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Device Stops Speeders From Inside Car
frdmfghtr writes "CNN reports that the Canadian government is testing a new anti-speeding device." From the article: "The system being tested by Transport Canada, the Canadian equivalent of the U.S. Department of Transportation, uses a global positioning satellite device installed in the car to monitor the car's speed and position. If the car begins to significantly exceed the speed limit for the road on which it's traveling the system responds by making it harder to depress the gas pedal, according to a story posted on the Toronto Globe and Mail's Website."
It looks like we would all need tin foil hats for our cars......
xao
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we'll think we're the luckiest people in the world just to be allowed IN the damn car, nevermind the fact that it'll only go where the Cognizant Authorities tell it to go, when and how they prescribe.
Is it fascism yet?
This'll ruin chase scenes in movies. I guess they can't film in Canada anymore. If they get this in L.A., what will they put on the news?
What a stupid idea. In an emergency, it may be necessary to accelerate quickly, e.g. to get out of the way of another vehicle that's swerving into your lane, etc. If the behavior of the gas pedal suddenly changes in the middle of a crisis, it could CAUSE an accident.
Or, let's say you've got a 25mph residential street that turns onto a 50mph highway. You're driving along at 50mph, and suddenly the GPS system mistakenly thinks you're close enough to the residential street that you should now be going 25mph. The ensuing weirdness with the gas pedal distracts the driver for a moment. Fantastic.
Have you ever seen an incorrect (possibly simply out of date) street on Mapquest/Yahoo/Google Maps? I wonder how that sort of thing might affect this.
I would have no problem with using this technology to light up a warning light on the dashboard or something, but directly affecting the control of the vehicle sounds like a VERY bad idea to me. As long as we still trust humans to operate the steering wheel, we need to trust them to operate the gas as well.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
because overtaking is sometimes a good thing.
We already have this -- It's called a Wife. They alert you when you're going over the speed limit and make it increasingly difficult to press on the accelerator.
If the scope of this system can be expanded such that it can also make the brake harder to depress when the driver is driving less than the speed limit, that would be like totally awesome. I can't tell you how many times I've been stuck behind a granny (or person with Florida tags), wincing in anticipation of every curve in the road, no matter how gentle, which I know will bring up those infernal brake lights. And, just as a tangent, simply because there's a car in the oncoming lane doesn't mean a rapid deceleration is prudent!
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
Because limiting the speed can actually be dangerous in certain circumstances.
Say you're driving along a two lane road (1 lane in both directions) stuck behind a slow truck. Cars are piled up behind you. I'm sure most drivers have been in this situation before. When you overtake the car behind you will move up to your old position stopping you from going back. If while you're on the wrong side of the road you see a car coming towards you it may be necessary to speed to complete the overtaking move. The proposed system would appear to allow for this while a set speed limiter may not. I'd prefer to speed than to die wouldn't you?
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What do the Germans have that we don't? Are they smarter (don't answer that), are they better drivers, do they have better roads ? Well the answer is IMHO yes. They aren't smarter, but they are more responsible behind the wheel... they aren't better drivers, their driving license is MUCH harder to get; they have better roads, but they also have WELL MAINTAINED CARS.
So in essence, the Germans are happily driving at 250+ Km/h on their autobahns without having significantly more accidents than us, because they have much higher standards when it comes to issuing drivers' licenses, they have suited roads, and their cars go through a very strict mechanical check-up every year, to make sure they are road-legal.
So stop pointing fingers at just speed, and start admitting that the reason we crash as much as we do is because we have too many sh*tty cars with sh*tty drivers. Period.
It's Canada. What's the point of driving 70mph in an emergency to get to a hospital where you're going to have to wait for six months before they'll see you? :D
Those are not legitimate reasons to drive at excessive speeds. Accelerating out of a dangerous traffic situation: yes. Shaving fifty seconds off a ten minute drive to the emergency room at the risk of colliding with another car, rolling over in a ditch, or wrapping around a tree: absolutely fucking NOT. Look at how fast ambulances drive. They don't exceed the speed limit. Honestly, where do people get the idea that careening down city streets at 80mph is a smart way to transport people to the hospital?
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
A noisemaker would be cheaper.
