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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."
of the privacy of police officers!
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?
You're rocketing down the freeway exceeding the speed limit checking your phone for text messages warning you to slow down. I hope you die in car fire.
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.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
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?
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.
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."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
sending a text message, however brief, and it is not hand free and thus may fall under the guidelines of some of the laws that are on the books or proposed.
Especially if you get someone who has some cell phone activity right before an accident.
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
>Information about active speed traps is kept for an hour, with the idea that officers may move on.
Indeed. This could become the system of choice for the subset of people who need to know exactly where the police are running 'john' stings, drug sweeps, or just parked in a neighborhood.
I wonder what effect that could have?
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
But I posted on about an almost identical system, which I called "copwatch" here on Slashdot, about a year ago...and it was something I 100% thought out on my own. Pretty cool someone did it.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=227045&cid=18394299
March 18 2007
Basically, it uses the same principle, but every time you see a traffic cop, you press a button somewhere in your car. Your car, with the use of a GPS, then beacons the location of the police car. Other cars then repeat the beacon, which does have a TTL value on it as well.
To prevent false positives, there is a limit to how many reports someone could generate in a set time period, and multiple reports in the same area could mod the threat up.
This would all be happening pretty transparently to everyone, unless they were within a set distance of an active alert, at which point they would be alerted to the danger.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Maybe troopers will start to hide around halfway between towers now ;)
- *flashing lights*
- Guy gets pulled over
- "license and registration please"
- cell phone beeps "speed trap ahead"
- "Oh what have we got here?"
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Maybe it's just where I live, but police do that too. I think it depends on the city/town.
For example, anytime I drive to Tampa, FL there is a crazy stretch of road where the speed limits go from 55->25->45->25 etc... where the police really do make money from the speed trap revenues. It's pretty amusing since people have put billboards up complaining about the ticketing on this stretch of road.
Apparently, you are.
I think catching the stupid and inattentive is kind of the point.
Police officials that Tenereillo has talked to haven't complained about the service because it inevitably encourages drivers to slow down.
So all the cops have to do to slow traffic down city wide would be two periodically send a car around with an officer punching #1 into his cellphone at many locations. This way users would know that there are speed traps EVERYWHERE.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
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.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
There is a considerable difference between driving like an idiot, i.e. recklessly, and driving fast, i.e. above the speed limit when conditions allow. Making the argument to drive faster is not irrational given one is driving safely.
My satnav (Tomtom running on a Windows Mobile PDA) can be updated to include speed camera and other information from http://www.pocketgpsworld.com./
I think that's a lot safer because in this part of the world you can be penalised quite severely for touching your mobile phone while driving. Additionally the gps has a much more accurate idea of my position and is aware of my actual speed and the limit in force on my particular stretch of road.
The databases I use are - static speed cameras, regular locations of mobile speed cameras, average speed cameras, and stoplight cameras. Each type of threat is alerted by a different sound effect and a visual reminder of the speed limit.
I feel that using SMS is a solution to a problem which doesn't exist, especially since phones are increasingly coming with built-in gps receivers.
My father who is a retired police officer was talking about driving 5 miles under the speed limit to mess with people, a lot of people will not pass a cop.
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
Speed is not the problem most of the time. America has notoriously low speed limits designed to make you the criminal when you drive normally (my state routinely has 55mph on highways where everybody goes about 72. Those who actually go 55 are in great danger from traffic). Last time I looked, it was safer to go 10mph above the limit than 10mph below.
It's just the easiest way to collect tickets. Point a radar gun, boom, and write ticket.
I see all kinds of more dangerous traffic infractions that almost no cop gives a damn about. Failure to use turn signals. Or this situation: you are on a normal two-lane two-way road at an intersection with a green light. You are at the forefront and want to make a left turn and the car opposite from you is in the same situation. There is a line of cars behind both of you. Most state laws would give the left-turners the right of way and both of you should be able to turn left simultaneously. What instead usually happens is that the cars behind you take to the shoulder (illegally in this case - going onto the shoulder is to avoid an obstacle, not traffic) and go around you, cutting the two turning left off from their right-of-way. This is where the law and (now) common practice collide.
Someone else mention the left lane as passing. It also recently became State law here that left was only to be used for passing and faster traffic. Not in practice. Most times I see some cas right next to each other neck and neck (and not even going fast) which leaves me wondering why the guy in the left lane even bothered going in the left lane... other than to block everyone else.
But cops sure do love keeping on writing the speeding tickets. I guess going slow negates the danger of not following any other rules:/
And I imagine it's worse in many small towns where moving violations sometimes make up a large portion of the town revenue.
Developers: We can use your help.
I wonder what the cops will come up with the counter this technology. Sure, some departments just want you to slow down, but others just want your money.
