Slashdot Mirror
Building a Traffic Radar System To Catch Reckless Drivers?
cbraescu1 writes "I live in a city with a population in the millions (someplace in the Middle East; the country is not important), and I am mad as hell. The car traffic is going from bad to worse, and I'm sick of all the car accidents that keep happening (we have one of the biggest accident and mortality rates per km of road or per 1,000 vehicles). I just witnessed a car accident a few hours ago, and in the last few months I've given first aid at two other car accidents, all happening within 500 meters of each other. Today's victims escaped alive, but the motorcycle driver who was responsible fled and the police weren't equipped to catch him. There are laws, but not much willingness to enforce them, and no traffic lights at all. After speaking with some of my friends, we decided to take the issue into our own hands: build a traffic radar system able to capture a vehicle's speed, install it at our own expense, and share the generated penalties with the city government (all subject of their approval, of course). We want to start on the main avenue (more than 15 km) and to 'roll' the income from the penalties into covering new streets (so that perpetrators will basically finance the system). We're not rich and we will not ask for our money back. We just need to make the system start and we're confident the penalty fees will cover its spread. So, I'm asking Slashdot: what would be a workable way to build such a system? It must withstand drivers claiming the system is cheating, high temperatures, high levels of humidity, and crappy electricity. Any suggestions would be appreciated. This is about technology saving lives — literally."
This is a terrible idea, because if it's successful it will be used to track people's movements by corrupt officials.
I second this. It's been proved time and time again that more guns in the middle east is always the answer.
So let me get this straight. The goal is to spend your money on catching speeders rather than installing traffic lights? Really?
If you rip a child away from it's parents, and you put the child in a suite in the Ritz, you're still a f'ing monster.
There's no worse tyrant than one doing it for you own good.
sharks/lasers
http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&q=radar+gun&cid=8215117706858258499&ei=ju9uTM7zGo-6NZK09JgP&sa=title&ved=0CA4Q8wIwATgA#p
Wouldn't it make sense to install traffic lights first? Seems like some order on the road rather than chaos would reduce the accident rate much more than ticketing speeders (who will likely just continue to speed). Either way there are commercial products available for this application. Sorry I have no links but in southern California red light cameras are all over the place. Our neighbors in Arizona also have "portable" speed cameras that they trailer to locations where speeding is an issue.
What's wrong with speeders? My X-34 land speeder can do 250 km/h so I should be going that fast.
Recently I took a trip to Adidas Abba Ethiopia. 7 Million people on a mountain top with 2 stoplights in the whole city. The price of gas however was $8/liter. No one drives reckless when gasoline is $8/liter. I didn't see a single accident while I was there.
will never replace rule of law.
What part of "A well regulated militia" do you not understand?
Speed bumps may be more effective than radar traps.
Why bother with all the infrastructure? Just install a monitor in the car and when the speedometer goes too high, charge his/her credit card.
If there was any will of the authorities to enforce speed laws, they'd do something. Apparently there isn't so what are you going to do about that? Vigilantism?
thegodmovie.com - watch it
You cannot solve a social problem with technology, or strict laws.
You'd think they could afford to install some stop lights in Dubai...
Move.
No seriously, the real issue is training/caring, not more policing. If your population is too dumb to be trained how to drive responsibly or don't care about their follow man as a rule, its time to move elsewhere.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Someone suggested putting spikes in place of air bags on steering wheels. Sounds like the wankers on the roads near you need to discover just how dangerous their driving its too other road users.
By the way, unless you're a police officer you probably won't get anyone to pay any fine you impose. Unless you intend too extort it out of them...?
Find a country willing to provide
lower quality services for less money -
then when they continue the downward trend,
complain about the cost of returning the
services to the local level to improve the quality.
3) Profit !
Just capturing speed is going to do very little to alleviate bad or aggressive driving. Speed can reduce reaction time and increase impact. It's often cited as a contributing factor in accident analysis, but often simply as a "check all the usual boxes" habit. ( http://www.tarcanfel.org/~hutchins/speed/speed.htm)
Is Reckless speeding? Weaving in and out of other cars? Sudden/frequent lane changes?
Do you need video of the vehicle driving recklessly in order to prosecute?
Just toss a spike strip across the road. That ought to slow things down.
Traffic camera systems are already commercially available.
or......
It's not hard with blob detection.... not hard at all using the opensource aForge libraries (google it). Just track the movement of the blob across the cameras frame and calculate the speed based off of that. Adjust the geometry for each site, and off you go.
And sand. With oil. Recipe for world peace.
First you need a law that says if you can get a "calibrated" radar reading and a picture you can issue a ticket to the owner of the vehicle.
Note that with the radar photo thing you cannot identify the driver. You need a law that says you can issue a ticket to the vehicle owner by mail or the equivalent and you do not need an officer actually chasing down the speeding vehicle.
Someone in the mid-east is mad as hell? they deuce you say~
"s I've given first aid at two other car accidents, "
good for you, well done.
" we decided to take the issue into our own hands: build a traffic radar system able to capture a vehicle's speed, install it at our own expense, and share the generated penalties with the city government (all subject of their approval, of course"
It can be done. You will need several traffic engineers, radar specialists, and about 100 million dollars. . . . and it still won't be perfect, and require law enforcement to use it. Don't forget you will need cameras, people to review the data, maintain the system.
I know everyone thinks keeping a city running is easy and cheap, but it is neither.
You don't need a technical solution, you need at social one.
You need to get the police enforcing the laws, you need to get a system with minimal corruption, you need to educate drivers on why they need to obey the laws, you need people to shame bad drivers.
You can do that for a lot less money and time then the technical solution you proposed.
yes, I do know what I'm talking about.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Any suggestions would be appreciated."
Here's a suggestion do whatever you want in your country but keep you and your idea the fuck away from the USA.
This query has to be coming from Israel, probably Tel Aviv.
"Even for Slashdot, that was a very obscure reference!" - Anonymous Coward
Think of all the tax dollars you're saving. Remember, the nine most terrifying words in the English language are "I’m from the government and I’m here to help."
Speed cameras are already installed in many systems.
Unless you plan on doing something new here, like catching "Reckless drivers" as your title implies as opposed to simple speeders there is nothing to discuss here.
There are companies that specialize in this. But that does not mean that any city is going to sanction a vigil-anti approach using private cameras of questionable certification maintained by non-certified private enterprises, producing tickets that will not survive the first court challenge.
(Cities issue contracts to companies to install cameras of questionable reliability, manned and operated by people of questionable certification, with debatable motives).
I sincerely doubt an open source approach would get very far here. Better to use the legal means at your disposal.
Take up a collection to buy cams fro the city or launch a ballot proposition to have the city hire it done.
Find a way to divert the funds from the police or the courts into parks or libraries, and make sure the contractor is paid on a fixed fee basis, and does not have any incentive to rig the system to generate more tickets.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
What's the end game here? You want to build a system that captures vehicale's speed and the repurcussions of speeding. For what purpose? If your government is unwilling to enforce current laws, how will this change anything? We have speed cameras here in Arizona, they even supply some nice big signs that say "Speed enforcement camera ahead - 1/2 miles". Everyone on the road slows down to the speed limit for the camera and then continues on their way doing 15mph over once they have passed. It's a great way to generate revenue from drivers not familiar with that route, but I doubt it makes the road any safer. In fact, in some cases less safe, I've had people slam on their brakes in front of me to make sure they don't get a ticket.
There are laws, but not much willingness to enforce them, and no traffic lights at all.
Let me get this straight. The police aren't enforcing the existing laws. There's no political infrastructure to install and maintain traffic lights.
Who is going to collect the fines? You aren't.
Why do you think the police will collect the fines? They aren't enforcing existing traffic laws.
In the unlikely event they do so, what makes you believe they will give you your share? It's more than likely to go directly into someone's pocket.
It sounds like your problem goes far beyond enforcement of traffic laws. And until that problem is addressed, it's unlikely that any technological solution will help.
Ok, so there is no enforcement for the laws in place, but a citizen wants to start his own enforcement. Yeah, I see this working out. It's not like there are no laws, then ignorance or naivety on the part of the government could be claimed, but there are laws that are ignored. This means the government willfully ignores the laws, and as such has something to gain by ignoring them. Could be laziness, could be corruption, could be any number of reasons, but in the end if they cared about the laws enough to let someone else enforce them then they would be enforcing them in the first place.
See if you can find some used or re-purposed phone BNU boxes - the kind that hang outside on telephone poles...
when I was working in telecoms, we had to test those things in rain, heat, cold, rifle and shotgun impacts, generic vandalism, you name it....
Real SUV's don't have cupholders
It's 5:42 A.M., do you know where your stack pointer is?
One such system on Bor Saeiad st. in Cairo won't help. You'll needs hundreds to make a difference. And nobody will care anyway.
Well lets go through the roll call of early North America and how we got to the transportation system we do today.
Lotsa cars/buggies/horses - mass chaos
Solution: Install traffic system(person or machine driven).
People fail to heed traffic system.
Solution: Use law enforcement that wants to enforce traffic laws, or specialized traffic divisions enacted via municipal code.
Issue: People pay fines, disposable income increases, issues begin to creep up.
Solution: Higher fines or scaled fines to correct bad behavior.
