New Service Maps Speed Traps By Cell Phone

esocid writes "In a modern equivalent of flashing your headlights to warn other motorists of police speed traps, you can now warn fellow drivers with a cell phone or personal digital assistant about speed traps, red-light cameras, and other threats to ticket-free driving. And as you approach a known threat, you'll get an audio alert on your mobile device. The developer of Trapster, Pete Tenereillo, said the system, which requires punching in a few keys such as '#1' to submit information to Trapster's database, should comply with laws banning talking on cell phones. The free service can automatically detect location using mobile devices' GPS capabilities or tap their Wi-Fi and get location from a database run by Skyhook Wireless. Police officials that Tenereillo has talked to haven't complained about the service because it inevitably encourages drivers to slow down."

Comments

Why complain?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would think a police official would find it easier to just have police drive past points hitting #1, saving money on police traps and increasing coverage?

Re:Why complain?

[dfghjk]

That assumes the goal of police traps is slowing traffic down. It is not.

Re:Why complain?

[Shakrai]

That assumes the goal of police traps is slowing traffic down. It is not.

Uhh, it is sometimes. I do my fair share of speeding, but I'm open minded enough to assume that the police officer sitting outside the school zone at 7:30AM isn't primarily interested in revenue collection.....

Re:Why complain?

[Shakrai]

because school zone speed limits are often ridiculously slow

Oh, c'mon! You'll brook no argument from me on highway speeds being artificially low, but school zones? If you can't stand to slow down for the 30 seconds it takes to drive through a school zone then I don't really have much pity for you if you get ticketed.

Likewise, I have zero fucking sympathy for somebody that goes around a school bus with flashing lights.

If getting drivers to slow down was the point...

[TubeSteak]

The police wouldn't be setting up speed traps.
A patrol car in the median is more than enough to slow down all but the stupid or inattentive.

False Positives?

[HighWizard]

I'm guessing this would allow me to make people slow down on my street by simply making them "think" there is a speed trap there. Not a terrible idea, if enough people use it. Though how many false positives will it take before confidence in the system is shot?

Re:False Positives?

[transporter_ii]

Just set up a limit to how many times someone can report something in a given amount of time. That way it would limit false positives. Also, if multiple people give a report, mod that alert up, as it is more likely to be a true report.

Another way to avoid tickets

[Nos.]

Or you know, you could obey the speed limit, stop at red lights, etc. Seems to keep quite a few of us from getting tickets.

Re:Another way to avoid tickets

[techpawn]

Speeding tickets are like the lottery:
They're just a tax on the stupid who are inattentive and don't understand how numbers work.

Re:Another way to avoid tickets

[techpawn]

i know people are going to say "well when it turns yellow you stop - no problem" but the yellow is so short that it is an issue..

Maybe it was the way I was taught to drive... but...

If it's green when you see it, assume it will turn yellow at any time: prepare to stop.
If it's yellow when you see it, assume it will turn red: you should be stopping
If it is red when you see it, assume the idiots coming the other way will run the yellow or red. Wait a second after it turns green then Go.
Stopping is not a problem if you assume everyone else is going to be more stupid than you are. It's driving again...

Re:Another way to avoid tickets

[scubamage]

I got a 400$ ticket by driving on a road in northern pennsylvania at the posted speed limit. Apparently there had at one time been a speed sign posting that the speed limit dropped by 20 miles per hour (from 55 to 35). However the only sign which was posted had recently been destroyed in an accident. I took photos of the sign. However to protest the ticket would have cost me 75$ in court fees just to protest, a day of lost wages, plus the cost to drive all the way up there and back. In the end, it was cheaper just to take the ticket. Obeying the speed limit only works if the police play by the rules, and sadly they don't always like doing that... as Rodney King, or any number of the thousands of police corruption cases on the books can tell you. Why else do you think you're more likely to get pulled over if you're from out of state? You have almost no chance to contest because its almost always cheaper to just accept the ticket - especially if you're from a far distance. This is done on purpose (as a District Attorney told me).

Re:Another way to avoid tickets

[Ioldanach]

If it's green when you see it, assume it will turn yellow at any time: prepare to stop.

That's good advice, but if you're watching the light and traffic, it can still take anywhere from 1/4 to 3/4 seconds to observe that the light has changed and depress the brake pedal. At 35mph, you're traveling at 51 feet per second and will need 101 feet to safely stop, or 130 feet if you're a truck. That means that if the yellow light is less than two seconds and you're 100 feet away, you can't safely stop without entering the intersection, and you can't enter the intersection before the light is red. Hopefully, the cameras will at least let you go if you enter the intersection on the yellow and leave on the red, otherwise you need to add the full length of the intersection to the calculation, and that can easily be 50 feet, or another full second.

