Drones: Coming Soon To the New Jersey Turnpike?

redletterdave writes "The FAA predicts 30,000 drones will patrol the US skies by 2020, but New Jersey drivers could see these unmanned aerial vehicles hovering above the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway much sooner than that. New Jersey lawmakers from both Republican and Democratic parties have introduced a number of bills to tackle the drones issue before the federal government starts issuing the first domestic drone permits in September 2015."

Comments

Frosty Piss

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one welcome our hovering unmanned overlords!

Re:Frosty Piss

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Union, hovering unmanned overlords; welcome you!

Re:Frosty Piss

[jklovanc]

Unmanned is am misnomer. Even if the pilot is on the ground there is still a person involved with controlling the drone. Calling a drone "remotely manned" is much more accurate.

Risk vs. Reward?

[dgatwood]

How often do these things fall out of the sky, and does the added revenue offset the lives lost when they do?

Just saying.

I tend to think that drones should be used only in unusual circumstances, where unusual is translated as "high reward and low risk." Locating a lost hiker in a national park qualifies. Raising traffic fine revenue does not.

Re:Risk vs. Reward?

[ArcadeNut]

In addition to that, what is it going to do with an already over stressed Air Traffic Control system?

Re:Risk vs. Reward?

[afidel]

And yet people aren't dying at an alarming rate on the turnpike or any other interstate highway, the roads and cars are built to handle at much higher speeds than are posted in the U.S. Hell, 20 years ago cars sucked compared to today but I was able to drive a fairly normal sedan at 100mph on the autobahn without incident. What we really need to do to improve safety isn't to crack down on speeding, it's crack down on distracted driving, a week doesn't go buy that some idiot on a cellphone or putting on their makeup doesn't come within second of crashing into me (defensive driving and ABS for the win).

Re:Risk vs. Reward?

[ShanghaiBill]

In addition to that, what is it going to do with an already over stressed Air Traffic Control system?

These drones can be easily programmed to keep clear of any airports, flight paths, and other restricted areas. There are plenty of good reasons to be concerned about drones, but this isn't one of them.

Re:Risk vs. Reward?

[ShanghaiBill]

you mean it is about revenue? not safety?

Of course it is about revenue. Governments need revenue to operate. A tax on speeders seems like a good way to do it.

I submit that if people are regularly going 75 in 55 zones and there are not massive pileups every week then the speed limit is set too low. Why would they do that?

Because if they raise the limit to 75, people will drive 85. Americans have been conditioned to believe that the "real" speed limit is at least 10 mph over the posted limit.

Re:Risk vs. Reward?

[Alex Pennace]

Because if they raise the limit to 75, people will drive 85. Americans have been conditioned to believe that the "real" speed limit is at least 10 mph over the posted limit.

That is an interesting point so I did some research. I found FHWA Report No. FHWA-RD-92-084 (one source of which is at http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/sl-irrel.html but other copies agree) that says "The results of the study indicated that lowering posted speed limits by as much as 20 mi/h (32 km/h), or raising speed limits by as much as 15 mi/h (24 km/h) had little effect on motorist' speed."

I'm curious if you had any citations to confirm your statement.

Re:Risk vs. Reward?

[dgatwood]

Because if they raise the limit to 75, people will drive 85.

And it would probably still be safe....

Americans have been conditioned to believe that the "real" speed limit is at least 10 mph over the posted limit.

Because it usually is. As far as I'm concerned, the law should simply say, "You may not travel at a speed that is unsafe for the current road conditions." Anything demanding strict conformance to a posted number (rather than driving at a speed that feels safe) is just asking for people to ignore the law... or worse.

The worst example of a highway safety law is California's 65 MPH law. Except for a few roads where it is specifically posted at 70 MPH, it is illegal to drive faster than 65 MPH in California, period. All other speed limits are flexible, depending on driving conditions. What this means is:

• If I speed in a 50 zone, if everyone is going 64 (even if that is verging on unsafe), you can potentially argue your way out of the ticket.
• If I go 66 in a 65 zone, even if everyone else is going 66, you can't argue your way out of the ticket.

