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Tom Tom Sells GPS Info To Dutch Cops
jfruhlinger writes "As smartphones with GPS capabilities wear away at the dedicated GPS market, vendors like Tom Tom need to find new revenue streams. Tom Tom decided it would be a good idea to 'share' (i.e., sell) aggregated data from their users to Dutch law enforcement. The company claims they assumed that the data would be used to improve traffic safety and road engineering, and were shocked, shocked to discover that instead the police used it to figure out the best places to put speed traps."
Did this story come from the Department of Redundancy Department?
Yes. We know. It was addressed last week: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/04/28/1719247/GPS-Maker-TomTom-Submits-Your-Speed-Data-To-Police
Dear diary: Today I stuffed some dolls full of dead rats I put in the blender.
I guess hanging round a gay bathhouse taking photos of guys penises is an inte3resting way to earn a living.
most speed traps are cash cows and not about safety and can make stuff unsafe.Just Try to drive the tri state tollway at 55 to see how unsafe that is.
Tom Tom has changed their policy and data will not be given to the cops anymore.
http://www.openmoko.com/
http://www.openstreetmap.org/
Anything else?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Cars that kill people? You mean Christine?
Am I eval()? - http://www.monst3r.com.br
In cooperation with a company that builds and leases speed traps, and has a full support package for the cities and counties it serves by identifying roads to make a buck off^w^w^w^w^w that could be made safer.
Don't the police already have accident reports? Why do they need more information?
It seems that everyone is collecting GPS information. What next? We'll find out that Windows machines are actually phoning home and Androids are plotting the death of humans?
If the purpose is to improve traffic safety, then TomTom does not need to provide real time data. They can provide one week delayed data. I don't think TomTom folks are that stupid not to know that the real time feed would allow cops to put speed trap. If a lawsuit is filed and internal emails are obtained, it would reveal the truth (but only if is done soon enough before they destroy the emails).
The company claims they assumed that the data would be used to improve traffic safety and road engineering, and were shocked, shocked to discover that instead the police used it to figure out the best places to put speed traps.
Well duh. Those two phrases mean exactly the same thing in the newspeak.
Auction the data on Identity Information Auction: Ebay
Have a day.
Yours In Miami,
K. Trout, C.I.O.
(Google Translate) Dat is een stom idee!
This stale story is days old by now.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
For all those devil's advocates out there that think it's still possible for the police to have ambivalent intentions behind this action...
Keep in mind that to actually do the most good, all they really need to do is look at locations of most accidents in previous years, and regulate driving upstream of that. It's just that of-course the cause of these accidents might be attributable to road conditions and not necessarily excessive speed.
The fact that they're paying money for this data of guaranteed speeders, rather than utilizing what's probably very well-compiled (by themselves!) and freely available information is very much so the investment in "6.???" before "7. Profit!"
The whole damn point is to get people to drive safely and punish people who don't.
So are you naive or just stupid?
Speeding is not dangerous in many circumstances, in fact if others are speeding one driver does not he is actually creating a dangerous situation. Road speed limits are set by politicians not proper engineering.
The name alone should be a clue for you: speed traps. They are designed the way they are, and placed the way they are, because they WANT people to speed.
Are they really that clueless? You would think that if they were that thick, they wouldn't be able to hold on to their market. Every dick and harry (not tom :) would be able to produce devices that rendered theirs obsolete, over priced and under featured.
I am both shocked AND dismayed
In Soviet Slashdot, articles are posts dupes of you!
Be seeing you...
I will vote for "just stupid". Either that or just another sad troll.
I haven't read TFA. But I but I assume the "best" places are where people are speeding? Why is it bad to reduce speeding in those places? If someone sold my data directly to the police and the police automaticlly sent me a ticket every time I was speeding (yes, it happens even if usually not by much) I would be outraged, but this? I don't see the problem.
is at every citizen's house as we all know that accidents happen closest to home. Problem solved!
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Speeding is not dangerous in many circumstances
Speeds are set based on many factors and are done by engineers and people lots more knowledgeable than you. And speeds are changeable. If you don't like the speed on a particular roadway and can justify why it is safe to go that speed, go to court and change the speed on that roadway.
