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Multi-Target Photo-Radar System To Make Speeding Riskier
mrquagmire writes with this excerpt from Engadget:
"Go easy on the gas, Speed Racer, because Cordon is on its way. Developed by Simicon, this new speed sensor promises to take highway surveillance to new heights of precision. Unlike most photo radar systems, which track only one violator at a time, Simicon's device can simultaneously identify and follow up to 32 vehicles across four lanes. Whenever a car enters its range, the Cordon will automatically generate two images: one from wide-angle view and one closeup shot of the vehicle's license plate. It's also capable of instantly measuring a car's speed and mapping its position, and can easily be synced with other databases via WiFi, 3G or WiMAX."
I am dubious...
...when my Google car is driving itself above the speed limit?
Fortunately South Carolina has Bubba.
Bubba comes in many shapes and sizes (mostly rotund). Bubba likes to shoot and shiny objects that Uncle Sam sets up alongside the road.
Bubba works for the good of mankind by filling full of holes things like street signs, street lights, and traffic cameras.
A speed limit sign, or deer-crossing sign you can just about still use even when it is full of holes. Speed cameras are pretty much useless after the first shot.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
How about you just don't speed, you jack-off...
Research has repeatedly shown that the safest drivers are around the 85th percentile by speed. If lots of people are breaking the speed limit, then it's set below that level. If the limit is set below that level and you drive below it, you're a more dangerous driver than many of those who are speeding.
Instead of complaining about tickets, run for office or attend government meetings and propose changes.
Yeah, that'll work.
'Look, I know you get a sizeable amount of your revenue from taxing those who drive at more than X mph, but you really should stop because it's very silly.'
I don't know, I tend to drive slower when I do that.
Seems like a very complicated way to collect taxes.
A useful application would be to target those vehicles which are going more than 10% (or 10km/h or whatever) faster than everyone else. That would actually improve safety and make the highway system more efficient (homogenous traffic reduces braking/lane changes and increases throughput). However, that's not the primary goal of highway speed enforcement so it will never happen
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
Then WHEN this has been implemented for a while... and tickets go up.... and there is no difference at all in accidents or deaths....
can we THEN admit that we have hit the point of diminishing returns wrt enforcement vs actual safety?
We keep seeing more rules or better enforcement... and yet.... don't seem to see corresponding improvements in safety. In fact, the only improvements in real safety that I have seen, have all come from safety devices in cars, like air bags.
We saw it in NY, when talking on phones was banned, and a study was able to verify that yes, people really were switching to headsets or not talking... more than a 60% drop in OBSERVED use...but.... no change at all in deaths or accidents. Yet somehow... that was explained away as not having any meaning (because if the report doesn't say we need more enforcement and more penalties, then its clearly not valid right?)
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
The 85th percentile of what?
Oh, of the speed people are going because of where the speed limit is set.
All speed limits are initialized to federal standard guidelines.
Almost never is a speed limit changed, except when the local OCD mommies get a hair up their ass and lower a perfectly good 50 to 35 for a 24/7 school zone, or a 40 to a 25 because their similarly brain-addled kids can't be trusted to stay the fuck out of the street.
Gee, a state with a million square miles and six cars doesn't find speeding to be a problem. Who'd a thunk it.
I would be tempted to say that if you can't speed anymore, then the device has done its job. Supposedly, speed limits are here for the good of the people.
Now, if only those speed limits were defined in a sensible fashion. How many times have I seen 2x 3 lanes highway limited at 50kph ? (I live in France)
I'm sure in the US there are also those places where the speed limits are just... insanely ridiculous.
So, when it was down to getting caught by the occasional police officer hidden in the bushes, the game was fair. If those automated radars become commonplace, then for the game to remain fair, they *must* revisit speed limits in most places. Because if we have to respect those speed limits *everywhere*, driving is going to become a PITA pretty soon. And nobody will benefit from this.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
How about you just don't speed, you jack-off...
I'd like to point out to you that most speed limit are ridiculously LOW.
Case in point, the expressways in the major metropolitan city in the U.S. called Chicago where the speed limit on the expressways is 55 MPH. From my estimation, the number of drivers at or below the speed limit is approximately 5%. I also estimate that the average speed of all drivers is approximately 70-75 MPH.
Now what does this tell you about how "reasonable" the posted speed limits are?
As a matter of fact, those who drive the speed limit in the left lane create a tremendous danger for everyone.
Read "acceptable range" as "tolerance of the measuring device". If they set a hard limit at the actual limit, they'd lose in court too often to make a profit.
