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."

Comments

I sold info to people about CmdrTaco's penis size

[Anonymous Coward]

I sold the info about CmdrTaco's microscopic penis size including extensive photographs from the gay bathhouse he frequents to marketers who sell penis enlargement pills.

Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did this story come from the Department of Redundancy Department?

Re:Again?

[v1]

it should have. I posted in a recent related thread forecasting this exact same thing would happen. Really, is anyone surprised by this? Lately the law seems to be a lot more interested in finding ways to boost their revenue than to protect the public.

Re:Again?

[Provocateur]

Well, it did say that Tom Tom was shocked, shocked.

Re:Again?

[c0lo]

Did this story come from the Department of Redundundancy Department?

FTFY

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[cpu6502]

>>>finding ways to boost their revenue than to protect the public.

I'm one of those who thinks the LAW needs to be changed, not the enforcement. i.e. Go ahead and put cameras on redlights and all along highways. Catch lots of people speeding. And then change the law to be more reasonable, such as 85 on the interstate (which is actually designed to handle 120 per the original Congressional act). Setting speeds artificially low at 65 or 55, when everyone is driving 80, and the road engineers recommend 80, makes no sense.

Re:Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did this story come from the Department of Redundundancy Department?

FTFY

Department of Redundancy Sector.

FTFY.

Re:Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

It makes sense when you talk about fuel economy and when the interstates were built.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Setting speeds artificially low at 65 or 55, when everyone is driving 80, and the road engineers recommend 80, makes no sense.

CITATION NEEDED!!!

Speed is set at 55mph or 65mph because of safety issues for the users, not just road capabilities. You can make roads that will work wonderfully fine at 400mph, but that is plainly unsafe for the drivers at such speeds.

Go ahead and put cameras on redlights and all along highways. Catch lots of people speeding.

Agreed!!!

Re:Again?

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Except, of course, it is in the best financial interest of both the "lawmakers" and the "law enforcement" (not to mention all the private ex-cop/ex-military contractors involved) to lower the speed limit further. More revenue that way and the "voter" has no real recourse anyhow (corporate stooge A vs corporate stooge B). The usual arguments about how "speed kills" and "fuel economy" can be successfully utilized all the way down to speed somewhere around 0mph.

So, let the good times (for a select few at the expense of many) roll!

Any more brilliant ideas?

Re:Again?

[__aamnbm3774]

I initially modded you up, but I have to comment and strip my points.

I can't find the exact statistic now, but I remember reading how the percent of fatal accidents skyrockets as speed increases...this tidbit supports my statement above:

Speeding increases the crash energy by the square of the speeds. For example, when impact speed increases from 40 to 60 mph (a 50 percent increase), the energy that needs to be managed increases by 125 percent! IIHS

Plus, if you set the speed limit to 85, how fast do you think people would be driving then?

In Atlanta people already drive like idiots. I've never seen so many people speeding through apartment/mall parking lots! It's insane. At any moment a kid could run out from a car and just get crushed! In Pittsburgh, where I spent most of my early adulthood, the speed limits were a lot lower, and I certainly felt safer (walking, driving, biking...doing anything near a road)

Re:Again?

[dgatwood]

It does no good to lower the death rate as a percentage of accidents by lowering the speed limit if that in turn results in an increase in the rate of accidents. The probability of a risk is dependent largely on the difference in speed between the slowest and fastest vehicles, so by setting the limit too low, you're not necessarily helping.

Want to lower the death rates? Raise the standards for automobile crash safety. Any other method of achieving such gains is almost invariably illusory. When cars are unnecessarily out on the road because of congestion caused by too-low speed limits, you're adding pollution that statistically kills people, too. It's just a lot harder to measure that causation.

Besides, the safety issues for the users have been dramatically improved since the 1970s, to such an extent that if 65 MPH roads were safe in the 1970s, a 100 MPH road is safe by that safe standard today. Yet speed limits have not increased. Thus, the position that speed limits are set based on safety simply cannot be justified in light of the evidence at hand.

The only good justification for a low speed limit is a large amount of pedestrian traffic, and only because they don't have cars to protect them in a collision. For highways, for maximum safety, the speed limit should be set at a speed that is safe for the road, and should be on electronic signs so they can lower it if road conditions are bad. And it should be set high enough that anyone exceeding it is clearly nuts.

Re:Again?

[eth1]

And then change the law to be more reasonable, such as 85 on the interstate (which is actually designed to handle 120 per the original Congressional act). Setting speeds artificially low at 65 or 55, when everyone is driving 80, and the road engineers recommend 80, makes no sense.

The problem with raising the speed limit higher than 70 or so is that a lot of cars can't handle that speed. Maybe when they were new, but I see a lot of mobile trash heaps (or just obviously unmaintained cars) that I wouldn't want to be anywhere in the vicinity of travelling that fast. Things are probably a bit better now with new cars required to have tire pressure monitors, but even then, I know a lot of people that totally ignore the warning light. So, doing the responsible thing (slowing down) would just bring us right back to where the people with well-maintained cars are doing the 85mph limit, while others are doing 65-70.

You'd need reserved lanes with a higher limit that require more frequent inspections that certify a car safe at those speeds.

Re:Again?

[Everyone Is Seth]

Yay, math!

In other news, did you know that, as impact speed increases from 5 mph to 25 mph, the energy that needs to be managed increases by 2400 percent!? That is just stunning! I think that we must start considering the children here, and lower all speed limits to 5 mph immediately. And ban driving in parking lots. With all of the obstructed views, it is just too dangerous, and I am not going to be held responsible for teaching my children about running into streets blindly.

Re:Again?

[blackraven14250]

I wouldn't be driving much over 85, if at all, if the limit were that high to be honest. I feel comfortable doing 80-85 on the NJ Turnpike (I95) as-is; setting the speed limit at 85 isn't going to change that.

Re:Again?

[geekmux]

I'm one of those who thinks the LAW needs to be changed, not the enforcement. i.e. Go ahead and put cameras on redlights and all along highways. Catch lots of people speeding. And then change the law to be more reasonable, such as 85 on the interstate (which is actually designed to handle 120 per the original Congressional act). Setting speeds artificially low at 65 or 55, when everyone is driving 80, and the road engineers recommend 80, makes no sense.

Uh, just curious, did the "original Congressional act" take into account the fact that there are still accident-prone humans behind the wheel of that 120MPH "design"?

And I'm also curious, are the road engineers also taking into account the massive aggregate increase in (foreign) oil consumption when everyone starts driving faster and faster while even hybrid fuel economy drops into the shitter?

We can't even keep the driving while texting problem under control with the speeds they're at now, I can't imagine how deadly highway driving would be at anywhere near 90+ with reaction times measured in fractions of a second. Sorry, there would have to be a hell of a lot less human interaction and way more automation to drive safely at those speeds.

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[(H)elix1]

Or make sure slower traffic stays to the right. Works in Germany.

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[__aamnbm3774]

I think there are extremes on both sides. 5mph being on the 'too slow' side, while 85+ probably being 'too fast'.
but you know, this is slashdot, so slam away instead of contributing.

Re:Again?

[cpu6502]

>>>Plus, if you set the speed limit to 85, how fast do you think people would be driving then?

80-to-90 is what they drive in states with 85mph speed limits.

Re:Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you didn't notice when the exact arguments you used for setting the limit at what you judge to be "not too fast" apply equally well toward setting the limit at what you judge to be "too slow". Which was obviously the point of that reply.

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[Dishevel]

You would also want to set a minimum speed for good conditions on a highway.
Grandmas driving 52 in the fast lane cause a lot of crap.

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[Dishevel]

I am not going to be held responsible for teaching my children about running into streets blindly.

Do not worry.
Life will teach your children about that. :)

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[Anonymous Coward]

Highway driving rarely involves avoidance of stationary objects. For the most part, you have to avoid other cars travelling at approximately the same speed.