So if you're running behind and trying to decide where to exceed the speed limit, you're better off speeding on the city street portions of your trip (where there are pedestrians) or the windy highways from hell (CA SR-17 with its constant switchbacks) than on the relatively safe 65 MPH stretches. In short, by any rational interpretation of California traffic laws, the 65 MPH maximum speed law is actively making the roads less safe, because on the roads where speeding would provably pose the least additional risk, the law restricts your speed in the strictest way possible, and on the roads where speeding would provably pose the most additional risk, the law restricts your speed in the most lax way possible.

And people wonder why I think traffic laws are almost entirely written by idiots.

Re:Risk vs. Reward?

[c0lo]

you mean it is about revenue? not safety?

Of course it is about revenue. Governments need revenue to operate. A tax on speeders seems like a good way to do it.

What exactly does operate means? Is it by chance "spend a imperial fuckton of money on drones to catch a few drivers that will quickly learn to adapt?" followed by "raise taxes to pay back the wasted fuckton"?

Re:Risk vs. Reward?

[Kahlandad]

you mean it is about revenue? not safety?

Of course it is about revenue. Governments need revenue to operate. A tax on speeders seems like a good way to do it.

Exactly! How else are they going to pay for those 30,000 new drones?

Re:Risk vs. Reward?

[R3d M3rcury]

As far as I'm concerned, the law should simply say, "You may not travel at a speed that is unsafe for the current road conditions." Anything demanding strict conformance to a posted number (rather than driving at a speed that feels safe) is just asking for people to ignore the law...

This always sounds like a good idea. Here's the problem, though: Who decides that the speed was unsafe?

Obviously, you wouldn't be driving at an unsafe speed. So you're cruising down that rain-slicked highway at 85 MPH and everything is fine until some other idiot who doesn't believe 85 MPH is a safe speed shows up in front you doing 50. As you slam into the back of him, you think, "This isn't my fault! It's that idiot driving 50 MPH! I was perfectly safe until he showed up!"

Yes, in an ideal world, we would all drive at a safe speed and be respectful of each other. But the reality is that you have different people with different driving abilities and different cars with different capabilities and the whole idea that everybody on the freeway can be trusted to "do the right thing" is completely absurd. That's why you need to have an arbitrary number.

Re:Risk vs. Reward?

[girlintraining]

In addition to that, what is it going to do with an already over stressed Air Traffic Control system?

The ATC system is "over stressed" because of large numbers of commercial flights, of which the majority are shipping. UPS, DHS, FedEx... they all have larger fleets than any commercial airline you're flying.

Drones don't need runway clearances, etc., and as long as they maintain flight separation (vertical and horizontal) in controlled airspace they're a non-event. ATC could care less -- they probably wouldn't even be on radar anyway, since to my knowledge they don't carry transponders. Remember that guy who decided to go hook up a bunch of weather balloons and float through the LAX holding pattern? Their first indication of trouble was a pilot radioing that he saw some guy with a shotgun float by the window sucking down a beer.

Controllers don't usually look at the actual radar. It's all transponders. You could fly an aircraft carrier through the flight corridor and it would go unnoticed by ATC until someone called it in. -_-

Re:Risk vs. Reward?

[Runaway1956]

What is a "safe speed" anyway?

Speed limits are NOT set to safe speeds. They are set to maximize revenues. The 85th percentile was the standard, before politicians got involved in speed limits. Open up a highway, and post no speed limits at all. Monitor the speeds at which people travel. After a period of time, set the speed at the 85th percentile, and you have a safe speed. In the case of a blind curve or something, you should post a lower limit as a warning.

Enforcing the law just because it is the law is moronic. Change the law.

One of the first lessons of leaderships is, "Never give an order that you know will not be obeyed." Ask any military officer of NCO/petty officer.