There's a highway exit near me that is posted at 25 mph, but routinely people, including me, take it at 50 without trouble. The reason it is 25 is because it's a blind curve because of a sound wall. The exit was put in prior to the sound wall so it was graded for much faster than is reasonable now. There are reasons for posted speeds being what they are.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Speeds are set by politicians, ever wonder why none of our roads go over 65mph?
My dad worked with those engineers. What the parent posted is true. The majority of the speed limits you see are not what the engineers give for a road. The possible exceptions are neighborhoods.
"All Roads are Open as a Matter of Right to Public Vehicular Travel" -google that one: we don't need licenses, and if you do then it's the regulative authority that moves you into their crooked Municipal courts rather than the people redressing damages in the county Court.
Traffic as defined in the Statutes for every country varry with minute detail, yet they all have one criteria Uniform to their perview of jurisprudence given to trustees (officers): traffic is the sum movement of commerce for any motor vehicle transporting cargo and passengers for "hire, compensation, or profit." They aren't even referencing auto-mobiles because that is plain language, but referencing to re-define two words "motor" and "vehicle" into a regulated TERM of a private contract (license) "motor vehicle" for licentiousness behavior on the road (doing something otherwise unlawful so-regulated: selling on the road from a car rather than traveling).
That is all.
If you think about it, the only obligation anyone has to abide by the ARTIFICIAL (legislated) "speed limits" is that privilege from that private company who's license is being used to move someone else's or their property under their regulative body and authority to improve the commercial viability of that action. Actual speed limits are true environmental road conditions and ability of the helmsman or captain to match the travel to the Rate of agressing one's right of way: damages go through county Court, not a regulative body of punitive persuasion in Municipal jurisdictions that bypass the remedies of law.
The main problem of interpretation is that the trustees foisting public into these private contracts (license) are exploiting the defective language displine of the people at large: when someone asks if you are "driving", then we need to comprehend that Modern language differed from the era and style of law for which arose all the mis-interpretation of disputes. To be asked if you are "driving" something or are a driver, you are in-effect being referenced to identify yourself as engauged to that private contract that gave grant of regulation and for what subject matter: these so-called highwaymen and police/COPS are so-crooked even if they don't know but eventually will know time and time again because they will keep this faulty anti-country interpretation for sake of revenue stream: I am not driving this car, but directing the movement as my Right to Public Vehicular Travel.
The only people that drive a car, are the same that drive cattle: they are moving property in their care of commerce to either sell on the road or elsewhere. If ever another of many definitions, "drive" doesn't even correspond to natural combustion engines but as a word of art to be religiosuly determined in context by the legislature. That's how tricky these definitions become, and so every court will presume obeisance to these private contracts until a Writ of Quo-Warranto is presented to call-forth the assigned non-existant or self-reserved regulative body (might be you, or might be them).
Governors are all Pro-Statute perverts: remember that they do anything for more money, so be warned.
ya how exactly is "the best place to put speed traps" NOT being used to improve traffic safety?
A speed trap is a stretch of road where the speed limit is lower than necessary for safety. This stretch is then used to catch people speeding through that section as a revenue generating tool. In the case in the summary I expect that the police force is finding stretches of road where the limit is already lower than it should be from a safety standpoint and using them as a trap.
N.B. If there is a real safety concern then the accident rate would have identified these areas without using the GPS data.
"As in the rest of the nation, most vehicle fatalities in South Carolina and Georgia are attributed to one or more of those three factors: speeding, drunken driving or not wearing a seat belt."
It should be noted that it is common for statistics of this type to be heavy handed. E.g. if a person dies and someone had been drinking then the death is attributed to "drunk driving" even if the death could not have been averted.
Speed traps can catch: cell phones, texting, not wearing a seat belt and speeding, and drunk driving.
But they won't, except incidentally. The point of a speed trap is to issue citations quickly and easily in a small space. Adding on an extra ticket for not wearing a seatbelt is gravy. However, they aren't on the road watching for erratic driving, they are hidden to the side and pointing a radar gun.