You don't need automatic controls to make higher speeds equally safe. You need smoother road surfaces, larger-radius curves, more open space to the sides of the highway (so animals running onto the highway can be seen from farther off), better shoulders, better ditches, more separation between cars travelling in opposite directions, and tighter control of how cars enter and exit the highway (i.e. matching speed with traffic rather than just pulling out into it). In the extreme, you can widen lanes, fence off highways completely from animals and pedestrians, mandate more careful inspections of vehicles for them to be allowed on the roads, have dynamic speed limits reflecting weather and traffic conditions, and even fully enclose the road.

There's a lot you can invest in making the same human drivers safer at higher speeds, and the interstates have made some very large investments indeed along those lines, which are ignored by the speed limit setters (who often set similar or equal limits on much poorer and more hazardous roads).

Re:Again?

[sudnshok]

There have been many unbiased studies done which have concluded that having a large differential in speeds between vehicles is far more dangerous and responsible for far more accidents than the actual speed itself. Also, studies have found that increasing the speed limit does not cause drivers to exceed the new limit and in fact sometimes actually reduced the average speed of drivers.

Unfortunately, legislators set rules and regulation based upon unfounded hysteria, gut feelings and revenue purposes instead of facts and figures.

If you are interested, there are many resources at motorists.org.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Can you repeat that please?

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[guruevi]

Given that cars usually don't go much faster than 90-120 and suck at mileage and maintenance at those levels I don't think it will be a huge problem unless you give everyone exotic sports cars. 80 is a good speed and you'll get much better mileage on cruise control than continuously accelerating and braking for slow people that drive 50 while everyone else drives 65. My car doesn't even go into it's 5th gear at 55mph unless I maintain the speed for a while so I'm usually stuck in 4th. You'll also get less traffic problems - a lot of highways reduce 1 lane if there are a lot of bridges or exits and especially around cities this usually also involves a 10mph reduction in allowed speed resulting in daily traffic jams.

Re:Again?

[easyTree]

It seems to me, looking at the world through my cynical-coloured spectacles, that the motivation for speed cameras is revenue-generation and that the safety aspect is the means used to allow us to persuade ourselves to accept them.

Speed cameras cause motorists to move their attention away from safe driving, paying attention to children crossing the road, cars exiting intersections etc. in favour of looking for hidden speed-cameras so that they are able to avoid penalties. No doubt this is clear to those who profit from their installation and operation.

What we should be concerning ourselves with is how to remove the multi-layer corruption that allows them to be placed there.

Re:Again?

[sjames]

Evidence suggests that no matter what the posted speed, people will drive exactly as fast as they feel safe driving. Unfortunately, they may feel safer than they actually are and that's where the trouble starts. Measures that make a road feel less safe inevitably cause people to slow down. The only thing the posted limit changes is the size and number of tickets.

Re:Again?

[dogmatixpsych]

Having driven through states or at least areas of states with the speed limit at 80 (or higher) I can attest that most people on the roads do not drive that fast. They maybe go 75. If we increased our speed limits up to 80 or 85, I really don't think people would go much faster, at least not for a number of years. Yes, some would still go faster but 85 in a car is quite fast and not a lot of people are really comfortable at that speed.

Re:Again?

[operagost]

Most states have annual safety inspections. Some, like NJ, waive the inspections for the first year or so of new vehicles. Some don't have annual inspections, so yes, I would be concerned about those. Ironically, the states without inspections (like NM) have some of the highest speed limits.

Re:Again?

[kimvette]

And then change the law to be more reasonable, such as 85 on the interstate (which is actually designed to handle 120 per the original Congressional act).

. . . and those laws were based on what 1960s' suspension and brake technology can handle. Now the limit on those designs should be much higher, given that practically every car in showrooms today will pull .7g lateral acceleration (most will do .8 or better, and many will do better than .9), have disc brakes all around (so little to no fade), will tend to spin out rather than roll when drivers domake mistakes, the tires produced today can actually handle sustained high speeds, and seat belts and even air bags are now standard equipment.

Why we continue to put up with the designed-by-revenue-opportunity speed limits and the drive-around-the-block-K-Mart driving test today is quite beyond me.

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[raddan]

Evidence suggests that no matter what the posted speed, people will drive exactly as fast as they feel safe driving.

That's interesting, and anecdotally, seems to make sense. But I suspect speeding tickets have more than "no effect", since I personally changed my driving habits after receiving one (and after having to pay the premium for such behavior on my insurance for years). Care to share links to studies?

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[AK Marc]

Speed is set at 55mph or 65mph because of safety issues for the users, not just road capabilities.

When 55 was lifted, there was a prediction of mass death. The fatality rate decreased. The same when 65 was lifted. There are no "safety issues" involved with raising limits from 55 to 80, and in fact, from the results after the US did it, it's safer to mark a road at 80 than 55.

Re:Again?

[AK Marc]

That's unrelated to minimum speeds. "Left lane for passing only" and enforcing that is all that's needed. If someone cruises in the left lane, hit them with a $500 fine and 6 points on their license (something akin to the maximum speeding fine and points value).

Re:Again?

[AK Marc]

Having gone 85+ legally on the open road, I'd have to say that there is no "too fast" that is right for everyone, and with proper lane discipline (a la autobahn), mixes of speed can be reasonably safe.

And, in my experience, there's nothing that could ever be said to someone who thinks 85+ is always too fast that would be met with logical and reasoned response. Perhaps he has my experiences as well and just decided to skip a little ahead to the inevitable conclusion. I'm form Texas. I've crested a hill in West Texas and seen 10+ miles without a single car in front or behind me in either direction. And that road was marked at 55 at the time. It was safe for as fast as the car was safe for (about 70 MPH in my VW bug I had long ago for a first car, 140 MPH+ in any of the more recent cars with a modern suspension and aerodynamics). But yes, I'm sure you can argue about I-5 in California in rush hour for why interstates should be marked no more than 55. But the reality is that much of the highway system is open road, and if your suggestion doesn't work in Montana or West Texas, then your suggestion is wrong.

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[sjames]

There are far too many references to list them all, but start with the Arizona DOT, then try here. From there, google driving speed limit safe.

The BC Ministry of Transportation has a good report in pdf form here.

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[guyminuslife]

In Montana, the only real speed limit I noticed was how fast you can go around a mountain bend without flying off into oblivion.

Same goes for parts of Arkansas. Locals must think Highway 7 is just peachy. We call it the highway of screaming death. You look at the speed limit and laugh. You'd have to be insane to actually go that fast along those turns.

I found one highway in Oklahoma where the speed limit was 75, though, and it was just a straight needle off into infine nothing (this *was* Oklahoma). I'd never seen a 75-mph speed limit sign before, I took it to mean, "We don't friggin care."

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[ShakaUVM]

>>Besides, the safety issues for the users have been dramatically improved since the 1970s, to such an extent that if 65 MPH roads were safe in the 1970s, a 100 MPH road is safe by that safe standard today. Yet speed limits have not increased. Thus, the position that speed limits are set based on safety simply cannot be justified in light of the evidence at hand.

Are you talking about a divided roadway or a rural two lane road, where the passing lane for people going one way is incoming traffic for people going the other?

In the first case, we could probably eliminate speed limits or set them to a rather high speed limit. In the latter, speed limits make a lot of sense. The research backs this up: raising speed limits on divided interstates makes no (or a trivial) difference in fatalities, but raising speed limits on rural roads is actually dangerous.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Better yet, set a minimum fucking speed limit and make sure they stay to the far right, as in exit right.

Fuckers driving 50 on the freeway should get their rusty overloaded shit off the road. Where I am you can do 50 on most of the frontage/service/access/whatever you want to call it. Doesn't stop the overloaded cement mixers and dump trucks from doing 45 on the freeway.