You know, I know, everyone in America knows that the nationwide 55 mph limit was ignored while it was in effect. Ditto with many speed limits around the nation.

Go back to the 85th percentile, then aggressively go after people who break THAT law. Stop robbing people for conforming to the flow of traffic.

Re:Risk vs. Reward?

[drinkypoo]

You are too late with your helpful suggestion. Obamacare is a tax on everyone who lives. Doesn't matter if *you* do not need insurance. Big Brother knows best.

We all pay into fire services so that when someone else's house is burning, it gets put out, because burning houses are toxic and because they might light our house on fire. We pay into society because if society burns down we all fail.

Whether Obamacare is a good implementation is another question, I personally think the answer is no. Whether national health is a good idea, however... if you don't think so, you need to come down off your ivory tower and take a look at what is going on in this country. Unless you really are of the mindset that we should simply let the unproductive die, in which case I hope you die of ass cancer.

Re:Risk vs. Reward?

[ShanghaiBill]

I would hazard a guess that we have roughly the same percentage of morons driving to fast for conditions as can be found in Europe, Asia, or anywhere else.

Your guess would be wrong. American roads are among the safest in the world. There are a few countries in North Europe that are better, but nearly everywhere else is far worse. Citation:List of countries by traffic related death rate. When you look at this chart, you should ignore the meaningless raw death rate (many countries have few cars) and instead look at the number of deaths per 100k cars or number of deaths per billion miles driven.

Re:Risk vs. Reward?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cameras on poles aren't able to accurately judge a vehicle's speed

Rubbish.

Cameras on pole A (one near the ground, to read license plates, and one at the top of the pole, for accurate location info, and maybe to catch vandals working over the one near the ground) simultaneously take a picture every time a car passes through a target zone in front of it (using e.g. ultrasound ranging sensor, light curtain, whatever, to detect it); similar cameras on pole B 100m up the road do the same. If a picture of the same car is taken by both camera clusters within ~3.6 seconds, it's going over 100km/h, and since both cameras are aimed, and the target zones are set, to ensure best visibility of the license plates, we'll be able to tell whether it's really the same car, or an identical car with different plates. To compute the exact speed, we must consider the position in the top camera's view -- but since it's looking almost straight down, parallax is negligible, so you just measure the distance along the roadway (for bonus points, have reflectors in the roadway at precisely known spacings, use these both for initial calibration and to defend the accuracy of the measurement in court) in each picture and add/subtract to the 100m baseline.

And yeah, when some dumb-arse says "that's just an average speed, you can't prove I ever traveled that exact speed", we call a high school maths teacher as an expert witness to explain the mean value theorem.

Re:Risk vs. Reward?

[They'reComingToTakeM]

"Cameras on poles aren't able to accurately judge a vehicle's speed"

They can in the UK, where they're networked together and know how far apart they are.
If you show up at camera #2 before camera #1 told it you'd be there, that's a ticket.

Re:Risk vs. Reward?

[mrvan]

Interesting wiki link, thanks!

If you compare the US with mostly "developing" nations, you are right, and I would guess that a lot of them are caused by bad roads, bad cars, and really bad driving, the latter presumably caused by easy to get licenses and bad policing.

If you compare the US to some OECD countries, the picture is different:

Country / deaths per 100k vehicles / deaths per 1B miles
USA / 15 / 8.5
Germany / 7.2 / 7.2
Netherlands / 7 / 5.6
Switzerland / 7 / 5.6
Sweden / 7 / 5.1
Belgium / 17 / 10.8
Italy / 12 / ?
Poland / 18 / 23.5
Serbia / 43 / ?
Egypt / 188 / ?
India / 315 /
Nigeria / 1042 / ?

