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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.
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.
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.
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.
You cannot solve a social problem with technology, or strict laws.
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 ----
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 !
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
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.
Start by calling these car wrecks, not "accidents". The latter term nicely hides the carnage behind a nice innocuous word.
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
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.)
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.
Open source number plate recognition software appears to exist. Now all you need is a couple of cameras and a server. In fact, you don't even need a real-time link to the server. You could store the photos on the camera and then process them off-line.
will never replace rule of law.
My understanding is that the story submitter is trying to provide the police / government with a means to enforce the law. You'll note the phrase, "but the motorcycle driver who was responsible fled and the police weren't equipped to catch him," implying that the police do not have sufficient means.
You'll also notice that the summary states, "build a traffic radar system able to capture a vehicle's speed," and "[t]here are laws, but not much willingness to enforce them," and hopes with the hypothetical new system that fines will be levied. This, along with the general tone and explicit suggestion of rolling fines into additional technology, would all suggest that the submitter is looking to bootstrap rule of law.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
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
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
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
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
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'
These systems are put in place to profit from a problem, or a perceived problem, or an invented problem, not to solve the problem.
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.
Yes, I want to work WITHIN the existing legal framework, by bootstrapping its enforcing. The radars are not some Charles Bronson vigilante tech toys, but should be installed with government consent under a revenue sharing agreement.
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
Clearly a case of the following driver not driving with due care and attention, or of not leaving a proper gap between them and the preceding vehicle?
Are you saying it would be perfectly acceptable for a rear-end shunt if the first car slammed on the brakes because a child suddenly ran out in front of it?
At least with [most] traffic lights the following driver should be able to see them and should know that they may change and that the preceding driver may slam their brakes on [in Toledo, OH] and so prepare for this by easing off the gas slightly and increasing the gap slightly (more if there is a following vehicle that is too close to them) in readiness to brake if necessary.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet;
A chrysanthemum by any other name would be easier to spell
So holding a gun to someones head, taking the fruit of their labor, taking a generous cut for yourself then distributing the remaining proceeds to the "deserving" (More so than the person who actually earned it I suppose) is the "right thing". Strange how the "right thing" has so much in common with a protection racket. "Nice life you have there, be a shame if something were to happen to it"
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
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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