Simple solution. Stop speeding. If people didn't speed, then the government wouldn't get any ticket revenues, and would be forced to find another income source (such as a direct tax). Personally, I'm glad that there are so many morons out there who pay extra taxes in order to reach their destination a few minutes quicker. Less tax burden for me!
First of all, what is the freaking speed limit on that road?
The only cars in the green are the ones coming to a stop in frame.
Second, I spotted one car with a green indicator accelerating away from a following car with a yellow indicator. So the thing isn't really discriminating accurately.
If I'm ever popped by this system, that piece of video will be my defense.
They also need to take current conditions into account (wet roads, fog, etc.) to determine if someone is breaking the basic speed law, even when they are driving below the posted speed limit.
And if they can do all that, they can objectively determine if you're tailgating (driving on a road too close to the vehicle in front, at a distance which does not guarantee that stopping to avoid collision is possible).
Because so many people tailgate according this definition, this technology has the potential to make roads a lot safer!
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
IIRC, speed does not increase the likelihood of an accident, but it does increase the severity when they occur.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
If so I want a dozen of these in my city. On my drive into work this morning three cars zipped through the red light 2.5 seconds after it had changed. On my walk during lunch hour at another intersection I watch 2 more vehicles blow through the just-barely red before they entered the intersection.
Rather than citations, I'd like auto-cannons installed to gun down the offenders.
they *must* revisit speed limits in most places.
I'm sure they will, and adjust the speed limit downwards a bit more to generate even more revenue. Be careful what you wish for.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Not My car. 1972 Diesel with no electronics to speak of.
Why is it that most of the people that I encounter seem to have been shat from the Sphincter of Mediocrity?
(sorry for the double post) Shoot, you could create this speeding system off of peoples cell phones.. They CAN'T be in city B from city A in less then X time, EVER, if they are law abiding. Cells registered in airport terminals get a special reset-until-next-update status. Damn... fuck them all with spiky baseball bats if this this ever happens! Moral: we ALREADY have those devices implanted...in our pockets.
CS majors know the time/space tradeoff, but they never get taught the 3rd, crucial, tradeoff of the set: comprehension!
You're paranoid.
I'll bet you $1000 I can drive faster AND safer in my 2010 impreza than you can in your 89 civic, so why should the statistic for the speed limit for the civic apply to me?
That's the problem with speed limits, it may not even be safe to go 55 in that civic (fun nevertheless), but nobody cares, it may be safe to go 75 in mine, nobody still cares. That's why the autobahn doesn't suck nearly as much as people think it does and that's why the only point of most speed limit signs is to make money. And WHAT ABOUT SNOW? Nobody can safely go 55 in that on these roads, do they change the speed limit? Safety is second handed at best. In my city we have great paved straight roads the kind that get rated for 55 w 30 mph on them and a speed van everyday what is the average citizen such as myself to think otherwise if you dispute my point?
You all are missing the real point of cameras and speed limits: to make some fat pigs easy money, fuck catching criminals and persecuting them, they can just harass everyday citizens for driving within the confines of their vehicle and make just as much for themselves and tons more for the city / state / government.
It is safest to pass quickly and get back into your lane. It's unsafe to pass at a differential of 2-3 mph ("micropassing") because you end up on the wrong side of the road for a long time, giving more opportunity for bad things to happen (an intersection approaching, other people pulling out to pass, the guy you're passing speeding up, etc.)
The earlier poster who gets angry when someone passes him quickly, is sadly symptomatic of a lot of so-called "good" drivers. They have to feel in control of the other traffic, or else they become angry and uncomfortable. The speed that they like to do is "perfect", anybody who wants to pass them should have left earlier, and anybody slow in front of them needs to start paying attention.
If it weren't on the road, we would call these people "control freaks". It's the same people who speed up when they see someone is trying to pass them. They don't give a crap about any other human being on the road, they only care that the lemmings behind them stay nicely in line behind.
If that poster is still reading: why does it make you so angry? What is wrong with someone going past? You're going to get to your destination at a pace you are obviously happy with , since you chose to go at the speed you are doing; so what is wrong with someone else getting to their destination at their pace? It doesn't affect you..
Have you ever been to kangaroo court (aka civil court)? They will find you responsible regardless, because it's actually guilty until proven innocent in the wonderful USA civil court system. Hell in my state of MA, they CHARGE you to go to court... how's that for fair?
"It's also capable of instantly measuring a car's speed and mapping its position"
A small point - but it is impossible to measure speed instantly.
There is no reason why government could not calculate the monetary cost of speeding (ie increased accident rate caused by speeding).
