concentrate" Pleeeeese
Was out walking yesterday past a cafe near a lake where I live. Suddenly a car tears down the road where we are walking drives into the car park at full speed, screeches to a stop and some guy jumps out who is obviously late for work. In that same carpark was a mother who had just left the playground to the side of the carpark. The little girl was bouncing a large inflatable beach ball. Now I am sure that guy was only thinking about how he would get cained for getting to work late. I am sure he didn't consider the childrens playground next to the car park or anybody else for that matter.
I'll lighten when I stop seeing stuff like that every day.
And if I get a speeding fine one day which I probably will. Shit happens and I'll eat it, but I won't bitch about it being the first step to alien facist overlords.
The bikini - security through obscurity since 1943
Nasty paint ? I'd use bird poop. Seriously, though, in the right circles, these markings would be seen as trophies. Gotta collect them all.
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
One key role of government is to "make people feel safe". People demand this, and it will never change. Sure, these searches do little to actually make people safe, but complaining about that is missing the entire point, as they do make most people *feel* safer. That's how democracy works - when most people want something they get it. It's still the least bad system.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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).
At least round here speedos must have a tolerance of +10%/-0%. Anything indicating less than actual speed is not legal.
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"
There is a difference here, a lot of people [I fall into this category] defend speeding in a reasonable manner. On a 4 lane super highway with light traffic in good weather conditions 70-80 is not an unreasonable speed even if the posted speed limit is 55. Small two lane important but still residental road with speed limit of 45, doing 25+ above on that is dangerous and is a problem because there you have people crossing, cars stopping to turn, etc. I don't think anyone is defending the idiots going 100 swerving just a few feet from other cars to pass on the left in heavy traffic while on the cell phone. What that guy did in the residental neighborhood is pretty much the same sort of thing. Honestly most residental roads [25-35mph] are pretty much good safe max speed limits regardless of time of day or type of car because of everything that can come out of next to nowhere there. Highway speed limits are largely set either baised on out of date car safety levels, or more often, arbitarty state speed limits. If I remember right NY has a state speed limit of 55. Once you are well outside of NYC, see how reasonable that is along long streches of low traffic highway.
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?"
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").
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.
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
so denial of basic rights is how a "democracy works"?
and in case you didnt know...
this is NOT a democracy... this is a republic!
(ok... slowly say the pledg... "and to the republic fo which it stands")
making people FEEL safe is NOT a key role of government!!! its a task that government has no power to accomplish, any more than it can make me feel happy, joyful, etc.
70 years ago millions were willing to die rather than put those papers on hold!!! today, we would rather put the founding principals on hold... but those principals are what we are... if we could put them on hold (you cant, they are not a product of government they are inalianable, then communist russia was just a republic with its rights temporarily on hold till the US was gone..
when do we get them back?
when will we FEEL that it is safe enough to tell our government to stop looking into our personal effects for no reason?
NEVER
because they will find new reasons... even now they are starting to use the fallacious argument that becuase nothing has happened what we are doing is working (what they dont realize is that because i didnt move away from new york that i am the real reason that nothing is happening! the fact that nothing has happend since i stayed is proof that i personally am holding the terorists at bay!)
soon... they will say.. hey, we can kill people if they are suspected... (whoops too late, they already killed one guy inthe UK and now just implemented the same program here in NY)...
meanwhile... it doesnt stop anything!!! we have paid for protection that doesnt work with the price of one of the most important amendments to the constitution!!! a document that defines what governments job is, and no where in that document does it say to make us FEEL safe!!! in fact the second amendment allows us as citizens to form our own militias to feel safe!!
they "provide for the common defense" and "promote the general welfare" and "SECURE THE BLESSINGS OF LIBERTY" for ourselves and our posterity...
you cant secure liberty by taking it away!!!!!
and if we put it away... when does my posterity get to enjoy it? (i mean they already have to self censor their speech, cant be safe in person from the government as the 4th amendment is trash with these searches, cant own property if someone else can make more money with it, and has lost due process in many aspects of the legal system)
i know.. they dont.. not till the world is "safe again"... well... there is no again, for it was NEVER safe... and nothing they can do can stop terrorism in a FREE country. nothing. if the german police state couldnt stop the french underground in a totalitarian machine willing to murder a whole city to stop it, then do you think that looking in my bag (and not even knowing what a bomb looks like), will stop a determined person?
these are ELEVATED trains... you can park a car under and wait for 2 to go by...
when you sell your life savings and the core of how you live for a solution.. then be sure as hell that your not buying magic beans!!!
benjamin franklin said that those that are willing to trade freedom for safety will get neither.
he IS right... not WAS right...