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[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be interested to know what portion of those fatal accidents are due to speed and what portion due to overly aggressive drivers speeding. A speeding driver swerving in and out of traffic is a much higher risk regardless of whether he is faster or slower. It won't help with car to fixed object impacts, but for car to car impacts, it might actually be safer with higher speed limits since the relative speed would actually be lower. Since you mention Atlanta, I'll give you an example of what I mean. I suspect that things would be safer if the stretches of I-75 and I-85 that are 55-60 mph were set at 65-70 mph. It doesn't keep people from going 80 mph anyway, but does cause the distribution of speeds to be wider (25 mph rather than probably 15 mph). It also causes inconsistent lane speeds - everywhere else I've been the left lane is 7-15 mph over the speed limit and the right is about the speed limit with a nice progression of 3-5 mph per lane as you go left (5-10 if only 2 lanes), but since everyone is going at 10 mph or more over, determining the appropriate lane speed is more difficult. This progression in speeds is useful because it allows gaps to present themselves to drivers in adjacent lanes rather than having them try to force their way in when their is not space. It also means that everyone slams on the breaks when they see a cop, causing needless disruption of traffic flow.

Re:Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm afraid you're the one who needs to provide the citation, since you're the one making the extraordinary claim. Overall, the only correlation between highway speed and safety is a positive one. Look at the statistics, then post.

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[JWSmythe]

    The US interstate highway system was passed in 1956 as the "Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956", also known as "National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956".

    It does not reference 120mph speeds. It does reference the defense of the United States, being able to move the military from Point A to Point B rapidly. That is what it was built for. Allowing civilians to travel at higher speeds without limitations such as stop lights is just an added benefit.

    I seriously doubt anyone considered a 120 mph design spec. In 1956, the fastest production car in America was the 1956 Buick Century Riviera Hardtop. It's "cruise" speed was 70mph, with a top speed around 105mph. At cruise, it would get about 10mpg. For the most part, I wouldn't want to see that car doing 100mph anywhere. I'm not considering customized hot rods for this conversation. The military wasn't moving anyone around in them.

    The roads have improved, as has automotive technology. Drivers are still the weak point. That isn't that I don't agree that we *should* have highways that allow such higher speeds. I do, but there should be serious restrictions on the vehicles and drivers on such highways. The Autobahn is a wonderful example of it. They also have severe restrictions, down to driver behavior. Slower cars MUST give way to faster cars. There is absolutely no passing on the right side. Drivers must be trained in first aid, and are obliged to stop and help in the event of an accident. Tires on the vehicle must be rated for the top speed of the car, or the vehicle marked with the rated tire speed.

      Myself, I wouldn't mind 120mph speed limits for my own driving. I know both my primary car and I can handle it. My secondary vehicle may be good up to 100, but I doubt it'll ever go that fast. I've seen too many people driving that can't handle 65mph safely. Even with a 65mph speed limit, I've seen too many people behaving poorly. Maybe if they increased the speed limits to 120, natural selection could take its course. People need to realize, speed limits aren't how fast you're suppose to drive, it's how fast you're allowed to drive. There are circumstances when it's not safe to drive fast (i.e., heavy fog, rain, or through traffic where others are doing 20mph).

Re:Again?

[dgatwood]

I'm talking about divided roads. I've never seen 65 on a two-lane. The reason that raising speed limits on many smaller roads can be unsafe is that they are sometimes set correctly based on turn radius, based on the number of road entrances, based on pedestrian counts, etc., whereas highway speed limits are almost invariably set by bureaucrats.

That said, I can think of plenty of roads where the speed limits are ridiculously low.

Re:Again?

[JWSmythe]

    Over the years, I've had conversations with people exactly on this. I've seen a few common conclusions on how it could work.

    We'll start with this. I've spent a good amount of time racing (legal, of course). I've had plenty of hours behind the wheel at over 100mph.

    My primary car is speed limited at the factory to 165mph. I only use tires rated at 168 mph (W) or 186 mph (Y). I purchase those for the traction quality (too much power for lower traction tires).

    My secondary vehicle probably has a top speed around 120. It has truck tires rated at 118 mph (T). It's intended purpose is to move things (i.e., it's a truck), not to drive fast.

    1) License plates would be color coded for the max speed permitted.

    2) The maximum safe operating speed would be determined by the vehicle.

    3) Higher speed vehicles would require semiannual full safety inspections. Worn brakes, tires, or other equipment can lower it to a lower class, or forbid it from operation. And no, we can't trust drivers to do that now.

    4) Drivers would be required to prove proficiency to drive higher speed vehicles.

    5) All drivers would be retested to show proficiency biennially.

    6) A driver licensed for higher speeds may operate a vehicle under their rated class, but no driver may operate a vehicle above their rated class.

    7) Enforcement of safety laws (give way to faster traffic, stop for emergency vehicles passing, etc) should be increased. I've *never* known anyone to get a ticket for passing on the right, or failing to yield to faster vehicles, although both laws are on the books in every state I've checked.

    8) Enforcement of speed limits would be focused on drivers attempting to drive beyond their rating.

    9) Speed limits would be ranged by performance. To a degree I've seen this is some states. They'll have a speed limit for trucks, buses, and any vehicle with trailers, versus any other vehicles. So cars may do 80mph, while trucks can do 65mph.

    I probably missed a few points, but those were the big ones discussed. It'll never happen though. At least not here in America, where traffic fines make up a huge part of most cities budgets.

Re:Again?

[ShakaUVM]

I'm talking about divided roads. I've never seen 65 on a two-lane. The reason that raising speed limits on many smaller roads can be unsafe is that they are sometimes set correctly based on turn radius, based on the number of road entrances, based on pedestrian counts, etc., whereas highway speed limits are almost invariably set by bureaucrats.

That said, I can think of plenty of roads where the speed limits are ridiculously low.

Can't say I disagree with you. =)

We set road speeds here in California based on speed surveys taken every 5/7/10 years (depending on if any new construction has happened), with the safe speed set to the 85th or 90th percentile. (Assuming about 10% of people drive too fast.) Except, of course, interstates.

Some places are still set at 55MPH (like the loop interstate around Indianapolis), which drives me crazy.

Re:Again?

[JWSmythe]

    Nope, not 1960's. It was passed into law in 1956. The fastest American production car would do a whopping 105 (theoretical max speed). And, I couldn't find where it said 120. I'm pretty sure he either pulled that out of thin air, or heard it from someone who heard it from someone who said it on Fox News. :)

Re:Again?

[jmcvetta]

II've never seen so many people speeding through apartment/mall parking lots!

Imho this is caused by bad traffic flow design. People speed in parking lots when there is no easy access to an unobstructed right of way.

In Pittsburgh, where I spent most of my early adulthood, the speed limits were a lot lower, and I certainly felt safer (walking, driving, biking...doing anything near a road)

I like Pittsburgh a lot. But sorry, the drivers there are bat-shit crazy. Maybe it's the the complex 3D street "grid" that causes it, or maybe the air pollution.. but man, if Atlanta is worse than Pittsburgh, then I do not want to drive in Atlanta.

Re:Again?

[rtb61]

The sense comes in when you are dealing with a whole range of every day people with varying degrees of driving skills and paying varying degrees of attention and varying times. The sense your trying to make is how to reduce the inevitable carnage from the varying road interactions, when they are over 40,000 per year, you really have to do something about it.

So sorry, all you expert drivers who always pay attention to the road but speed limits are there to protect you in spite of yourself from other people who pay less attention (also tries to protect them from their own stupidity). Having spent a year off on a driving incident recovery and recuperation I can appreciate no matter how careful and attentive you are, you can not also drive the other persons vehicle to stop them from doing something reckless and involving you in their mistake.

Two vehicles doing 130km/h in a head on, don't cut the people out of those cars, hose them out. So settings speeds taking into account 'all' road users, plus stray animals, plus random vehicle failures, seems pretty sensible and when more than 40,000 a year die in the US not even looking at permanent injuries like, spinal and neck trauma, dismemberment, brain injuries, well, suck it up goof ball speeders, the speed limit is still to high.

Best place to put speed traps is where too many people are breaking the law and need to be reminded. I also don't see any harm in traffic fines being a percentage of your income and throwing in a compulsory this is what happens retch video.

Re:Again?