Traffic radar is a terrible system, it fills coffers, and doesn't correct behavior. The best system are some type of law enforcement that does, wants, and actively is involved in ensuring that the roads are safe. And is someone who will admonish the driver in some way with a physical presence. This system begins to fail when the system itself is highly corrupt however. Most ME countries suffer from this issue, so you're going to have an uphill battle.
So in the end? The best system is people who want to do the job to make the streets safer, because it has a direct impact on them. Not machines.
Om, nomnomnom...
Speed is only one factor in "reckless driving". Driving aggressively, following closely, disregarding signs / streetlights / other laws are other factors. Some are easier to measure / capture in an automated fashion than others.
How do you intend on addressing the issue of drivers whose reckless driving is due to lack of speed or situational awareness?
Frankly, if all drivers simply obeyed these simple rules, there would be significantly fewer traffic issues:
1. If there is a vehicle driving fewer than 5 car lengths behind you, where you are not approaching a traffic control device (stop sign, etc) and the vehicle is getting closer... move one lane to your right. If there is no passing lane, pull off the side and let the vehicle pass before continuing.
2. If you are approaching a vehicle from behind, where you are not approaching a traffic control device... move one lane to your left. Spend no longer than 10 seconds in the area 2 car lengths in front of and behind the car you are passing (while in the left lane). Merge back into the right lane when out of this area.
3. Raise the minimum speed limit (weather permitting) to the current speed limits on highways; if a driver wishes to drive slower than the minimum, they are free to utilize local roads.
Crazy right? Pay attention to what's going on around you, don't try to police other people's driving and control your own vehicle. Just using these rules allows people to travel safely at higher speeds on a regular basis.
Start by calling these car wrecks, not "accidents". The latter term nicely hides the carnage behind a nice innocuous word.
What's wrong with speeders? My X-34 land speeder can do 250 km/h so I should be going that fast.
I'm not sure which is worse. The fact that was such a geek Star Wars reference, or that I recognized it as such.
Whenever I drive on the tollway, I think tolls should be charged based on lane changes. You'd get left lane changes for free. Every left lane change after that would cost. That means you'd be able to get into the left lane once and it would charge anyone who insists on weaving back and forth between lanes to speed themselves up by a few seconds at the cost of slowing everyone down.
Getting passed while in the left lane would put the charge on the person in the left lane if they weren't doing the limit. Those who want to pass to drive 80 in a 55 can just pay extra to drive like madmen.
More fees to be charged for exiting if you weren't in the rightmost lane for the last half-mile.
t
In the UK, reduced speed limits due to road-works on motorways are often policed using average speed cameras. These use number-plate recognition to identify cars as they pass cameras at two or more points, then calculate the average speed based on the distance between the points. The advantage of this as a home-brew solution is that you could build it with off-the-shelf equipment - no radar units needed. There's also no need to paint lines on the road or to calibrate a radar unit. It's also possibly more effective - there's no point slowing down just for the trap and then accelerating away again and it's passive, so radar detectors don't work. You'd need some license-plate recognition software, but I imagine there are free or cheap solutions available for that now. You'd need to ensure that your jurisdiction allowed you to photograph cars on a public road and store details of their number plates and you'd need to find a way to convince a court of the fidelity of the time-stamps on the photos (maybe have an OTS unprogrammable GPS unit sitting in view of the camera?).
Your solution is a radar when cops don't even bother to try and catch the culprits in a place with NO traffic lights even?
Sure, right, I believe there is a form for this on the Internet, the kind that gives you a bunch of checkboxes to fill in and then at the end gives you the result why your solution is not 'practical, politically/economically viable, etc.'.
By the way, seems to me what would happen to ANY radar/camera in a place like this is that it will be stolen in moments or destroyed some other way.
You can't handle the truth.
"I live in a city with a population in the millions (someplace in the Middle East; the country is not important)"
Some folks that I worked with did a mobile pilot project in a Middle East country to control speeding. One of their "discoveries" was that the higher you were up on the political ladder in the country, the lower your license plate number. And that number, really determined, whether you got a ticket for speeding or not.
So with a system of government like that, you can dump all your monitoring stuff into /dev/null.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Unfortunately you have probably initiated a different conversation than you intended. In principal you have a fair question and the location really shouldn't matter for your question.
All that being said, you have given a bit of a mystery as the name of the city that you are talking about. This being slashdot people are going to start querying for cities in the middle east with a population of a few million. They will than expand this with those large cities in the middle east that have the highest traffic and mortality rates per 1000 KM. Following this it will be narrowed down by those with a main avenue in excess of 15 KM. Just for good measure it can than be narrowed down even further with the consideration of high humidity.
You'll probably have more luck if you can embarrass people into complying. A number of police departments have posted pictures online of traffic scofflaws with success. You could also do as they are in India and have people post pictures of violations on facebook. All told I think a public education campaign might work best as fixed traffic signals increase accident rates (see studies from the UK for reference) and would probably not have the affect you are looking for. Kudos for providing first aid though, too many can't be bothered.
If I understand correctly, you are trying to build some kind of a static radar gun. I'm afraid that legal part of this venture is much more tricky than the technical stuff. In most countries I've visited, such a device must be officially approved and regularly calibrated. Have you checked if your device has to pass any tests to be allowed to produce evidence? What you must also consider is the way it will record offenders - it's likely this is also subject to some legal requirements. And then comes the support part - someone has to support it (which can be a pain under working conditions you mentioned) and someone has to take the evidence from it and issue a speeding ticket - in Poland, where I currently live, police was forced to hire new workers just to be able to send tickets to some offenders (plus keep in mind that there must be a way to identify them in a reasonable time frame). A lot of things to consider (and check) before you even start planning the tech part of this idea :)
An idea that I used when I helped my friend try to set up a wireless, no-collar alarm system for his pets involved multiple cameras that were set up to triangulate position, and track it as it moved between cameras. His goal was to play an alarm any time the cats got near the fish, or got into his room, or when his dogs got past their fence, etc. Disclaimer: we never really got it working well, but we got it working sometimes.
The system worked fairly simply: The cameras were stationary and usually ~10 ft high. They would detect motion sources, and then the system would calculate the angle from the wall to the object. This data then was used to determine which other camera(s) could see the object. As soon as one camera detected it, other cameras would try to find it to triangulate its location. Location then got plotted on a 2d graph of the property (no walls, just a large grid) and was moved around accordingly.
I did much of the coding in java, mainly using some apis I found for motion detection. I calculated angles based on the object's position on the screen. The toughest part (that we overcame) was how to pass objects off between camera zones. We found that for things to run smoothly, we needed 3 cameras on the zone change so that the animal was always seen by 2 cameras. The system worked great indoors, with only 1-2 pets, but outside didn't work at all due to too much motion noise. Ultimately, we scrapped the tracking project and just went with motion detecting cameras that would go off whenever a pet moved within a certain area of the frame.
To make this relevant to you, I would think that this system would be much easier to implement using cars. Motorcycles could be a bit of a problem, but still, there's one vehicle moving and it's much bigger (and faster) than everything else. All you'd need is 2 layer camera coverage on every square cm of road, and then some math running to calculate speed. The biggest problem here, I bet, would be powering all the cameras (although if you're in the Middle East, I bet you could use solar).
"Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without your accordion." ~General Norman Schwarzkopf
Plus speed bumps have the added bonus of wrecking and perhaps killing all those pesky motorcyclists! (I was kind of assuming from the description that he wasn't talking about a sub 20 mph area.)
...would like a pony.
+1 Disagree
Installing radar jammers in the front and rear of my car, just in case our law enforcement gurus get any ideas.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Vandalism
And pissed off "vigilantes" who got a ticket issued by the system, who decided they wanted to take it out on the camera.
It just takes one jerk with a shotgun to put a hole in your plan quite literally.
So just ruggedness against the weather and bad electricity isn't the only concern here.
You might want to think about surveillance monitoring for security as well, IR camera, and a robust data uplink, so at least you have a chance of getting a picture if anyone decides they want to try to tamper with the system.
All vehicles should be required to have sensors that prevent crashes by drunk or bad drivers.
High technology is not likely to solve something that is actually a social problem. People in your country are accustomed to driving any way they like with impunity. Installing speed cameras in a few places is not likely to change their behavior. More likely, your camera is going to end up getting run down by a car (or with a bullet hole through the lens if it's mounted away from the side of the road). Are these tickets going to be legally enforceable under your country's legal system?
If you're determined to use technology to solve the problem, instead of trying to use a high tech method to punish drivers to alter behavior (especially when the punishment comes long after the infraction), look into low-tech methods like installing speed humps to reduce speed (which are not the same as speed *bumps* which are actually felt less the faster the car is traveling).
There are many other traffic calming measures that can be employed, like narrowing streets, using traffic circles, etc. These have the advantage that they are completely passive and work against all drivers, not just the ones honest enough to want to avoid a ticket.
Your biggest challenge will not be finding a solution, but getting the solution implemented. You will deal with a lot of officials who are ignorant, arrogant, or just don't care about human life as much as you do. Even when they do care, you have to deal with their ignorance. They will likely not lean on experts for advice, but instead rely on the local computer guy Bob for advise, or they will shell out big bucks to a local consulting firm where their acquaintance works, even though that firm has no experience in the task at hand.