Beat your red light ticket here
Good site for beating speeding tickets here
Other helpful links here
My biggest problem with Red light cameras and Photo Radar is that they do seem to be abused by our governments. When they are first brought in, they promose to place them in areas with the highest traffic accidents, but soon after they find there way to the bottom of every hill, and they speeds in which tickets are sent for get lower and lower, and the timing for red light cameras changes so that it is almost impossible to get through without either causing an accident or getting a ticket! Also I remember a case in Vancouver where someone blew through a photo radar location so fast that the picture was burred and the plate couldn't be identified - so when we think about this the people who are REALLY causing a danger by driving 200 KM/H + won't be ticketed by these systems, only those who are going a little over the speed limit. Seems more like revenue generation than traffic saftey.
Website Just Down For Me? Find out
I always thought those signs that show your speed were contests and you have to try and beat the guy in front of you.
forgot to mention...
the founding fathers DID NOT TRUST government...
you are an idiot for not even having the distrust that the founding fathers had.. they KNEW that governmetn was not friend to liberty... and that it should be curtailed..
yes it means that we are less safe from each other...
but we are more safe from the government! it wasnt citizens that injected black men in the south that had syphilis with plutionium.. that was our government...
the purges of people.. more than 70 million by only 3 systens... and that dwarfs the numbers killed by wars, and individual people...
you dont realize that in the begining hitler was VOTED in.. the jews voted yes like everyone else... but wasnt their government supposed to make them FEEL safe.. oh it did.. it scented cyclon B so it would have a fresh clean smell and not scare the people as they started to be gassed to death.. they sure felt safer!!!
as of august 3rd its our government that says if you sweat, pace, walk fast, walk slow, improperly dressed, that a police officer should cap you BEFORE asking questions and such!!! in other words, if the officer thinks you are a suspect he or she is supposed to shoot you first in the head, THEN figure out if your a terrorist! thats the program... feel safer? that poor guy in the UK wasnt even a saud... he was ASIAN...
and if your defense is that you are lucky enough not to fit the profile.. so you wont be bothered.. well wake up.. the profiles basically list conditions that EVERYONE is a suspect! you are a suspect.. you are guilty BEFORE innocent.. the MAJOR foundation of our legal system is also under attack.. presumption of innocence and due process...
but then again your young and educated here... you dont know how your own country works... they like that, for they have magic beans to sell you!!!
do me s favor... tomorrow when you leave the house... open all the windows.. unlock all the doors.. then when you leave, ONLY lock one of them.. tell me if you feel safe for your belongings.. then why would you feel safe on the subways... oh yeah... its because your belief system says govt is good and its here to help you (thats why duck and cover was such an effective strategy for nuclear holocaust)..
therefore.. in order to accept that this dont work you would have to accept that they are not helping.. your world view is such that they must.. you wont let go since you think your world view IS you. in order for you not to trust your government and watch them and make sure that it does what we want, you would have to let go of your sense of safety... so its you that cultivates false safety in order to feel safe.. and feeling safe is a far cry from being safe.. for one can be safe and feel scared... but one can also feel safe and be in great danger.. the first one is smarter...
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.
I actually have faith in our legal and policing system not to introduce corruption into something as simple as speeding fines
That may be so, but the thing is that you're not only dealing with the government here. You're also dealing with the private company that creates the system and the cameras.
These companies charge the city a processing fee for each ticket that is issued. So now the government and a private company both have a vested interest (and a conflict of interest I might add) to give out as many tickets as possible.
And if this private company fudges the system to take a picture a fraction of a second early or something similar than who's going to look into that? The same government who is also filling thier coffers with the same ticket fines?
this is NOT a democracy... this is a republic!
The difference being? One is latin, the other greek for the same thing?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
AC--
Moving target. Yes, second preimage resistance (given md5(x), make y such that md5(y) = md5(x)) is important, but right now we have "given x and y, alter both such that md5(x) = md5(y)" and that flat out violates "computationally infeasible to find two files with the same hash".