[vivian]

I'm much more worried about grandma driving at 90 in the fast lane... My 80 year old grandma used to drive a Cordia turbo and drove it like she thought it was a Ferrari and that she was the Stig's mum.
Luckily they eventually decided she probably shouldn't be driving any more.

Re:Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Denmark, the speed limits on highways was increased from 110 km/h to 130km/h, and on highways were this was not safe, there was made a local speed limit of 110 km/h. This lowered the speed on the highways with 110 km/h speed limit, even though nothing was changed there. One could hypothesise that people are more prone to following laws they see as sane.

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[tehcyder]

If you are interested, there are many resources at motorists.org.

None of which will be biased in favour of motorists, of course.

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[silentcoder]

Dear TomTom
You sold a monkey the keys to the banana plantation and you're surprised at the results ?
Sincerely duh.

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[tehcyder]

So basically, you're a fucking fast and extremely skilled driver, and therefore all laws should be designed around you?

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[michelcolman]

Germany has many highways that have no speed limit whatsoever. Germany does not have more highway deaths than neighbouring countries. In a few other European countries, experiments increasing the speed limit from 120 to 150 km/h (about 100 mph) have shown a decrease in the number of accidents. Unfortunately the wrong politicians then came to power and decided to keep the old limits anyway.

By the way, in Germany, people do tend to respect the posted speed limits a lot more because they are more realistic. If a German speed limit is low, there's normally a good reason. You won't find many Germans speeding past a school, for example. The opposite is true for countries that have ridiculously low speed limits everywhere. When people lose their respect for limits, they stop respecting them.

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[sjames]

That does seem reasonable.

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[tehcyder]

Just fuck off. If everyone drove around at 200 mph you'd have a lot more fatal accidents, because most people don't have the skill and reflexes of racing drivers.

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[teh kurisu]

Isn't that because roads with higher speed limits tend to be dual carriageways (divided highways) with a central reservation, whereas roads with a lower speed limit tend to be single carriageways (undivided highways? No idea what Americans call these)?

Assuming no speeding, the worst combined speed you're going to have in an accident on a 70 mph dual carriageway is 70 mph. On a 60 mph single carriageway, the combined speed in an accident could be up to 120 mph.

Re:Again?

[tehcyder]

You couldn't enforce a stricter driving test in a country where most people apparently depend on their car to do basic things like go shopping and get to work.

Re:Again?

[tehcyder]

Maybe if they increased the speed limits to 120, natural selection could take its course.

It's not people killing themselves by driving like twats that I mind, it's when they cause accidents that kill other people. It's not natural selection to wipe out perfectly innocent bystanders

Re:Again?

[tehcyder]

it should have. I posted in a recent related thread forecasting this exact same thing would happen. Really, is anyone surprised by this? Lately the law seems to be a lot more interested in finding ways to boost their revenue than to protect the public.

In the UK councils are having to close down speed/safety cameras because they can't afford to run them. They don't make money off them, they are actually a cost.

Re:Again?

[teh kurisu]

There was a case a while back where a police officer was prosecuted, and subsequently cleared, of driving at 159 mph on a deserted motorway. If I remember correctly, his claim was that his high-speed pursuit training meant that what he was doing wasn't dangerous.

My question at the time was, why isn't this training available to the ordinary motorist?

Re:Again?

[AVee]

On properly build dual carriageways you should also have a better change of actually avoiding a collision because of the presence of more than one lane, an emergency lane and the lack of nasty stuff like ditches and trees beside the road. Compared to rural roads this makes a huge difference. In low traffic on a properly designed highway driving at 100mph isn't a problem. I've actually averaged 105mph on a two hour drive on an unresctricted highway in Germany. There is another advantage to totally removing the speed limit, you make the driver responsible for choosing a sensible speed depending in the circumstances, when the speed limit is 80 people tend to always drive 80 just because that's the limit. When there is no fixed limit people might actually slow down to a sensible speed in bad weather or on crowded roads.

Re:Again?

[AVee]

Given that cars usually don't go much faster than 90-120 and suck at mileage and maintenance at those levels I don't think it will be a huge problem unless you give everyone exotic sports cars.

Yep, that's a problem when you've got a lot of U.S. build cars. My 5 year old and utterly average and fairly cheap european car doesn't have a dramatic millage at 100mph...

Re:Again?

[vegiVamp]

> Plus, if you set the speed limit to 85, how fast do you think people would be driving then?

Following this brilliant bit of deduction, let's set the speed limit to c. We'll finally have FTL travel.

Re:Again?

[AmiMoJo]

It is hard to have a rational debate about speed limits because as they go down so does the number of deaths and serious injuries. There is an unwritten level of "acceptable losses" that society decides is a reasonable cost/benefit ratio. By dropping from 30MPH to 20MPH (as they did in my city) you save an average of X lives per year but it takes longer to get around. It is difficult to argue that X lives is an acceptable price to pay for getting to your destination 33% faster.

Re:Again?

[AmiMoJo]

Your argument fails to take into account the road user. There are plenty of drivers with below average reaction times who can drive safely at 60 MPH but not at 80 MPH. It doesn't matter how safe their car is, they just can't react fast enough to avoid an accident.

You also have to account for the fact that everyone drives too close to the car in front. In France they have chevrons on the roads to show you how far from the car in front you need to be, and it is about 4x as far as I have ever seen anyone in the UK drive on a motorway. Therefore you have to set the limit low enough to prevent serious injury if the car in front slams on the anchors.

Re:Again?

[mrchaotica]

Setting speeds artificially low at 65 or 55, when everyone is driving 80, and the road engineers recommend 80, makes no sense.

CITATION NEEDED!!!

Speed is set at 55mph or 65mph because of safety issues for the users, not just road capabilities. You can make roads that will work wonderfully fine at 400mph, but that is plainly unsafe for the drivers at such speeds.

I am a highway engineer (or at least, an EIT).

Your statement doesn't make sense because "road capabilities" and "safety issues for the users" are the same thing. Engineers take all factors, including sight distance etc., into account when designing the roads; if we designed them for 400mph then they would be safe to drive 400mph on, by definition!

By the way, the grandparent post's "everyone is driving 80" argument has some merit -- studies have shown that the design speed tends to correspond to the 85th percentile driver's speed, regardless of the speed limit. In other words, setting the speed limit artificially low doesn't actually make anybody slow down (unless, perhaps, its a well-known and constantly-enforced speed trap).

Re:Again?

[mrchaotica]

In Atlanta people already drive like idiots.

Maybe that's because people in Atlanta are conditioned to ignore the speed limits.

Re:Again?

[mrchaotica]

Imho this is caused by bad traffic flow design. People speed in parking lots when there is no easy access to an unobstructed right of way.

Ironically, attempting to deter speeding is why site designers obstruct the right of way in the first place.

Maybe it's the the complex 3D street "grid" that causes it, or maybe the air pollution.. but man, if Atlanta is worse than Pittsburgh, then I do not want to drive in Atlanta.

3D or not, at least you have a grid. Except for downtown and some older residential neighborhoods, Atlanta doesn't.

Re:Again?

[__aamnbm3774]

thanks!

Re:Again?

[mrchaotica]

The sense your trying to make is how to reduce the inevitable carnage from the varying road interactions, when they are over 40,000 per year, you really have to do something about it.

No you don't, because you also have to consider that Americans collectively drive about 3,000,000,000,000 (that's three trillion) miles per year (source). On average, that's one crash per 75 million miles driven -- a tiny ratio.

Two vehicles doing 130km/h in a head on, don't cut the people out of those cars, hose them out.

Fine, but what about divided highways (including all Interstates), where head-on collisions are rare to the point of negligibility?

Re:Again?

[JWSmythe]

    There are plenty of better drivers than me. There are plenty of better cars than mine.

  The laws should be scaled. As they are now, they're written for the lowest common user, but then adjusted up a little bit. Who knows, if such a plan were put into place, I may not ever get the highest classes of licensing. At very least, it would prevent those who themselves or their vehicles, shouldn't be on the road, or driven too fast.

Re:Again?

[JWSmythe]

    No one ever said natural selection was fair to everyone.