It would, and my car (a 1989 Mercury Cougar) has the old-school (non-GPS) variant on that called a speed alarm. Basically, you set the alarm at your cruising speed and it tells you when you've gone 5 mph over the set speed with a little beep (it starts flashing as soon as you go over, if I remember correctly).
The problem with it is that it's not directly connected to the thought of speeding. There have been many-a-time that I've heard the beeping and thought "What the hell?", even though I personally set the speed I wanted to go not five minutes earlier.
If you're going to help people remember that pushing the gas pedal right now may not be the best of ideas, then the least distracting and most direct way to do it is to rig the gas pedal in this manner.
Besides, in order to get over the noise of the radio and cell phone, do you know how loud that sucker would have to be?
Although there's an idea... If you speed, you don't get any music or radio. Because, obviously, you need all your attention on the road right then.
Further supporting the notion that speed limits have everything to do with raising money for the state, and very little to do with road safety.
To be a good driver, you need to know how your car reacts to your control inputs. You provide input X, it responds in manner Y.
Introducing a device which changes Y to, say, Y-5, will impair the ability of people to control their vehicle, because it will change the vehicle's response to their inputs to one they are unfamiliar with.
This is a really dumb idea.
What a bunch of fucking nonsense.
Look, traffic engineers know, and have known for a very long time, that the safest speed to set speed limits at is the 85% percentile speed: the speed which 85% of the free-flowing traffic on that particular road travels at or below. This is because the large majority of drivers are reasonable and prudent, and while they wish to reach their destination in a short amount of time, they also wish to remain alive and unwrecked.
If traffic engineers want this speed on a stretch of hypothetical road to drop, they do this by changing the road surface. Narrows, curves, crests, inclines, will all reduce the 85th percentile speed.
Setting a speed limit lower than the 85th percentile speed doesn't reduce the speed at which traffic flows. I'm going to repeat that again, because it sounds vaguely important:
Changing the speed limit doesn't change how fast people drive. The safe speed for a road is determined by the road design and the road conditions, and *not* by some arbitrary number on a sign.
The notion that traveling at the posted limit +5 is more dangerous than traveling at the posted limit, or than traveling at the posted limit -5, is reasonable only if the posted limit reflects the 85% percentile speed.
Sometimes it does. Some states even have it written into their laws that that's how speed limits are determined.
But more often it does not. More often, speed limits are set artificially low, in order to provide a source of revenue for the state. If you set a speed limit below the 85% percentile speed, people will generally ignore it, drive at the speed dictated by road conditions and their ability, and then you can ticket them for speeding.
Here are the actual conclusions of that study I linked to just above:
If you implement systems like this, or other speed enforcement techniques like photo radar, the DOT needs to fix the underposted speed limits first. Traffic engineering rules specify that a good speed limit is the 85th percentile speed of unrestricted (IE, not stuck in traffic, not being enforced by a cop) traffic, rounded up to the nearest multiple of five. Studies show that this speed is the safest speed to drive at, regardless of any artificially chosen "limit" which is clearly not a limit in any sense of the word because the limits are routinely disobeyed.
If you want people to take speed limits seriously you need to make the limits appropriate and enforce them appropriately. A favorite trick in many states is to post a rediculously low (20 or 30mph under the prevailing traffic speed) work zone speed limit where no actual work is occuring. Then a police officer sits there and pulls over the people at the high end of the normal traffic speeds and tickets them. This behavior is unsafe, unfair, increases distrust of law enforcement and leads people to believe the whole traffic system is a scam.
A local expressway here is posted at 65. People typically drive between 65 and 80. Some drive faster. 80 is a completely safe speed on this road (in good conditions) and the off duty police drive much faster on their way home. A reasonable solution would be to set the limit at 80 or 85. Most people wouldn't drive that fast. I know most of the time I'd stick around 70 for fuel mileage but knowing it was legal to accelerate faster than that for passing or traffic maneuvers would increase safety.
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Sorry, but you got a few things wrong. Although you might be essentially right, let me be a Fact-Nazi (got it? A German, calling himself a Nazi. Funny, huh? Aw...):
1. The mandatory check-up (so-called "Hauptuntersuchung") is every _other_ year, and only after four years for a new car. Still, judging from what I see on `Pimp my ride', it is possible in the states to drive cars that would never be allowed on public streets in Germany.
