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FCC Allocates More Bandwidth to Transportation
Ydeologi writes "MSNBC is running this story on the FCC finally getting around to allocating a more significant chunk of the airwaves for "intelligent transportation" services. "
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First was the information superhighway, now we'll be hearing about superhighway information.
Esteem isn't a zero sum game
Antelope Freeway. One Quarter Mile.
Innit, a guy is testing out a new car; along with conversations you hear road signs "speaking" to him in the background.
Antelope Freeway. One Eigth Mile.
Cool stuff.
Antelope Freeway. One Sixteenth Mile.
Stefan
Yup. Opticom, from 3M.
10. Thunderstorm in California; traffic slows down in NYC.
9. Forgot to go to the garage to get that new Service Pack.
8. Windshield is overtaken by a slew of porn site ads.
7. Incompatibility between your car's OS and the highway's OS.
6. Got distracted by all the pretty iCars.
5. That's what you get for running a beta!
4. Instead of the fancy car with all the extra options, you should have chosen that reliable, Open Source car...
3. Your car is highjacked by a script kiddie and driven into a ditch.
2. "What are you talking about? There's no Ctrl-Alt-Del in my car!"
And the #1 accident of the future...
1. It was a bad idea to advertise your new car on Slashdot...
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
In a lot of the sci-fi books I read, all space travel vehicles have some sort of automatic identification transmitter. (You learn of this when the ship is stolen and the transmitter is disabled.) This new allocation of frequencies sets the stage for this possibility becoming a reality far before space travel becomes common.
How long can it be before all cars will have transmitters built-in that can be set with the VIN and other data like license plate number? This data could be used instead of video or photo evidence now used to automatically identify cars violating laws such as not paying tolls etc. I imagine the data would be much easier to store and search through--and gather. This could definitely be a big privacy issue.
Unlike computers, you already need to have cars registered. It would be easy to alter the laws to require a transmitter as well as a license plate. I also think it could be quite easy to gather this data by deploying sensors at various places like intersections. Many intersections already have sensors to activate the light. Surely it would not be that costly to build a box to gather transmitted data.
Of course this could have benefits, hit and runs may be easier to trace, but imagine the government being able to have that information, and possible even sell that information. They can sell your information that they gather at the DMV why not this?
The biggest barrier is not cost of all the transmitters and receivers. That could be funded by selling data or by other automotive related fees. The biggest barrier will be standardization. It is unlikely that all 50 states will work together on such a system; they can't even work together on automated toll systems. But if some clever company made the product, it may well be able to market it to eager communities and states.
--- If you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question.
This technology is really cool. With the right encryption, it would be workable for a lot of car devices. I look forward to the day when every automobile contains a camera mounted right behind the rearview mirror, looking out the front window of the car. Why? This is the best place to put a camera if you want universal (or nearly so) video coverage.
Yes, this is like 1984, but no it won't be an awful thing, because the cameras will be privately owned and controlled by the owners of the cars.
-owners will have complete control of the video
-owners will have the option of giving others access to their video
-if owners don't want anyone to use their camera, that's their right
-when you're in public, there are very few places where you're not in view of a car somewhere
-if you're being video taped all the time in public places, few will commit crimes.
-if the police hear about crimes, they can use the car cams that they have permission to use, and no others
-if you're at home in your living room, you're safe unless you park your car next to the TV.
Orwell wrote a good book, but the difference was that he wrote about cameras in a totalitarian society. We don't live in one of those, and cameras won't bring such a society about either. Take a look at who gets in trouble with cameras. When was the last time you saw your neighbor doing illegal things on film? Hardly ever. Instead, we've got plenty of examples of politicians getting in trouble with cameras. Think LAPD (Rodney King) or the Clinton aid caught with the hooker. Universal cameras be worse for politicians than for everyday people.
OK, and besides cameras in cars, I would like to have this technology used to provide web browser services in my car. On long drives my mind wanders a lot, and in the course of my thoughts I frequently come up with questions which the web certainly holds the answers to. It would be nice to have the luxury of instant gratification in those circumstances.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
It seems pretty simple to me: Tracking vehicles. Not just tens or hundreds, but millions simultaneously. Oh, it'll be dressed up with some noble language like "It can help the tow truck find you when you break down" or "It can direct you away from traffic jams", but none of these things require the vehicle to broadcast data (and with the mandatory cellular location features, its position) all the time.
