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Tagging Devices To Aid In Car Chases
kthejoker writes "ABC News is reporting that a company called StarChase has invented a device that will allow police teams to 'tag' cars involved in dangerous chases. The device is the size of a golf ball, can be launched via an air-powered shooter attached to police vehicles, and uses a "highly efficient" glue to stick to cars. From there, it transmits its GPS position to a central monitoring station."
Its like the spiderman toys we all used to throw at windows and doors.
Am I the only one who could never get them to stick to friends backs?
liqbase
Shouldn't Peter Parker own the patent to this device? If so, I wondow what the police will be paying in licensing fees.
Keeping up with a car in a highly visible chase scenario might be the most dangerous way to handle a criminal with a deadly weapon.
Better to let them think he has outstarted the police and hopefully back off a little bit.
High tensions and a rush hour road or pedestrian town centre don't generally mix.
liqbase
If the police pursue a criminal in a high speed chase and someone else gets hurt as a result of it, the police have a good chance of being sued. The tagger would help tremendously in this department, as it encourages the person being pursued to ditch the car at some point instead of flying around the roads like a maniac.
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
it could well help avoid fatalities in road chases, the police can then hang back and not push too hard on the person they are chasing, this should help take some of the tension out and reduce the risk of the criminals trying something stupid and killing people, police helicopters can then be called in to keep track and the people in the car can be arrested when it stops (or if the tyres are blown out in a safe place)
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
Make these available to everyone. When you see someone being an idiot or asshole driver, not just the aggravating ones, but the really stupid ones you pull this out, and tag them. After about 3-4 "tags" the cops can pull them over and give them a "asshole" ticket. Even better would be if these tags had a memory in them that recorded the time and GPS coordinates of the event you tagged them for. Maybe even allow selection of event types such as speeding, reckless driving, drunk driving, blocking traffic, too slow, etc. But I guess this would be handing over the cops job to the citizens and you know we are not law enforcement trained so we wouldn't know a violation, and a lot of innocent people would be getting "harrassed"for something the didn't do ;)
Surely there should be some real experience to report by now, rather than just a press release from the manufacturer...
"Why can't they just keep up with the car to begin with?"
Ask that to the realtives of people who are killed every year due to stupid fucking cops living out their Dukes of Hazzard fantasies on city streets.
Regardless of whether fleeing drivers realize they have been tagged, it's unlikely that individuals could unglue the dart.
Delicate electronics don't tend to survive being hit with a hammer. You don't have to get it off the car, all you have to do is disable it. I'd be curious to see how smash proof this thing is.
AccountKiller
Car chases careening through L.A. mowing down pedestrians like wheat aren't just the stuff of action movies. They're actually a significant danger.
And for as long as people have been saying, "Chasing people down residential streets at 80 miles an hour is dangerous, for Pete's sake!" the standard reply has been, "Well, we can't just let them go."
Now, maybe they can let them go, and the Bigger-Dick Theory of Car Chases can finally be put to bed. Stick them with a tracking dart, surprise them when they're sleeping. Just like Batman. Except with less bats.
> "Why can't they just keep up with the car to begin with?"
As mentioned above, high speed pursuits are extremely dangerous,and usually the police will want to back off if they are in a built-up area and they can track the perpetrator via other methods without aggravating them further.
>"but chance are the cost makes it very impractical."
As opposed to, say, smashing a patrol car or two, before slamming in to some unfortunate motorist who just happens to be crossing an intersection, America's Greatest Police Chases stylee?
"Besides, why should the police get all the fun toys?"
Because they're funded by the taxpayer to use all available resources in the fight against crime - so they have a budget for technoloy like this if it's going to prove cost effective (for example in reducing pursuit collisions).
Philosopher (n) - a wise person who is calm and rational; someone who lives a life of reason with equanimity
this will help tracking car but not the person in the car. if police stop chasing person because they think they can track using gps signal, person can leave the car ( if car is stolen ).
I guess this will have to do until they release the gun that shoots the car stopping beam.
(sigh)
I am going to have to disagree with this plan. Yes, it might make running away from the police futile. Yes, car chases will be over more quickly. But I cannot and will not deal with the loss of "World's Wildest Police Chases" because some guy who had a spiderman sticky toy when he was 9 invents a spiderman sticky toy that ends police chases. It's not right.
This is going to be worse than useless in such circumstances. If the police are going to be in a position to use this they'd surely be able to use spike strips to take out the tires. If a foot officer saw a stolen car and was in a position to tag it but is it worth carrying the weight. Shades of Snowcrash loogie guns.
The only thing this would be useful for is surveillance, and there are better devices out there.
I recently did work at a company that sort of competes with onstar - the field is referred to within the industry as 'telematics' apparently. Anyway, it was kind of interesting, drivers could put their cars into a theft recovery mode' where in addition to reporting gps it would also kick the cell phone on in a stealth mode where operators could hear what was going on in the car and coordinate with law enforcement. One time when I was there one of these was going on and the operator was on the phone and could hear the siren as the police approached, and was able to tell them 'no, it sounds like you're getting further away from them' when the cop car took a wrong turn or something. Pretty neat.