--
JimFive
Please stop using the word theory when you mean hypothesis.
I make $3000 a week and get to see all the willies I can handle. Fan-fucking-tastic job!
Quite a few roads in the US have speed limits over 65MPH. You should try looking harder.
If you're an urbanite, the reason you never see speed limits above 65MPH is probably because it's never safe to go above 65MPH on any road you drive on. No matter how many times you and others decide to put your own and others' lives into your hands.
If you want to pay for your own roads you and your state are more than welcome to set your own speeds. If you want federal highway money, you follow the rules given to you. This was the entire impetus behind the 55mph limit imposed during the 70s. Carrot and stick is a highly effective motivator. I don't know if this is used any longer but is the reason most interstates are the way they are.
There are roads out west where its straight and flat and easily able to go 70 or even 90. Those are the exception. And they have one problem, not everybody is going 90. If there's only 2 lanes or even one, a 30-40 mpg difference in speeds becomes a hazard in its own right.
I suspect the speed traps being talked about are not on highways but on regular roads anyway.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Actually, it depends on which state you're in, and the primary distinction from one state to another state is the different politicians.
E.g. "the Kansas Legislature on Friday agreed to raise the speed limit to 75 mph on more than 1,000 miles of separated, multi-lane highways." Yes, that's last Friday; you heard it here first...
I recently picked up a new client who needed a fair amount of work done to their small network/computers. The location thou is about as far as I advertise my services and had they not needed all the work that they do I would have likely referred them to someone more local. As my profits would not have been worth it with the current gas prices even with my decently efficient vehicle.
So in driving out there so often I have noticed how often the speed limits will change in even just a few miles. Going from 45 to 35 then back up to 45 then to 40 then...you get the idea. It's a freaking nightmare for a number of reasons:
- The police in the area seem pretty well disposed to enforce speed limits and know EXACTLY where the best spots are where say the limit goes from 45 to 35. I've seen them working in teams on an intersection where you turn off a 45mph road onto a road where the limit is 35 [b]for no more than an 1/8 of a mile![/b] (Then of course it goes right back up to 45.)
- Trying to follow this yo/yoing of speed limits only makes it that much harder to drive around as there are plenty of people who just don't care that much. Doing the speed limit in slow lane has netted me dirty looks.
- Can't just set my cruse control and just go even when I'm going to be going straight for a fairly long stretch because for whatever reason because doing 45 clearly is so dangerous at some point in that stretch that I need to be only doing 40 for a few blocks.
As such I've been starting to ponder as I make these drives who the hell is doing this to us? Is it law enforcement or civil engineers who are saying that that 5mph for a few blocks is a good idea? The best answer I've come up with in my head is it's likely a clusterfuck of law enforcement, civil engineers, and politics. Very depressing.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
"they assumed that the data would be used to improve traffic safety and road engineering, and were shocked, shocked to discover that instead the police used it to figure out the best places to put speed traps."
ummmm, speed traps DO improve safety!!! Excessive speed is a major cause of collisions and severity of injury is proportional to speed also.
Did his Tom Tom rat him out or did his iPhone's location tracking identify him?
Speeds are set by politicians reacting to (and anticipating) the needs and complaints of the public. Sure, people will complain about that one stretch of 25 MPH road that used to be 45 MPH, but they'll also complain about the student getting hit walking home from the new school there. To avoid looking like an ignorant jackass, a savvy politician will try to make the road safe before the school opens. He'll listen to the opinions of traffic engineers, who will adapt existing traffic patterns to accommodate the new school. A few warning signs later, the school opens, kids are safe(r), and traffic is minimally disrupted. Everyone wins, except that driver who still insists on going 60 MPH.
The reason none of your roads go over 65MPH (though note that several US states are higher, up to 75MPH in Montana) is because the demand for speed doesn't outweigh the demand for safety. Write your representatives, and tell them that you want your collisions to have more energy!
