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Ford Develops a Way To Monitor Police Driving
cartechboy writes Sometimes you wonder, "Who's watching the police?" Well, now it appears everyone can as Ford has developed a way to track how the police drive. The automaker has announced a new telematics system for police cars that will keep tabs on the cops while they are driving, tracking their behavior in real time. The system will be able to tell what speed the police offers are traveling, whether they're wearing their seat belts, and where they're driving. The idea behind this system is to improve fleet management with a side benefit of creating a degree of transparency to improve public trust.
I just got a message from the future!
It read: ...and the police have been using this system for several years without a problem. Why not apply it to the general public for the sake of safety...
It's greatly tempting, when replying to slashdot comments, to find something to be contrary about, and argue forever.
Like that there are more shitty cops than we collectively like to acknowledge, or that, systemically, these kinds of measures just cause bad apples to be sneakier.
But the reality is that you're right. Transparency measures don't have to fix everything to be a good idea. There don't need to be a strong super-majority of flawless police to appreciate that most are just people doing their best. This is the only attitude that has any hope of working to a future where no one distrusts cops.
This is solving the wrong problem. Focus on preventing the police from unjustly murdering, imprisoning, and harassing people first, then worry about how they drive. That will go a lot further toward building some trust in the police.
Years and years ago while working 3rd shift in college I stepped out for a smoke. Two cops, no lights/sirens, lined up at a stop light in the deserted 4-lane manufacturing district street. Both of them waited for the light to turn green, and buried the pedal. At the next stop light, both cops hit their red and blue lights and did a high speed U-turn. They raced all the way up to the original stop light and then drove off at more acceptable speeds.
I ask the other smokers what the heck that was and their response was, "They do that every night."
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Of course it should refer to defectives in the police farce.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
"We apologize, but it seems that the system was malfunctioning between the times of 7pm and 11pm last night. This was a temporary outage, but sadly the history relevant to the event in question was lost. We greatly regret the losses incurred by the families attending the bat mitzvah, and we promise that our standard investigative procedures will determine whether there is any culpability by the officers. Pending the results of the investigation, our officers have been placed on paid leave, as they have suffered tremendous trauma due to the tragic situation."
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
I'm sorry, $5 a month (the Progressive Snapshot thing) discount on what is typically a $100+ monthly payment is not worth them tracking my driving habits.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
The system will "malfunction" and fail to record data when it matters, so who cares.
Wait... what the fuck good will it do?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Sure, either that or reckless driving.
Police generally have a track or other private area to train on. Public roads aren't it.
I have worked with automated vehicle locator data throughout the US as a source of data integrated into my company's products. Getting a fire department's AVL data is easy. Never had any objections if they have the hardware installed. Getting police AVL data is next to impossible in most places thanks to the union agreements. I am unaware of a single US police department that has AVL on by default for their vehicles. Those that have AVL systems installed have it configured so the officer can turn it on and off, usually at the flip of a switch on the dashboard.
It's such an issue with the unions that we've had trouble with getting some departments to have AVL enabled in the police cruisers leading and following a parade just for the duration of the parade. It makes the command center's job much easier if they know the exact extents of where the parade is in real time, but you can figure out the information in other ways so it would seem like something that wouldn't get a lot of push back. I can't even imagine trying to get an always on system installed in a department, regardless of who you pitch it to.
It won't bring down insurance rates because the police unions will never allow it to be implemented. It's not like there was a technical hurdle to gathering this data before and Ford just 'solved' the problem, the issue is that the public employees that are supposed to enforce the law increasingly see themselves as above the law.
Enigma
Today it's a discount. In 5 years no one will offer you insurance without it. (And the WAN connection to stay in touch...)