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!

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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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.