If you want this to succeed, you will probably have to spend the rest of your life trying to become the head of your Department of Transportation or maybe Highway Safety, or whichever department has authority over the other. So that you can ensure first hand and with authority, that the solution is implemented correctly.
What you are proposing is a pilot project, and at the most you will get a "huh, that's cool." and that will be about as far as you get.
I don't mean to be overly negative, but I have been down this road before, and that fact is the people you will deal with are 9-5 people and all they really care about, despite their huffing and puffing, is how long till it's 5 o'clock.
BTW, reckless driving and speed are two different things. Speed makes little difference if you don't drive intelligently or are distracted and unfocused.
red light cameras
Oh the Sheriff of Nottingham returns!
You want to take a public road, install a system to enforce a speed law and have the proceeds return to you? That is no different then what highway brigands did during the middle ages. However if you must you can install your own system, after its up and running you can then adjust the system to issue tickets when ever you want. Need a little extra cash for the kids college, just a quick tweak and there you go, instant money tree!
I am sure you have enough cash to get the bond or insurance to cover the litigation your group will face every time it issues a ticket. You have the money to have your system calibrated by an independent third party every time you issue a ticket? The money to pay the lawyers to defend the tickets in court?
Petition your local government to install a traffic light or a few speed bumps.
There's plenty of eyes already on the road who see these reckless drivers in action, and could catch them red-handed. How about we "crowdsource" it and put all those people to good use? They're already pissed-off by these reckless drivers and possibly motivated enough to actually volunteer.
Why do people even bother asking /. for advice when these are the responses that they get?
Unlike many people posting here, I've traveled enough to understand what you want to do, and why it is likely to work, and I applaud you!
That said, England is full of these devices, and I would suggest you buy one rather than roll your own. My quick searches didn't turn anything up, but I know they exist, as there are websites devoted to pictures of people burning them down in England. : ).
For slashdotters with complaints about this:
A fine can be sent automatically. Social circumstances in much of the Middle East make automated fining likely to gain far higher compliance than police or traffic lights could. Of course senior government officials won't pay their tickets, duh. That doesn't change how likely it is to help the man/woman on the street.
Yup, this sounds like a clear case of jumping to solutions. The problem is stated as a solution, rather than the difference between the way things are and the way you would like them to be.
On the other hand, getting rich off reckless drivers sounds like a classic case of privatization of law enforcement. Good entrepeneurial thinking.
Which is more important to you?
If you are interested in actually improving driving conditions, try analysing the problem using a reliable problem-solving/troubleshooting approach. I recommend "The Thinker's Toolkit" by Mason Jones http://www.amazon.com/Thinkers-Toolkit-Powerful-Techniques-Problem/dp/0812928083 . If you are interested in making money off the enforcement of public safety, this book may still be a great help.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
The upkeep on the proposed system would be insane, it sounds like you should make the proposition to the government to assist in funding of the installation and then place you on a payroll for upkeep of the system and monitoring/reporting to authorities. You might just do the upkeep and let officials track offenders and deliver citations. other citizens taking the law into their own hands and handing out penalties doesn't sound like a recipe for peace or non-violent interactions.
Troll!? I was trying to be funny :(
The USA in fifty years.
If you really want to make a statement, dump the Radar Gun and get yourself a real gun. Find a nice secluded spot and when you see a recless driver coming towards you, put a bullet through his windsheild. Or pop a tire. Either way, he gets the message.
If you're saying you're in the Middle East, chances are the people doing the reckless driving are wealthy because they are driving large, armored vehicles and are generally immune to small arms fire. So, even with a decent rifle, you're unlikely to be killing anyone, so, you don't need to worry about that, but the expensive glass getting replaced on a regular basis will cause them to slow down. Maybe. Either that, or they will find out hwo you are and kill you for laughs.
So really, the Middle East and Detroit aren't all that different. There's a lot of gun fire, women can't go outside without escorts, and everyone drives like jerks. And the rich people have their own laws that they don't have to follow, while the poor have to put up with the corrupt officials.
Everywhere it's the same...
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Ask anyone living in England how well static systems such as these work (The ones that vandals haven't smashed, cut down, lit on fire, or covered the cameras with paint).
Most 3rd world countries that I've visited seem to need to work out their problems with basic infrastructure and police corruption before you can start dealing with problems with drivers.
Even here in the US the daily carnage on the roads is amazing in quantity, though not nearly as spectacular (people with death wishes on scooters).
Personally I view the death on our motorways as the last great bastion of natural selection for the human race. Generally the idiotic manage to kill themselves more often than not. Why fight it?
... like all police radar, will only catch fast drivers, not bad drivers. It will be great at raising revenue but it will have little to no beneficial effect on safety.
In general you can't solve social problems with technological means. Get your government to focus on better driver training, better highway engineering. Possibly try raising fines and penalties for genuinely reckless behavior, and put more cops on the street in problem areas.
Speeding does not necessarily equal bad driving.
If anything, speeding is a subset of bad driving -- for people who are already bad drivers.
You need to lobby your local government to more heavily regulate/test drivers.
There is no technological solution that can take the place of that.
Futurist Traditionalism
Replace airbags with big metal spikes, in the event of an impact you are almost certainly going to die.
Car safety allows drivers to drive faster and take more risks. Cars are too easy to drive, too smooth, too quiet and so some people have no problem with driving fast. If you got up to 70mph and your car sounded like it was going to fall apart you would back off the speed.
Adjusting driver behaviour requires adjustments to the cars, not more policing.
So imagine, you manage to build a radar with a camera. Now, how will you catch all the people without a valid license plate ? I've traveled a little in those countries and they either have no plate, a funny invalid plate, and unreadable one or an old invalid one they never changed. Well, the governmental organizations have valid license plates, but I don't think they'll ever pay anything ;-)
So before using tech to make the roads safer, I would first ask the police to ensure every driver has a valid driving license, papers, a valid plate, isn't drunk or high. Basic work and it will help a lot better !
Shuddup about what is and isn't a good idea for him. Who cares if he can't solve his social ends with technology - I want to know how to build a traffic system that can interpret radar data. Talk about Kalman filtering and shit, this is news for nerds, not sociologists.
Because there are no circumstances in which a car speedometer could go higher than the road limit legally.
And there is only one speed limit for all the roads.
Think it through.
No automated system can beat the 'drivers claim it is cheating'. If your laws don't explicitly allow mechanical surveillance of this kind, you are out of luck. Even very expensive red light camera systems in the US lose in court basically every time they are challenged.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
the problem with vigilantism is it is not accountable, except to the vigilante, whose principles may be quite out of whack
you can complain about the abuses of the police all you want, but the police, at least in theory, serve the people. of course they can be corrupt, but this is a structural failure that can be remedied by the government. if the government is unwilling or unable to control the police, then your country is screwed anyways, so start building molotov cocktails
vigilantism can never be reviewed, criticized, or policy changed. plus, the usual guys who like the idea of vigilantism and are attracted to the idea are of a sort of personality that has serious psychological issues with control and power and dominance, and are therefore exactly the wrong kind of person you want to be enforcing anything. yes, people with the same sort of psychological issues are also attracted to becoming cops, but at least with the police, there exists (again, at least in theory, where it doesn't exists its a failure of policy and execution of the government) a feedback system that can weed out such people
i'm sorry, but vigilantism sucks, and is not a solution to anything. the only valid solution is to kick your government in the ass to fix the failures in your society that make the idea of vigilantism seem remotely appealing at all
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Two webcams pointed perpendicular to the road 5-15m apart will be more accurate and cheaper than a radar. Just make sure you have good heavy(as in hard to move) points of references for the cameras and elevate them enough to capture all lanes. Then it's a few downloads of python libraries, a bit of basic algebra, and some tests and your good to go.
The hardware has already been developed and deployed in cities around the world. Southern California has lots of intersections where cameras will take pictures of cars going though red lights. I've heard of other places that can even detect rolling stops. I encountered what you are talking about in Brasilia, Brazil, about 13 years ago. They were pretty smart in that more structures to place cameras/radars were constructed than the number of cameras/radars they had. Drivers all knew where the structures were, would slow down, and then speed up again. I was told that after a couple of years a new mayor was elected and he forgave all the citations.
I don't think you could afford all the testing of a home brew system and I suspect that the law would need changing to allow cittions from the cameras.
Nate
I think it is Cairo, Egypt. They have pretty bad traffic.
I heard that RPGs are pretty available in the Middle East.
Topes are what they call speed bumps in Mexico (the word means "limit"). They are usually found on the highway as you approach a village, though large cities will put them at strategic places to control traffic speed. They are very effective. They do not require vigilance from law enforcement. They work even if the government is corrupt. They are cheap. They require little maintenance.
Topes
Topes in Yucatan (including photos of ganada falsos used as topes)
Edith Keeler Must Die
Switch to English units from metric and watch that number go down a notch or 2 almost overnight. And while you're at it, you can quit comparing your stats with the other colonies.
BTW, reckless driving and speed are two different things. Speed makes little difference if you don't drive intelligently or are distracted and unfocused.
Bingo!
You can drive like an idiot without even approaching the speed limit. A lot of accidents could be avoided if only one party was paying attention. Sure, there is generally someone who is responsible, but it's been my experience that driving defensively and assuming that everyone is out to get you goes a long way. Don't just go speeding through green lights, pay attention to the traffic that's supposed to be stopped. Watch cars up ahead that are waiting to turn out, because it could be right in front of you. Don't drive in clusters, whether right beside, behind, or in front of others. People can do a lot to limit their exposure to accidents, that's to be sure.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
I have to question if the goal is really to build a traffic radar system, or get some cheap radar technology for some other purpose.
