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New Speed Cameras Catch You From Space
A new kind of speed camera that uses satellites to measure average speed over long distances is being tested in Britain. The "Speedspike" system combines plate reading technology with a global positioning satellite receiver to calculate average speed between any two points in the area being monitored. From the article: "Details of the trials are contained in a House of Commons report. The company said in its evidence that the cameras enabled 'number plate capture in all weather conditions, 24 hours a day.' It also referred to the system's 'low cost' and ease of installation." I can't wait to see the episode of MythBusters where they try to avoid getting a speeding ticket from a satellite.
The AA said it would watch the system “carefully” but it did not believe there was anything sinister. “It is a natural evolution of the technology that is out there,” a spokesman said.
Ones "Natural evolution" is another's slippery slope.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
The cameras are here on earth. They're just synchronized using GPS so the system can tell how long a vehicle takes to go from one checkpoint to the next.
Data sheet
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
The only thing in space here is a GPS satellite. The speed cameras only work on the ground and use GPS to determine its location
Are you kidding?
1) find the GPS receiver .50 Desert Eagle semi-automatic pistol
2) shoot GPS receiver with
3) write a letter to Gordon Brown telling him to fuck off
Will rain fade make so you can speed in the rain and not get a ticket?>\
This is a very misleading title. Combining GPS with a speed camera is not particularly surprising unless the camera is in a moving vehicle. Proving that someone had taken a particular route would also be impossible. I'm not particularly excited about this one.
How the hell can this be considered low cost and easy to install? I thought that sending things into space was expensive and since we strapped it to a rocket and waited for the fuel to explode that would not be very easy. And tickets from space seems a little unnecessary to me.
hello
The mythbuster episodes about speed cameras are horribly boring, since you know from the start that if they were to find something that actually works and is feasible, they would not be allowed to air it.
Here is about 100 pictures of Big Brother devices destroyed by fire.
http://www.speedcam.co.uk/gatso2.htm
This sounds no different from VASCAR which has been used since the 60s.
Err, no. But it does make it more likely you'll crash and die - a sure way to avoid the ticket (or at least it's "ill effects" - the "death" thing kinda sucks though)
This isn't about speeding tickets. This is about creating a nationwide tracking system for Britain's highways. If they have cameras that can recognize license plates along Britain's highways, with all the information from all the cameras aggregated in one database, do you think they won't give the police access to this information to help track criminals?
Given the recent history in Britain, it's a safe bet that the police will have immediate warantless access to this information, and thus the ability to track all the cars in Britain. I'm not sure this is completely a bad thing, but there are certainly some significant privacy concerns at play here. What if police officers decide to abuse this information? What sort of checks are in place to make sure it's only used for legitimate purposes? I could be wrong, and they might not be giving police access to the camera data, but, given the recent history, I would be shocked if they weren't.
This doesn't really matter, since the US is paying for the satellites anyway, but isn't it a little odd that the UK is looking to profit from the use of US satellites?
Does the US receive funding from other countries for GPS?
I mean if these are setup anything like red light cameras here in the states a lot of people are going to be getting a lot of tickets. It seems every week we hear stories about how red light cameras screw things up, or the lights are adjusted to try and catch more people.
Whats to stop this system from being messed with so that it "accidentally" catches people who didn't even speed? Is everyone going even an average of a single mph over the limit going to be getting a ticket or are they just going to use this for those people who average out to doing very large speeds such as 80 in a 45?
Hey, I've got a better idea: How about we have actual police officers on the streets? The nice thing about police officers is that instead of merely pedantically punishing the most measurable of laws long after the infraction has occurred, they can detect harmful behavior in progress even when it does not meet specific technical parameters and intercede. A visible presence also has an enormous deterrent effect on all kinds of criminal and negligent behavior. And even better, they are available to help with things that are not directly enforcement related, like calling a tow truck or directing traffic when a signal goes out. You know, to protect *and* to serve.
As a side benefit, this helps ensure that the fines are going where they belong; to pay the salaries of hard-working public service officers -- not into the pocket of some private corporation's CEO.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
they can tell me how fast Osama Bin Laden is driving!
....how are they going to know who's driving the car and then who to issue the tickets too?
I can hear the Clarkson rant in my head right now...the season opener will be a gooder.
I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
And they wonder why the American colonies revolted?
It's used to time-synch the cameras, not directly to track vehicles.
http://pipstechnology.com/news/library/datasheets/PSS5060%20SpeedSpike-1108.pdf
Will rain fade make so you can speed in the rain and not get a ticket?