Well, that depends on whether an accident is "caused" by the speeding or not. This is a pretty complicated question. The investigators often report 'speed is a factor', however speed is obviously a factor in every crash. In every single crash, if they'd been going more slowly it either wouldn't have happened or would have been less serious.
Those sort of studies often competely ignore statistical variance too. For example, sometimes here on a holiday weekend there'll be no fatalities, and sometimes there'll be 10. Obviously (if you studied statistics!) neither of these things implies anything, however the police will come out and praise everybody on the 0 weekend, and criticize everybody on the 10 weekend.
Amateur. :)
But seriously, it is kind of weird to me that they didn't line up the lines dividing the lane, very much offends my OCD. Georgia, what a strange state you are.
If police would just enforce the keep-right-except-to-pass law, 90% of the traffic problems go away within a year. It would do a hell of a lot more to reduce speeding too, as most of that is born out of a desire to not get stuck behind one of the assholes you mentioned.
This is true of Illinois as well.
A person, driving at less than the normal speed of traffic, shall drive in the right-hand lane available for traffic or as close as practicable to the right-hand curb or edge of the roadway. See 625 ILCS 5/11-701(b).
Stop speeding. If people didn't speed, then the government wouldn't get any ticket revenues, and would be forced to find another income source (such as a direct tax).
While keeping the laws against speeding on the books and continuing to enforce them against everyone else who didn't stop speeding? Obsolete laws don't get repealed.
#OccupyInterstate Everyone drive 45 MPH in the 40-Minimum-to-75 MPH zones this Thanksgiving weekend!
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Man, you need to be modded up. People passing me aren't doing anything to me. It doesn't phase me in the slightest. The person who cuts me off just to prevent me from passing because they think it would be safer (or slamming on their brakes when you get a little too close to the guy doing 15 under in the "passing" lane), are the ones who are actually risking people's safety. Stop playing games! The rest of us are just trying to get from point A to point B. This whole country is filled to the brim with busy-bodies whose only method of elevating themselves is to bring other people down.
This is quite insightful. Thanks!
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
And if you don't speed, they don't get revenue.
Funny how that works...
Tucson, AZ spent something like 8 years reworking a road due to congestion, and when they were done, a beautiful new stretch of 2 lane was made (Aviation highway).
And they marked it at 35mph. It was 40 prior to the reconstruction. It's pretty much a straightaway, residential areas are completely blocked by huge walls, and yet, 35mph. 40mph is the norm in Tucson except residential.
This went on for almost 2 years. Until they ticketed a lawyer who decided to fight it. Turns out, they NEVER bothered to even consider it from an engineering perspective, they just slapped up a 35mph sign and started collecting revenue. Now it's 55, and the city had to return money to anyone they ticketed.
There might be rules, but don't think they get followed all the time.
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.
My response to this is... "sometimes."
The fact is, while high speed limits may not have a direct impact on frequencies of accidents, they do have a significant impact on severity of an accident as well as overall societal fuel consumption.
While vehicle-vehicle accident damage does tend to scale with speed differential, accident damage also has to do with speed differential to the environment, especially when in an area where the most common type of accident is road departure.
I'm surprised that fuel consumption, being a big national issue, hasn't gained traction with the speed limit people. The state next to mine even recently increased their speed limits on a major road from 65 to 70, so all those SUVs can go even faster and burn even more fuel (no engine technology in the world will save you from speed-squared drag).
I also think that all those people who speed on their commutes must have failed math, because going 75 instead of 70 only saves you a theoretical 100 seconds (not even 2 minutes!) over 30 miles, which is generally erased by slowdowns at an interchange or a traffic light. Going 75 versus 65 only saves you 220 seconds - less than four minutes - over 30 miles. About the only time speeding makes sense is on very long trips or if every second counts.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
I don't know about other states, but in California what you wrote simply isn't true. The speed limit is a Prima Face limit; if the officer feels that you're driving too fast for conditions, he can cite you with CVC 22350 (same VC used to cite speeding above the posted limit.) The only difference is that he'll have to prove your speed was unsafe in court*. Vehicle type also qualifies under this VC, if the officer observes that your vehicle is not under control.
Extreme fatigue would be considered driving while impaired, and enforcement is similar to drunk driving laws.
In addition, all speed limits below the state maximums are supposed to be set based on a traffic survey; an engineer observes how fast people drive, and recommends a speed limit based on a simple formula applied to the observed speed. The law provides very little leeway to adjust from there based on accident reports, housing density, and a couple other factors. If the engineering survey is not valid, the tickets can be easily thrown out. Word gets out and the speed limit becomes completely unenforceable.
