Motorists face new 'Big Brother' technology
Discussion
Motorists face new 'Big Brother' technology
Juliette Jowit, transport editor
Sunday December 21, 2003
The Observer
After speed cameras, road humps and mobile phone bans, there could be more bad news for Britain's motorists. Police are urging Ministers to give them the power to stop vehicles by remote control.
In what will be seen as yet another example of the in-creasing power of Big Brother, drivers face the prospect of their cars being halted by somebody pushing a button.
The police lobby is being led by Superintendent Jim Hammond of Sussex police, who chairs an Association of Chief Police Officers technology working group which is examining the idea.
'Providing an effective means to remotely stop a vehicle is fast becoming a priority,' Hammond told a European conference. 'The development of a safe and controlled system to enable remote stopping has the potential to directly save lives.'
However, Bert Morris, deputy director of the AA Motoring Trust said: 'People don't like the idea of Big Brother taking over their driving. In years to come that might be acceptable, but it's very, very important that there's a step-by-step approach.'
Cars could be stopped by the gradual reduction of engine power so it slowly comes to a stop, or by making sure when drivers come to a halt they can not move again.
Stopping cars remotely sounds futuristic, but the basic technology is already available and used in lorries to limit the top speed to 56mph and in new systems to immobilise stolen cars.
The key is the electronics box in most new cars which, when the driver presses the accelerator or brake, sends a message to the engine to speed up or slow down. It can be programmed to limit the speed generally or according to the position of the car, established via a GPS satellite. For remote operation, a modem, which works like a mobile phone, can be used tell the car to slow down or stop.
Similar radio telemetry was used by Formula One pit crews to adjust the engines of racing cars at up to 200mph - until it was banned this year.
'The technology exists and will become more refined as time goes on,' said Nick Rendell, managing director of the Siemens business developing this technology in the UK.
A senior police officer - assumed to be the chief constable or deputy - can already give the order to stop a car remotely, but that power has rarely if ever been used, said Morris. To use any new powers more widely, police must first overcome some practical problems to reassure Ministers that vehicles would be stopped safety. Ministers will also want reassurances that drivers would not be mistakenly stopped.
ACPO insists that it would only introduce the technology when it was safe. It is calling on the Government to introduce the legislation which it says will be vital to stop vehicles when - as expected - manufacturers develop tyres that run when they are flat. This will make 'stingers' - the spiked strips thrown in front of speeding cars - useless to stop stolen and get-away cars or dangerous drivers.
It is also linked to pressure to make cars 'pointless to steal' because of growing concern about more violent car crime as vehicles become harder to take. The RAC Foundation recently found there were as many as 1,200 car jackings in Britain last year.
Another link is to technology which would stop cars going above certain speed limits - either a fixed maximum such as 70mph, or varying according to the local limit.
The system could even be programmed to reduce speeds below the limit in bad weather or when school children were expected to be about, said Robert Gifford, director of the Parliamentary Advisory Committee on Transport Safety, which believes the technology could cut the 3,420 deaths a year on Britain's roads by 59 per cent.
Experts now believe the technology could start to be used voluntarily by the end of the decade and ultimately could be made mandatory.
News link here:http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1111211,00.html
What happen's if this device fall's into the wrong hands
. Atb Derek
Juliette Jowit, transport editor
Sunday December 21, 2003
The Observer
After speed cameras, road humps and mobile phone bans, there could be more bad news for Britain's motorists. Police are urging Ministers to give them the power to stop vehicles by remote control.
In what will be seen as yet another example of the in-creasing power of Big Brother, drivers face the prospect of their cars being halted by somebody pushing a button.
The police lobby is being led by Superintendent Jim Hammond of Sussex police, who chairs an Association of Chief Police Officers technology working group which is examining the idea.
'Providing an effective means to remotely stop a vehicle is fast becoming a priority,' Hammond told a European conference. 'The development of a safe and controlled system to enable remote stopping has the potential to directly save lives.'