Beyond that, I have personally constructed such items and I'm aware that if you search the Internet diligently you'll find plans that actually work for 'radar guns' but I think you should have to work for it...possibly because of the first concern.
Further beyond that, I have to wonder from the first 2 items if you really have the increasingly larger knowledge and devotion to manufacture, operate and enforce a system on a large scale. It's not trivial. Even data collection comes at a price. At some point you'll need to collect that data after all. Additionally such devices require calibration and the tools to do so may not be cheap enough or even available for loan from the local ham radio operators.
In the end, I'd like to suggest something slightly less complicated. Cheap RF transmitters, laser diodes (think laser pointers) and a 'photoswitch' that detects when the beam is broken. Put the sensors a known distance apart and you can determine the speed of the object based on the time between the breaks in the laser beam. Use a cheap microcontroller or a basic CMOS counter and you have the basic components. Add a camera to that and you can see who/what broke the beams.
I'm comfortable making the above suggestion because it barely qualifies as a high school level electronics project.
All you really need to do is adjust your perspective. Visit Boston for a while and I guarantee you that the driving everywhere else will feel sane and safe in comparison. Seriously, I've driven all over the world, from Mexico to India, to Australia, to Brazil to Indonesia to... Nowhere did I feel as unsafe as when I was living with the absolutely moronic drivers of Boston. The driving there isn't simply bad, or irresponsible (although it is both), it is literally homicidal. So just drive there for a couple weeks and then go home and you won't be worried anymore.
As an optimist, I wish something like that would work. But your problem is not the people themselves, it's the culture. I had a mini flame war without meaning to make it flame because someone misunderstood me. I'll use what I'm VERY familiar with: Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico, North America. I learned while working there for a minute that you don't "follow the rules, you follow the cars." This means everything they do. If they don't completely stop at a stop sign, then you roll through it as they did when it's your turn. If you see they make 4 lanes out of 2, you do the same. And when those 4 lanes swerve like a freakin snake, you better freakin swerve too. Why swerve? Well, if you want a flat tire from those sink holes they call pot holes, keep going straight! So it's the culture that has to change. In Down Town Los Angeles people in their Porche's don't care for speed limits or red lights. While the *majority* of people won't have these cars nor money, they do congregate in this area because of their type of work. So, that many people with that mentality isn't a good thing, and guess what? Money isn't going to "teach them."
As stated many times, I am a biker. Or, as my friends say, "an every day rider." In doing so I've seen a lot of things, and I understand why many people say "you have to be crazy to ride a bike." The problem with trying to "punish bad drivers" is that it'll fail just as punishing "bad people who break laws and get caught" does. You can't stop it. And don't make any allusion to that because the problem doesn't disappear, it just move somewhere else.
Now, my idea, as stated before, for my problem is to equip both marked and unmarked 'law enforcement vehicles' with the same system parking enforcers have, but also an augmented system. Here are the basics:
a) Scan license plates on passing or being passed by other vehicles. Their windshields need to have HUD in order to make this effective.
b) Data will be categorized by priority. A red border around a vehicle is high priority: wanted by law, yellow, some sort of mark on the license plate, could stop legall but maybe not a priority issue, green speeders and reckless drivers. MANY more colors for other things.
c) Next, depending on the color of issue, the registered cars owner could receive a warning OR a citation in the mail. I would refuse to accept anything less than a system that gives out no less than 2 warnings BEFORE imposing fines or penalties. That way people "get a chance to learn to obey the rules of law." That way, people also don't get f'd by laws that are not brought to our attention. Other owners though, will be immediately pulled over AND fined. Known and repeat offenders even have their vehicles impounded on the SPOT. Regular speeders in excess of 20 MPH of posted speed limit or who have had "other serious moving violations."
d) Owners can contest the fine at the same cost of said fine. So, if you get a ticket in the mail for your 3rd offense of going 85 in a 65 MPG zone and its for say, $100, you CAN contest it paying $100, then if the judge says it was wrongly issued you're only out $100. But, if you are found guilty, then you're out $100 + $100 = $200. Helps keep waste down in the court.
e) Now, with time tables established, those who break more serious laws will have their licenses suspended and eventually permanently revoked.
Harsh right? Well, when you've been almost killed more times than you have fingers on 1 hand, you *might* feel the same way. The biggest crime in those peoples lives are that they would have killed me, and not even have known it.
And oh yeah, I have more! I'll throw it up on my blog sometime. Maybe someone will steal that idea and make it happen!
My abilities are only limited by my imagination
Add speed bumps into the road. Depending on how fast the road speeds are supposed to be, you can make the bumps smoother for faster areas and higher for slow traffic ones (like before what should be a 4-way stop / light).
Bye!
Much less built out anything other then a non-working prototype.
I can tell just by reading your comment.
Moron.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
1. Reckless doesn't mean speeders.
2. The best drivers drive in something like the 87th percentile of speed (A study I read in dead tree media). Yep, they are speeding.
3. While even my local state patrol says "Speed is the number 1 cause of accidents." this is completely false unless by speed you mean that one of the vehicles in a crash had to have speed >0 AKA be moving. 20 years of studying crashes and watching people crash says that the #1 cause is inattentive driving or putting things where they do not belong.
4. Speeders are a created villain that you have decided to go after (In Germany they drive much faster than we do here so speed is not the issue).
5. You need to target bad drivers. Those who commute in the passing lane, those who don't use turn signals, those who turn to the wrong lane, those who roll through stops or ignore them completely, those who drive distracted, those who impede traffic, etc. These are the people who do not pay attention or put things where they do not belong.
So if you actually want less death you need a legal solution not a technological solution.
1. Police target bad drivers not speeders and drunks. Vehicle profiling should also be used.
2. change drunk driving laws to cover all inattentive driving. If talking on a cell phone while driving impairs you as much as the legal alcohol limit it should be targeted and penalized in the same way.
3. Lobby for heavy penalties for turning to the wrong lane, improper signal use/no signal use, commuting in the passing lane, and all the other things that indicate that the person either doesn't know how to drive or is driving impaired, impeding traffic, rolling through stops, etc. By heavy penalties think DWI penalties.
4. Penalties for LTV drivers should be double as they are way more dangerous to other drivers.
5. Let the fines from the bad drivers buy HD video cams for police dashboards to increase conviction rate.
6. Push for regular drivers tests for licensed drivers, to make sure their skills are current.
People like going after invented villains like speeders because then they feel that themselves are not the problem. When you target the bad drivers you target most people, so enjoy getting any laws created that target the majority.
I should note that while speeding doesn't cause as many accidents as other things, the more speed a vehicle has the more energy it will deliver in a crash and the more damage that will be done. Of course with energy you can look at a LTV that weighs 2x what a car does and do the energy calculations yourself.
You could just lobby for lower and lower speed limits but what this will lead to is "Every child Left Behind" applied to roads. Get the bad drivers off the roads, do not dumb things down for them. Do not make everyone else drive at their level.
The other problem with lower and lower speed limits is that you get higher and higher speed deltas between the fast and slow drivers.
It's great that you want to do something but you have this the wrong way round.
If there is no political will to enforce the current laws then that is the first problem that needs to be solved. Start lobbying the city authorities - show them how much accidents cost the economy and line up some people to remind them of the devastating social cost. Show them how a multi-pronged enforcement program could be revenue neutral (probably best not to suggest positive - once the government starts relying on revenue like this they stop making good decisions). Use statistics from first worlds countries to show that these enforcement programs do reduce the rate of death and accidents over time.
Some of the measures you might want to consider along the way include:
- Demerit points program so repeat offenders lose their right to drive.
- Variable fines tied to income (stop the rich from flouting the law because the fines aren't large enough to worry them - possibly not required if you use demerit points).
- Mandatory seat belt and motor cycle helmet laws.
- Advertising campaigns that remind people of the very personal and tragic outcome of road accidents.
- Improved driver education for younger drivers and increased licensing standards.
- Child restraint standards.
- Random drug and alcohol testing (maybe not such an issue for middle east).
Then there is the issue about how you make the road system safer. Many safety improvements are about engineering rather than changing attitudes.
- Traffic lights and signalling
- Segregated Carriageways
- Improving vehicle safety standards
- Speed limits determined by engineering expertise rather than popular poll
- Wider shoulder and run off areas on roads.
- Re-engineering intersections
- etc etc
And yes, part of such a program might be fixed and possible mobile radar/laser with cameras (mind you if your registration scheme is not robust enough a camera is of zero use).
If that all sounds like a lot of work then yes it is. Now some civil libertarians will no doubt jump in and use some ridiculous stats to try and point out why you shouldn't do this, or that etc etc. Most first world countries have been using some combination of such programs to reduce the impact of road trauma for some time with a great deal of success.
As is usually the case with social programs it is difficult to take a scientific measurement of which parts of a program contribute the most (because you don't really ever get apples/apples comparisons) but something is being done correctly. For example here in Australia in absolute terms deaths in MVAs have fallen from around 3300 in 1982 steadily and continously to around 1400 per annum - in the same time Australia's population has increased from around 15mil to 21mil. So in deaths per 100,000 the rate has dropped from approximately 22/100,000 in 1982 to around 6.5/100,000.