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
This argument is essentially "it isn't safe for me to drive at 55 when everyone else is moving at 75". It isn't unsafe because of the law or because the specified maximum speed is 55, it is unsafe because everyone else is breaking the law. That argument can be countered with the standard school teacher response of "if everyone else put their head in fire, would you?". If everyone is breaking the law then by all means charge everyone for it. If you think the speed limit set by law is wrong campaign to have it lifter rather than just ignoring it and breaking the law. The speed cameras would not be "cash cows" if people didn't routinely ignore the speed limits.
Speed limits are not only set for safety in some places. Studies have shown that most road systems, once above a certain % of their carrying capacity, are most efficient (both in terms of average journey time for those taking part in the system and in terms of fuel efficiency) when the maximum speed is set to a value most people would find surprisingly low. This is mainly due to the fact it means people keep a more constant speed, with far less accelerating simply because the speed limit is higher then having to slow down again at the next obstruction (lights, slower moving traffic ahead, turning off into a slower road). Without this constant speed variation in individual vehicles less fuel would be used and there would be less "bunching" which can cause havoc with road system efficiency (meaning average journey times, and fuel waste, rise). Of course for optimum efficiency the speed limit would need to be more dynamic than the current fixed limits, rising on straight stretches at times when the roads are clear to traffic can move freely and safely+efficiently at a higher pace - but would require significant infrastructure investment to implement so may be a pretty bad optimisation in short/medium term.
The debate about speed cameras in high speed areas is interesting. If they were just there for the safety aspect then there may be a case for their being less of them, but there is also a case for speed limits being lower for efficiency reasons in many areas and there would be no way to implement that without the cameras to keep an eye on people.
One place where I would like to see *more* cameras (perhaps moving some of those that are currently monitoring high-speed areas?) is in slower zones where the issue is very much safety. I expect that cameras policing the 15 and 20mph zones near schools, parks, and other quiet residential areas would draw in less cash but would make more of an impact in terms of lives saved and injuries lessened. I've often seen people shoot past a local school here at far more than the posted (but not enforced, aside from the very occasional bobby with a radar gun) 20mph limit - when I had my motor bike I would sometimes be in that flow of traffic and be getting bibbed by the idiot behind me because I was moving at 20ish rather than the 30+ he thought more appropriate. The really irritating thing is that some of the people speeding were speeding away after dropping off their kids at the school (I'm sure they'd complain pretty indignantly if one day their snotty little sprog was skittled by a car or bike that was moving faster than the limit). An efficiency issue would be addressed by this too: all to often you see people putting their foot down at one end of a short street only to slam on the breaks at the other end before they turn, which is probably more wasteful than pushing up from 55 to 75 and back down again.
If speeding is as dangerous as claimed why not save themselves some cash and instead of buying the data from Tom Tom simply examing their own records.
They would simply have to look for roads where the most accidents ocurred and set up their speed-traps there.
Any officer or city official in plain clothes who travels to and from any location and takes different routes and clearly identify where hot spots are for speed traps. The reality is that once GPS data is turned over there a database may be compiled following the path of any unidentified subject and begin to pinpoint common begin and end points. Eventually, they will use such data in a court of law as a matter of historical record.
Defendant: "Your honor, I submit was not speeding, here's my GPS proof."
Prosecutor: "Since the defendant is submitting their GPS data, we would like to submit the defendant's historical GPS data on the signal identifier, which shows that the defendant habitually passes through said area in speeds in excess of x mph."
Manufacturer of GPS devices Term of Agreement....by using this item you are agreeing to be tracked by law enforcement...
While this not be the case yet, I am predicting that this is how the data will be used eventually.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
WikiSPEEDia also sells your information, however they give you the money.
For example, in 2010, everyone who submitted information got a check for $20.
WikiSPEEDia, the open speed limit database.
In the spirit of repetition, I'll just leave this link here...http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2111968&cid=35965884
What is wrong with police putting speed traps where people are speeding?
And why is it a problem that they get aggregate speed information from any available source?
sort of by definition, and as I argued, with a source, excessive speed *is* dangerous, regularly. How fast the road can handle is not the same as how fast people should drive, I'm not sure why one (the engineering speed) would imply the latter (the target speed). Lower speed can significantly improve fuel economy and safety in collisions, and remember the article is for europe, where they are far more concerned with car-people collisions than car-car collisions, this is reflected in different lights, different collision standards and just generally different cars. A car moving at a safe engineering speed for a road, even a very slow road (say 40 Km/h) is still going to seriously injure someone they hit, so if you're expecting foot traffic you set speed limits even lower.