However, Bert Morris, deputy director of the AA Motoring Trust said: 'People don't like the idea of Big Brother taking over their driving. In years to come that might be acceptable, but it's very, very important that there's a step-by-step approach.'
Cars could be stopped by the gradual reduction of engine power so it slowly comes to a stop, or by making sure when drivers come to a halt they can not move again.
Stopping cars remotely sounds futuristic, but the basic technology is already available and used in lorries to limit the top speed to 56mph and in new systems to immobilise stolen cars.
The key is the electronics box in most new cars which, when the driver presses the accelerator or brake, sends a message to the engine to speed up or slow down. It can be programmed to limit the speed generally or according to the position of the car, established via a GPS satellite. For remote operation, a modem, which works like a mobile phone, can be used tell the car to slow down or stop.
Similar radio telemetry was used by Formula One pit crews to adjust the engines of racing cars at up to 200mph - until it was banned this year.
'The technology exists and will become more refined as time goes on,' said Nick Rendell, managing director of the Siemens business developing this technology in the UK.
A senior police officer - assumed to be the chief constable or deputy - can already give the order to stop a car remotely, but that power has rarely if ever been used, said Morris. To use any new powers more widely, police must first overcome some practical problems to reassure Ministers that vehicles would be stopped safety. Ministers will also want reassurances that drivers would not be mistakenly stopped.
ACPO insists that it would only introduce the technology when it was safe. It is calling on the Government to introduce the legislation which it says will be vital to stop vehicles when - as expected - manufacturers develop tyres that run when they are flat. This will make 'stingers' - the spiked strips thrown in front of speeding cars - useless to stop stolen and get-away cars or dangerous drivers.
It is also linked to pressure to make cars 'pointless to steal' because of growing concern about more violent car crime as vehicles become harder to take. The RAC Foundation recently found there were as many as 1,200 car jackings in Britain last year.
Another link is to technology which would stop cars going above certain speed limits - either a fixed maximum such as 70mph, or varying according to the local limit.
The system could even be programmed to reduce speeds below the limit in bad weather or when school children were expected to be about, said Robert Gifford, director of the Parliamentary Advisory Committee on Transport Safety, which believes the technology could cut the 3,420 deaths a year on Britain's roads by 59 per cent.
Experts now believe the technology could start to be used voluntarily by the end of the decade and ultimately could be made mandatory.
News link here:http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1111211,00.html
What happen's if this device fall's into the wrong hands
. Atb DerekEvery move you make…
Telegraph Motoring, 20.12.03
Will the launch of new satellite monitoring system improve road safety or threaten our civil liberties? Andrew English investigates
George Orwell's Big Brother moved a step closer last month with the launch of a new in-car "black box" system and data bank that was endorsed by the Irish government as a major contribution to road safety.
The £215 (300 euros) black box, which will be distributed via fleet service companies and fitted to company vehicles, measures speed, position and distance travelled via a global positioning satellite (GPS). When the system goes live next year, this data will be stored in a new European Safety Data Vault, housed in Ireland, where it will available to public agencies, the police, insurers, car makers, lawyers and fleet companies.
The system's developers — IBM, Safety Intelligence Systems (SIS) and Celestica — claim that the information will help to improve road safety, hasten the response of emergency services and cut insurance fraud, thereby reducing annual premiums. They say the data recorders will immediately notify the emergency services when road crashes occur and provide accurate and objective information about them.
The first customers for the service are those of Minorplanet, a company supplying vehicle management to big fleets. Over the next three years, information from its 8,000 customers around the world and their 200,000 vehicles will be placed in the European data vault and, ultimately, a global data bank. The company will fit the black box to all new customer vehicles and eventually, as an upgrade, to all its existing ones.
Although satellite-based, data-gathering devices have existed for some years, they have mostly been used by big fleet operators to increase productivity. They are, however, particularly well suited to a number of forthcoming initiatives from government agencies and companies.