Apparently the legal department of the place spent the majority of their time fighting off law enforcement from getting info from the service to track suspected drug dealers or whatever for agency requests.
Replace the electronics onboard with some C4. Much more fun.
What Would Spiderman Do?
It seems to me that anyone willing to engade in a long hi-speed pursuit is just the sort of person that this will NOT be effective with. I understand wanting to avoid long pursuits. In fact, in my city, as a matter of policy, police officers will not engade in a pursuit with motorcycle in the downtown area. The combination of speed and the crowdedness of the streets are simply not worth the risk.
Also, think about the nature of the pursuits they are wanting to avoid. We've all seen it on cops. Driver takes off going way in excess of 100 mph on city and neighborhood roads. If the cops are lucky, they can radio ahead to other police officers and setup road blocks or put down tire strips. But the suspect always either nails the cops with his car and keeps going, or blows his tires out and keeps going along right on his rims shooting sparks every which way. Sometimes, the cops will perform that move where they catch up to the fleeing car and ram it on a rear fender which sends the driver spinning out of control. Sometimes this works. Sometimes they spin out and hit people and just keep on going. Sometimes they even get the suspect trapped between two cruisers and run at the driver, pistols drawn. And sometimes the drivers just smash their way right out of this almost killing the police officers in the process.
Yeah, I understand the need to want to curtail all of this dangerous activity. But what the last thing you always see from your airial police-cam? The driver gets out and starts running. My guess, if the person fleeing is desperate enough to get involved in a high speed pursuit, then they are also probably going to run after they ditch their car. If the cop is hanging back, I seriously doubt they are going to catch them.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
Cause too many people are taking him too seriously :D
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
They can just stick these on the sides of inmates' heads, and if they try to scale a wall or dig a tunnel and escape, they can just go find him. The best thing is they only need the dogs for the last three meters or so.
The best is still a chopper with night vision, so when the perp leaves the car they can be followed. After all, the value is in getting the criminal.
That's not a bad idea at all. A hand-held launcher has one huge flaw: while you are chasing a suspect's car you are also likely speeding through the streets with the other vehicle, attempting to avoid obstacles and pedestrians, talking to other officers, trying to keep up with where you are so you know what to tell the other officers, and bouncing around inside your car. Now try tagging someone with one of these trackers at the same time. Not only would you be unlikely to make the shot, but you'll also be putting your life and quite possibly other people's lives in further danger.
;)
With this device another officer at dispatch could remotely aim and fire the vehicle-mounted device. However, using pre-installed GPS devices are far less costly to the police force and probably a bit more reliable, but this tracking ball is a great back-up in case someone didn't comply and someone else stole that particular vehicle.
Then again... there are such things as helicopters.
The idea that this will end high-speed car chases is seriously far-fetched.
If a policeman relies on this device and stops chasing the guy, the common criminal will simply ditch the car and get away.
The reason cops chase people is so the bad guy doesn't get away. Maybe it will help in situations where the police can't help but lose sight of a car in a chase, but how often does that happen outside of the movies?
I also think that if this weapon starts to be used a lot, the fugitives will also escape into dense cities, undergroung parkings, etc because they know GPS devices cease to function there. Anyone has an idea of how the data of the device is transmited back to the police... maybe that is another thing to work around...
in a lot of cities there are ordinances that the cops can't chase motorists under various conditions, like over 20mph over the speed limit. It's pretty common actually, the idea being that in high speed chases even more people get injured.
You are joking right?
This is basically cheap ass battery and GPS unit that is so over produced today they are cheaper than peanuts. By Peanuts I mean slightly premium quality ones, that may costs 30$ a unit.
And glue, well, that isn't exactly expensive, add on some air based cannon, not very expensive at all.
Of course, the whole process of development is expensive, so you should be glad when such development that your taxes goes into comes out with something that can reduce get aways, dangerous chases and crime.
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Just like the kiddie trackers and other GPS devices. they will stop working t he moment they are in a building of any size and with a metal roof or lots of stuff between the sky and the reciever.
Solution? when you get enough of a lead, stop and either yank the damned thing off, wrap it in tinfoil, pull into a all metal trailer, etc....
The GPS in phones always made me laugh. The ones in Nextel phones suck horribly taking upwards of 10 minutes to get a fix and do not work indoors.
All these startups are trying to jump on GPS as if it's the new hotness. and every signel device I see can not overcome basic problems with recieving a semi-weak signal from sattelites overhead.
My high end hand held GPS has trouble holding on to 12 sattelites in dense tree cover, some really low end reciever mated to some other electronics is not going to do anywhere as well. Espcially something the size of a golf ball that will have a transmitter withing millimeters of the GPS recieving antenna swamping the recievers in the gps as well as not having a way to right it's self so the GPS antenna is aiming at the sky.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The next step in the development is, of course, to deploy a lil' spider-bot to crawl under the car and disable it by cutting a fuel line or drilling a hole in the fuel tank.