Yes, that's a political decision, to incorporate more than just the design of the road, but also it's use, and the likely risk. Oh and depending on where you are, most places I've been no one follows speed limits, so you have to set the speed limit lower than the speed of the road, or else people will drive too fast for the road. Yes, collective disregard for posted speed limits is both strange and very hard to fix.
Yes, when driving you should move with the speed of traffic, speed traps slow traffic because everyone sees a cop and says 'oh shit I don't want a ticket' so they slow down to the 'not worth ticketing speed' (which around here is 15Km/h over the speed limit generally). And hey look, traffic slows down. Which is the point. Maybe in the US it's different but in canada cops don't tend to like stopping people, it's extremely dangerous for them, they would rather people just drove safely. So they do whatever they can to get people to slow down, and pull over the people who are reckless. Including putting 'speed trap' cop cars on the road, with no one in them. To get people to slow down. We had our money grab of speeding tickets, (photoradar), which is long gone for about about 15 years (not that photoradar is necessarily a money grab, but as implemented here, admittedly, before I could drive, it seemed to be).
So I ask you: Are you naive, or just stupid? Because clearly you haven't put much thought into this. Or you're just a reckless driver, and I hope you stay the hell away from roads people actually use.
Highway exits are almost invariably advisory speed limits. All legally enforceable limits are posted in either white (normal signs) or orange (for construction).
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Simple. If the majority of vehicles (or even a significant percentage of vehicles) are driving a given speed, then the road is clearly safe at that speed. Therefore, that's prima facie evidence that whoever set the speed limit lower than that was wrong, either due to negligence (incompetence) or malice (revenue generation).
The burden of proof should be nearly impossibly high when it comes to proving that such limits are reasonable, with the sole exception being school zones, and even then, only during hours when students can reasonably be expected to be entering or leaving school.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
My point has nothing to do with whether it's 'enforceable' or not. An exit ramp is fairly subjective but double the posted 'advisory' would still be significant I would think.
My point was that roads are affected by things outside of the roadway themselves and even though the physical roadway is built and able to hand higher speeds, there can be other factors causing a lower posted speed.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Well, if you already have a bunch of automated radar along a stretch of highway... Why not just use them to set the speed limit to the observed average speed (up/down to some limit, anyway). It would tend to creep upward toward the limit when traffic was flowing freely, and down as it got more crowded.
Somehow more than one Slashbot has read "aggregate data" and concluded that this means both "real-time" and "not at all aggregate". To clarify, the data that TomTom sends is something of this rough form: A list of sections of road. For each stretch of road, they have data on average speed and average traffic. Whether this is a 24 mean, or more fine grained than that they haven't said. Nevertheless, it's not individual records, its averaged over all users. The amount of traffic is an important metric. Cities routinely spend money to collect this. This is typically done by laying two wires across the road, connected to a datalogger that tracks the magnetic signal of a big chunk of metal passing over the two wires. This is fairly expensive and so they can't do it too often. This data is used to decide where to allocate city funds. Busy intersections have priority for upgrade to roundabout or traffic signal, or for building alternate routes. Cities buying access to TomTom aggregate data are then getting data they already routinely collect. The difference being they are getting it much much cheaper, and getting a more accurate picture (so long as enough people in the city own a TomTom). But the TomTom aggregate data has something that these wires cannot collect: Average speeds. Average speed can paint a decent picture of traffic patterns. If at certain times of the day the average speed is quite low, that is indicative of congestion. And that's what TomTom themselves use it for, for routing around congested roads. (While a GPS route might estimate time based on speed limits, TomTom can do so based on predictive models constructed using aggregate data, or even real time data). Again, cities also collect this data, though not as much. In fact, after a relative got hit by a speeding car at a crosswalk, my grandpa took it upon himself to take a notebook and a clicker to count the number of people speeding through the school zone by his house. He diligently reported his counts to the police every month. While I'm sure many people considered him a busybody (especially the police), I don't think it's reasonable to consider him a spy who was robbing anybody of their freedom.