The IBM/SIS system is being sold on safety, and the Irish government, which takes presidency of the European Union in January, is keen to reduce the death toll on its roads. "I believe SIS and IBM's launch in Ireland of the black-box technology has the potential to make a significant contribution to this country's determined efforts to reduce deaths and injuries," said Irish transport minister Séamus Brennan. According the World Health Organisation, Irish road deaths have fallen in the past 10 years from 16 per 100,000 head of population to less than 10 per 100,000, but it still has a higher number of fatalities than Germany, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Britain or Sweden. Ireland also has a high death count per passenger miles compared with other developed European countries; in 1998 there were 13 road deaths per billion passenger miles in Ireland compared with five in Britain. The EU has set a target of reducing its road accident fatalities by half (from the current 39,200 to 20,000) by 2010 and the Irish government is keen to be seen to be doing something about it.
Black-box technology will also be essential to British road-pricing systems of the type championed by the chairman of the Commission for Integrated Transport (CfIT), Professor David Begg (see Telegraph Motoring, November 30, 2002). Begg claims a road-pricing system based on £200 GPS transponders (similar to IBM's black boxes) could reduce traffic congestion by up to 44 per cent on Britain's roads, although, as yet, nobody has adequately defined congestion. Motorists would be monitored by a satellite on their journeys and charged between 50p/km in the most congested areas and 1p/km in the least. The CfIT report, Paying For Road Use, claims: "63 per cent of vehicle miles would incur no charge at all," although Begg admits that since more than 80 per cent of traffic congestion is in urban areas (where most of us live), few people would escape paying something.
Another use for black-box monitoring is in the insurance industry. Norwich Union, which insures almost 20 per cent of Britain's 22 million cars, is about to go live with a trial of its own system — also developed by IBM using Celestica-manufacturered boxes. The company will fit a £215 black box (the size of a VHS video cassette) free to 5,000 cars belonging to volunteers from its existing customer base. The resulting data will give details of a car's position, speed, direction and the time of day. "The aim of `pay-as-you-drive' insurance is to get more accurate pricing, better transparency for your bill and more choice, so that people can choose whether to travel on a road, or at a time, that has a statistically higher risk than others," said a spokesman for Norwich Union, which denies it is merely using satellites to cherry-pick low-risk customers. He claims pay-as-you-drive is entirely self-financing, with separate internal accounts that will not be cross-subsidised from the conventional car insurance business, and that as customers will be able to identify the most dangerous routes and times to travel, road safety will also benefit.
Black-box technology also has its proponents in the police, who claim it could reduce vehicle crime and help in accident investigations. Road safety groups also like the technology, which has been used in successful trials of speed limiters on private cars. Customs and Excise favours a black-box, GPS-based system for its forthcoming Lorry Road User Charge, even though a similar scheme in Germany has not been an unalloyed success, with widespread equipment failures reported.
The list of black-box proponents goes on: even Britain's Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has recently issued new guidance to employers on their responsibilities to employees who drive in the course of their duties, which stresses the "monitoring" function of management. "Our guidance encourages employers to monitor in this way," said Mark Wheeler of the HSE, "and black boxes could be a useful management tool in meeting their responsibilities. We could never endorse a particular product or technology, however, and employers should consult their employees on the introduction of technology that could affect their health and safety."
All the proponents of this technology are fulsome in their praise and don't seem to have a problem with the amount of data it can gather on an individual. Begg claims that mobile telephones and credit cards also allow the authorities to track our movements (although these are voluntarily used by the public, unlike compulsory road-pricing technology, and such surveillance requires legal justification). Not everyone is so sure, though. "It's all very well to explain its safety benefits," said Barry Hugill of the civil liberties campaign group Liberty, "but it's everything else it can do that bothers us. This is basically a 24/7 tracking device and there are people who claim we need this product in cars, so that every driver would be under constant surveillance.
"What's equally scary is that once it's there, there's a potential for other people to gain access to the data. We all know cases where supposedly impregnable databases have been breached. This is potentially a stalker's fantasy."
You might think that drivers would find the idea of constant monitoring unacceptable. Not so, according to Andrew Tillman, founding director of Minorplanet, who claims that not one of his customers has complained about the civil-liberty implications of black boxes.
