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D.C. Commuters to be Scanned With Infrared Cameras
owlgorithm writes "Washington, D.C. area commuters are going to be "scanned like groceries at the supermarket" in order to catch single-occupant vehicles who are illegally using carpool lanes. The article, from the Washington Post, says that infrared cameras capable of detecting human skin will be installed, rather than the visible-spectrum cameras in use today. So much for using dummies in the front seat."
is watching you...
Remember, the ultimate goal of these politicians is to have such a dizzying array of laws that they can arrest anyone at any time and always have a "legitimate" reason.
Cameras only help them.
Care about privacy? Read this!
They won't.
It won't.
It will.
The problem with this stuff is that there is a constant erosion or privacy. Every step is just one more little thing. What's the big deal about "a" when they are already doing b,c,d,e, and f. And once "a" is gone, you never get it back because the people already accepted giving it up. When people say "we don't have to worry about losing x because people would never accept it"
Um how about heated dummies?
Actually, this is a serious problem.
HOV lanes are usually created in order to reduce traffic congestion problems, by encouraging people to car-pool, use public transit, cycle, or walk. The alternatives are less desirable: paying even more money to expand and maintain road networks with higher capacity, or to deal with health problems created by the dumping of combustion by products (particulate matter, nitrous oxides, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, etc.). The latter is a non-trivial problem.
This is not about cheating the system, though some may think of it as such. It is about using municipal resources efficiently and saving lives.
I understand that in certain places, carpool lanes have been abandoned because the number of drivers who use them is so low that they effectively take an entire lane away from the highways, and cause more congestion in the remaining lanes, thus worsening the problem. I really believe that it's entirely about the money, and the real asshats are the jackholes that came up with the idea of the carpool lane. Most tickets are written to generate revenue, not to improve safety or traffic flow. If someone can get away with "cheating" this system, then they become a sort of modern day Robin Hood in my book.
Other than this text, there is no discernible information contained in this sig.
Human beings have a rather unique IR signature that is very easily distinguishable from other heat sources.
Human beings also have a rather unique ability to find creative ways to beat challenges like that.
Random and weird software I've written.
HOV lanes are fairly pointless as is. It's clear that people are not significantly incentivized to use the carpool lanes. Moreover, conflicting schedules (particularly after work) and the impossibility of spontaneity provide heavy disincentives toward their use. They certainly don't cut down on pollution or fuel consumption as cars spend more time stuck in traffic in the adjacent lanes, or taking longer, more circuitous routes. They don't cut down on traffic, as more cars are forced to fit in fewer lanes. People who live in Arlington or Falls Church, especially, could have to go miles out of the way to get to work, despite having a major traffic artery in their back yards.
The money spent on policing, enforcement, and, in some cases, construction and maintenance of elaborate switching mechanisms to change the direction of traffic in center lanes, could be more efficiently spent toward carbon offsets, and opening the lanes themselves to normal traffic would better accomplish the goal of reducing congestion. Or make the Metro train free to ride; it's already heavily subsidized anyway, and everyone would benefit from increased use. (Of course, capacity would likely need to be increased as well, since they're heavily used already).
Regulating the routes of traffic in an effort to decrease traffic is an exercise in futility. It merely relocates the problem; it does nothing to alleviate it. Traffic is already self-regulating, especially as the distribution of information becomes increasingly streamlined. When one route slows down, people take alternate routes. If the distribution is inequitable, it's because of poor infrastructure design in relation to the population. The cure is redesign, not banishing the overwhelming majority of vehicles from the shortest route between Point A and Point B. It would be one thing if HOV was a stopgap while more effective measures were implemented, but as it stands, it's merely contributing to the problem it claims to resolve.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Yes, yes, I know, they don't really specify... ...but hopefully you realize the idea and spirit of HOV lanes is for carpool, multiple passenger commuter, busses, passenger vans, and similar applications, and not someone who happens to be toting a child in an infant seat. :-/
(How did the parent get modded "Insightful"?)
Are you saying, then, that a parent and child don't qualify for "two or more people" in the car? When did minors stop being people?
Good, inexpensive web hosting
I've always heard that HOV lanes are for 2 or more licensed drivers.
I mean, the point is to reduce congestion/pollution by limiting the number of cars on the road, and the benefit of the lane is the incentive to ride with somebody else instead of driving your own car by yourself.
As unlicensed drivers (children, etc.) aren't going to be driving by themselves anyways, it wouldn't make sense to allow them to qualify you for the commuter lane.
...be able to get somewhere faster or more conveniently because they have a child with them Less time on the road? Yes.Less time overall including the 20+ minutes of saying, "Let's go! Let's go! Don't hide your sister's shoes!"?????? Fat chance.
[waves paw] Bah!
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dman123 forever!
Filtering out the -1s and 0s since 1999.
I'm an asshole so I like to report them.
You've got your causes and effects reversed. You like to report them because you're an asshole.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Rome didn't last forever either. A country is only as good as its citizens force it to be at any given moment in time. If you look at the history of the US - you see a constant struggle to protect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights - an ebb and flow of interpretations as conditions allowed or demanded. It takes wisdom and compassion to do that fairly. It takes the involvement of the people - people with a moral compass that leads them to do the right thing even if the road less traveled is a difficult one. The greatest strength of our nation has been the willingness to protect the rights of the minority - to tolerate different views, and have the flexibility to change when change was required - and conversely to hold the line when the pendulum swings wildly away from the plumb line of the common good.