Anyways, TomTom didn't really do anything wrong. Giving this data, properly aggregated, is harmless to the users who contributed to it. And actually, its quite helpful to them, as it saves the city tax payer money by giving them a cheaper and more accurate and complete source of traffic data. The drawback is that the average speed metric gives a nice map of choice speed trap locations. TomTom (apparently) didn't intend or anticipate this use. If they're truly apologetic it's a very quick fix: They can simply truncate the average speed metric. Say, if the average is higher than, I don't know, 1 or 2 KPH under the limit, just use that value as the average. So, if the limit is 40, return 38 regardless of whether the actual average was 38, or 45, or 50. This maintains the full utility of the metric as a measure of congestion, and eliminates the potential for use setting up speed traps. Which is unfortunate. In an ideal world, stretches of roadway that have an average speed 10 KPS over the limit, but which do not have a lot of accidents, are roads where the limit is too low, NOT roads where you should ambush people who are (statistically) driving safely. Sadly, it's more cost-effective to do the latter, as opposed to actually using the data to improve a city's roadways. Reprinting signs costs cash, but giving tickets generates cash!
Oh, and when I say they did nothing wrong, this is obviously assuming a lack of sinister intent or incompetence. Theoretically aggregate data is private. Knowing that X TomTom users per hour drive down road Y doesn't tell you anything that's private. Assuming X is large. For X=1, that tells you quite a lot, especially if that stretch of X=1 can be followed all the way to a residential address. While I have no way to know for sure, my HOPE is that TomTom also knows this fundamenta
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
In the UK there is at least one trial scheme to fit driving style monitors in cars to determine insurance premiums ("to reward safe drivers", of course). Currently this is targeted at young drivers who have no driving history - which isn't a bad idea in practice actually, young drivers have more accidents that older drivers (see: http://wales.gov.uk/topics/statistics/headlines/trans2009/hdw20091208/?lang=en - sadly Welsh Stats. only, would be the same for England, Scotland & N. Ireland I'd suspect).
How long will it be before the insurance companies discover that selling information - such as excessive speed use to the police so that drivers can be fined automatically - in the interests of public safety, of course, in that "Public Morality Code" a-la- Demolition Man way - is profitable?
Consider:
Any excuse to increase premiums is financially rewarding for insurance companies and having endorsement(s) (aka. "points") on your driving license from a speeding offense is long accepted justification for this (no discrimination here, just 'profiling'). Incidentally, the cost of the speeding fine is insignificant compared to the increase in premiums a driver is hit for - and points last 5 years afterwards. Still, as an insurance company any excuse to bring in money that can't be objected to is a good one!
Wallets open while you've got your trousers down people.....
Disregard that, I suck cocks.
The speed limit was set lower to be a fuel saving device in the 70s Spped is not the problem, If everyone on the roads are doing the same speed be it 40 or 100, there is less danger. The danger comes into play when you have people doing 40 in a 65 and cars catching at a high rate of speed, that and people who find it ok to do that in the left lane (passing lane).
The National Maximum Speed Law (NMSL) in the United States was a provision of the 1974 Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act that prohibited speed limits higher than 55 mph (90 km/h). It was drafted in response to oil price spikes and supply disruptions during the 1973 oil crisis. While gasoline consumption was expected to fall by 2.2%, the United States Department of Transportation calculated actual savings at 1%. Independent studies suggest savings as low as a half percent.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
GPS as far as I know works in one direction. How does TomTom collect data? They upload it if you log in on the net for an update?
"... they assumed that the data would be used to improve traffic safety and road engineering"
I don't know about the Netherlands, but for most communities in the US this function is performed by Public Works.
A poor lie at best.
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It would need to be quite dynamic like that, but the current infrastructure isn't up to that sort of immediate feedback at the moment. To be useful the system would need to consider the wider grid rather than each stretch of road individually, and it couldn't be truly dynamic (dimmer people would get very confused and those trying to get out of a ticket would try claim the system was showing something else at the time) so some research would need to go into the optimum setup in terms of keeping the system stable, understandable, and auditable/accountable.