--Dan
look it up... they are not the same... close but no cigar. A political order in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who are entitled to vote for officers and representatives responsible to them. government by the people; especially : rule of the majority b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections the second one is what we talk about and act like we have and want.. the first one is what we have... there is a difference... climate is what we want, weather is what we get!
Wow, you sure like to type a lot (but you oddly seem to have forgotton that sentences start with capital letters - keep practicing).
None of your opinions change the simple fact that in a democracy (err, representative government, but whatever) people *will* get what they feel strongly about. Good or bad, that's how it goes. You might as well complain about hurricaine season in Florida (I know I do, but I don't expect anyone to care about those complaints). Heck, in Britain you don't even have a constitution to fall back on to stop a wave of sentiment, just tradition.
The good news is, it's been this way for centuries and the world hasn't ended yet.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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)
A political order in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who are entitled to vote for officers and representatives responsible to them.
a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them [...] through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.
Still sounds like the same to me, people vote for other people to represent them, the representatives then govern. Or is the deciding point here that one is an order, the other a government?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
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.
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.
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!
Interesting to note is that red light cameras are not as debated as speed cameras, probably because a red light camera reduces the rate of the common accidents caused by people forcing more traffic through red lights.
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
A "body of citizens" may not be the whole population, they can be an upper caste, or special group. "the people" is all of em... Perhaps this does make a difference between an order and a government... though i cant really say... want to flip a coin on that one? but this is not too important.. what we have is what we have, and in a few decades will be quite something else if we keep trading pieces of our rights away.
I didn't know you would start with an ad hominem from the gate. Good going, that's the way to win an argument (though I didn't know we were competing till you tried to draw first blood with your superior grammar). My spelling, grammatical errors, and such, in truth, have no bearing on the validity or the quality of the point I decided to post.
"None of your opinions change the simple fact that in a democracy people *will* get what they feel strongly about."
That may be what the textbook says but I don't think that is what we have. We get a lot of things that we don't want. Beginning in the 19th century the way we looked at companies changed. Something called corporate personhood was created. Prior to that the United States mistrusted corporations. But with the passing of the Fourteenth Amendment (the one intended to make sure slaves and all got equal protection and such), and later interpretations by the supreme court also offered these rights to corporations. In the first 30 or so years after the 14th was in, only 15 cases were brought having to do with African Americans, 135 were brought that involved business entities. From here on in the courts viewed corporations as individuals. Though unlike real human individuals corporations have immortality (and a few advantages that us humans don't). it was almost 1900 when the supreme court officially granted this status of personhood under the constitution (santa clara county v. southern pacific railroad). corporations were first granted protection under the Bill of Rights in 1893. in the new deal era federal regulations started to overpower state regulation. This was the start of the feds extortion of power from the state falsely giving it power over decisions that were guaranteed to the state to be theirs to decide (you don't make x illegal, then you don't get any federal money - good bye sovereignty of states).
to make this long thing shorter (and leave the legal history lesson to you), I will just skip it and give a quick summary.
we move forward to the 60's. laws became more intrusive (Mayer), and the idea of what property is changed. This led to more corporate protections and privileges. Some of these were revoked and then granted back in 1980.
the key here is that corporations have more control over the government than an average citizen. For other than the likes of bill gates and a few, there are a hell of a lot more companies that now are considered mega wealthy persons!! And as such have access and ability to change government for the people and by the people, into for immortal corporate persons for said same.
"The corporation's invocation of the first ten amendments (the Bill of Rights) symbolizes the transformation of our constitutional system from one of individual freedoms to one of organizational prerogatives." -Carl J Hastings, 1990 law journal article
in this new government order that I just all to quickly brought you through, how do those pesky people get what they will feel strongly about, when companies are people too?
Good or bad, that's how it goes. You might as well complain about hurricaine season in Florida (I know I do, but I don't expect anyone to care about those complaints). Heck, in Britain you don't even have a constitution to fall back on to stop a wave of sentiment, just tradition.
first of all.. you spelled hurricane wrong (you're the stickler, not me).
Second of all, I don't care about what the English decide to do in their country. That country wasn't made for me, this one was, as it is for all of us here.
Third... That's not how it goes in a republic. In a republic we make change by doing what I did. And that's post. And the people of a republic have a damn better chance effecting change through a system created for them to effect change.
Here is what you aren't getting. These changes that are being made, that can only be made by an act of congress (as dictated by the articles which IS the representative government
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.
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. . . >_