2. Nobody is "happily driving at 250+ Km/h". Yes, I have been overtaken by the occasional Porsche doing 300 km/h (~190 mph) and Mercs at 220 km/h are not exactly a rare sight, but these people are notorious for closing up to an arm's reach of your bumper with headlights flashing; and they are generally considered arseholes with tiny wangs.
3. About 60% of the Autobahn network (that's an estimate, I couldn't be bothered to look it up) have speed limitation, typically 120 km/h. That doesn't stop people from speeding there, but they get caught sooner or later (the Autobahn police squad sports disguised, camera-fitted cars with appropriate engines)
4. From what I hear from friends with American licenses, you are right about driving licences.
5. Accidents don't happen on Autobahns. They happen on county roads with sharp curves, crossroads and narrow passages. Due to the Autobahn's construction (or any other Highway's, for that matter), head-on crashes are nearly impossible, and deadly crashes are much rarer than they are on county roads (believe me, I am an EMT...)
The poster seems to be under the delusion that speed limits are always tied to the current maximum safe speed.
This is absurd, as other factors can be at work:
political (the town I live in has 5mph lower speed limits on exactly the same roads and road conditions as the towns around it - and not coincidentally is the first town in the US to use photo-radar).
legal - in the US, every state (except perhaps one) has an absolute maximum for speed limits. Clearly some roads and vehicles are capable of being driven safely at much higher speeds on some road segments in those states. Not that long ago, the idiot Jimmy Carter forced a 55mph maximum speed limit throughout the US, that lasted until 1994. The interstate highway system was built for much higher speeds (I believe 75mph) and the Kansas Turnpike for 80mph, it's previous speed limit.
safety for non-familiar drivers - a road can have conditions which make the maximum safe speed lower than the apparent (to non-familiar drivers) safe speed. The authorities may choose to set the speed limit lower to compensate.
weather - the speed limit may be lowered to compensate for common but not continuous weather conditions such as high winds.
Traffic engineers used to set speed limits, in the absence of other factors, determining the 85th percentile speed of unconstrained drivers. In other words, presumably 85 percent of the drivers, based on their experience and perceptions, drove at or below the maximum safe speed. They would, of course, set them lower at hard to see hazards such as hidden curves.
If one is going to have such a system, soft but effective feedback seems much better than hard limits.
BTW... some cars have unadvertised built-in speed limits. My 2001 Toyota Sequoia appears to have a 100mph limit. One day on a storm chase, on a very good road with almost infinite visibility, we tried it, and at 100mph the engine refused to go faster, even though it clearly had the capacity. I suspect this may be because they didn't want to put bigger tables into the engine computer.
The only good weather is bad weather.
In regards to your ambulance point: actually, on the way to accident scenes, those things do go well over the speed limit. So do police cars and fire trucks. Once the person is in the ambulance, yes, they slow down - the person is already getting medical attention. But shaving 30 seconds off a 5 minute trip to get to the guy having a heart attack can easily be the difference between life and death.
Also, there are times (rare, yes) when speeding to the hospital is not the worst idea. The hospital where I live is slightly out of town, and to get there you have to go on a highway of sorts. The limit is 60km/h for part of it. Oh a straight road, no lights, no fast turns or merging traffic, if it was 4 in the morning and someone was dying in my backseat, going up to 100 would not be an issue.
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl
But various studies[1] like this one[2] have indicated that speed limits have little effect on the frequency or number of accidents. In fact, in some cases, raising the speed limit actually lessens the risk of accidents.
Yes, speed is a contributing factor to the severity of the accident, but not to whether or not the accident actually occurs. Look at the Autobahn in Germany. Accidents are not nearly as common as they are on American freeways (I don't know anything about Canadian freeways and their accident rates), yet the speeds tend to be substantially higher.
Personally, I think the speed limits are mostly for police to engage in revenue collection. Yes, keeping speeds around 55-60mph usually results in fuel savings for most vehicles, but people should be free to move at any safe rate of speed, within appropriate limits for that particular roadway (and most people naturally drive at a safe speed for the road, even if it is higher than the posted limit), and have that choice be their own. If I choose to drive at 55 to save fuel, you'll find me in the slow lane with the semi trucks. If I choose to drive 85 because I'm late for an appointment, I'll be in the fast lane with other similarly-rapid vehicles.