Across the border from where I live is the little city of Queanbeyan - around 25,000 people - it's greatest claim to fame at the moment is being the home of Formula One driver Mark Webber. That entire city represents approximately how many lives have been saved since 1982 in Australia through some combination of the road safety program.
And to be honest - deaths is just the tip of the iceberg. For every 1 person killed there are 4 people whose lives are destroyed through injuries which change their lives forever. Acquired brain injuries, spinal injuries, amputations etc etc.
I applaud you for showing enough concern to want to do something. Build some allies - that's what you need. Show the authorities just how appalling the loss of life is over time. Help them build a revenue neutral program to show they can afford to start addressing the problem. Then you can buy your rader ;-)
Let me guess... DUBAI!!!
Get these people, we will call them police, to patrol where these accidents occur and give tickets to people who behave recklessly. That way the people who get the ticket cannot weasel out of it by saying the automated system is not reliable and is just being used to make money and if there is an actual problem these "police" can be there to help!
This might help some:
http://www.genetec.com/Products/Pages/autovu-overview-en.aspx
...for example, the motivation of the writer:
"This is about technology saving lives — literally."
He states this just after stating this:
"...we're confident the penalty fees will cover its spread."
When money is involved, things get REAL backwards. Like Rei said above, the focus should be on the real problems: the people, and the lack of traffic lights. People can be educated. If they don't obey the rules of society that are designed for their physical wellbeing, they likely get injured and in some cases, remove their influence from the community permanently. Not that that would be a good thing, but PEOPLE should be the ones responsible for their own stupidity, not the government, because when the government steps in, liberties are lost.
Don't do it unless you support the same political structures that Stalin and Hitler were the front men for.
The question of cheating or lying is based on your ability to enforce the speeds you capture, thats a matter of lobbying the local government which is actually your biggest issue. i'm kind of lost in what your actually after technology-wise.....how on earth do you plan to enforce this? Do you want a speed triggered camera that grabs a license plate photo? If so, there are several manufacturers, just buy the first one if you think it'll catch on, happing all over the US now. Sorry to say but if you even have to ask this question your probably not capable of building a system to do it yourself. If you want to research it, you don't need a radar specialist at all, you need a dopler radar front end, which you can buy as a module or you could just buy a radar gun used in baseball or a police issue model, rig it into a computer (may need a microcontroller doing some glue work) and have the computer attached to a high speed camera capable of resolving a license plate (the camera is by and far the largest expense in all likelihood). There will of course be some work to glue it all together but nothing a EE undergrad couldn't figure out.
So you live in the middle east and want to build and operate your own radar system. Are you sure you're not just visiting there?
..are speed bumps! Coupled with some signs suggesting motorists should slow down for them..
This won't generate revenue.. but you could always start a nearby towing service at the same time and profit from the one's who didnt heed the warnings :)
Radar does not make the roads safer.... education does.. radar and speed traps only generate revenue and annoy people.
they're even called, somewhere, a "slow child" (laff):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_bump
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You really only get to choose at most 2 out of the three.(there is the possibility that it could have none of the above)
Issues
--------------------
Electricity
Humidity
Unfortunately I'm not familiar with how humidity affects radar. But one option is to do is include humidity readings with the violation. Then do a large amount of testing at various speed/humidity to produce a error margin look-up for a given humidity. (this may result in the minor offenders to escape the fines(speed is within the error margin of speed limit), but you will get the major offenders)
Cheating
Well unless the source code for the system(s) that you purchase is open source you can't prove it one way or the other. Only other choice is to buy it from a reputable vendor.
i'm sure that are a few dudes somewhere who can drive 90 mph all the time and never get in accidents... yet
i'm also sure there are plenty of dudes who say they can drive 90 mph all the time, out of a mix of testosterone, machismo, bravado, and bullshit, but can't
can you tell the difference?
look: the faster you drive, the greater your chance for crashing. so society picks a speed limit, and lives are saved
yes, a few supermen out there, now have their styles cramped. and for those superman, i have nothing but sympathy and tears for this heavy, heavy burden you must bear
truly life is so not fair to the supermen... or at least the hubristic assholes who kill other people because they think of themselves as supermen
obey the speed limits, asshole. you're no fucking superman
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
In the US we have radar detectors, speed traps, traffic lights, plenty of police officers, reasonably well-marked lanes (compared with the rest of the world), all the trappings of a fairly sophisticated automobile system.
And yet, the worst drivers in the world are found in Massachusetts, USA. Worse than Rome, worse than all the places with reputations of crazy driving, per insurance company and other statistics.
The location you are in DOES MATTER. If the people don't abide by simple rules of the road, all the technology you throw at it isn't going to make much difference.
Many people have written that this is a social problem not a technical one. Here's why they are wrong.
I have been to Egypt on many trips and have seen firsthand the problems described above. In egypt, there is rampant corruption in the government. That trickles down to all agencies. The people who pay taxes do not get anything in return. Nobody obeys traffic laws there. People frequently cram 6 cars into the equivalent of 3 lanes of traffic. People believe the lines are for decoration. In the areas where there are traffic lights, nobody obeys them. The only person people obey is soldier with the machine gun directing traffic. They are groomed with the understanding that as long as they don't piss him off they get away with everything else.
What people are asking him is to essentially revolutionize the government and make it work. The people only understand money. If you have money, you get what you want. If you don't, you end up with the above situation.
As an example, a number of years ago I witness a car accident on a busy street which backed up traffic for miles. It was between a guy on a motorcycle and a guy in a car. The two drivers started fighting in the middle of the street and a crowd of people developed. The soldier didn't care about the people involved or the damage to the vehicles. He pointed his gun at the crowd and told them to move the cars or else. The crowd moved the vehicles on the sidewalk and they to got on the sidewalk. The fight continued but traffic started moving again.
For your technical solution, there are going to be lots of caveats. In Egypt, for example people will steal just about anything. I have seen people steal electricity, phone lines, natural gas, side-view mirrors on cars just about anything. If you create this system, theft will be a big issue. If you can guarantee that know one will steal your system that is your first hurdle. Soldiers in egypt are paid so little that they may not care for your system - especially if the guy who broke the law will pay them a bribe directly on the spot versus paying a fine to a higher up agency where he will never see his cut.
If you can start with the block that you live on and mount webcams (*note -- In egypt, this will run you afoul of the government and the soldiers regardless of your intent!) on your building to prevent theft then you can log all the cars coming and going. This would make it easier to identify who the parties in the accidents are in case someone flees.
Speedingwise, I have seen stories of how people take apart optical mice and use them as sensors. There is probably a cheap way to rig this to give you timings of start/stop points. You could then time how long it takes a vehicle to cross two of these sensors to determine rate of travel. If you take snapshots of the clock time at both locations, you could do a look up against the snapshots from your webcam. Or you could use this to determine when to take snapshots on the webcam.
This is basically how the toll road cameras work here in the states. Even if the driver gets away, you can at least identify the driver in the future.
I work for a company that does automated traffic enforcement similar to what you are talking about. Having said that, obviously those systems already exist and making your own would be putting yourself in competition with some big players who are advanced beyond anything you could put together with private funds.
This is not a fun business and you will automatically be super-unpopular just for being associated with it. People don't like getting tickets; they REALLY don't like getting tickets from automated systems. If there is enough public backlash then the politicians or officials involved will feel the heat for it and cut your program. People will dislike your company, too, just for being in the business and offering your services to the government (programs are always set up according to the government's specifications and so government employees actually issue the tickets - we perform the legwork to make everything else possible). They will definitely resent that you make a profit (even if you haven't made one yet).
Now you should start to sense that a huge part of this business is dealing with governments, bureaucracies, legal maters, public opinions, lobbying, etc. It is integral to everything, including the technical aspects your operation. I can tell you that I have seen entire programs die overnight as a result of court rulings.
Once you get a working traffic unit, clear the initial legal hurdles, and establish a program, you can look forward to the operational necessities of the business. These include installing and maintaining traffic sites, processing violations internally, making and maintaining software with which to processes and handle those violations internally and externally (by your clients), running a call center, handling payments, printing and mailing notices, possibly arranging court dates or interfacing with external court systems, and working with various third parties like banks for lockbox accounts, credit card providers, collections agencies, and postal services.
Is there any kind of legal backing for the scheme? I'm from UK but I'd be amazed if you can just stick up a speed trap and issue penalties in "someplace in the Middle East". Even if you're allowed to stick the cameras up, you can't enforce the penalties until given legal privilege to do so. You say "the country is not important" and you couldn't have it more wrong. Government roads, government controlled, it's all about the country. If you were in the UK I'd say simply write to your MP then if nothing happens set up a pressure/lobby group.
The technology is easy, there's the "GATSO" speed cameras that just sit on a pole. "SPECS" systems are more of an investment but monitor speed over the distance rather than just cause everyone to brake just for the camera. I'm not sure speed traps are going to resolve the stated issues however, I'd hesitantly wager a guess that your starting point would be setting up a major charity running national road safety and awareness education campaigns.
These systems are put in place to profit from a problem, or a perceived problem, or an invented problem, not to solve the problem.