* With a normal speed citation based on the prima face limit, the officer only needs to prove that he or she accurately observed your speed.
Do you know how I can tell you've never driven in "reasonable and prudent" Montana? There are no speed limits except for trucks. So therefore, how could the posted speed limit be 65?
http://www.us-highways.com/montana/reasonable.htm
http://www.us-highways.com/montana/mtspeed.htm
However, that law doesn't appear to be in effect anymore. reasonable and prudent was literally, what you and the officer agree is a safe speed due to the conditions. If it is 80, go 80.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_the_United_States#Montana
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
I'm surprised that fuel consumption, being a big national issue, hasn't gained traction with the speed limit people. The state next to mine even recently increased their speed limits on a major road from 65 to 70, so all those SUVs can go even faster and burn even more fuel (no engine technology in the world will save you from speed-squared drag).
Lowering the speed limit is an extremely inexact way to reduce fuel consumption. Plenty of people will simply ignore it as they do already, and to the extent that they don't, you create a disincentive for people to buy vehicles that consume less fuel because their gas-guzzling monster truck won't hit them as hard in the pocket book at a lower speed. If you want to reduce fuel consumption then you raise the gas tax. Then if I still want to drive fast, I can buy a car that gets 30MPG at 80MPH and everybody's happy.
I also think that all those people who speed on their commutes must have failed math, because going 75 instead of 70 only saves you a theoretical 100 seconds (not even 2 minutes!) over 30 miles, which is generally erased by slowdowns at an interchange or a traffic light. Going 75 versus 65 only saves you 220 seconds - less than four minutes - over 30 miles. About the only time speeding makes sense is on very long trips or if every second counts.
And driving 85 instead of 55 will save you more than 10 minutes. Each way. If you're commuting five days a week that's a hundred hours a year. I don't know anybody who couldn't use an extra hundred hours a year.
And most likely he's intentionally riding your bumper because you won't get the fuck out of his way, and he's wishing for a front mounted nuke to vaporize you completely. Seriously, it won't kill you to speed up an extra 5-10 km/h to get your passing done and move the hell over.
Depends on the autobahn, only some are unrestricted.
It used to be (here at least) that the speed of a road was set at close to the 85th percentile (no one wants to read that the speed limit is "46.8734mph", so there's a bit of rounding).
When the hand-wringers got all uppity about a few bad crashes (hello, random cluster) the limits were reduced. This was hailed as the answer due to the lower accident rate next year (oh, hi there Regression to the Mean). Then there were a few more accidents (cluster), speed cameras brought in, accidents dropped again and the hand-wringers went away happy. Until the next cluster of course.
Meanwhile the various councils and private companies/partnerships who run the cameras realised they were cashing in big-time. So more cameras went up, more limits lowered, more money made; all was good with the world if you were a civil servant (or an importer of cameras, as some "expert" witnesses were...bias, really?) until the cracks began to show.
i.e. people started to ask why regression to the mean hadn't been accounted for? Why other measures were not tried first? Why cameras were place in areas without a history of speed related accidents? Where was the money going? Why was speed the only focus? etc.
Then, of course, there is a bit of human psychology. Negative reinforcement is one. You break the limit, nothing happens, so you feel safe to break the limit again.
The limit feels too low, so you start to do other things (e.g. tailgate, make more lane changes, whatever) to try and bring the state or arousal back to a level you feel comfortable with. Or you stick to the limit and nod-off due to boredom. Crunch.
Trials have been done with removing traffic lights, road markings and other measures to make roads "feel" more dangerous. Result? Drivers took more care. Problem is these measure cost money to implement and raise no revenue.
And finally, there is my one of my pet hates. Moronic parents who *MUST* drive their brat to the school gates. There are the same hand-wringing excrement who campaign for cameras and cause major problems by double-parking and disgorging their progeny into traffic. Here's an idea: park away from the school and WALK your little precious to the gates. Not only will that ease congestion, but you can take the time to teach them road safety (assuming you know any). And let's face it, it's probably the only exercise the wee bugger will get.
The best thing they could do is bring back the traffic police. But then a trained traffic officer does on raise revenue, they merely help make roads safer, catch criminals and save lives. What does that matter when one has beans to count, eh?
FYI: Montana was coerced by the federal government to switch from reasonable and prudent to fixed limits by the threat of losing federal highway funds.
Interesting read about accident rates related to the reasonable and prudent years.
Summary for the tl;dr crowd:
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
while I'm cruising at 70mph in the "fast" lane
That's precisely the problem. Even if you're driving faster than everybody on the road, nobody should be "cruising" in the left hand lane. It's for passing only and that's the law in a lot of places.
