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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.
Any bets on whether the public will ever see a single byte of this data?
The differences between applying this to the police and to the general public are that the police are public servants (they work for the public) and they are endowed with special powers above and beyond a "normal citizen" (arrest, ability to use force in some cases, etc). They do a valuable service, but this power can also lead to abuses. Making police activities more transparent helps assure the public that their powers aren't being abused. This justification wouldn't apply to your average citizen. (This isn't to say that the police wouldn't love to apply it to everyone. Just that any reasoning to that end would be flawed.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Over a decade ago, Siemens offered a system that offered all of this. It would automatically alert dispatch if a vehicle left a specified area, the shotgun was dismounted, lights were on, vehicle was exceeding a certain speed without lights on, etc... I worked with the public transit version which had similar features, but the local PD was there with us for quite a bit evaluating how we were using it to possibly start using it on their fleet. This was in 2004.
Welcome to the real world:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V...
Specifically:
In April 2014 it was reported that U.S. regulators were close to approving V2V standards for the U.S. market, and that officials were planning for the technology to become mandatory by 2017
That combined with new mandatory CAN Buss in every car. A cop will be able to roll by you and know you've had a taillight out for 3 weeks without fixing it. You'll get a ticket on our cellphone. That's progress for you :-)
it would be awesome if it automatically deducted money from their pay every time they violated the laws.
"I'm sorry officer, you've exceeded the speed limit. I'm deducting $150 dollars from your next pay check and assigning two points to your license. Thank you for using Johnny Law, he he!"
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Good, just in time for my Kickstarter ODB-II/CAN datalink "test simulator for TESTING PURPOSES ONLY". Everyone will plug them together and toss them in the trunk.
I worked in IT for a police force for a time. These systems have already been in place for more than 10 years, Ford is just making them an option on the Interceptor rather than requiring an after-market solution. And yes, police do get in shit for going 50kph over the speed limit without their siren on. Not that that stopped some of them.
I doubt that you've got the overhead of legal payouts we have. On two occasions, I've had insurance payouts from fender benders that included $5,000+ medical payoffs when nobody was actually injured. The insurance industry does this in order to get the individual to sign off and not take them to court where the costs would be much higher.
Just a side note on the fender benders. The first one was clearly a set up...the woman slammed on the brakes in front of me for no clear reason. She had a child in the back seat with stitches in his head from another recent "accident". The collision occurred under 5mph. Police and Fire came by, and no injuries were recorded. She filed a medical claim, and was bought off.
The other case was my daughter's, and she admitted guilt, but similarly there were under $1,000 in vehicle damages, and more than a $5k medical payout. This shit happens way too much in the U.S., and it seems nobody is making an effort to put an end to it.
Just another day in Paradise