Therefore, if you come back and record the light's transitions and discover that the light provides less than two seconds of stopping time you have an affirmative defense in that it is physically impossible with standard automotive equipment for a vehicle to stop in the time allotted. You might reasonably argue for 3 seconds, since stopping distance is increased in foul weather to about 150 feet and setting the time less than that is unsafe (though if weather is that foul, the driver should be reducing their speed so that they can stop in 100 feet anyways). Also, a setting of 2 seconds requires that the driver be able to identify their range to the intersection as greater or less than 101-102 feet, which is an unreasonably small target to estimate on the fly. A setting of 3 seconds in fair weather allows the driver to estimate their distance as greater or less than a 101-153 foot space, which is reasonably manageable.

Re:Another way to avoid tickets

[ejasons]

However to protest the ticket would have cost me 75$ in court fees just to protest, a day of lost wages, plus the cost to drive all the way up there and back. In the end, it was cheaper just to take the ticket.

Well, then ... frankly, you're part of the problem...

Consider it your civic duty to protest the injustice in court, even if it is inconvenient, even if it costs more. If more people do this, then the operation becomes less lucrative, and they will then have less incentive to do it.

I've protested every one of the speeding tickets that I've gotten in my state -- it's never done much good, except a slight reduction in the fine a time or two. However, I felt slightly vindicated in that I was taking up some precious court time in the process...

OT: laws banning non-hands-free cells

[davidwr]

I don't know about you but it takes more mental effort to carry on a conversation than to dial a phone or hold it up to my ear. The latter two are practically robotic to me by now.

Rather than banning certain activities like shaving, talking on a cell, fiddling with the radio, or tending to unruly children, train new drivers on how to drive with common every-day distractions, train them to use common sense in minimizing distractions in unfamiliar environments, and if they get in a wreck and a distraction is one of the factors, let that affect who is deemed "at fault."

Re:If getting drivers to slow down was the point..

[Telvin_3d]

I think catching the stupid and inattentive is kind of the point.

That's exactly what a selfish driver would say.

[spun]

Guess what? I have never been in an accident and never been ticketed in 18 years of driving. I always signal, never drive more than 5 miles over the speed limit, always let people in when they signal, maintain a safe following distance, and generally don't act like an ass on the road.

Am I better than other drivers? Perhaps, it depends on what you mean by better. What I am is a safe and courteous driver.

Re:If getting drivers to slow down was the point..

[truthsearch]

Don't they want to slow people down in general Not where I live. The police hide and let cars go by that are 15 mph over the limit. They wait to see a car going 15+ to get a bigger ticket. It seems to be all about the revenue, not safety.

And I imagine it's worse in many small towns where moving violations sometimes make up a large portion of the town revenue.

Re:That's a violation

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, a lot of people probably won't realize that by allowing "Trapster" to track their movements and feed data back to them based on location, they will be giving up a big part of their own privacy and helping to create a database that will no doubt be subpoenaed from time to time -- if not outright plundered through misuse of the so-called Patriot Act.

In addition, with speeders allowing their locations to be tracked, that database also documents their speeding. A juicy target if the speeder is involved in a collision and the victim(s) want another way to establish reckless driving.

Or, it's just a useful target anyway to document and prosecute speeders. Most subscribers will no doubt be speeders, so as the police state becomes stronger, look for your now well-documented past to come back to haunt you.

And what happens to all of that data if there is a security breach at the company and someone exfiltrates all of the records. Most probably wouldn't care, but the higher your profile, the more you could expect to see your actions published in the open for all to see.

No thanks. I'll just keep my radar detector.

Re:If getting drivers to slow down was the point..

[Anonymous Coward]

Your father is an asshole.

Re:That's a violation

[NeverVotedBush]

I'm not all paranoid about it. I was just pointing out the downside to basically keeping nice, 3rd-party evidence of your driving habits, where you go, when, etc. That kind of information would be really interesting to anyone who had some reason to think they needed to investigate you.

And if you don't think that happens, go read how the Bush administration decided the Fourth Amendment did not apply to them and they could wiretap and eavesdrop all they wanted. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/03/1219200

And if you don't know what the Fourth Amendment guarantees (or did until Bush decided to ignore it...):

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Re:The Easiest Way to Ticket Free Driving is...

[bnenning]

It's not like driving 25 MPH is going to kill you now is it?

If everyone else is doing 40, it very well might.