There are several generations that come to mind - that had the will to stand - the generation of the American Revolution years, and the generation that fought WWII. Both were willing to sacrifice their lives in order to first form a novel form of government, then later to protect it from destruction. The Civil War, for that matter, could be seen as a correction to the Great Compromise - a point which shows that the founders were not perfect, and sadly one that led to war - a cautionary tale of where intolerance leads. The Civil Rights laws and protests of the 1960s was a less destructive completion of the Civil War that began a century before. It seems that people only show the best (and for that matter worse) of their character in times of ultimate distress - it is almost as if we can't see the train is coming until it is upon us. We only stand when it becomes unbearable - and destruction ensues.
My question is, will today's generations go down in history as protectors or destroyers of the great experiment that is the United States of America? Will we be a beacon of freedom for others, or a sad footnote of history? Will we sit on our hands until the destruction of civil war rips the fabric of the nation, or will we have the wisdom to settle conflicts peacefully (hold public policy makers to a higher standard)?
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Udall's Fourth Law: Any change or reform you make is going to have consequences you don't like.
Straight from the slashdot quotes, very convenient. Now the problem with techy solutions, and the reason slashdot geeks will always be skeptical of them, leading to other geeks making fun of the said skepticism as a sort of mature outlook on the matter - the problem is that technology always has loopholes:
You introduce a harmless little thing like an IR based camera solution and suddenly people buy thin, invisible, heated coating for their seats or windshields that will fool your nifty little cam for a little cost. Camera tech evolves to identify human heat signatures using pattern matching techniques on the images. Spoofing tech evolves to comply. Police begin searches of cars... do you see where this is going?
I live (and go to grad school) in DC; I honor the code, everybody I know does, and HOV lanes almost never get blocked because of violators, AFAIK. If they do, then maybe the troopers on the road, instead of being busy tossing salad, can keep an eye out for infractions and produce solid cases that nobody can contend. Humans are good for some things. Use them. Automating criminalization is not easy, and should be avoided when possible.
They're just automating an inspection that could have been performed by cops on the ground. I know because I got a ticket for driving in the stupid carpool lane once. And you're already in public in a vehicle where you're, at most, shielded from plain view by a bit of glass. Which is to say you're not shielded from plain view.
So, unless law enforcement plans to use this technology to see something it's not already capable of seeing, e.g. using it to see through the walls of your home, I don't think this is a big deal.
So many suggested avoidance schemes, but haven't any of you actually thought that maybe you could just car pool instead? Easy solution and so much better for the environment. Plus you might actually get some stimulating conversation on the way rather than the inane radio DJ chatter ;-)
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
It's the people who won't obey traffick rules who are assholes, not the people who report them. I've been nearly killed numerous times by cretins who run the red light, go over the speed limit, take a shortcut through the left line in left turns, won't use the turn signal, drive through crossroads without any regard for other traffick, just have to pass the car in front of them despite there being incoming traffick, jump from line to line randomly, etc.
Fine them till they go banckrupt, then lock them away for life and throw away the key. Or at the very least take away their licenses and damn cars. The roads aren't a fucking playground, they're a public utility, and screwing up there gets people killed. The traffick rules should be enforced with the fervor appropriate to the risks breaking them causes; namely, they should be enforced as matters of life and death, since they are.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
they need a Metro Bus system that doesn't scare away everyone but those with no choice
Any idea how to do this without getting the ACLU all worked up?And anyway, Falls Churchians and Arlingtonians have plenty of roads other than 66 to choose from. Hell, you can't even get onto 66 going Eastbound from half of Arlington, anyhow. more efficiently spent toward carbon offsets I've never understood this whole carbon offsets thing. Is there any actual legal framework with teeth in place to force emitters to purchase "carbon credits"?
Even if there was such a thing, I would be against it for this purpose. Why should we prefer to spend our "carbon emition" resources on ParkingLot-66 as opposed to actual production of useful goods? To me, that seems wasteful. Or make the Metro train free to ride; it's already heavily subsidized anyway, and everyone would benefit from increased use. DC Metro is already at capacity. You seem to be familiar with Northern VA, so you've probably heard the term "Orange Crush". The Blue line is at capacity as well.
There really isn't much more that Metro can do to increase capacity. They're already running many 8 car trains. What metro really needs to do, that they will never do, is add more tracks. Currently, if there is one "sick passenger" on one train in one direction, the entire metro system gets brought to its knees. This is because that line will have to single-track (trains going in both directions on one track), and the resulting slowdown gums up the other lines as well.
At any rate, I disagree with your assertion that HOV won't change behavior. I know plenty of people who HOV when they otherwise would not. Slug lines further support this position.
What I think may screw the whole thing up is these HOT lanes. I mean, really. People in NoVA have way more money than time. Why should I bother to pick up slugs if I can just pay $5 or whatever and not even have to slow down?
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
I'd much prefer that HOV violators are detected by camera and mailed tickets than stopped by a police car.
I'd much prefer that HOV lanes be done away with entirely, allowing motorists to use the full available bandwidth of the highway system, and for the police not to waste any resources on counting people and issuing HOV violations.
I mean, when NEW JERSEY has scrapped a traffic control initiative, you know it has to be a bad idea.