My friend just bought a shiny new radar detector. Radar detectors are illegal in some places and the cops can find out if your using one with a radar detector detector. My friend's new radar detector prevents that from happening because it has a radar detector detector detector that shuts off the radar detector if it detects a radar detector detector.
Seriously, this arms race has to stop! I'm sick of using the word detector!
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
The city and police as an organization probably would. Speed traps have nothing to do with enforcing the law and everything to do with revenue generation. If this gets in the way of their revenue generation, you can bet they will try to find a way to make it illegal.
What you will also get are discounts on your insurance because of a safe driving record. Over the years that adds up to quite a bit.
I never had so much fun on the dreary drive between Dallas and Houston as the times when we used to carry a radar speed gun in the car and would turn it on when some tailgating speeding asshole flew past us.
Extra points for visible smoke emanating from the screeching tires.
Double extra points for loss of vehicle control!
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
In my city people commonly drive very dangerously - not signaling when they turn, aggressively weaving around in lanes so they can get to the red light 3 seconds before everyone else, running red light/stop signs, pulling out in front of traffic so that everyone else has to stop briefly to avoid hitting you - but the cops never seem to give a damn. Go more than 6 mph over the speed limit, though, and they pounce on you. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that people should speed - but the amount of enforcement effort that goes into speeding seems vastly excessive compared to the relative danger it poses.
It is not clear who you are speaking of when you refer to selfish pricks who drive as though there were no one else on the road. In my experience, the slow drivers more fit into that category than anyone else. Sharing a road takes cooperation and it's the slow and inattentive that cause many problems. Most speed limits are set low enough to make criminals out of the bulk of all drivers, so speeding is hardly an adequate measure of selfish driving.
...to FOLLOW THE FUCKING SPEED LIMIT GODDAMMIT! If you go over the speed limit, you deserve the ticket. And I don't want to hear all the lame justifications like "revenue generation" and "unreasonable speed limits". If it says drive 25 MPH, then fucking DO IT! It's not like driving 25 MPH is going to kill you now is it? And if you say that it will make you late getting to your destination, you should have accounted for that when you left and left a little earlier! God, it amazes me how people try and weasel out of REAL personal responsibility where they actually have control over something. But as soon as there is some poor soul with real problems like poverty or HIV who really needs help, those same people are saying, "She should have been personally responsible and not been born into a poor family". Or... "Serves him right for being born with the wrong gender preference" regarding HIV.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Sounds familiar. Check this out: http://www.newromesucks.com/main.html.
Your father is an asshole.
The last time I tried to pass a cop (Oregon State Trooper), he pulled off while in front of me and then came in behind me to pull me over the "following too closely". (which was BS, he pulled me over for coming up on his ass @110MPH in my WRX, ha ha - his radar was off though!) Too bad for him I knew the answer to his safety questions, denied his accusations and the PASSING LANE had just opened up and I was going to pass him on the left (I had been behind him for a couple miles, at a safe distance doing exactly the speed limit). So I was speeding up to pass his slow ass as soon as the passing lane opened up and he hit for me "following too closely" right at the last second, basically. He had nothing on me though and he knew it. I thought it was a real bitch move.. traffic was great (as in, NONE) until I rolled up on him and the line of 8 cars in front of him all doing 55.
They only detect the cheap radar detectors. There has been an electronic warfare in the civilian world with radar detectors (RDs) and radar detector detectors (RDDs). Moderate priced RDs have had RDD detection capability for awhile and will go into a stealth mode, temporarily disabling their main oscillator.
And of course, you have the professional level such as the Beltronics STi Driver or the Valentine 1 which have been hardened to prevent RF emissions detected by RDDs...
All editorial writers ever do is come down from the hill after the battle is over and shoot the wounded.
Hey, I've seen my fair share of asshats on the road but I don't think speeding automatically qualifies you as one.
In many areas the speed limits are artificially low and/or the flow of traffic precludes obeying the speed limit unless you enjoy people closing on you at 15-20mph and flipping you off as they pass.....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
No, we don't. The speed limits we have on our freeways are set for purely political reasons. (The clue is that the limits are set by state legislatures, not engineers.) What I'm saying is that the posted speed limit should reflect the maximum speed for which the road is designed. Naturally, exceeding this limit would be dangerous by definition and worthy of much more than a simple fine.
So, you still think that the current posted speed limit reflects the maximum safe speed? Try this: In the late '80s, the speed limit on many rural Interstate highways was raised from 55 mph to 65 mph. The roads were not changed or altered in any way (other than changing the signs). How is it that one day the maximum safe speed is 55 mph and the next day it is 65 mph for the exact same road?
I'm all for more training, but I think that 50 hours might be excessive. Periodic ability tests (at least more frequent than what we have now) are probably a good idea.