It was a joke. But throw in a little GPS and you could do it.
Take your technological solution to a social problem idea, and all that freedom-degrading, corruption-enhancing, abuse-inviting, wont-work-anyway gadgetry you just developed and shove it straight up your ass. I'm glad as hell you don't live in my country, we've got enough petit-tyrants wandering around inventing new ways to milk everyday people out of every penny they can get a mindless bureaucratic system to squeeze from us. You cannot dispense justice from a vending machine.
Insightful and funny are really the same thing, except one has a punch line.
you were talking about Boston, but then I realized it was Middle east and not northeast.
I don't think anything can be done. Many people are horrible drivers. A certain percentage is very afraid of driving and clog up the road with their uncertainty. Another set believes that driving's just like a video game, and that signals, proper distance between cars, and basic courtesy are inconvenient and optional.
There is nothing that can be done, I'm afraid. Honestly, if they made drivers "qualify" for different types/sizes of vehicles, accidents would be reduced. But, everyone values their time over safety.
You can check the studies, the state here in the USA that removed speed limits reduced traffic accidents.
When the speed limits were put back in, accidents increased again.
In my state, officials openly admit speed enforcement generates revenue. The figure was a significant proportion of the state budget.
It's not for safety, it's an indirect tax.
If you look at the hard data on accidents, the vast majority occur at low speeds.
I have yet to be at fault in an accident, but I have been hit multiple times. Each time it was at low speed. Each time it was due to a driver not paying attention.
As much as I hate to say it, if you consistently have accidents in a situation, a study might reveal WHY accidents occur there. If it were do to speed, all our police officers, ambulance drivers, firemen and race car drivers would all be dead by now.
As others have pointed out, I'm afraid the technical solution won't be to fine fast drivers who avoid accidents, but to change the circumstances encouraging accidents.
Use a high definition video feed. Speed can be calculated from angles, measured distance to objects near the car. For best results capture traffic from several different angles. This can be done in software with human back up. Software can quite easily pick out moving objects from a static background.
This would be massively more indisputable in court than radar.
Does your country have laws about following distance? This is a huge and often over looked contributor to accidents.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
I am sorry for not making things more clear: what I want is not a Charles Bronson vigilante thing. I want a system that is approved by the city government (the equivalent of a city hall in the EU or USA) and operated on a revenue sharing basis (therefore the city will have a financial incentive in allowing it to run).
Our share of the generated speeding tickets will be reinvested in new radars, thus making the system self-financing and self-replicating.
I don't want a city wide system, costing millions of dollars. I want *ONE* radar installed on the main road. This first radar will sooner or later pay for itself then will generate the funds to buys a 2nd radar. Now, having 2 radars installed, generating the money for the 3rd radar will be faster. Got my point?
I don't want a complicated system that needs uber professional engineers and urban managers. I want a rugged, simple radar + camera that can be used to identify which car went faster than X speed. Once we have *ONE* such radar, the tickets can be issued. Once drivers learn their speeding is affecting their wallets, they will obey at least the speed limits (thus decreasing the number of accidents and therefore the number of fatalities).
Yes, I am aware there are some American companies offering radar guns etc. But a radar + camera seems to cost in excess of $10,000, and that's a huge sum for us and for the speeding tickets to cover. I believe with an Open Source approach we can build one such system with much less money, therefore decreasing the time it takes to finance installing a new one from funds obtained through fining speeders.
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
in which you think a completely unrelated point: that cops try to pad municipal budgets with law enforcement tricks, disproves the actual point: that speeding kills people
all you have done is changed the subject matter you moron
meanwhile, back on topic: show the fuck down you asshole, so you don't kill anyone in your hubristic ignorance
capisce?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I know exactly the city you are talking about. /. and the whole science/technology AFAIK.
And I know exactly the problem, and you can't solve it.
The government has ordered about 7 Billion USD approximately for the next few years to solve the problem, and the government as well as everyone know that 7 Billion Dollars won't solve it, yet, they are willing to spend it. FFS, it's a country that you can't acquire a driving license without bribing everyone from the janitor to the officer, your driving test is already done if you pay 10 dollars, if you don't pay them, you fail even if you are a nascar champion.
This problem is out of the scope of
thanks for the clarification
you want to be deputized
very old american wild west type stuff
good luck ;-)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Well hell, can anyone just answer the poor guy's question instead of lecturing him on all the side issues?
"So, I'm asking Slashdot: what would be a workable way to build such a system? It must withstand drivers claiming the system is cheating, high temperatures, high levels of humidity, and crappy electricity. Any suggestions would be appreciated. This is about technology saving lives — literally."
Because speeding has never been the problem?
Perhaps you should worry about misogynist scumbags in your corner of the world who gouge out womens' clitorises in the name of keeping them pure, or deal with the fuckheads who think killing their daughters for bringing "shame" upon their family is perfectly acceptable. Your society has very SERIOUS problems with the way women are viewed and treated. They are not your property, douchebag. Until you realize this, I'm afraid I cannot muster any sympathy for you. You deserve whatever comes your way - especially if it's an out-of-control bus.
I think your best bet is to become a very vocal "concerned citizen" (possibly even doing it anonymously) and essentially shaming citizens, public officials, or public servants into changing their ways. You may be able to organize a group and protest peacefully if your government and citizens allow. Setup a blog and distribute flyers to spread the word. Good luck and be careful and secure.
This is why well-constructed speed bumps have a pass-through for bikes on the curb side.
At a place I worked, speed bumps were installed, but they were so short that they worked against their purpose. It didn't take long before everyone with an SUV figured out that instead of slowing down from 25 mph to a crawl, one could speed up to 40+, and take the speed bump on the suspension without feeling any discomfort.
When properly constructed, yes, speed bumps reduce the speed. But whether they also reduce the number of accidents is debatable. It's not speed in itself that is the problem, but drivers going at a faster speed than they can safely control their vehicle at. And a speed bump reduces not only the speed, but the safe speed too. Going at a relatively slow speed over a speed bump can be more dangerous than going twice as fast without it, if it turns the driver's focus towards the speed bump instead of the child walking out between two cars. Or if the driver misjudges the speed bump, and goes over it too fast, losing control of the vehicle for a second or two. Then it would have been safer if the sleeping policeman hadn't been there in the first place.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/columnists/rdreher/stories/011308dnedidreher.1ab6eb80.html
How about a law that if someone breaks a traffic law, you're legally entitled to shoot them. An armed society is a polite society, right?
Next on "Ask Slashdot"... Building lasers to burn out traffic cameras?
"I live in a city with a population in the millions (someplace in the Middle East; the country is not important), and I am mad as hell. There are vigilantes who are going from bad to worse, and I'm sick of all the revenue collection schemes they keep hatching. So far, they've delivered thousands of tickets, and it hasn't done anything to address the accident and mortality rates. After speaking with some of my friends, we decided to take the issue into our own hands: build an infrared CO2 laser system able to fry the traffic cameras, install it on a van at our own expense, and rescue our fellow citizens from these vigilantes and the corrupt city government officials. They are currently in a mode where they are reinvesting their extortion money in increasing the size of their racketeering operation, so now is the time to stop them. We're not rich and we will not ask for our money back. So, I'm asking Slashdot: what would be a workable way to build such a system? It must have an invisible beam not observable by the extortionists or the general public, which might cause word to get back to the extortionists. Any suggestions would be appreciated. This is about technology stopping criminals -- literally."
-- Terry
The police in my area have such a device; It's called a 'Stealth Staff'. It's battery powered, has a DVR built in and has radar and an automatic camera built in. They just screw it to a telephone pole and it does the rest on its own. You can even get it powered off of solar cells.
Well, actually I could reduce this traffic problem with an application of technology, but the original poster said his overarching purpose is to save lives.
But seriously, I visited Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates two years ago, and the drivers there are the worst I've seen anywhere - and I've been a lot of places. They are not merely bad drivers but extremely aggressive drivers. It's like they have a death wish or something - which may be understandable, seeing as they are forced to live with themselves.
Now I'm reflecting on the myriad places I've been and the bad drivers thereof - Lima, Bucharest, Chicago, Washington D.C., Johannesburg, Guayaquil - there were some bad drivers in these places, but there's at least an order of magnitude difference between any of those and Abu Dhabi. If Abu Dhabi resembles other middle eastern cities in terms of traffic, I certainly sympathize with the OP. Still, I don't see a technological solution - at least, not one that lets the bastards live.
Probably an option you haven't considered, but for you consideration...
You might think about approaching the problem from a different direction than standard law enforcement, which is both ineffective and costly. For example, you might consider that speeding doesn't cause accidents; bad driving causes accidents, and the two are usually only incidentally related. Trying to police speeding is like trying to improve school test scores by kicking out all the children with a certain hair color: you might get lucky, and you might kick out some people with bad scores, but your metric isn't really related to the problem you're trying to solve.
Instead, maybe consider being part of a solution instead of just piling on more ineffective big-government type solutions, and focus on what causes bad driving, such as distractions, lack of social responsibility, lack of training, or road rage, as examples. Try working on some solutions to those problems, which you might actually be able to influence, and leave the bloated bureaucratic one-size-fits-all bad-idea "solutions" to the organizations that specialize in them (ie: the government).
Just a thought.
This would actually work, if we could give guns to all the women in the middle east.
That sounds a lot like the traffic in Riyadh.