"As a driver of a company vehicle, I am being safeguarded by the system," he said, "from employers who put unreal deadlines on me and encourage me to drive too fast and too long." He even claims that one trade union official thanked him for his company's role in providing driver information to employers.
There's not been a peep out of Norwich Union customers either, according to its spokesman. "This is a voluntary system," he said, "and we have been snowed under with volunteers." He admitted that the black boxes could give information on drivers who broke speed limits, "but at this stage we have no desire to use any information on speed. We are collecting geographical data only and we have no intention in working out your average speed to challenge our customers in terms of their insurance premiums".
IBM is also unapologetic. "Data-protection law still applies; there is no change in the legislation for this data vault," said the company's European automotive telematics director, Pierre-Henri Gabriel. "When you subscribe to your car insurance, in your contract you agree to supply information to public agencies or the police. It is exactly the same with this system: no change."
But even if Big Brother is watching you, the Orwellian state is a way off yet. All parties in the Irish experiment see the insurance industry as the key to major adoption of black-box technology. "It's them that should be grabbing this by the balls," said a source. "That's the way to get the accident rates down."
Yet Norwich Union, which is running basically identical technology in its trial, is going nowhere near IBM and the Irish government's data vault. "The data we gather is for the Norwich Union only," said a spokesman. "It is protected by the UK laws on data protection, it's ours, we've spent a lot of money on it and we're not about to just give it away."
So that's one-nil to the cock-up theory versus George Orwell, then.
Telegraph Motoring, 20.12.03
Will the launch of new satellite monitoring system improve road safety or threaten our civil liberties? Andrew English investigates
George Orwell's Big Brother moved a step closer last month with the launch of a new in-car "black box" system and data bank that was endorsed by the Irish government as a major contribution to road safety.
The £215 (300 euros) black box, which will be distributed via fleet service companies and fitted to company vehicles, measures speed, position and distance travelled via a global positioning satellite (GPS). When the system goes live next year, this data will be stored in a new European Safety Data Vault, housed in Ireland, where it will available to public agencies, the police, insurers, car makers, lawyers and fleet companies.
The system's developers — IBM, Safety Intelligence Systems (SIS) and Celestica — claim that the information will help to improve road safety, hasten the response of emergency services and cut insurance fraud, thereby reducing annual premiums. They say the data recorders will immediately notify the emergency services when road crashes occur and provide accurate and objective information about them.
The first customers for the service are those of Minorplanet, a company supplying vehicle management to big fleets. Over the next three years, information from its 8,000 customers around the world and their 200,000 vehicles will be placed in the European data vault and, ultimately, a global data bank. The company will fit the black box to all new customer vehicles and eventually, as an upgrade, to all its existing ones.
Although satellite-based, data-gathering devices have existed for some years, they have mostly been used by big fleet operators to increase productivity. They are, however, particularly well suited to a number of forthcoming initiatives from government agencies and companies.
The IBM/SIS system is being sold on safety, and the Irish government, which takes presidency of the European Union in January, is keen to reduce the death toll on its roads. "I believe SIS and IBM's launch in Ireland of the black-box technology has the potential to make a significant contribution to this country's determined efforts to reduce deaths and injuries," said Irish transport minister Séamus Brennan. According the World Health Organisation, Irish road deaths have fallen in the past 10 years from 16 per 100,000 head of population to less than 10 per 100,000, but it still has a higher number of fatalities than Germany, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Britain or Sweden. Ireland also has a high death count per passenger miles compared with other developed European countries; in 1998 there were 13 road deaths per billion passenger miles in Ireland compared with five in Britain. The EU has set a target of reducing its road accident fatalities by half (from the current 39,200 to 20,000) by 2010 and the Irish government is keen to be seen to be doing something about it.
