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RF Safe-Stop Shuts Down Car Engines With Radio Pulse
An anonymous reader writes with news of a device built by a company in the U.K. which uses pulses of electromagnetic energy to disrupt the electronic systems of modern cars, causing them to shut down and cut the engine. Here's a description of how it works:
"At one end of a disused runway, E2V assembled a varied collection of second-hand cars and motorbikes in order to test the prototype against a range of vehicles. In demonstrations seen by the BBC a car drove towards the device at about 15mph (24km/h). As the vehicle entered the range of the RF Safe-stop, its dashboard warning lights and dials behaved erratically, the engine stopped and the car rolled gently to a halt. Digital audio and video recording devices in the vehicle were also affected.''It's a small radar transmitter,' said Andy Wood, product manager for the machine. 'The RF [radio frequency] is pulsed from the unit just as it would be in radar, it couples into the wiring in the car and that disrupts and confuses the electronics in the car causing the engine to stall.'"
those high-powered NSA satellites can do this from orbit. No, this is NOT meant to be a troll post. I wonder if a country could actually orbit a satellite with enough power and a spot beam to stop cars in an entire city... in the name of anti-terrorism, of course.
Toil is Stupid. Don't be Stupid.
So there are some potentially cool applications of this - stopping a criminal in a car chase with police, for example - but it has massive potential for crime as well. Stopping cars at night, in secluded areas, to steal them and/or assault the passengers? Or causing mayhem by stopping cars on freeways, not all of which will slow at the same speed, leading to massive pile-ups.
William George
Are fly by wire brakes even legal? It was my understanding that there must always be a mechanical linkage between the brake pedal and the brakes, just to give you a hail mary if your brake booter craps out.
I read the internet for the articles.
won't work if you drive a plastic car ['Vette, Saturn] but with metal bodywork your average care is already half way to being a Faraday cage. A concealed job of finishing that cage would be difficult but most openings just need a grounded hardware cloth covering of proper mesh [must study TFA to see what frequency is used].
Active jamming to cancel out the incoming waves is not likely due to the high frequency they probably use.
BTW, do they test this thing on Dick Cheney to see if it shuts down pacemakers?
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
The car is already a pretty good Faraday Cage, being mostly metal.
The fact that this took so long to arrive in a viable product (it it is in fact viable) suggest how difficult the task of shutting down a car is. Presumably it is getting easier, because cars are no so much more dependent on computers.
The problem I see is that unless this device can be triggered precisely upon arrival of the target vehicle, you would end up clogging a freeway with 40 stalled vehicles just as your getaway car arrives. So you dump your desperate criminal in a bunch of helpless and confused hostages. If you could aim it, and and make it safe enough to carry on a helicopter you might have a useful product.
As described it sounds simply like another over-reaction tool for police.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.