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Tom Tom Sells GPS Info To Dutch Cops
jfruhlinger writes "As smartphones with GPS capabilities wear away at the dedicated GPS market, vendors like Tom Tom need to find new revenue streams. Tom Tom decided it would be a good idea to 'share' (i.e., sell) aggregated data from their users to Dutch law enforcement. The company claims they assumed that the data would be used to improve traffic safety and road engineering, and were shocked, shocked to discover that instead the police used it to figure out the best places to put speed traps."
Did this story come from the Department of Redundancy Department?
Yes. We know. It was addressed last week: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/04/28/1719247/GPS-Maker-TomTom-Submits-Your-Speed-Data-To-Police
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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.
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.
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)
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
My bad, just checked google maps, its about a 2 mile stretch. Still quite alot of speed changes.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
Speeds are set by politicians, ever wonder why none of our roads go over 65mph?
My dad worked with those engineers. What the parent posted is true. The majority of the speed limits you see are not what the engineers give for a road. The possible exceptions are neighborhoods.
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.
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JimFive
Please stop using the word theory when you mean hypothesis.
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...
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.
Highway exits are almost invariably advisory speed limits. All legally enforceable limits are posted in either white (normal signs) or orange (for construction).
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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.