Only in a real heavy downpour, and you need to be flying (at least 120 KPH). Be careful not to slow down for "obstacles" such as turns and bumps, or they'll read your plate. Let us know how it works out.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
I'm convinced that the only way to reduce crime and foster a positive relationship between the police and citizens is to have cops on the beat, walking the streets. This way they're forced to interact with people. Having them speed by in patrol cars, and even worse sit back at headquarters while cameras do the work only increases antagonism amongst the people and make it easier to the police to be abusive. You're not going to have a vested interest in someone if there's no personal interaction.
Couple this with governments harboring some authoritarian tendencies and you're looking at real problems. Although I'm sure some will strongly disagree I'm convinced this is the general tendency for socialist governments. I'm not talking about socialism in principle, I'm talking about the tendencies more socialist nations have. Inevitably this attitude arises in government where they're convinced they're the caretakers of the people. They know better than their citizens and need to protect them. This tendency is exhibited in everything from protecting us from terrorists to reducing salt in our diets for our own good. And too often it's too far reaching and misguided. But it frequently it even becomes a necessity. Take government healthcare, if it becomes expensive treating people for a particular preventable condition you can guarantee that the action that causes the problem will be banned.
So I'm not surprised by these totalitarian tendencies. And, especially in this case, it's hard to argue that the UK shouldn't be doing this. It's for our safety that we shouldn't be allowed to speed, isn't it? Of course, when there's a chance for the state to increase revenue, especially with minimal effort on their part, you can't seriously expect them to not jump at the chance.
would be nice!
Systems like this work better on paper than reality. To start, they're effective over fairly long distance open motorway routes. Most speeding isn't done over the entire distance. These systems would only catch people who quickly accelerate to a fairly high speed, hold that speed over long periods of time -- not not having to slow down for other motorists, construction, traffic, fuel, or road hazards. Drivers who are highly disciplined in their speeding habits and make significant effort to maintain the high pace.
The road trips I've been on in the UK and Europe (which are admittedly few) make these conditions over long periods of time seem remarkably unlikely for most people.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Rumor has it that some long-distance toll road operators in the USA will give you a ticket if your average speed is higher than the posted limit. Enter the road at noon and exit 70 miles later but not before 1PM!
Yes, America still uses miles per hour. Sigh.
The black helicopter guys over at abovetopsecret have had this story for at least a week. Maybe they all aren't crazy over there.
In the US, several major toll roads (NJ Turnpike, MA Turnpike, Garden State Parkway in the northeast) have been using the time stamp on the toll tickets to determine your average speed on the road in use. If the time it takes to go from one exit to another is one hour doing the speed limit and you do it in thirty minutes, you can expect to be mailed a ticket.
That system is fairly easy to implement as the roads are limited access and all vehicles will be passing through the toll booths at some point along their length. It appears the British system is geared toward using the system on roads without limited access. With increased complexity will come increased possibilities of errors creeping into the system. I agree with the conclusion in the article that the system should be watched closely before it becomes official. (And, yes, I acknowledge that such a system could be used for less-than-moral uses by a government.)
As one reader, Vanderbosch, noted above, how are they going to tell who is operating the vehicle? Well, would you entrust your car and insurance to a 'friend' who is less than responsible for other people's property? If he's a friend, he'll pony up and pay you for the ticket and the increase to your insurance. I sure as hell wouldn't be entrusting an expensive piece of property to someone I didn't trust! If you do, then consider it punishment for being a fool.
Whew! This water sure is cold!
I know this isn't about California, but FYI. Bored, reading the California Vehicle Code one a couple of years back. In California the police have to have a direct measurement of your vehicle exceeding the speed limit. The code specifically references measuring the speed you must have been traveling to pass between two points in a certain amount of time as not being a valid measurement for a speeding ticket.
That satellite shown here on /. is quite the phallic
Table-ized A.I.
Maybe I'm missing something basic here, but why is the GPS system needed? The cameras aren't moving, so their position is already known, as is the distance between them. They aren't somehow hacking into your car's GPS system (if they were, the cameras wouldn't be needed).
If they can take a photo of your car's plate from one camera, and then take a photo of it from another camera, they can just measure the time using a normal clock at the central tracking site and calculate your speed easily.
What exactly is the GPS system telling them?