If you travel by bus or airline, your movements are easily tracked. Now we're looking at this being true for personal automobile travel as well. Surveillance society, here we come.
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
The real root of our car problem is cheap fuel and sprawl development. In the long run, IVHS won't reduce accident rates or congestion anywhere near as effectively as a $10/gallon hike to the gas tax.
The frequency block allocated is 5.850 to 9.925 Gigahertz. That is 75MHz of spectrum. For comparison, the entire FM stereo block is just 20MHz. But at these high frequencies spectrum is cheaper. These frequencies also require more-or-less a clear line-of-sight for communication and the hardware to use it is more expensive. Such frequencies require GaAs RF components and are currently beyond the reach of cheap silicon MMIC (microwave monolithic ICs).
But this is going change with the ongoing improvements to silicon processes. Soon this band and the unlicensed NII band (National Information Infrastructure - 5.725-5.825 GHz) will be supported by cheap mass-produced high-integration silicon.
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Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
A lot of posters here have so far raised some valid concerns, but as someone who is involved in the IVHS world (specifically electronic toll collection systems) I think I can say that this is a good thing for the FCC to do, and it helps the development of a technology that has already proven very beneficial.
Privacy concerns are common, but in every existing implementation of this sort of system legal safeguards are put in place. None of these systems can be used for speed enforcement purposes; in fact the only ticket you can get from a toll collection system is one for blowing through the toll with an expired account (or no account at all). These systems are also generally required by law to either provide a way of anonymizing the user or to provide a means of defeating the system (i.e. disable the tag so that the account isnt read if you're on a trip you want noone to keep a record of).
As far as the benefit and convenience, these things speak for themselves: ask anyone who uses E-ZPass on the East Coast, Florida SunPass, CalTrans' FasTrak, Atlanta's GA400 Cruise Card, and a host of others. Some states use a similar system for truckers, called PrePass, which uses transponders and weigh-in-motion scales built into the interstate to allow truckers to bypass weigh stations while still having their weight checked.
Some cities, such as Houston, use the transponders for the toll-collection systems in a secondary traffic-management role : antennas around the city monitor the flow of traffic and detect traffic jams and other problems by sampling the movement of the transponders. In this case, the account and other vehicle information isn't used, just the fact that vehicles are moving about is information enough.
Some models of radar detector can already read signals and warn of emergency vehicles and/or receive text messages sent by a portable roadside antenna; these can warn of traffic congestion problems, accidents, etc., and are another way of helping traffic flow. The biggest problem contributing to traffic jams stemming from accidents etc, is that by the time drivers know about a problem, they've gone too far to turn around or take an alternate route.
In short, traffic management systems using radio transmitters and other technologies are already in place in various locations. Steps like the FCC has taken will help all of these sytems standardize and become interoperable, which will help everyone on the road.
Sites that don't allow one to leave the place using the browser's back button (like this MSNBC site) deserve to be either slashdotted or boycotted, I'm not sure which. It's damn user-unfriendly site design.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
I can forsee a great potential for abuse here...
(regarding the toll booth thing, for example) Okay, assume you're not broadcasting a cc#, just an ID number.. What's to prevent someone copying that and running up charges on your account?
The fact is, that any system like this can be duplicated and abused, while it's in its infancy.. Look at all the fraud that has occured (and still occurs) with cell-phone theft.. It's not hard to see that the system is becoming available before the means to secure it.
Yes, it could be secure. Public-key cryptography could make a system secure by, for example, the toll-booth broadcasting a key out to encrypt with (just off the top of my head, so don't take it as fact or anything).. But how much do you want to bet that security has not been implemented to the point where you, or I, or Joe Cracker thinks it's secure?
Any system that involves automatic transfer of funds or services needs absolute security within unreasonable limits before I will adopt it. Plain and simple. By "unreasonable limits," I mean limits that are above and beyond my expectations. If there's a chance I could crack the system myself in under a month, I won't go for it. Forget it. I'll stick to cash, thanks.
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- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
This extra spectrum is for purposes above and beyond the useful little things like that.Do not make the mistake of believing that the explanation for this action is the same as the reason for it.
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.