I would posit that if one were to remove all speed limit signs, except for those around inherently dangerous sections of roadway (i.e. an upcoming sharp turn that requires a lower rate of speed), most people would drive slightly faster (maybe 70-80mph) than they do presently, but would still drive in a safe manner. I doubt that many would suddenly start going 140mph just because there's no signs.
[1] http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/p-sl.html
[2] http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/sl-irrel.html
I haven't RTFA, but I can only assume that there is some room to allow for the use of evasive high speed when necessary.
You know, I shouldn't throw stones, because I speed all the time and not usually just a "little bit" -- 80-85 is common for me on the highway. That said, I've been driving for almost 15 years. I used to work for an insurance agency and attended more safe driving courses/schools then I can recall. I processed thousands of accident reports and claims. And not once in all of that did I see an accident that could have been prevented by "evasive high speed".
Your at cruising speed. Let's say 70mph. All of a sudden something that happens that will require you to speed up or slow down 10mph to avoid it. What action do you think is faster? To gain that speed in time to matter will doubtless require a downshift. That's going to add at least a second on a shift stick. It might even take that long in an automatic -- since newer automatics lock the torque converter at cruising speed and would need to unlock it before downshifting. All the CVTs that I've driven in my day seem to be equally slow to change gear ratios to anything meaningful. Then how long will it take to actually gain that speed? Contrast that to your brakes. The brakes that I might add have the power to stop your your car even against the force of a runaway engine.
The first thing you are taught in defensive driving is to study the situation around you and think about what could wrong. For each scenario of something that could go wrong you are supposed to have a way to get out of that problem without it becoming an accident. This could be as simple as thinking "What will I do if he doesn't stop at that stop sign?" with the answer "I'll stop" (duh!) -- but it works equally well on the West Side Highway at rush hour. In all of my driving experience I can not once think of a situation where my method of getting out of trouble would have involved speeding up.
This doesn't mean that there aren't scenarios where you need to speed up to stay out of trouble -- some asshole tailgating you comes to mind (speed up to pass the guy on your right and get out of the dimwits way). I'm just saying that I've never seen a scenario where a split second decision to go faster would have prevented an accident. I've seen lots where a split second decision to brake would have.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I don't think these will last very long.
I found a recent article about red-light cameras that had been installed at various local intersections. The article made interesting mention of the fact that some of the yellow lights were timed as low as three seconds, which unquestionably does not provide enough notice to bring the vehicle to safe stop. You have two choices: slam on the breaks and hope there is noone in back of you, or continue, which will most likely have you entering the intersection on a red light.
This provides an excellent revenue source for both the city, and insurance companies- the city can impose a fine, and the insurance company can raise your rates. In fact, one of our local interstates generated over $13,000,000 in speeding fines (from cameras). Ethics aside (there don't appear to be any in this business) do you honestly think local governments are going to think very highly of a device that will deny it such a substantial source of revenue?
As a New York City Paramedic, I agree. Here in New York State, we are never alowed to exceed the speed limit, no matter what the scenario. We are (same goes for FDNY) not even allowed to take red lights. Only the NYPD can do that.
The sick person being transported to the hospital is already sick, there is no exuse to jeopardize the public after the fact. The same holds true for responding to calls.
There have been quite a few case lately were EMTs or Paramedics have received jail time for their reckeless driving.
I will lose all respect of the Canadian government if they actually try to implement such a device.
Well, I'll lose all respect for their product test cycle if it ever gets out of alpha testing.
We've had a Garmin 3600 GPS gadget for a couple of years. It's a nice tool, but you quickly learn that it has certain, uh, limits.
For example, I often take a local street to avoid a busy stretch of our local super-highway (Boston's Route 128). The two roads are only about 10-20m apart for part of the drive, and the GPS map often shows me jumping back and forth between them. The speed limit on one is about twice the limit on the other.
Similarly, if I'm on the main highway, my GPS position often shows as the nearby frontage road. So the proposed gadget would show me going 2-3 times the speed limit of the street that it thinks I'm on. I'm not sure that trying to slow me down to 25 mph on a busy super-highway is all that wonderful an idea. And this problem isn't limited to adjacent "frontage" roads; sometimes my GPS position puts me on a street a block away from my real position.