If you think changing lanes is so dangerous, then yes, you probably should stay in the right lane all the time. Because it's really not that big a deal for thet vast majority of drivers. Some people aren't comfortable behind the wheel and that's ok, but you shouldn't make everyone else pay for it (especially when there's a sign every mile telling you to get out of the way).
It's not a law (It should be IMHO), but it's common sense. The exact same thing as being in an escalator in a mall or a subway station, or blocking a door. ... and I go when I made sure that I'm not cutting anyone on the left lane!
I live in quebec and I spend most of my time on the highway cursing ppl like that. I usually don't speed (my comfort speed is around 120Km/h) I rarely stay on the left lane, I go there only to pass and go back to the right. When passing I go above the limit as much as needed to passe (20-30 somtimes 50 --I hate big trucks--) quickly. as the longer I stays there the greater the danger (most ppl don;t check the blind spot)
Speed alone doesn't kill. It saved my ass few times b/c others made stupid mistakes!
"Reporting on these results in 1971, academics West and Dunn confirmed the findings of Solomon and Cirillo,[11] but found that crashes involving turning vehicles accounted for 44 percent of all crashes observed in the study and that excluding these crashes from the analysis greatly attenuated the factors that created the U-shape of the Solomon curve.[12] In 1991, Fildes, Rumbold, and Leening collected self-reported crash data from 707 motorists in Australia with less than 200 reporting they had been in an accident but, unlike Solomon and Cirillo, the researchers found no relationship between slower speeds and increased crash involvement.[13]"
People quote the result that they agree with. In particular, in two studies it looks like there's nothing particularly unsafe about driving slowly IF you exclude turning traffic (traffic suddenly appearing on the road, traffic abruptly slowing to turn) . There are also crashes, and crashes; the higher the speed, the greater the violence of the crash.
The other important thing about the Solomon effect is that it is not a statement about safe speed for a given road; it is a statement about safe speed in a given herd. "Hauer provided a theoretical foundation for the Solomon curve in 1971 – “for example, if I drive at 45 mph, while the median of the pack is 60 mph, how many cars will pass me in an hour and hence have a chance to collide with me ” – that showed that the theoretical distribution was nearly identical to the Solomon curve." So if increased traffic enforcement changes the speed of the entire herd, then the new "safest speed" is the 85th percentile of the new herd speed.
So, when it was down to getting caught by the occasional police officer hidden in the bushes, the game was fair.
No, if he had to hide in the bushes he obviously not being highly visible and setting an example to everyone to be safe. He's a predator looking to slap someone with a ticket.
Back out east the traffic has a completely different flavor to it. In the middle of the country it's much more relaxed.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Speed limits are a voluntary highway tax, not a safety measure. This new technology will just make the government more efficient at collecting revenue.
If they really cared about safety, I'd say it's well within the grasp of 21st century technology to simply prevent vehicles from exceeding the speed limit for any given set of coordinates. Nobody wants that technology, because the government needs you to hang yourself with the rope they give you, so they can generate revenue, and people want to feel "free."
Victoria Australia has 99+%* speed limit compliance on some highways and its accident count has been steady for a while and the deaths per distance driver has increased in step with the speed limit compliance. This year was on track for being worse than last year except the police decided to stop writing tickets as a protest for more money which resulted in an increase in speed and a drop in the accident rate.
They run a "Wipe off five" ads here which came from badly done report on crash rates out of South Australia university* that forget to take into account increased traffic density increasing accident rates. They claim by going just 5 km/h over the limit doubles the chance of an accident*. What they don't say is that is true for about 25 km/hr over the limit (as per Solomon quoted elsewhere here). They didn't point out that slowing down everyone increase tail gating which is something like 4000 times more likely to cause a death*.
Of course using traffic from Adelaide for any other city is like using traffic data from Billings Montana for Los Angles, Rome or Cairo.
Victoria currently has about 350 people a year die in traffic accidents*. World wide trends in stats show that number is somewhere between 20 and 100 high than it should be*. I figure the "wipe off five" campaign is killing an extra 30 people a year.
They use the distance over time cameras between Sydney and Melbourne in Victoria and have for years. The police stopped counting a number of single victim accidents in the road stats as well. Apparently stressing out drivers so bad they have a stroke and kill other people doesn't count as a "road accident" anymore since it was a "medical problem"
* data can be found on VicRoad's annual reports and crashstats web sites and backed up references found in a wonderful bit of fiction published by the Victorian Auditor-General.