Also, it might be useful to put a small UV strobe on this type of device, to make tracking by helicopter much, much easier (as if spotting someone doing 120mph in a 50 zone wasn't easy enough) as CCDs will pick up UV light without any modification. I could imagine that helping if the suspect fled to the cover of trees. That said, it just occurred to me that a lot of choppers have IR vision as well, which makes things easier than any strobe. D'oh.
Of course, my opinion of people who drive like this is that police choppers should be armed with Hellfire missiles, and that this little beacon should be used to just take these people out with one, but that's just my opinion. Fuckers.
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
Okay... that just makes the case once more for the GPS jammer, a device that emulates GPS signals and fools every GPS receiver in its vicinity into thinking it is located near the south pole. Of course the car is still trackable by triangulating the location beacon. Of course a GPS jammer like that would be a dangerous thing to have and I'm thinking of here is what if someone happens to put that on a plane. I fly myself so that's a scary thought.
I want to know where my cops are.
When we were kids we used to throw snowballs at passing cars. The kids of tomorrow will be throwing sticky GPS tracking devices at cars.
I kept seeing a recurring theme throughout the posts on this device (and I haven't read the article yet), in that police should chase the criminals with helicopters. Great idea, but a lot of cities and towns don't have, or can't afford, or don't have the facilities for a helicopter.
There are also many ways in which a helicopter can be either avoided, or at least forced to drop far enough back to give you a better chance to lose it. Going near a major airport comes to mind. A city with many tall buildings (downtown New York or LA comes to mind) would make the helicopter less effective.
The way I could see police using this device, is tag the car, then "let" them get away/out of sight. Using the GPS, keep a group of patrol cars in a "box" around the suspect, and eventually, he/she will stop somewhere. At that point, move in. Best case, everybody wins. The cops get the criminal, the vehicle is minimally damaged, and few if any civilians get hurt. Worst case, the cops get the car back in good shape, and again, few if any civilians get hurt. Truthfully, I believe the cops would much prefer fewer chances of civilian injuries versus getting the criminal in custody, and not just because of the lawsuits.
Likely, most chases start when the criminal does something to attract the attention of the police, who then do what they are supposed to do: try to catch them. The problem with backing off, is that once the chase is on, they get fixated on stopping them. It seems a (very loosely) similar situation would be when one is working on a project or program, and is cruising along, try to stop... One big difference, which I'm sure someone would point out if I don't, is writing code isn't going to hurt anyone.
Stop and think for a moment, too, what would happen if the police *never* chased. Why bother doing anything even remotely near the speed limit? Streets are too corwded, hit the sidewalk at 60mph... Traffic signals would be less than "suggestions"....
At least if people think there's the possiblity of a cop, or several cops, chasing, and likely stopping them, they're more likely to simply pull over. With the obvious exception of criminals....
Do you see the FNORDS? I refuse to post anonymously, as I am fireproof!
Won't the cops need spidey senses to use it?
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
If everyone has a tag, then you can just track people directly. Even when they are on foot.
Wouldnt we be so much safer if the government knew where everyone was , at all times?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Does anyone remember that idea he had? I probably got some details wrong, but it was something like this: Everyone gets a dart gun that shoots a dart that sticks to another car, it says "stupid". Get enough stupid darts from driving like a lamer and you aren't allowed to drive any more. The original moderation/karma system.
Let's see now. How about this for a hypothetical situation:
Criminal/drug dealer type buys expensive car with his ill gotten money. Said person then proceeds to install a GPS TRACKER in his expensive car so if it gets stolen, the company can track it and return it to him and he can take the person who stole it to court???
I guess this is why criminals continue to get caught - because by the sounds of it, most of them are stupid enough to voluntarily put TRACKING TECHNOLOGY in their own cars. Makes it easy for police to build a social network map of the criminal's associates and market now, doesn't it?
In reality, SMART criminals would work like this:
Buy aforementioned expensive car. No need to install expensive tracking device in case it gets stolen, because the thief would soon find themselves trying to play Harry Houdini with concrete slippers encased around their ankles....
Nice and quiet, no need to involve law enforcement, and everyone ends up happy (well, except for fishfood boy).
Only in America.... land of the stupid criminal mastermind!
Visceral Psyche Films
With a dozen cars screaming down the road, once it gets to that stage (where there is enough cars to head it off, lay spikes, etc) the chase would have gone on for far to long and have put dozens if not hundreds of lives in immediate mortal danger.
Being that a chase will usually start when a single patrol car tries to stop someone and they take off, the moment the runner floors it, shoot this sucker and thats it. No need for a dozen cars hurtling through populated streets at rediculous speeds chasing someone of unknown driving ability and unknown state of mind (except absolutely pumping with adrenaline, thus ensuring tunnel vision and criticaly poor decision making abilities).
The greatest benefit? Innocent people wont die because the police where trying to arrest someone.
Anyone still think Muslims are reasonable? All this over a fucking cartoon. Fucking barbarians... http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060205/D8FIK3M81 .html
The potential for someone getting hurt with an electrical disruption device (especially a 2 foot spear!) is much higher. This is passive so it doesn't involve any risk to those in the fleeing vehicle. If someone is driving at 100mph it might actually be more dangerous to just shut their vehicle off and have them lose control at that speed. Plus, it wouldn't have any affect on pre-computer vehicles, (ok so not a lot of those speeding around....)