I've seen cases where my GPS position was more than a mile from my real position. This lasts a few minutes, and then suddenly corrects itself. I wonder if the US military is again playing games with the satellites. But I don't know.
This afternoon, I was driving south on a local street in a nearby town. I glanced at the GPS gadget, and suddenly it showed me headed north on the street at around 150 mph. A few seconds later, it showed me headed south at my actual position, but at over 200 mph. Then my speed dropped back to around 30. I wonder what the proposed gadget would do with my gas pedal and/or brake in this situation?
This gadget has the ability to record a trip, including times, positions and speed. I recently looked at this after a trip, and was a bit amused when it said that my top speed was 350 mph. I've been contemplating the prospect (proposed seriously by some people) that such devices be installed in cars for evidence to be used in court.
In real life, the guys doing the programming and testing have some very interesting problems on their hands.
Actually, I think these problems are interesting. I wonder how one might get a job working on such problems? It seems to me that they might be solvable. But it also seems to me that Garmin hasn't solved them yet. Stories from other GPS users are similar, so apparently nobody (or maybe no commercial developer) has solved them yet.
Of course, for uses like they intended, they don't really need to fix these petty inaccuracies. Users just get a chuckle now and then and quickly learn the gadget's foibles. But making the device responsible for part of the vehicle's operation or use of GPS data by the legal system are something rather different.
My prediction is that it will fail and quietly disappear during alpha testing. Of course, it's always possible that the bureaucracy will ignore this and decree use of the technology anyway. It wouldn't be the first time that stuff was debugged by the victims^Wcustomers.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
...that you're basically describing public transport, right ?
:) -that- is none of their business. How fast I drive, however, is very much their business. How fast you drive when you're coming up behind me is also very much my business.
If you're sucking on a giant icecream cone - don't be surprised if you're not allowed onto the bus.
The bus only goes where the government decides it should go.
It only goes when the government decides it should go.
And, lo and behold, along the route the government decides it to go.
There's just one thing... almost everywhere except for the U.S., public transport -works-, and works *so* well that there are millions who not only see it as a viable alternative to their car (if they even have one), but they prefer it.
The car is not a symbol of freedom - it's a mode of transportation which is regulated like any other, except that you have even more responsibilty. And, sadly, there are many who do -not- drive their cars responsibly, making it possible for these types of limitations to be implemented. It's a shame that a few should 'ruin' it for the rest. But, do tell, what bit of not being allowed to speed is ruining exactly what ?
Now if, on the other hand, you're pondering the gov't always knowing where you are... I wholly agree
This is for the more extreme people who share your view...
Roll back a few decades to when seatbelts became law... would you also have said "Before this is over, we'll think we're the luckiest people in the world just to be allowed IN the damn car..." etc. ? Did 'the slippery slope' start there ? Or do some measures actually just make sense ?
The Autobahn doesn't really compare well to U.S. driving - the driving situation is too different. All the little rules that are just considered common courtesy in the U.S. are law there (drive in the rightmost lane on long stretches, only pass on the left, leave the left lane as soon as you pass, etc.). Here, on a four lane highway in Oklahoma, I drive consistantly on the left because I go about five miles over, although I pull to the right if someone fast comes up behind me. In Germany, I'd get ticketed for that.
Also bear in mind that the Autobahn is monitored electronically and the speed limits are variable depeinding on the amount of traffic at any one time. The U.S. doesn't have anything like that (and really, with as much Interstate as we've got here, we can't).
Better would be to compare states with similar driving conditions but different speed limits. In Oklahoma, the speed limit on the Interstate is 70. In Illinois, it's 65. In Texas, I think it's lower for trucks than cars (which always seemed abysmally stupid to me - you're causing obstacles in traffic that way). It makes more sense to compare the accident rates on selected areas of similar highway and derive your results from that.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
Computerized enforcement of laws is only going to get worse.
In the past, punishment for illegal parking/speeding was overly harsh so as to make an example of those caught. Now that "they" are gaining the ability to catch/fine *all* infractions, do we see the penalties decreasing? Nope.
Just something to think about as we rush headlong into the great 21st century with computers and stuff.