I would rather forget about radar and laser and go with a license plate reader. Install two of them between two spots and you get the average speed over this stretch of road. That's a lot worse than just measuring a single point on the way. Where I live they installed a few of those and as a customer, I must say I hate them worse then the radar boxes. Which means, they must be more efficient.
Also from a technical point of view, realising them is a lot cheaper and easier to do if you like to tinker. No need for radar, laser etc, you just a need a camera with decent optics, a computer and probably an infrared light source to illuminate the plates better - all of which is available for reasonable amount of money. The rest is software and can be done in your living room.
You will need to play around with image recognition, specially as the Hindi digits often found on Arabic license plates aren't often handled by standard OCR-readers. But that makes an interesting project. And the good part is, that you won't need 100% accuracy, any correct reading will be a success. I think they published a few years ago that the license-plate readers have a success-rate between 80% and 90%, which is good enough.
As to the accidents, a simple traffic camera will help catching resolving accidents and identify the involved parties.
Plus speed bumps have the added bonus of wrecking and perhaps killing all those pesky motorcyclists! (I was kind of assuming from the description that he wasn't talking about a sub 20 mph area.)
Ah no, it makes them go faster.
Seriously.
When on a bike, your eyes light up when you spot a speed hump. You open the throttle, hit the bump, the suspension compresses, rebounds, and launches you over to the other side. My favorite bit of road has five (!!) in a row - awesome!
This is why well-constructed speed bumps have a pass-through for bikes on the curb side.
That's for storm water to flow thru.
(This is a UK-viewpoint, also I just know about this from the Local Government IT side - I'm not a Traffic Engineer)
What we do is offer to issue these to community groups who some basic safety training and are told to be clear if asked that they are not issuing penalties. The "concerned members of the public" then sit out with the device and it keeps a log of the speeds recorded. They then return this to us and the log is used as evidence alongside their submission to decide if a more formal study is carried out possibly leading to traffic calming measures. Showing people they're exceeding the speed limit often helps in itself and one of the possible things done to help is a static version of this device that still doesn't issue penalties. The devices also have the ability to be set with a limit to how fast they show on the screen to prevent people using them to show off.
I wouldn't suggest trying to build a device yourself, there are often cases reported where the suspect has been acquitted due to the device being incorrectly calibrated and I imagine everyone would try this angle when they found it was something done by amateurs. That said some people seem to do fine with just a hair dryer...
You sir are an idiot.
Shoot yourself in the head.
Speeding is fun.
The key to any entrepreneurial endeavour is of course to make someone else pay the bill.
1) Create a GREAT relationship with local, regional and national authorities.
2) Make a business plan.
3) Convince some established manufacturer of radar equipment to do a free test installation, against exclusive right to sell equipment if the business plan works out.
4) Profit.
I am from Sweden. Authorities here have a "Vision Zero", which means zero deaths per year in traffic. 2009 358 out of 9.3 million people died. Ten years earlier 580 out of 8.9 million died. The target for 2020 is 220.
One strategy used to reach the goal is automatic speed cameras. The ones deployed are built by http://www.sensys.se/. They have a lot of installations worldwide. You probably have nothing to lose by contacting them!
I'm disappointed that there have been so many comments suggesting anything but help on speed camera (possibly because they are unpopular devices). Speed cameras do have the potential to reduce speeds around accident black spots, assisting in the number of injuries and fatalities. Speed cameras can also be considerably cheaper to implement than traffic lights and provide a revenue stream to fund maintenance.
In terms of preventing disputes of pictures taken by cameras I would suggest that you look at techniques used in the UK. There they take two photographs of any speeding vehicle at precisely timed intervals. There are marking on the road to show distance so the two images can be used to prove that the vehicle covered the distance stated on the ticket.
Another item I would recommend is that all digital evidence is signed with a digital signature to show it has not been tampered with. In Australia md5 hashes were used to show an image had not been tampered with, and that allowed someone challenge the ticket successfully in court as the defendant was able to demonstrate that someone could have easily replaced both the image and hash (as anyone can create an md5 hash, but a digital signature requires the private key).
Tamper proofing is also very important (expect attacks on cameras with many items). I strongly recommend mounting cameras on high poles (at least 2.5m, basically beyond the swing of a baseball bat) to reduce vandalism.
Mobotix make some excellent cameras, and while they are not designed to function as speed cameras they are programmable and offer and excellent api. Additionally, they function extremely well in bad weather conditions due to having no moving parts. They also make vandal resistant cameras and I have personally hit one of their cameras repeatedly with a sledgehammer and it continued to function throughout. I've also used them without issues in the top end of Australia where the temperature can exceed 45C and there is often high humidity.
Cameras only catch speeding, and actually encourage reckless driving.
UK police accident stats: TRL323 for example
excessive speed (includes over the limit *and* too great for the conditions; rain/fog etc): Generously, somewhere round 15% of accidents in the UK definitely, probably or even possibly include excessive speed as a component. The largest component by far is inattention ~25%, then comes failure to judge ~20% other road users and looking but not seeing ~20%, all of which are simply reckless driving.
Install speed bumps (you can even buy them on ebay) rather than cameras. Cheap to install and maintain and they do cause people to slow down, but more importantly, they make drivers pay attention to the road or they destroy the vehicle suspension. They also don't require police enforcement or law courts to be effective. If you set them far enough apart, drivers will be able to make reasonable progress, but will be physically incapable of exceeding the limit and will have to pay attention.
It's called traffic calming and it (road design) has a much larger effect on accident rates than cameras.
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1. Police and ambulances kill people too. I've seen a couple of occasions where an emergency vehicle driver clearly "on a mission" has caused further accidents.
2. You put them where they are necessary, not everywhere. The average speed can be kept reasonable if they are set far enough apart.
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They are about driver attention.
That was a perfectly clear road, reasonably well lit, with good road conditions. Did the drivers even see what was ahead? No, they didn't even attempt to slow down. They simply, weren't paying attention to the road, and lack of attention is the primary cause of accidents, not excessive speed.
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And hence have lower accident rates per passenger mile than those who solely drive cars. It's a feature of continually being a victim of attempted murder.
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Maybe I am misunderstanding things, but...
You will install speed traps on streets that are not your property, fine people who are not your slaves and presumably enforce the fines with the help of a local mob? At least you will share your profits with some politicians who are corrupt enough to let this happen, though.
I agree that you obviously have a problem in your city and things should be improved, but your approach is horribly, horribly, horribly wrong. There are way too many reasons why, but it seems the other posters have done a decent job listing them, already. I will limit myself to listing one:
If you can simply do what you want, what stops anyone else from stealing your speed traps, damaging them, charging protection money for their well-being or just killing you and using your skulls as bowling balls?
My advice is don't try to reinvent the wheel, there are many proven suppliers of portable kit of various sorts. Having said that you would need to show things like you trained the operators and had checking systems in place. The cost of kit then becomes small in relation to the cost of ensuring it is used properly.
As law enforcement really relies on deterrent (Oh dear there might be a speed check and I might lose my licence as a result) this has to be an issue that gets through the skull of drivers. Here is how I suggest you go about your mission:
To conclude. Good objective. Good to have a go. Wrong method. This is much more about getting people to support improved road safety than a radar camera. Once you've got started you will find many other issues apart from speeding that affect road safety and by then you and your mates (yes you'll have to form an organisation - with a name, web page, contact number for the press etc.) will be the experts as nobody else has bothered to get stuck-in and make a noise. Good luck
He asked how to make a radar speed trap system. He didn't ask for you half baked, armchair philosopher, amateur, basement dwelling, anarchist overview of his idea. So get stuffed.
If you don't know how to make a radar system for a speed trap then I am not sure you have any right even looking at Slashdot. Go and play down the park and leave the rest of us to deal with the technical stuff.
I agree with the majority here. If you really want to work towards a solution, marketing is probably going to work better then building speedcams without law enforcement standing behind you.You need sensibilisation.
A couple of things you could do:
work together with driving schools to inform new drivers of the dangers. Don't do this soft. For example: here in Belgium we had a famous emergency room doctor film a bunch of accidents caused by speeding, Driving under influance etc. They didn't only show the wrecked cars but also: victims being reanimated, limbs of people that were torn off in the accident, dead bodies etc.. They had a every high shock level and many parents and people protested this campaign with following results:
The campaign hit the local (and some international) media Over and over and over.. as long as the discussion and protest was going on ( = bonus coverage)
The protests went away when after a couple of years, we were seeing results being: A LOT less casualities with young drivers ( which the campaign was aimed against.. people between 18 and 21 which only just got their license and crashed due too speeding or something)
Another campaign can be directed towards the "already driving" people.. even there shock effects can work. And you can try to get them where it hurts: You could die, your kid could be killed or crippled at those speeds..etc.. try to get a feel of what would effect them.. cause simply saying "you could have an accident" doesn't do it.. you must SHOW them
and last but not least: get governement involvement.
The campaign for the young drivers was started privately but the organisation doing it, grew out to become a part of the governements traffic department. Get their attention, you can even "taunt" the government and law enforcement a bit in your campaigns (which happened here too) so the population will start to pressure them for doing something about it. once you get the first people paying attention and they start to notice and think: " why is our government not doing anything about this", it will start to lead a life on it's own...
when that is starting, THEN is the time to start talking about technologic solutions with traffic lights and speedcams.. cause before this, when in the law and mind of people these things are not official , they will be ignored resulting in an even worse situation than it already is..