It has to be said that the right amount of revenue induces naivety.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
A friend of mine bitched when they put in a permanent camera near our home. I said "It doesn't bother me because I don't speed." He replied by looking at me grumpily.
Speed traps are cash cows to an extent but they also work. Put cameras in the black spots, let a few people get fined for breaking the law and then the word gets around and then it's no longer a black spot because people are following the rules. Amazing!
No, I'm not to clueless as to suggest that every law enforcement agent and agency are lily white but slowing down DOES reduce the quantity and quality of road accidents. Until all drivers are lily white, I'm fully in support of efforts to reduce incidents on the road.
Why can't we let people believe whatever they like? It's not like a little religion has ever hurt anyone.
In fact, placing speed cameras based off 3rd party reports of speeding, rather than crash rates, indicates the police are specifically targeting safe drivers to give tickets to. After all, if speeding was unsafe, then they'd have been able to see where the speeders were by the number of call-outs to crashes.
Learn to love Alaska
Yeah! Let's lower speed limits by 0.01% every time someone is hit!
(you will end up riding turtles in no time).
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
It should be noted that it is common for statistics of this type to be heavy handed. E.g. if a person dies and someone had been drinking then the death is attributed to "drunk driving" even if the death could not have been averted.
It should be noted that if you are driving home with a passenger who is drunk and the driver is 100% sober, and someone who is also sober runs a red light and hits me, the crash is "drinking related." And if the responding officer suspects alcohol, even if the driver blows 0.0 on a breathalyzer, it can be marked down as drinking-related. Also note that there is no finding that will ever remove "drinking related" from a crash statistic. This means that someone who commits suicide (suicide isn't a category, so no crashes are ever attributed to that) by drinking to get up some courage then hitting a wall at high speed, leaving behind a note and leaving the belt off for obvious reasons will have the crash go down as a speed-related, drinking-related fatality involving an adult not wearing their seatbelt. There is no other way to record that crash.
When you look only at crashes that are multi-vehicle where the other driver was drunk, the statistics aren't nearly as bad. They are purposefully inflating speeding and drinking in order to generate excuses to increase enforcement, even if the increased enforcement is counter-productive (and by that, I mean that if they had spent the same resources elsewhere, they'd have saved more lives than focusing only on speeding/drinking).
Learn to love Alaska
yeah. they should put them in the worst places.
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
The advisory speeds around here (northern California) range from about 25 MPH too slow up through 10 MPH faster than I can maintain control over my vehicle. I've pretty much concluded that dartboards and either beer or pot must have been involved. Maybe yours are better?
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I do not get it why people bring so clearly untrue stories in the world to harm companies. Tom Tom never planned to sell their information to the Dutch police. Now they know that the Dutch police is using it they are making sure that the Dutch police will not be able to anymore. They however never sold it to the Dutch police in the first place but the Police got it from second hand. I do not know what reason the original writer has to post this information while it is old and already known not to be true. Personal interest? Funny how so many people also react outraged without checking information.
I don't understand what the fuss is all about. Police forces used this aggregate data to find spots where many drivers are speeding, in order to efficiently decide where to put speeding camera's. That sounds like an excellent way to improve the efficiency of how my tax euros are spent.
Now this may be a radical idea, but maybe people should try to (*gasp*) obey the speed limit!
He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
Exactly. Close to where I used to live, there are two roads that are both marked 50 km/h (about 30 mph). One is a curving road with one lane in each direction, lots of shops, parking spaces and pedestrian crossings. The other is perfectly straight, two lanes in each direction seperated by trees, pedestrian and bycicle path seperated from the main road by several meters and with trees in between, through the fields with no houses or shops nearby. Guess which one has a speed trap every few weeks? Guess which one NEVER gets a speed trap? Road safety my ass.
Speed kills. Your speeding kills innocent people, get it? You and your driving are not special exemptions from the laws of physics. You act as though speed limits are some trick on the part of Big Government to render you some injustice. Grow up.