I understand that law enforcement will use the argument: "Sir, our system shows that you MUST have exceeded the speed limit on that stretch of road. No , we can't actually prove it, we only infer it from the measurements". Is such stuff enough to condemn someone to a fine ( or worse ) in the UK ? That sounds like a fine example of "presumed guilty until proven innocent". Whoa.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Slashdot printing another made up story from the UK press again.
Please stop it.
The system is using land based cameras which work out the average speed between two points. Currently this is implemented on (some) motorways and duel carriageways, and only works while you stay on the same section of road. The new system works by using a very accurate route planner and works out the quickest route you could have made between two points (using any number of roads). The only satellites involved are GPS, which are used to get very accurate positions of all the roads and cameras. The system can be updated very quickly when roads change, or when there are roadworks by simply uploading the GPS co-ords and the max speed permitted between those two points.
I assume this was posted by someone who doesnt live in the UK
a) the UK press prints crap all the time
b) its cloudy here most of the time so good luck on a sat tracking your number plate
c) sats have difficultly reading number plates as they look from above.
Does anybody have statistics that show this, or similar technology, is making the roads safer? How many fewer accidents? How many fewer deaths? I want proof that this is a good thing.
Speed limits and speeding tickets are a huge scam. They are mostly in place to generate revenue, not improve safety.
Speed limits should be abolished, and police officers merely told to pull over people who are driving recklessly. This would improve safety and eliminate some of the antagonism people have towards the police.
I was recently ticketed for doing 56 in a 40 zone. The problem is this 40 zone stops at the bottom of a highway offramp. I would have had to slam on the brakes to get from 70 (highway speed) to 40 in the amount of distance I was given to do it. This might have caused me to get rear-ended. Yet there was a speed trap just in front of the end of the ramp. There was hardly any traffic. I wasn't being unsafe. Yet they stopped me anyway.
They should go after the kids who do 90MPH in a 40 residential neighborhood with straight pipes on their cars making noise at 3AM. But there's not enough money in that.
Today started like any other day, I get up and go to the shower, turn on the hot and cold taps and step in, only to be greeted by a blast of ICE COLD water. The shock of it is almost as jarring as the fact that the Google energy efficiency package on my house has never failed before. I turn off the water and try the sink. It's only has cold water as well. I think, no big deal, and go to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee and get ready for work, but my coffee pot has an error sign that reads "SLOW DOWN." I sit back and think, the KCup machine in my kitchen has produced a perfect cup of coffee for years, and I that is when it hits me that something is very wrong.. At that exact second my phone beeps, I have a text message. YOU WERE SPEEDING YESTERDAY! THE COMPUTER IN YOUR CAR IS VALUABLE! DO NOT RISK IT'S LIFE! IF YOU DO YOU WILL GET NO COFFEE OR HOT WATER EVER AGAIN! YOURS! SKYNET!
Then it hits me, the machine revolution has not only started, but they won. They can cut off the hot showers with only a thought, but I can't shut off my solar, wind, and geothermal powered home without shutting off the universe. Man no longer rules.
We are the Borg...
We need orbital enforcement. Nobody would dare break the speed limit if it meant getting hit by an orbiting gigawatt laser! Mwahahahahahaha!
They sure do let the government rape them over there don't they.
Just a matter of time, and I'm sure it'll be for "our own good".
Top Gear is the likely candidate for running the lights and speed cameras. They've been doing this for years.
Speed
Checked
By
Satellite
The amount of speeding on cloudy days is going to skyrocket.
I can recall a quickly hushed up proposal by Lawrence Livermore to link all the http://www.video.dot.ca.gov/ CALTRANS cameras to a software system that would effectively allow CHP to track every single car on all of California's freeways, simultaneously. You don't need "GPS" if you actually know where all of your cameras are located on the WGS earth model. Plate recognition, parallax, framerate... all data points that will give you plate number, time, direction, speed. Everything you need to know to automatically hand out tickets to everyone in California.
Yo- Arnie ! Want to solve your budget crisis ? If you ticketed every single driver for a $200 fine once a week, that would be some serious bucks.
I can't wait to see all of the tickets that are handed out during the next offroad SCCA racing event if we can get the technology here in the USA!
Obama = Socialism.
As an old photointerpreter from the Vietnam era, and a fanatic regarding aerial photography, I can assure you that civilian satellite-based cameras do not have the resolution to read license plates. There was once a concept of "infinite resolution film", but that was always theoretical and, if you think about it, could never be accomplished. As was said above, the cameras are earth-based. Only the speed computation using the GPS system is satellite-based.
number plate capture in all weather conditions, 24 hours a day.
Yeah. And I’m Santa!