    It's not fair if an idiot leads a bear back to camp who eats everyone in their sleep. Natural selection made us taste like meat. :)

Re:Again?

[JWSmythe]

Well, it is, and isn't.

    There are events at closed tracks, including private raceways and superspeedways, where drivers can learn to handle their vehicles in high speed, and extremely accurate maneuvering. In the ones I've attended, you are *required* to race in the lowest class the first session (the first weekend of racing). That class usually includes an instructor who rides with you, and teaches you how to manage your vehicle. Once you show proficiency, you can move up in the classes, but it takes several sessions to end up in the higher classes. That's interesting is that even with multiple cars on the tracks, everyone follows the rules and they rarely have accidents. The worst "accident" I've seen are rubbing a wall or spinning off to the infield. If you pay attention when driving on a highway, you'll see evidence of the same things happening in real life. K-rails have tire marks half way up them. Grassy medians have tire tracks where someone spun. And people like to blame blow-outs for such events, but since I've had a few high speed mechanical failures (complete tread separation, or loss of tire pressure), I know they're perfectly manageable events.

    Here's a few groups that have events open to the public, that don't generally require specialized race cars. There are others, that's just a sampling.

http://www.myautoevents.com/
http://www.hookedondriving.com/
http://www.drivenasafl.com/
http://www.drivepetty.com/

    Learning how to handle your car better in various conditions is a very good thing. most drivers were never taught how to corner, brake efficiently, and have never been on a skid pad.

good

[Anonymous Coward]

cars kill 1 million people per year worldwide. catching more dangerous drivers would make the world a better place.

Re:good

[MikeDirnt69]

Cars that kill people? You mean Christine?

Re:good

[Sir_Sri]

ya how exactly is "the best place to put speed traps" NOT being used to improve traffic safety? The whole damn point is to get people to drive safely and punish people who don't.

I grant you speed traps can be used as a 'revenue generation mechanism' too, (both for insurance companies and for the ticket issuers), but traffic safety and speed enforcement go hand in hand. The best place for revenue generation is where people are speeding the most, which is, on a personally correctable basis the most dangerous places. Speeding is, I would think, one of the most common dangerous driving things we all do (though texting or talking on a cellphone is probably up there, you don't really set up a trap for that which would be any different than a speed trap). Sure there are roads themselves which are unsafe, but that's not a police problem.

http://www.independentmail.com/news/2010/feb/07/dangerous-driving-habits-can-increase-risk-fatal-c/ has a great one line tidbit:

"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.

Drivers distracted while using cell phones or text messaging, eating or fidgeting with on-board electronic devices also are a growing concern, according to U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood."

Speed traps can catch: cell phones, texting, not wearing a seat belt and speeding, and drunk driving. Though randomly driving around will probably net better distracted drivers, and targeted placement of checks will catch drunk drivers better. You still want to stop the maximum number of speeders (and people not wearing seat belts.. seriously, who in this day and age doesn't wear a seat belt?), which will be the same place that would ensure maximum revenue generation.

Re:good

[h4rr4r]

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.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

ya how exactly is "the best place to put speed traps" NOT being used to improve traffic safety?

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.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

I will vote for "just stupid". Either that or just another sad troll.

Re:good

[pixelpusher220]

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.

Re:good

[h4rr4r]

Speeds are set by politicians, ever wonder why none of our roads go over 65mph?

Re:good

[PoopMonkey]

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.

Re:good

[JimFive]

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

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:good

[pixelpusher220]

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.

Re:good

[_0xd0ad]

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...

Re:good

[Sarten-X]

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!

Re:good

[Jetboy01]

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.

Re:good

[Sir_Sri]

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.

Re:good

[dgatwood]

There's a highway exit near me that is posted at 25 mph, but routinely people, including me, take it at 50 without trouble.

Highway exits are almost invariably advisory speed limits. All legally enforceable limits are posted in either white (normal signs) or orange (for construction).

Re:good

[dgatwood]

ya how exactly is "the best place to put speed traps" NOT being used to improve traffic safety?

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.

Re:good

[pixelpusher220]

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.

Re:good

[AK Marc]

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.

Re:good

[Alex Belits]

Yeah! Let's lower speed limits by 0.01% every time someone is hit!

(you will end up riding turtles in no time).

Re:good

[AK Marc]

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).

Re:good

[dgatwood]

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?

Re:good

[michelcolman]

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.

Repost

[ThePolkapunk]

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

Re:Repost

[Lunix Nutcase]

But a blogger at IPWorld needs you to drive up his page and ad clicks!

Re:Repost

[Anonymous Coward]

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

This is just as ludicrous as if /. were to sell their list of articles to the editors!

Re:Repost

[QuasiSteve]

Repost indeed.

Also, just to recap the actual events...

TomTom asks users if they would like to share 'anonymous' (since leaving place X and returning there every weekday is kinda indicatory) traffic information with TomTom in order to improve services. The fine print says that TomTom can also make this information available to 3rd parties.

One of those 3rd parties is a research company. They take datasets and provide condensed reports based on them.

One of the reports they generated revealed either A. where people were speeding or B. simply what speed people were driving. Not individual users - just a breakdown of numbers. N data points, X% of those N > 120kph, Y% between 100kph and 120kph, etc.

This report is what the police apparently use to decide that if every day there's 1,000 people going 140 where they're only supposed to go 100 (arguments of whether 140 is safe etc. is another story), they should place some speed traps there.. be that to make a safer situation, as a cashcow, or simply because they felt like annoying the speeding drivers.

That's it. There wasn't a direct line from TomTom to the police. In addition, that same information is used by the government to determine if perhaps an extra lane should be added, or whether the speed limit should actually be increased (it's usually environment/noise regulations that limit roads to a certain speed).

Now TomTom, pretty much pandering to their audience (the ones that download speed trap location POI's being pretty much the majority) by saying they're going to adjust the terms of use of the datasets so the police couldn't do what they did anymore.

I have no idea how TomTom thinks they're gonna do that, given that they have no direct relationship with the police -and- the data can be used for perfectly good things as well. Tell the research company they can only sell on the distilled information to the government if they include a clause that the police can't use this information to place speed traps?
What if one of the research companies simply dumps the average speed on major roads as a picture or google maps data on the internet. Now what - that picture/google maps information needs a clause saying "If you're a cop, you can't use this information"?

Hence the 'pandering to their audience'. There's pretty much nothing they could actually do to halt the use of information for purposes that their customers aren't too keen on, other than simply not selling the data at all.

Re:Repost

[houghi]

Not a repost. They just sold it twice.

Re:Repost

[Anonymous Coward]

Would that make it TomTomTomTom?

Re:Repost

[joocemann]

Once they release the data to anyone, they might as well assume it can go anywhere.

One has to wonder why TomTom didn't just innovate better or charge more if they wanted more revenue. I say this because I'm pretty confident that most people I know owning TomToms and other GPS devices are under the belief that the data is coming to them, not going to tomtom -- and that they would be pretty offended to know that ANYTHING is being done with their location data.

The notion that businesses think these kinds of practices are even at all acceptable is absurd to me, and makes clearer the reasons why we need extremely powerful consumer protection laws that actually have teeth. I would prefer we had a consumer protection against any of this kind of activity and that 1) TomTom never did this, or 2) is going bankrupt thanks to fines and its heads facing 5-10 in prison for permitting it.

Re:Repost

[im_thatoneguy]

And last week we also knew that TomTom didn't *sell* the info *to the police* they sold it to a traffic consulting business who sold their services to the police department and used TomTom data.

Since then TomTom has promised to forbid that in their licensing.

Re:Repost

[Dahamma]

One has to wonder why TomTom didn't just innovate better or charge more if they wanted more revenue/

I'd say that's pretty obvious - their primary business used to be selling hardware, and that has been hammered by Smartphones and in-dash Nav systems.

They then ported their software to run on those Smartphones, but the pricing pressure from intense competition for Smartphone Nav software (there are now at least *11* available for the iPhone!) has eroded much of that revenue as well.