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
What happens if the criminal panics?? More specifically, what will happen if the criminal thats being chased looks out his window and sees the cop aiming what looks like to be a gun at the car? Granted it would be pretty unrealistic to expect the officer to pull right up, point the thing out the side window and shoot while driving along side, but even so, one of three things could happen. The criminal can shoot back (very doubtful but who knows in a car chase). Or the guy can panic, loose control of the car, sending it into who knows where, or he can go at even faster speeds trying to lose the cop. Or he could just stop and the chase would be over ;)
Its pretty obvious that these darts have to be shot discretely.
A little dart is going to be a LOT cheaper than a helicopter. Even the LAPD only has a limited number of copters.
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
A little more information:
"Each StarChase unit can fire two GPS tracking devices in case the first one misses or does not stick to the vehicle. The GPS device consists of a battery and a radio transmitter embedded in an epoxy compound. The tag affixes to the suspect's vehicle and transmits its location via satellite to police headquarters where it is superimposed over a map displayed on a computer. The GPS tag activates at impact. It transmits the car's exact position via a wireless modem. An encrypted cellular backbone delivers continuous position updates to the StarChase server that pushes location-based information to authorized users through a password-protected Web portal. The delay between the transmission and the refresh-picture rate from the Web server is about two to three seconds. The system uses data transmission encryption to ensure security."
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
I've kind of thought that a highspeed RC car could launch, use military technology for tracking, get under the car and attach itself with a bunch of hard drive magents. Either use that as the GPS device (which eliminates the whole impact debate here) or emits a small, localized EMP. Yes, I know that EMP takes a lot of energy, but nothing a couple of really large capacitors could be revved up to handle. Few people are likely to initiate a chase in any vehicle that doesn't have a computer nowadays, so the only weak spot would be diesels.
For the critics who complain about what an RC car would need for resources, they are forgetting that two things are in its favor: the vehicle only needs to run at full speed for about 2 minutes (>2minutes is a failure), and its carrier is already travelling at full speed. Heck, for that matter why not make it a hovercraft and avoid all those pavement anomalies.
P.S. This counts as prior art. :-)
You tag my car, I run your sorry ass off the road and shove your gun so far up your ass you'll shoot darts out your nose evey time you sneeze.
... that hitting a moving car from another moving car would be, uh, rather difficult?
Time for a competitor to come up with a cheap portable GPS jammer
The cops start shooting at you with anything at all for whatever reason their little pea brain has, that gives you the right to shoot back.
If you are ever involved in a high speed car chase, common sense should tell you you can't outrun a cop car which has a souped up engine, souped up radiator, bigger gas tank, and when they are interconnected out there with radios and a central dispatch. You can learn alot from the discovery channel.
This is what you do.
First, you jam them across the radio band with a white noise generator connected to a transmitter you have wired to your beefed up car electronics system. If you're not driving with one of these, you're a sitting duck for any police action against you. They will pull you over, they will search you, they will plant evidence on you, and you will suddenly find yourself doing 10 to life. Pigs have more access to 'drug evidence' they can plant on you than you could ever imagine. In the end, it comes down to your word against theirs, who do you think a jury will believe. I thought so. The only person who will protect you is you yourself. This is life or death.
Second, you site your automatic weapons on the son of a ****** that is chasing you from the rear seat while someone else drives. Slow down, let them catch up to you, and then aiming straight for the driver you let him have it with the full clip. If that don't kill the SOB it sure as heck will convince him to back the f off. If you can't get the driver, the tires and the radiator are secondary targets.
Remember to lead your target.
If you don't have someone else in the car or a weapon, you have to follow Boella's (sp?) Dicta, which says you should always, always, turn and face your enemy at all times. In this case, the bogie is already on yoru tail. Speed up real fast, get him going real fast with lots of inertia, and then slow down, closing the gap, so Piggie thinks he's being supercop and has you now. Then slam on the brakes real hard so he smashes into your rear end. You will be expecting it, he won't.
Now most amatuers at this point would speed up and try to run for it again. No, that gives him time to speed up and go back into supercop mode. You do what any motherbear would do protecting her cubs. You turn and fight. That's right, swing your car around, and start ramming the SOB. Forward, backwards, forward, backwards, slam in to him, aiming for the weak points in his combat vehicle.. the driver side door first, the radiator second. Once you've beaten him black and blue, then you can leave. Get a good distance a way, ditch the car out of site, and get yourself a fresh vehicle.
You will want to return and pick up the original car later, as it may trace back to you with prints, etc. So its good to stash it down some logging road in the back woods.
Or, you can continue to live in your fairy land, that the police are there to serve and protect, and not a police state out of control, only interested in protecting power and fear and slander upon you. And that a defense lawyer, which should be the most honorable profession on earth, meant to be the last stand against the overwhelming power of the state... hasn't been undermined or sold out yet or has no clue how to really defend anybody in court, irregardless of how expensive they are.