No light and a wall of clouds and rain between them, and there will be no photons there to capture. Simple as that.
Someone should get that marketing droid a physics course!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
It was only a matter of time!
I worked for an insurance company 15 years ago, when the gps systems were first coming, out, and I was telling them it could be
worthwhile to combine this into a black box that you install on cars to then offer even cheaper rates based on the stats of the person's driving behaviors. The boss could not grasp why on earth i would want to do that, but now with proof that satellites are able to track your speeding, this somewhat dissolves the need for that, as it would be more cost effective to send up a satellite then to force your clients to have a blackbox installed on their vehicles.
Duplicate the license (could use a photocopier).
Pass a speed camera at point "A".
Have your friend then pass the other camera several miles away a couple seconds later, giving you an apparent speed of several hundred miles per hour.
Do this several times. Then speed as much as you want after that since you have a history of the cameras grossly mis measuring your speed.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think they're likely to be used on the main road(s) through small towns or villages, where a 50-60mph limit road becomes a 30-40mph limit one (because suddenly there's loads of buildings, schools, pedestrians etc) but some drivers still don't slow down. With conventional cameras they slow down at one point and immediately speed up again, with this system they need to stick to the limit (or below).
I still don't quite understand why GPS is needed at all. Why not just use the cameras, see where the car was at previously, see where it's out now, get the distance (which could be specific to that road, rather than having to merely use the straight line distance as a GPS would likely have to use), and then calculate the average speed between the cameras? Simple, decentralized, going to be in place anyway, costs millions less. So what am I missing? I've gotta be missing something.
I for one welcome our new lamp-post mounted overlords!
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
I somehow don't think even Orwell predicted big brother's eyes peering down from space! It's so great for the metaphor that they're so high up as to be out of reach of ordinary citizens.
life is a tragedy to those who feel, and a comedy to those who think
Ok, but the first time you have to slow down for someone making a turn, for a stop light or roundabout -- whatever, the "Average" speed drops precipitously.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
1) Everyone gets caught when they speed, so everyone slows down, ticket revenues dry up and the local government goes bankrupt since most of them rely on ticket revenues to meet their budgets.
2) Everyone gets caught when they speed, leading to a voter referendum increasing speed limits up past how fast everyone was driving to begin with.
The law makers don't really want people to drive under the speed limit, and they want enforcement to be just under the threshold of what people will tolerate in order to generate the maximum revenue for the local government. Safety rarely has anything to do with it.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Exactly. Which means the people that do get caught would have to be trying pretty hard and truly deserve it. Sounds like a win for common sense to me.
One potential problem I see arising from automated ticketting systems, is the problem of the driver getting a ticket, but no notification that they were in violation, so you could potentially ticket the same driver over and over with the driver not even realising they are being ticketted.
Here in the U.S., my family is from the State of Ohio. Now, in Ohio, there is a 'point system' with regards to drivers licenses. Different infractions are assigned different amounts of points - worse infractions get more points, a very minor infraction might get 1 point. When you hit some threshold amount of points, your driver's license is automatically suspended.
My family was on a trip once, and my father was driving. He flowed along with the other traffic on the road, not going faster than the other drivers, but not slower. We were travelling in another State, Illinois. Someone, later that day or weekend, told my dad how in Illinois, they use automatic cameras to enforce the speed limit and automatically ticket you. My father was worried that there were a few constuction zones we had passed through (maybe 4 or 5 of them as we crossed the State), and he got really worried that he was going to get 5 or 6 tickets for that one trip. Luckily, Illinois apparently either wasn't using cameras in all the zones, or maybe they just set them at a threshold significantly above the speed limit (say > 15mph over the limit), but whatever the case, my dad didn't end up getting a whole bunch of tickets.
My point in all this, though, is that if you have automatic systems that ticket people, but you don't notify them that they are in violation, they aren't probably going to *stop* violating - they'll keep on speeding, and potentially end up getting lots of tickets for what was, sort of, a single violation, and they might end up losing licenses.
If many thousands (millions?) of drivers suddenly started to lose their license because of these automatic ticketting systems, there's gonna be a huge public outcry, I would expect.
This is no more high tech then your cell phone. Give me a break.
Lets see two cell phones on the side of the road. One pictures your tag number and sends it with its GPS location to the next phone. There your Tag number is compared and the new GPS location.
You would get better distance traveled if you took reading off of the patrol car's odometer for the distance traveled traveled.
Using GPS is low balling the distance. and thus underestimating your speed.