You can check the studies, the state here in the USA that removed speed limits reduced traffic accidents.
When the speed limits were put back in, accidents increased again.
In my state, officials openly admit speed enforcement generates revenue. The figure was a significant proportion of the state budget.
It's not for safety, it's an indirect tax.
If you look at the hard data on accidents, the vast majority occur at low speeds.
I have yet to be at fault in an accident, but I have been hit multiple times. Each time it was at low speed. Each time it was due to a driver not paying attention.
As much as I hate to say it, if you consistently have accidents in a situation, a study might reveal WHY accidents occur there. If it were do to speed, all our police officers, ambulance drivers, firemen and race car drivers would all be dead by now.
As others have pointed out, I'm afraid the technical solution won't be to fine fast drivers who avoid accidents, but to change the circumstances encouraging accidents.
Well, everyone knows that in germany you can drive at unlimited speeds at some parts of the "Autobahn".. but recent tests in Austria and Italy, where they raised the maximum speed on a part of road to 150 Km/h (austria) and unlimited (italy), the accidents dramatically DECREASED.
Why ? well.. if you are driving jolly 120 Km/h ( regular speed limit in most countries here) and someone is passing you at 150 Km/h, you don't expect him to be driving this quickly and might misjudge when changing lanes thinking you have the room and time to do so.. when you KNOW that he could be driving that speed, cause it is allowed.. you will be a lot more carefull. The same goes for driving at higher speeds.. as someone who drives quite a lot in Germany, i can tell you that you are paying a lot more attention when driving 180 Km/h or faster, then when you are "cruising" at 120 Km/h fiddeling with your ipod, phone, whatever...
Your city is in the Middle East. Unless you're talking about Tel Aviv then the population is Muslim. Whether or not you kill someone with your car is the will of Allah, so no technology can help you.
If you want to fix the problem, get everyone to convert to Christianity.
well placed snipers to put rounds through the engines of the dumb asses that drive like crazy.
give it two months and see if your problem goes away.
much cheaper than the tech you are asking for :-p
Why would anyone pay you? If they're willing to ignore laws and the police don't care one of them might be willing to come and destroy your equipment. Or hurt you. Speed bumps seem like a much better solution to me.
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
A radar gun attached to a machine gun instead of a camera. Shame about the unfortunate pedestrians nearby but they are just collateral damage...
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
I am not paranoid, I just learnt to drive in the middle east....
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
The problem both you and the original poster and most on this forum have is this: Some areas of the world have no traffic rules. India has a simple rule, do not cross rails at the station. People do and people die. Constantly, daily. Why? Culture mostly. It can be very hard to grasp this if you follow some rules instinctively.
Do you jump from the rail platform on to the rails to save you have to go through a tunnel less then a hundred meters away? No? Why not? Because it is the law or because some laws do actually make sense? Do you wear a helmet on a motorcycle because it is the law or because you think it actually makes sense? Do you not drive on the wrong side of the road because some cop might catch you or because you don't fancy plowing into another car at 200km/h?
Simply installing traffic lights is NOT going to convince people to obey them. Only when the culture has changed to see that the traffic lights are NOT there as restrictor but as an enabler (traffic flows more smoothly allowing everyone to pass the junction more smoothly) will the traffic light start to work.
Frankly having been to such places, I think the guys changes are hopeless. It just doesn't fit with how people think. In India, if you get killed in traffic, it is bad karma, NOT you stepping in front of a speeding train that did it. Life just doesn't have the same value. Not that you have to look far for such attitudes. The west prefers SUV which kill more people then 9/11 each year including kids and never consider smaller vehicles which don't cause such injuries. Bull bars? Say bye bye to any kid hit with it.
Traffic, where humanity takes a nose dive. get used to it or start patrolling the roads with a machine gun.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
There is much simplier solution: bumbers. If your only concern is speed it's a perfect one too. Completely passive. Cheap. Unavoidable. And the best part: drivers enforce speed limit by themself.
Such systems already exist. Use one of them. Don't reinvent the wheel.
Is to get the government to mandate (like seat belts and airbags) a radar/speed based collision system in all cars. Your car sends radar beams (like the Mercedes) out the front and controls your speed to what is a 3 second gap. Also, have them mandate that all speed limit signs also broadcast the speed out so that when your car passes, it will read this speed and LIMIT your vehicle to this speed, until you pass a sign with a higher or lower limit.
Also, why do cars (in America, at least) need to be able to reach speeds over 70-75 MPH? Most roads are limited at those speeds anyways. Also, why do we need to go from 0 to 60 MPH so fast? When are you ever on a street with a stop sign/light that has a speed limit of 60.
If we remove free will from diving we can save lives. Think of the children.
I live in the US, but uncivilized behavior on the road is a problem here too, especially in Florida where Joe Pickup Truck will side-swipe you off the road if you don't let him bully his way in front of you. My first take on this is that speed is only one of the vehicle behaviors that cause accidents and is probably simplest to detect. Weaving through traffic is probably detectable too though a bit more complex. Following too closely is a fairly easy one, again. To carry it a step farther, with enough research funding you might even detect characteristic signs of aggressive behaviors or alcohol-related unsteadiness, etc. You might add facial recognition so good that the system "knows" the name and sexual preference of every driver on the road. (I've read that this sort of thing is coming pretty soon.) So, you can likely capture the occurrence of various types of traffic events, and record individual reaction times of all vehicles involved or affected, and follow the chain of small actions by which the initial traffic event propagates into a multi-vehicle accident. The consequences of car accidents are so horrible that all of this kind of surveillance seems justifiable, but would it not be better to have a government that protects the citizenry by means of adequate enforcement and traffic lights, highways designed for safety and a social ethic of civility? I do understand something about the situation in many places in the Middle East where the governments tend not to be responsive to people's needs. (Join the club! Instead of healthcare we got the war in Iraq!) Good luck!
We'll just start (or keep) riding supermotos.
Speed bumps? I only see wheelie indicators :-)
Eat the rich.
The more of you that die, the better. The civilized world has moved beyond wife-beating and executing homosexuals. If you'd all just martyr ourselves already, civilization would not miss you (despite our current President's best efforts to help you improve your self-esteem by reminding you that you "invented" the alphabet). You are a parasitic and oppressive culture. Good riddance to you all.
In Qatar there is already a mixed radar system working all around the country.
There are some typical photo radars installed on each intersection on Doha and every few km on the roads... If you are speeding, you see a flash and you get a nice photo and a ticket.
But the most efficient radar is a stealth one. It is installed on the road lighting poles and it takes continuous pictures. If the time a car takes to reach the next camera is too low... Bingo! You have an infraction. No flash, no warning...
This is being quite efficient in Qatar... Now the only issue is to teach drivers some manners... But that's another story...
It has been PROVEN numerous times that speed in and of itself
does not cause traffic deaths.
There is no need for new devices or new laws. There is only a need for
existing laws to be enforced. The laws concerning driving while impaired,
the laws about driving too slowly in the fast lane, etc. are what need to
be enforced. Oh, and the use of cell phones by drivers needs to end.
The job of the driver is to DRIVE. And the sad truth is that in the US, any idiot
is allowed to drive and because of this driving IS very dangerous. But forcing
adherence to speed limits will not in and of itself reduce traffic accidents. Like I said, you
need to learn more about the subject before you attempt to become "super traffic cop".
And you also might want to study what happened in Arizona with the speed cameras. Among
other things, speeding did NOT stop, and the people of the state were quite vocal in their desire to
remove the cameras. Speed is not the problem : lousy drivers are the problem.
Try a good old roundabout to help out.
Very low cost, and really helps focus the driving; Doesn't get rid of all bad drivers, but helps.
If it's not a junction, then you're likely out of luck. Speeding is very rarely the cause of accidents. Bad and careless driving is; That doesn't conveniently show up on a cheap camera.
Trafistar SR590 - Quote: "can simultaneously monitor the speed of 22 cars in four lanes, not just the normal two. It can also spot nine other driving misdemeanors.
Drivers who tailgate or trespass into bus or cycle lanes, who fail to give way to pedestrians or to traffic to the right, who overtake in a dangerous manner, fail to halt at a stop sign or who make an unauthorized turn have been warned.
The SFr80,000 ($77,000) device, made by Zurich firm Multanova, is equipped with the latest 3D tracking radar technology, which allows it to pinpoint the precise position of each vehicle and follow its movement. "
Wax on, wax off baby!
Have each camera note time and number plate. Have known distances between cameras. Work out average speed the car must have travelled. If above limit then fine driver. No radar required.
Get a bunch of sharks with lasers. You can train them to shoot the tires of reckless drivers. Repeat offenders just might get a later to the eye.
What are you talking about? As a motorcyclist I can tell you that not only do speed bumps not make me wreck, I don't even need to slow down for them as much as cars do. In fact, when I'm traveling at a reasonable speed I often don't have to slow down at all.
Don't punish the speeders! It's not speeders that are the problem, it's people not looking before they go. So many times people just assume the roads are safe and they go without looking both ways. If anything, people going too slow are more of a problem as they block traffic and cause jams. Also, the roads over in the middle east are horrible! Way too thin!