Same thing happened to Tivo (and Tivo also responded "creatively", by selling anonymous aggregate usage data as well as suing anyone they could). "Innovation" is great, but not as easy as it sounds when your entire business becomes commoditized...

Re:Repost

[Anonymous Coward]

Thing is... TomTom also sell you maps with the locations of speed cameras on them.

Like selling weapons to both sides in a war - scumbags

Re:Repost

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait a minute. EU law requires explicit opt-in. You have to take positive action to share your data. And TomTom has always been clear that this data is used for HD Traffic, so "most people don't expect ANYTHING" is plainly false.

And if you think that the government would EVER introduce a law that bans companies from helping the police, you're beyond naive. It's quite likely that TomTom won't sell the data in the future, simply because governments will demand it for free.

Re:Repost

[Anonymous Coward]

The police in other countries should be more like the German police. They should care where speeding accidents occur historically (Which they should already have the DATA for) and enforce the speed limit there. Usually people are more likely to speed where it is relatively safe to do so. Enforcing the speed limit to make profits should not be the job of the police because it does not protect or serve anyone but politicians. Obviously, this will lead to catching less speeders but you'll be catching the really dangerous ones. It will probably lower the number of accidents as people learn not to speed in those areas.

Re:Repost

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this "you can use this, but only for some purposes" what a contract is for? It strikes me rather like the creative commons criteria:

- you may use this data for some reasons specified by us
- you may not sell it to the police
- share alike

sorted. What was the problem again?

Re:I sold info to people about CmdrTaco's penis si

[Anonymous Coward]

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 safet

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Already resolved too

[Anonymous Coward]

Tom Tom has changed their policy and data will not be given to the cops anymore.

Re:Already resolved too

[spire3661]

Until the next quarterly profit drop....

Make our own

[Compaqt]

http://www.openmoko.com/
http://www.openstreetmap.org/

Anything else?

Re:Make our own

[Anonymous Coward]

openstreetmap.org is apparently incompatible with Firefox 4. My options say that javascript is enabled, but openstreetmap is telling me that I need to enable javascript to use the site. This is not the first site to exhibit this behaviour; a handful of others do so as well. :\

Re:Make our own

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Works fine for me in FF 4, and tbh I can't recall seeing that in behavior in years. You might want to check your options again.

Re:Make our own

[ktappe]

http://www.openmoko.com/ http://www.openstreetmap.org/

Anything else?

Here's the problem: Even if you roll your own GPS/Nav, the Tom Tom data the government obtained will still be used against you. They won't just be pulling over Tom Tom users for speeding; this data "breach" (wasn't really) affects every single driver. So one company kind of ruined it for all of us.

Re:Make our own

[asdf7890]

It might be worth checking your plugin options too is you use AdBlock, NoScript or similar - they may be inadvertently blocking some script in the site that is incorrectly identified (by some heuristic, or a blacklist updated by user intervention) as an unwanted bit of code.

Some sites deliberately mix their general script detection in with the ad servicing to discourage people from browsing their sits with adverts blocked, though I doubt this is the case with openstreetmap as it doesn't seem to have any ads at all at the moment.

Re:Make our own

[Compaqt]

Well, but that's what I'm saying, let's make our own replacement for Tomtom, Garmin, etc.

Yeah, there won't be satellite maps, but we'd have crowdsourced location markers.

And we wouldn't have to give our location data to the cops (without a subpoena).

They did this in Germany, too

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

The best place to put speed traps?

[Jeremy Erwin]

Don't the police already have accident reports? Why do they need more information?

Re:The best place to put speed traps?

[Yetihehe]

1. Places where there are many accidents are not always places where people drive fast.
2. Set traps where people are driving fast.
3. Profit.

Re:The best place to put speed traps?

[kannibal_klown]

Don't the police already have accident reports? Why do they need more information?

Accident reports would be a great indicator if all they were looking for was preventing accidents. It wouldn't cover everything, but when the concern is public safety it's definitely a great metric.

The skeptic in me has to mention that, while I can't speak for Europe, I know that some towns in the US really rely on income generated from tickets and fines. In which case they would want to place traps in places more likely to catch offenders.

Putting aside my skepticism, it's still an OK metric. Most places would like to reduce speeding in general; all it takes is one careless driver and/or one careless pedestrian and you have an accident. The mortality rates go way way up when you get hit at 40MpH instead of 25MpH.

So if this residential area has a lot of heavy speeding, then it's probably good to put the fear of the police into the drivers.

Re:The best place to put speed traps?

[DontBlameCanada]

Accident reports are only good for determining where the combination of speed + road conditions are a hazard. They aren't good at finding long stretches of good road surface, with lower traffic volumes and good sight lines that allow very good drivers to shave several minutes off their commute by driving well over the posted speed limit.

i.e. traffic report mining doesn't generate additional precinct income through additional high-value speeding tickets.

This is a cash grab.

Re:The best place to put speed traps?

[h4rr4r]

On the freeway were I see most speed traps going 65 instead of 55 is not going to impact mortality a whole lot.

Re:The best place to put speed traps?

[Cwix]

I know that some towns in the US really rely on income generated from tickets and fines. In which case they would want to place traps in places more likely to catch offenders

That is a large part of the problem right there. A lot of these towns love to use speed limits that jump up and down. There is a stretch of highway not far from me that goes from 55 to 25 to 35 to 25 to 35 to 45 all within about a mile stretch. Its blatant that its purpose is solely to catch drivers unfamiliar to the area. (Speeds in MPH)

Re:The best place to put speed traps?

[Cwix]

My bad, just checked google maps, its about a 2 mile stretch. Still quite alot of speed changes.

Re:The best place to put speed traps?

[JaredOfEuropa]

The "best" places for speed traps, according to the Dutch police, are not dangerous spots but the spots that generate the most revenue. For example, a dual carriageway that looks like one where 80km/h is the norm, is safe for and built for 80, but actually has a limit of 50km/h because it happens to be in the (poorly signposted) city limits.

A typical example: cops expressed shock that over 90% of drivers passing a speed trap were exceeding the speed limit, which was reduced because of road works. They kept writing tickets for a few days... and none of them stopped to think if perhaps the lower speed limit wasn't very clear, and if perhaps they should instead do something to slow oncoming traffic and make things safer for the construction workers. Nope, just keep that camera busy!

Re:The best place to put speed traps?

[Sarten-X]

Let's see... come into town right at the elementary school, get out of the school zone for a little while, then go by the high school, then head into a less-dense area of town, then leave it. Sounds like a lot of small towns, including my hometown. Write the city council and complain about the inconsistent limits. Ask for that middle 35 section to be lowered to 25 to benefit drivers.

Re:The best place to put speed traps?

[Cwix]

Not a single school zone on that stretch of road.

Re:The best place to put speed traps?

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand your point, and if you're talking about one person hitting a brick wall at 55 mph versus 65 mph, I agree there's no real difference in outcome. But the crash is unlikely to happen in isolation. And the energy involved is proportional to velocity squared. There's nearly 40% more energy involved in the 65 mph crash (where 65 mph is the relative difference in velocities between the colliding objects). At 75 mph it's 86% more energy. That is energy that needs to be dissipated by breaking, crumple zones, other cars, etc. The potential for destruction goes up quickly.

I'm not saying that safety should be our only concern. But at the same time we can't say that an extra 10 mph has no impact.

Re:The best place to put speed traps?

[jank1887]

don't forget, energy of impact goes up as v^2. so that 18% velocity increase translates into a 40% increase in impact energy. 40% can make a big difference.

Re:The best place to put speed traps?

[sjames]

If their main concern was public safety, the accident reports would be all they needed or wanted to know.

If their main concern is revenue generation, they'll want to know where people are speeding the most. This is not so interesting for safety since people would likely go slower if the situation was unsafe, and if it was less safe than it seemed, the accident reports would point it out.

Feel free to draw conclusions from there.

Re:The best place to put speed traps?