The only one who will protect your rights are you. You have to fight like a pyscho Indian, and yes, its to the death. Why this is? Because for the last 20 years nobody has stood up for civil rights, and everything that was fought for in World War 2 against fascism and police power has been eroded away and is now gone.
Oh yeah, and when you stash your beat up car, assuming the "paintball golf ball gps unit" is still attached. Stop by an airport, find a plane that is about to take off, and stash it on somebody's carry on. Or if you can't find that, watch for one of those ninja bikes, and when he stops for gas, tag him with it, he should give them a run for the moeny. Or barring all t
I was just thinking that del.icio.us could be used to extend this service with the tagging and all. Social traffic policing. Where democracy meets dangerous drivers.
Michael-m.co.uk - Home of Michael Mulqueen
We have license plates for this purpose. You read the number and can report it later. Many commercial vehicles also have 800 numbers on them that you can call to report dangerous driving.
I would like to see some pictures of this if anyone has any!
But what happens when the legal department loses it's first case? Here's a likely situation. The government decides it needs protect us by listening you talk to your friends in your car. You know, just in case you're a terrorist. And since the GPS is always on, why not have your car's location get tagged whenever certain 'key phrases' are overheard. Of course, this will have to be done without alerting the driver or passengers that they're being listened to and tracked, otherwise the terrorists will never talk openly. While we're at it, better make this tech mandatory...i mean 'standard' on all new vehicles.
It's already being done on phone calls, this would be the next logical step.
D
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A bullet is cheaper still.
Maybe new car computers should start to incorporate GPS systems, remote kill, with celular linking - not just 3rd party/aftermarket add-on stuff, but actually part of the computer code itself, disabling it or the associated hardware/sensors renders the car completely inoperable. That way say, when the vehicle is registered (and linked to a license plate), the police officer has the ability to control said vehicle, either by remote kill or severly limit operability (say like tell their onboard computer to limit said cars' top speed to 25 mph or so...).
Then again, false plates/stolen plates could be a problem: Sammy and Sally in $SOMEOTHERSTATE driving to $DESTINATION some day all of a sudden can't go over 25 mph and they have no idea why, on a major highway going warp 3, thusly killing a gazillion people in the accident they're going to cause... But then we could scrap the current license plate system and make it a permanent part of the car at the factory like the VIN.
The method being proposed does not prevent the chase. It only allows the police to hang back a little because they have to be close enough to not give the criminal a head start on a foot chase.
Someone running from the police at high speed is wielding a deadly weapon against the public. Use of lethal force is unquestionably justified, but the police can't just shoot at these folks in most situations due to the danger of missing and hitting a civilian.
Why not just replace the payload on these things with a radio controlled explosive device that is chemically rigged to have a short lifetime after arming? The concept would be to fire a few of them at the car and use a directional antenna to command the ones that actually attached to explode whenever the car is in a relatively safe (for others) location. If the device armed upon being fired and became chemically inert around an hour later, the danger of civilians being hurt by devices that missed would be minimized.
They use one of these in episode 8 of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex to track and follow some criminals who are getting away through crowded down-town traffic. Nice to see some things from Sci-fi coming into reality.
Too bad most of the time it's a stolen car..and most of the time the perp ditches the car as soon as they lose the police.
Tune out.
Why develop such a device when we already have 50 caliber machine guns and automatic grenade launchers and shoulder-launched anti-armor rockets?
Remember: If you are nice to such people then you will end up with more such people. The best approach is to take them out of the gene pool at the very first opportunity, so don't jail 'em, kill 'em!
There really is some merit to the Chinese method of "two strikes and you are dead" providing it isn't abused for political purposes. No point of keeping some whacko sociopath locked up at the cost of twenty grand a year, just whack 'em and be done with it. If they give you the opportunity on the first go 'round, well, take it -- that's what opportunity is all about.
To those who suggest rehabilitation, please reference the recividism rates in the U.S. Rehabilitation as a correctional concept is a huge failure and needs to be brought to a meeting with reality.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
So you just have a jammer in the car before you commit a crime. Problem solved.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Tag 'em and bag 'em may not sound glamorous but I for one welcome our new sticky dart, GPS tracking overlords. It'll be safer for everyone.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
You steal a car, are careening down the highway with cops tight behind, then you hear a dull *thud* from the trunk and the cops stop chasing you.
What are you going to do?
a) Bring the obviously tagged car back to your hideout / chop shop
b) Pull over very quickly at a 7/11, run out and shoot the tracking device, jump back in and speed off. All of which is possible because the cops stopped chasing you.
Seems to me like even with this thing they willhave to maintain at least a close distance to make sure they don't disable the thing.
They sure as hell know how to build stuff that survives being run over with a car let alone a hammer. Plus they will be so stylish everyone will be getting into high speed chases just to have one on their car.3
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/nano.ars/
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
..and I'm not sure they pay to dig the bullet out. I wouldn't worry about your cockamamie paint job.
Well, the concept can't be that new...