So, the US has twice the per-vehicle death rate of countries like the Netherlands (really crowded), Germany (really fast driving), Switzerland (mountain roads and inclement weather) and Sweden (low population density). The per-mile deaths are higher (but not so much higher) than germany, and still a lot higher than the smaller countries. Even southern European countries like Italy but also Spain and France (both around 10) have less deaths/vehicle, even though people have "interesting" driving habits there. Unlisted countries like Sweden, the UK, denmark etc. are mostly similar to the Netherlands / Germany. Belgium is a weird outlier, as they are quite similar to the Netherlands in a lot of respects but have a much higher death rate.

Eastern (central) european countries like Poland but especially Serbia are a lot worse, and it seems to loosely correspond with economic development. If you look at countries like Egypt or India it becomes pretty bad, and a lot of African countries have >1000 deaths per 100k vehicles, e.g. a >1% annual death rate for vehicle owners. (That means that if you drive for 30 years, there is a chance of a fatal accident of around 25%... yikes!)

From the list above, it seems that there is a rough predictability of the danger of traffic based on national income and maybe population density, but the US is certainly on the "wrong end" of the prediction, comparable to Germany or Sweden in terms of wealth and population density, but with much higher death rates.

Re:Risk vs. Reward?

[ebno-10db]

Here's the entire list of services provided by speed traps:

• 0: Revenue generation

I triple checked but I can't find "safety" anywhere in that list.

Nonsense. They help to safely ensconce our public servants in their jobs.

Hellfire Enema

[stevegee58]

I've seen one or two drivers on the Turnpike that could have used a Hellfire missile up the tailpipe.

Re:Hellfire Enema

[mjwx]

So the question is,

Will these drones be targeting tailgaters? If not, when can this feature be implemented.

Too late - local papers are using them now

[WillAffleckUW]

It's too late, the local Seattle paper The Stranger is already using drones in public, under both the First Amendment (free press) and Second Amendment (Right To Bear Drones).

Wake up and smell the privacy-disabled future!

(caveat - Canadians have privacy rights, and technically the Washington State Constitution has strong privacy rights - but there are still drones)

Oh come on

[Bruce Perens]

Mounting things to light poles is 10,000 times more practical.

My most interesting experience

[OhANameWhatName]

Is riding on the autobahn in heavy, heavy traffic. 5 lanes, no speed limits. The left lane was doing 70kph, second left 80, 90, 100 and the right lane was 'as fast as you want'. If someone in the right lane saw somebody bearing down on them, they switched one lane to the left and let them past. But you hardly saw anyone driving above 120, and I didn't see a single soul above 130. The car doing 130 was a brand new Porsche on a flat straight stretch of road ... a perfectly safe speed for such a car.

All lanes moved smoothly, if you needed to change lanes .. just flip on the indicator and the next person let you in. Nobody cutting people off, driving aggressively or getting frustrated. Everyone was driving very sensibly and patiently, with 60% of the people driving slower than what the marked speed limits would say if you were in Australia.

If you can drive however fast you want .. you make a conscious decision on how fast you want to drive. Give someone a limit and they react to that limit. Either by driving right on it, exceeding it or being aggressive toward others driving in their own way in relation to the limit.

Speed limits are a mechanism of control. They're designed to fill your head with ideas that you otherwise wouldn't have were you thinking without limits. The limits don't limit the speed of the car, they impact the mind of the driver. The more troubled the mind of the driver, the greater the impact of the limit. Roads are unsafe because of the impact of speed limits on drivers, not because of drivers exceeding speed limits.

Take the red pill.

Will somebody please RTFA for once?

[rockout]

The summary is mostly to blame here, because it leads you to believe the exact opposite of what's happening in the NJ state legislature - namely, that the bills introduced are all to RESTRICT drone usage in NJ. Even the least restrictive proposal seeks to require a warrant for their use and outright bans them for use in traffic or speed limit violation instances. The most restrictive seeks to ban them completely from the state.

Thanks for jumping the gun, everyone, and assuming that there's going to be speeding tickets handed out via drones in NJ. Blame slashdot if you want, but in the end, you're the morons for not RTFA.