[sjames]

The speed limit changes tend not to follow rhyme or reason. Sure, school zones are understandable, but in the small town near me, there is a road with a 35 MPH limit for all but about 50 feet in the middle where it's 30. There is nothing different about that 50 feet except the speed limit and the likelihood of a cop car being parked behind the bushes.

Re:The best place to put speed traps?

[ShakaUVM]

>>I know that some towns in the US really rely on income generated from tickets and fines

They do.

Why they haven't been sued for conflict of interest in law enforcement is beyond me.

Re:The best place to put speed traps?

[mrchaotica]

1. Places where there are many accidents are not always places where people drive fast.

Well that depends what you mean by "too fast," doesn't it? If people exceed the speed limit but don't have accidents, perhaps they weren't going too fast after all.

Everyone is doing it ...

[applematt84]

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?

Lame excuse - improving traffic safety

[u19925]

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).

Re:Lame excuse - improving traffic safety

[AntiNazi]

I seriously doubt this is a real time feed. I didn't get that impression anyway. 1. Buy GPS data. 2. Place speed camera where you already know a huge amount of people regularly speed based on historic GPS data you recently purchased. 3. ??? 4. Profit As if there was anyone left that didn't understand yet that the traffic cops' primary job is revenue collection rather than traffic safety this ought to help pound it through their skull.

Re:Lame excuse - improving traffic safety

[jsvendsen]

I could be missing something, but I don't think anyone has mentioned the data being provided as a real time feed. If I were to guess I would think that the 'delay' was much longer than a week, but probably covered a considerable duration of time.

The cops probably care less about where someone is speeding right now, and more about where and when the incidence of speed limit violations are the greatest.

Re:Lame excuse - improving traffic safety

[Tharsman]

The true reason TomTom is because they were not expecting more efficient speed traps, just retroactive speeding tickets based on the included personal information that was tied up to your driving logs.

There's no difference.

[_0xd0ad]

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.

Re:There's no difference.

[seanmcelroy]

Despite the egregious lack of corporate responsibility, perhaps there could be some useful application of the data for traffic safety and road engineering.. for instance, if traffic engineers can see what roads are congested which have too low of a speed limit imposed, they could propose raising them? A pipe dream, but I have to believe someone looking to optimize traffic flows would consider the design upside as well as the police simply considering how to generate revenue.

Re:There's no difference.

[c0lo]

Despite the egregious lack of corporate responsibility, perhaps there could be some useful application of the data for traffic safety and road engineering.. for instance, if traffic engineers can see what roads are congested which have too low of a speed limit imposed, they could propose raising them? A pipe dream, but I have to believe someone looking to optimize traffic flows would consider the design upside as well as the police simply considering how to generate revenue.

What's in that pipe you used for dreamin'?
The most probable behavior is for the cops to lower the speed limits on other roads and install some new speed traps there.

Re:There's no difference.

[u19925]

Why do you need real time info for traffic safety?

Re:There's no difference.

[Tharsman]

Yea, I mean, since when does the police take any part in road engineering?

Re:There's no difference.

[Anonymous Coward]

If they did that in LA, they'd have massive riots on their hands. There are some places where circulation needs to be improved, fine revenue be damned, and the cops know it.

Sadly the problem is that TomTom sold to a police department, instead of a city's road management department. Now I don't know if those are the one and the same in the Netherlands, but I doubt it. Admittedly the Dutch haven't had a government for over a year now, so it might be tricky to sell stuff to a non-existing entity.

Re:There's no difference.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cops can't, in the Netherlands (which is where the data sales happened).

In fact, there's little freedom to set speed limits. Maximum road speeds have to match the road class, and there are typically only two maximum speeds possible per class. E.g. highways are 100 or 120 (except highways inside cities, which are 80 or 100). Plus, for major roads, you need an environmental impact study.

And the pipe dream in which speeds are raised? There's an experiment to raise the maximum speed in .nl from 120 to 130. Road deaths have been dropping so quickly that the limit of 120 seems outdated.

Re:There's no difference.

[Anonymous Coward]

The data has been collected in real time because it's used for TomTom HD Traffic, but the police got the aggregated data over the last 2 year.

I've Got A Better Idea: +4, Plusgood

[Anonymous Coward]

Auction the data on Identity Information Auction: Ebay

Have a day.

Yours In Miami,
K. Trout, C.I.O.

Dat is een stom idee

[Rick Richardson]

(Google Translate) Dat is een stom idee!

Stale

[Nom du Keyboard]

This stale story is days old by now.

Greedisgood

[XiaoMing]

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!"

Re:Greedisgood

[Anonymous Coward]

We had a story in the local newspaper a month ago about how our traffic cops' work performance was judged by the amount of tickets they gave out. Cops not fulfilling a quota were considered underperforming.

Oh come on

[mevets]

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.

Re:Oh come on

[cdrguru]

TomTom is actually a vendor that could be replaced pretty easily. From what I understand, they really don't do much to the raw data that the get from either their own map source data or other vendors that they incorporate into their units.

Garmin, on the other hand, does considerable tailoring of the data to the GPS device and the GPS application. You can easily spot the difference with any unit when comparing to a Garmin. If it tells you frequently to "keep left" or "stay on the road" then it is using pretty raw data. Having worked for the company that is now Navteq it is fairly easy to spot occurrances in the data that need to be smoothed out but most systems aren't doing. Garmin does and it greatly improves the usability of their systems.

TomTom as well as most of the built-in systems are junk compared to a Garmin. I have a BMW with navigation and while it will eventually get you where you are going, it doesn't do a great job. My wife has an Enclave with navigation that is awful with plenty of "stay on the road" messages. We stick the Garmin up and use it in preference to either built-in system. Most Garmins can also accept red-light and speed camera data from other sources.

Re:Oh come on

[_0xd0ad]

You can easily spot the difference with any unit when comparing to a Garmin. If it tells you frequently to "keep left" or "stay on the road" then it is using pretty raw data.

I've had a Garmin insist that I was on the outer road for several miles after I missed my exit, so I'd take that with a grain of salt. More likely they're just making it less picky about whether you're actually on the road it thinks you're on.

Re:Oh come on

[Laurence0]

Interesting, I've had both a Garmin and a TomTom (both on a palmtop and a standalone device) and I much prefer the TomTom. The UI is much easier to use, it supports more waypoints, it'll let you plan arbitrary routes (ie, point A to point B, instead of just current location to point A) and I think there were other things as well.

When my Garmin died, having used a TomTom elsewhere, it was a no-brainer to get a TomTom to replace it. And for reference, I was using the entry level of both units. I basically just want it to tell me where to go, playing music or working as a hands free kit is unnecessary for me.

Unlike Tom Tom

[NEDHead]

I am both shocked AND dismayed

In Soviet...

[Nyder]

In Soviet Slashdot, articles are posts dupes of you!

Why is this bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why is this bad?

[AK Marc]

Since the cops couldn't find the place by looking at crashes, they targeted speeders who weren't crashing. If the point of traffic laws is to increase safety, then the cops were not acting in the best interests of anyone. If the point of traffic laws is to make irrelevant and capricious laws and train people to follow the rules regardless of whether the rules make sense or the armed people will take you away, then yes, that was the right thing for the cops to do.

Re:Why is this bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course you should follow traffic rules regardless of whether you think they make sense or not. They are not there to annoy you, you know. They are there because driving is a dangerous activity and it becomes even more dangerous when people ignore the rules. If you don't think the rules make sense, do something to have them changed. Until you manage that you should just follow them and do whatever you can to not put the rest of us in danger. In theory I would say that this applies to any law, but especially in cases like traffic where your recklessness can easily kill someone.

Re:Why is this bad?

[AK Marc]

Of course you should follow traffic rules regardless of whether you think they make sense or not.

Does that go for Jim Crow laws as well?

They are not there to annoy you, you know.

You are right, the majority are there to make money or offer up options for pretext stops, not to annoy me personally.

They are there because driving is a dangerous activity and it becomes even more dangerous when people ignore the rules.