I would implant a chip on each car plate, but if people knew that the black market would provde us with "non-wireless-plates" again...
Anyway, this seems a good option, since most of that cars use fake plate numbers and things like that. Even the system in UK that uses cameras all over the place couldn't follow those cars with 100% precision.
But if you saw the moview "2 Fast 2 Furious II" you'll know that with some gym they can remove that things in movement... if the thing is too attached to the car with some chemical thing, in no time they will some with a new car painting tecnology that will make the device not to attach itself...
No perfect or defenitive solution I gues...
Just build a receiver in the transmission to shut the damn car off. It's the simple.
It doesn't need to transmit anything, it doesn't need to step on privacy rights, it just needs to shut the car off.
No high speed chases. No spike strips. All vehicles in the area of the signal (emergency vehicles excluded of course) are simply shut off.
Of course the true hard cores will find away around it, but aern't THOSE the folks the stop spikes (and other more forecful methods) are made for?
Your run of the mill stolen car, joy riders, or divorced dad on his 5th DUI (and the bulk of your chases) wont be removing it.
Insurance companies could underwrite the cost of installation in existing vehicles.
Because surely, standing on the side of the road wailing on your car with a hammer is an effective means of avoiding pursuit.
As we've all grown up in the virtual crime world of Grand Theft Auto, as soon as our car gets 'tagged' by law enforcement, you just have to go and steal a new car!
You can hardly turn the wheel when you *aren't moving*. At highway speeds it's much much easier to turn the wheel without assistance. So easy in fact that some systems ADD resistance to make the steering experience more consistant. A system with ABS breaks in which the ABS has failed becomes a system with regular hydraulic brakes. Which on a dry day is no different from the ABS system anyway. If there are traction issues, you're simply going to have to learn to pump, and learn fast.
Cars are not like fighter jets. They are designed to fail gracefully.
Ok, if you have a complete fly-by-wire system, I can see how you'd get into trouble, but even electric steering is actually electric-assisted-steering. We should resist attempts to put full drive-by-wire systems in cars though.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
...would be a 20mm cannon. That way when the cop misses the fugitive car and hits a pedestrian, the pedestrian won't be around to file the lawsuit.
rj
you complain the parent post appears to have been from someone who has "never driven a car," but I wonder if you've ever driven a car in anything close to the circumstances you describe.
modern braking and steering systems are designed dependent upon the motor running.. without the power steering pump and power brakes, your steering/braking ability will be negligible. but.. the worst issue is the fact that the car will probably still be in gear, which means with a dead motor, either the motor will have to turn, or the wheels will lock.. best case, this will explode the motor/transmission, but more likely, the wheels will completely lock. as someone who actually has driven a motorcycle on several occasions when the motor suddenly dropped out, i can tell you for certain that when your drive wheels lock suddenly, most drivers would not be able to recover control of the vehicle.
The cops didn't care about the car. Say you want your stolen car back, OK, but the cops just want to beat the shit out of the person who did not do what they wanted them do do. Eventually the world will be one old lady with lots of money and everyone else a cop. I guess that would make her "GOD". If my family member was killed as a "bystander" in a shot out or chase, I would ask the old lady to terminate those in charge down to those involved. Using the same method.
Like the Vette, Malibu, etc. are all electric. Like hydraulic power steering there is a mechanical linkage in there too, but it doesn't work as well as the power steering. So if the power steering were to deactivate from the EMP you would lose much of your ability to steer. If the EMP instead cause it to malfunction, you might lose all your ability to steer.
Come to think of it, EMP a new Vette (C6) and you won't be able to unlock the doors from the outside. That'd provide an interesting situation once the car actually came to a stop.
Beyond this, if you are one moment doing 80 and suddenly lose power steering and power brakes due to your engine stalling, you're going to increase your chances of running over something you didn't intend to hit, at 80mph. Lawsuit time.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
So now that we know if the "new" methods used by law enforcement, it's time to add another prep to the plan:
Criminal - "Hmmm. Time to go buy a case of "PAM Cooking Spray" to spray the car before I rob the next bank."
You talk about helicopter-less chases. I just don't see how this works without a helicopter. If you don't have a helicopter, all you'll do is recover the car. The criminals will be gone. I guess that's better than nothing, but it's only slightly better than if you don't have this device at all (you don't get the car or the criminals).
As to the idea of holding a circle around the car, if the criminal drives fast, you have to move the circle fast. That means the cops are still driving the same speed as the speeding car, only now there is an area several blocks across with cars whizzing around in it.
And how big is this circle? I think the smallest circle you could hold without cars actually driving in reverse on the front side and without the criminal seeing you do it (and thus driving extra fast and dangerous, thus defeating the purpose) is probably a 3 block radius or so. That's gonna take a lot of cars and encompass a lot of houses and other places to hide. Criminals will just ditch the car in a neighborhood where they know some people or places to hide, and then disappear into a house. You won't find them.
Really, the chopper with IR sensing is key.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
They have just made the jump into hyperspace.
You're sure the homing beacon is secure aboard their ship? I'm taking an awful risk, Vader. This had better work.
