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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."
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"
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"?)
As someone who has commuted in DC, I welcome this. Nothing chapped my ass more than watching a douche take the HOV all on his lonesome. He didn't earn it, he can sit in shit with the rest of us.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
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.