When you finally graduate high school and move out of your mom's basement and she doesn't drive you everywhere while you play DS in the backseat, you'll notice that everyone ignores the rules, and those that don't are the most inconsiderate and least safe drivers (all two of them).

If you don't think the rules make sense, do something to have them changed.

So you are arguing that all those uppity Blacks shouldn't have broken the laws while waiting for them to be changed? I've tried to get them changed. It doesn't work. Just like drug laws where the majority of people have "responsibly tried" illegal drugs, yet vote to make anyone who did what they did a felony, the majority of people vote the opposite of what they actually do (or did).

Until you manage that you should just follow them and do whatever you can to not put the rest of us in danger.

The studies show that someone driving 5 mph above the legal limit is less likely to crash than someone traveling 5 mph under the limit. If safety were your primary goal, then you'd be advocating safe driving, even if that safety were gained through violation of laws. Since you are not, I wonder what your true motivation is, since you've proven it to not be safety.

In theory I would say that this applies to any law, but especially in cases like traffic where your recklessness can easily kill someone.

What does not following the law have to do with recklessness? Are you asserting that any violation of law is necessarily reckless? Or are you arguing against some subset of driving that is reckless that may or may not be explicitly illegal?

Casablanca

[fregare]

Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!

[a croupier hands Renault a pile of money]

Croupier: Your winnings, sir.

The best place to put speed traps

[oldmac31310]

is at every citizen's house as we all know that accidents happen closest to home. Problem solved!

Re:The best place to put speed traps

[DudeTheMath]

It is well-known that most accidents happen with fifteen miles of the bathroom.

Statutory laws define TRAFFIC as commerce.

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Re:I sold info to people about CmdrTaco's penis si

[Anonymous Coward]

I make $3000 a week and get to see all the willies I can handle. Fan-fucking-tastic job!

Law, Speed limits, and Engineers

[yoshi_mon]

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.

Re:Law, Speed limits, and Engineers

[yakatz]

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?

There are some places in northern New Jersey where the speed limit changes every few blocks because you are changing municipalities and each little town sets its own speed limit. It is incredibly annoying for all the reasons you mentioned.

Re:Law, Speed limits, and Engineers

[SydShamino]

Most likely the little stretch where the road is 35 MPH is within the jurisdiction of a nearby town (perhaps one you can't see) that annexed over just far enough to grab a little piece of the road. That allows them to set the limit on that part, which they did. When the road leaves the town, the speed returns to the county's rate. Then you reach the next little town...

It would be better if the state restricted the ability of cities to enforce speed limit reductions based on jurisdictional boundaries, and instead required them to justify speed limit reductions based on, say, peak (midnight-to-midnight) populations within 500 feet of the area. If there are few to no homes or businesses nearby, the town would be prevented from lowering the speed limit on the road just because it is within their city limits.

speeds traps DO improve safety!

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Re:speeds traps DO improve safety!

[Anonymous Coward]

Lack of attention when driving is a cause, speed is a mere catalyst.

Re:speeds traps DO improve safety!

[makomk]

Except when you check the fine print, it's speed that's in excess of what's safe for the conditions that's a major cause of accidents - not speed in excess of the arbitrary and often politicially motivated legal limits, which is all that speed cameras can detect. (When you check the even finer print, I'm not sure even that is necessarily true, but...)

Is this how they caught bin Laden?

[NicknamesAreStupid]

Did his Tom Tom rat him out or did his iPhone's location tracking identify him?

Re:Is this how they caught bin Laden?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interestingly enough, it was possible the opposite behaviour that game him away:

Osama bin Laden's decade on the run after 9/11 may have come to its end in part because his large hideout reportedly lacked a phone and Internet connection.

Re:most speed traps are cash cows and not about sa

[asdf7890]

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.

GPS not needed to identify areas

[realsilly]

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.

They should pay contributors for speed information

[cellurl]

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.

Repetative Redundancy

[orthancstone]

In the spirit of repetition, I'll just leave this link here...http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2111968&cid=35965884

So what???

[yakatz]

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?

Re:So what???

[Jimmy King]

People have a problem with this method of collecting data because people did not (at least knowingly) agree to have Tom Tom store data on where they traveled and when and how fast and then sell it. I believe they are right to expect that the company not do that. Sure, it's probably buried in some ToS or the like somewhere, but I'm firmly on the "shit buried 20 pages deep in fine print legalese is not a fair warning or agreement" side of the fence.

As to the speed traps themselves, an argument could be (and has been) made that they are not terribly helpful and are just the city/county/state trying to collect money off of a relatively easy target rather than preventing real crime or making the roads noticeably safer. For the most part, I agree with that as well. Want to make my roads safer? Put a cop where lanes come to an end and pull over those assholes who rush past everyone in the lane ending and cut someone off at the last minute. That will make my trip safer than pulling over someone driving 75 or even 85 or 95 mph in a 65 or 70mph zone, staying in their own lane. Hell, pull people over who are going too slow and causing traffic to slow down unexpectedly and build up. I've seen more dangerous situations caused by them than by people going too fast.

Re:most speed traps are cash cows and not about sa

[eth1]

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.

Illiteracy Problems

[canajin56]

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

Get used to it: pay-per-mile(km) insurance

[Anonymous Coward]

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.....

Re:I sold info to people about CmdrTaco's penis si

[Anonymous Coward]

Disregard that, I suck cocks.

WRONG

[ganjadude]

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.

Re:WRONG

[AK Marc]

At least the NMSL was quickly repealed after the oil prices stabilized and the fuel savings was determined to be much lower than expected.

how do they collect the data?

[tinkerton]

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?

Re:how do they collect the data?

[hawguy]

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?

Neither of TFA's linked in the summary are very long, your answer is in the second one:

When you use one of our products we ask for your permission to collect travel time information on an anonymous basis. The vast majority of you do indeed grant us that permission. When you connect your TomTom to a computer we aggregate this information and use it for a variety of applications, most importantly to create high quality traffic information and to route you around traffic jams.

Tom Tom Surprised Roads are Not Built by Police

[sacdelta]

"... 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.

Re:most speed traps are cash cows and not about sa

[asdf7890]

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

[SpaghettiPattern]

It has to be said that the right amount of revenue induces naivety.

Is it so hard to stick to the speed limit?

[srodden]

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.

Re:Is it so hard to stick to the speed limit?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

No, he replied by utterly destroying your poorly-disguised version of the wheezing old "nothing to hide" argument, and after you ran away in tears and humiliation you decided that you'd try to retake control by telling the Internet that something different happened. You then collapsed into further tears in further shame at your own dishonesty and ineffectuality, and you still haven't stopped crying.

Re:Is it so hard to stick to the speed limit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem is, this data doesn't show black spot. It's likely to show "white spots", because at the black spots, *most* people will be slowing down.

For instance, if you look at a road that would have been called "Autobahn", if it had been in Germany, you are likely to see lots of people driving above the speed limit, where as in front of a school, you're likely to see only fewer people speeding. What this data will tell the police is that they can write a lot of tickets by putting a couple of guys with a radar out on the "Autobahn", where as by the school they would only catch the few who are the real problem. Writing a lot of tickets looks good on the report.

Even worse when some places have a minimum number of tickets an officer is required to write. If you were required to write 100 tickets per day, where would you be? In front of the school where you might at best get to write 80, or out on the "Autobahn" where you could write 250?

Yes, such a thing exists. I live in a country where police districts have to make a minimum number of arrests. One district was on the news explaining that they simply don't have enough crime to meet their quota, and the only option was to start arresting people who had done nothing wrong, wasting the courts time (along with everybody else's time), and they really didn't want to do that. The politicians answer: I'm sure you'll come up with something, the quotas must be met.

..to figure out the best places to put speed traps

[sqldr]

yeah. they should put them in the worst places.

Old story and untrue

[Invisible Snake]

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.

What's the fiss about?

[jeroen94704]

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!

Re:What's the fiss about?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to see you obey a speed limit that is as follows, over the course of a 2 mile road:

40
45
50
35
55
40
45

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.