- - - -
Not a bad bit of rescuing, huh? You know, sometimes I even amaze myself.
That doesn't sound too hard. Besides, they let us go. It's the only explanation for the ease of our escape.
Easy...you call that easy?!?
They're tracking us!
Not this ship, sister!
(It's a pretty sweet video - a guy on a goped races a 2001 Trans Am with a 150hp shot of nitrous. . . and wins.)
www.linuxpenguin.net
Don't worry chief, we tagged that car "getting away".
This is much safer than what we do here in the USA. Here, we shoot from ground level. Sure, we shoot low to get the tires, but the bullets could easily miss or bounce. Vertical shots have a superior backstop and a better target. The helicopter is probably more stable than a swerving cop car too, allowing for more accurate shots.
Why the heck don't we authorize this over here? Some FAA thing or a DoD power grab?
Am I the only one who gets annoyed by this? Why don't they just say "lattitude/longitude".... or just "coordinates"
Sure. Now, instead of driving his own car, the crook has to carjack to get a fresh vehicle. Nice...
for repeat offenders, a golf-ball sized grenade..
YEEHAAAW!
Am i seriously the only one who isnt interested in whether or not 90% of these people live or die? (the 10% are-like in the article- innocent passengers)
-AlexC
Where re the posts complaining about privacy invasion?! Where are the "OMG Bush is stealing our freedom" posts?! The sky is falling! A technoligical government advance hasn't brought on a horde of posts complaining about how they should need a warrant to do this!
My favorite dumb chase were the kids who had a moderate-speed chase for many miles up US 101 to San Francisco. The CHP just followed them, not trying hard to pull them over. The kids exited 101 at the last San Francisco exit, and turned into an alley. The alley led down a ramp and into a building. At which point, heavy doors closed behind them. They'd driven into the loading ramp of SF's main jail.
Oops, you're right http://auto.howstuffworks.com/power-brake.htm/prin table
I confused the brake booster with a vacuum pump.
I can only imagine that if the engine died while still in gear, you'd get a hell of a lot of engine braking.
Either way, I don't think the results would be all that safe in the end.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
This is old news, Ghost in the Shell had this years ago. Can't reality catch with anime already?!
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
The best is still a chopper with night vision, so when the perp leaves the car they can be followed. After all, the value is in getting the criminal.
I thought the value was in getting the criminal... on tape.
For the next episode of World's Wildest Police Videos.
What's the value in actually catching the criminal? Then you just have to spend money on a court case to prosecute him. That's a net loss, unless it happens to be Michael Jackson or OJ Simpson or someone with major merchandizing opportunities.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
There's no question that Spiderman would have used impact adhesives - he would want the web he launched to stick specifically to what he wanted and not to anything else. This would be an effective way to achieve exactly that. It would be interesting to know what ways such glues ARE used - both in the Real World and the Comic Book Universe.
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)
The best is still a chopper with night vision, so when the perp leaves the car they can be followed. After all, the value is in getting the criminal.
Another Republican ideal. Spend millions of dollars on helicopters with night vision in order to catch a teenager that boosts a car. Oh, and we'll lower your taxes too.
Personally, I believe that legislators should make it a severe felony to evade the police regardless of whatever they are suspected of. Its easy to get a conviction once caught, and maybe the fear of prison will make people think twice about evading the police. As it is now, its not much of a crime, and basically worth the risk of getting caught or killed and/or killing bystanders.
Would be to just make traffic cops work on commission. Hell, they could be independent, non-employees, for that matter. Make it licensed, and require some conviction rate.
When have you ever seen some fucktard, turning left at an intersection, trying to sneek through a yellow, who cant clear the intersection and blocks the whole fucking thing ever get a ticket? Never. Commission traffic cops could retire in a day off asshats like that alone.
Dang. Now it is going to be illegal to cruise the 'hood with your car coated in nonstick spray. Pam sales are going to be way down.
it'll be a bit difficult to hit the car once the driver tromps on the gas pedal and takes off. So a policeman will probably have to tag every car he's intending to pull over, "just in case".
If the glue is as good as the news release claims, then every poor slob who gets stopped for any reason will be faced with a large bill for repairing the damage to his car's paint job.
So, we tag them with the GPS golf ball.... then call of the pursuit so they slow down and the maniacs don't kill anybody... And then we watch them on a GPS map.... sounds great...
But what happens when they get out of the car and run or switch cars?
I worked with a funder to develop a similar vehicle tagging system. However, I told the funder that the fleeing vehicle tagging system was already nixed by the "Pursuit Management Task Force", making it one of the lowest priority systems for federal funding. It would've been a huge flop had a bunch of money been poured into it. How somebody else comes along claiming history does not exist is either a fool or great salesperson.
I dumped the project upon finding this report: http://www.justnet.org/pdffiles/pmtf.pdf
which concludes about tagging system that:
"Tagging systems have their drawbacks as well. Unless aided by helicopter or
other air support tracking, it is easier for suspects in a tagged vehicle to elude capture. If helicopters are readily available, the need for tagger/tracker technology is significantly mitigated. The deployment system requires a high degree of accuracy; anytime a projectile is launched there is some degree of hazard. Finally, tagging systems do not cause a fleeing or reckless vehicle to stop; unsafe or dangerous acts by the driver continue unabated until the driver decides to stop or the vehicle otherwise becomes disabled.
Because of these drawbacks, tagging systems are seen by the PMTF to have
limited potential for significantly impacting police pursuits."
If you dive into a respray booth when in high persuit, they'll be sufficiently confused and stop the persuit...
Ahhh, grand theft auto... obviously realistic enough to get some politicians and parents panties in a knot... or maybe it just challenges the 'work or starve' mentality.
Kiss - Keep it simple stupid.
The genius in this idea is in it's simplicity. Sure the idea is dated and millions have thought of it but these guys had the guts to exectue it.
The bottom line is anything will help. I think this is a winner.
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
Most, if not all new cars are equipped with gps spy equipment. These stories are just to get people to say, "Hey, let's use OnStar to track criminals!!!" When in reality the plan all along was to track everybody, not just criminals. You can see this technique used all day long on television. The real goal of these stories is encouraging people to forget 4th Amendment protections and learn (or be forced) to accept 24/7 tracking and tracing. The original Star Trek series introduced us to what was planned to come: flip style communicators, scanning, asking the computer where somebody is, etc. Once tracking and tracing is a reality you can then move to a cashless system because with track and trace identity is always known. God help us.
If you really want to get away from the cops, buy a motorcycle.
RCMP in Canada will not chase speeding motorcyles; the chase with an untrained driver is likely to end up in death, and they're not going to be able to keep up. A speeding ticket isn't worth a death sentence for the driver of the motorcycle.
Makes me wonder what they do in the US.
For what it's worth; it is a myth that police cars are fast. The interceptors are only fast on freeways, where you are unlikely to gain the speed differential needed to escape. They're very heavy. If you are in a sports car with performance tires, and know something about driving, you can outrun a police car very easily on a secondary road. The only question is if they can radio ahead to have someone block the road. Most areas do not have enough police coverage to do this.
Why not outfit a large helicopter like a Chinook with a giant electromagnet? They could just hover over the car and lift it right off the street. And if the people in the car get unruly they can shout down with a bullhorn. "Don't make me drop this car!"
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
wasn't it George Carlin who proposed issuing darts to drivers, so that you could shoot them at obnoxious drivers, and anyone accumulating three "*** darts" would automatically have his license revoked?
hawk
Just kidding. They can take away my 1929 ford when they pry it from my cold dead hands
P2P Anonymous Distributed Web Search: http://www.yacy.net/
Second, recall that this thing is designed to be shout of a high powered air-gun, slam into the back/side of a speeding car, and stick there. I kinda sorta expect that it's not what we would describe as "delicate" electronics. More likely, at least three quarters of the mass of that golf-ball sized package is impact absorbing material and reinforcing. Stick that up against a rather flimsy backing of sheet metal (as opposed to a concrete floor), and hitting it with a hammer (assuming you even have one handy) will only dent the body panel it's stuck to.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Hmm, if they have to shoot a glue ball - how about firing a "highly effective" gob of glue in front of the car and glueing it to the road? With the car firmly stuck, the chase is over.
Oh well, what the hell...
It's like when your sister glues your hand to the car [. . .]
I hate it when that happens.
I am related to him... My grandmother's maiden name was "Booth" and we are from Memphis...
Libertas in infinitum
I feel your pain dude....When I play spiderman with my girlfriend I can only get it to cling to her face for a few minutes... Then it usually just drips off. Oh well... ;-)
Libertas in infinitum
Every month or so, certain priviledged drivers would be given tags to tag other taggers. When they someone tag a driver unfairly, they can throw a tag on top. These tags might have the values "unfair", "green eyed monster", "tree hugging hippie", and so on.... ;)
You know you play too much WoW, when you read this story and think: "Hey! It makes the car appear on the minimap! I wonder if it also puts a large red arrow above it and prevents it from stealthing!"
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
I know of at least one person (through my girlfriend) who died because her friend in the passenger seat thought it'd be a fun joke to lean across and turn the keys off in the ignition. The sudden unexpected loss of electronic brakes and power steering caused the driver to lose control, and drive off the road. I know of another person who had a serious accident because his mentally disabled passenger thought it'd be funny to pull up the hand brake and stop the car on a high speed road along the side of a hill. I personally nearly had what could have been a serious accident when I lost power steering as the car I was driving stalled in an awkward part of a road. I feel quite fortunate that I noticed quickly enough that the car wasn't responding as I'd expected it to, and was able to recover.
Even if you can still force the brakes or the steering, suddenly and dramatically changing how the car will react is asking for trouble. Sometimes a driver will be able to stop safely, but don't be surprised if it results in a serious accident.
My feeble mind remembers car 54 not car 57.
"The device is the size of a golf ball, can be launched via an air-powered shooter attached to police vehicles..."
g e.jpg
In other news, Police Drive for New Recruits:
http://www.ok-golf.com/images/facilities/golf-ran