Black-box technology will also be essential to British road-pricing systems of the type championed by the chairman of the Commission for Integrated Transport (CfIT), Professor David Begg (see Telegraph Motoring, November 30, 2002). Begg claims a road-pricing system based on £200 GPS transponders (similar to IBM's black boxes) could reduce traffic congestion by up to 44 per cent on Britain's roads, although, as yet, nobody has adequately defined congestion. Motorists would be monitored by a satellite on their journeys and charged between 50p/km in the most congested areas and 1p/km in the least. The CfIT report, Paying For Road Use, claims: "63 per cent of vehicle miles would incur no charge at all," although Begg admits that since more than 80 per cent of traffic congestion is in urban areas (where most of us live), few people would escape paying something.
Another use for black-box monitoring is in the insurance industry. Norwich Union, which insures almost 20 per cent of Britain's 22 million cars, is about to go live with a trial of its own system — also developed by IBM using Celestica-manufacturered boxes. The company will fit a £215 black box (the size of a VHS video cassette) free to 5,000 cars belonging to volunteers from its existing customer base. The resulting data will give details of a car's position, speed, direction and the time of day. "The aim of `pay-as-you-drive' insurance is to get more accurate pricing, better transparency for your bill and more choice, so that people can choose whether to travel on a road, or at a time, that has a statistically higher risk than others," said a spokesman for Norwich Union, which denies it is merely using satellites to cherry-pick low-risk customers. He claims pay-as-you-drive is entirely self-financing, with separate internal accounts that will not be cross-subsidised from the conventional car insurance business, and that as customers will be able to identify the most dangerous routes and times to travel, road safety will also benefit.
Black-box technology also has its proponents in the police, who claim it could reduce vehicle crime and help in accident investigations. Road safety groups also like the technology, which has been used in successful trials of speed limiters on private cars. Customs and Excise favours a black-box, GPS-based system for its forthcoming Lorry Road User Charge, even though a similar scheme in Germany has not been an unalloyed success, with widespread equipment failures reported.
The list of black-box proponents goes on: even Britain's Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has recently issued new guidance to employers on their responsibilities to employees who drive in the course of their duties, which stresses the "monitoring" function of management. "Our guidance encourages employers to monitor in this way," said Mark Wheeler of the HSE, "and black boxes could be a useful management tool in meeting their responsibilities. We could never endorse a particular product or technology, however, and employers should consult their employees on the introduction of technology that could affect their health and safety."
All the proponents of this technology are fulsome in their praise and don't seem to have a problem with the amount of data it can gather on an individual. Begg claims that mobile telephones and credit cards also allow the authorities to track our movements (although these are voluntarily used by the public, unlike compulsory road-pricing technology, and such surveillance requires legal justification). Not everyone is so sure, though. "It's all very well to explain its safety benefits," said Barry Hugill of the civil liberties campaign group Liberty, "but it's everything else it can do that bothers us. This is basically a 24/7 tracking device and there are people who claim we need this product in cars, so that every driver would be under constant surveillance.
"What's equally scary is that once it's there, there's a potential for other people to gain access to the data. We all know cases where supposedly impregnable databases have been breached. This is potentially a stalker's fantasy."
You might think that drivers would find the idea of constant monitoring unacceptable. Not so, according to Andrew Tillman, founding director of Minorplanet, who claims that not one of his customers has complained about the civil-liberty implications of black boxes.
"As a driver of a company vehicle, I am being safeguarded by the system," he said, "from employers who put unreal deadlines on me and encourage me to drive too fast and too long." He even claims that one trade union official thanked him for his company's role in providing driver information to employers.
There's not been a peep out of Norwich Union customers either, according to its spokesman. "This is a voluntary system," he said, "and we have been snowed under with volunteers." He admitted that the black boxes could give information on drivers who broke speed limits, "but at this stage we have no desire to use any information on speed. We are collecting geographical data only and we have no intention in working out your average speed to challenge our customers in terms of their insurance premiums".
IBM is also unapologetic. "Data-protection law still applies; there is no change in the legislation for this data vault," said the company's European automotive telematics director, Pierre-Henri Gabriel. "When you subscribe to your car insurance, in your contract you agree to supply information to public agencies or the police. It is exactly the same with this system: no change."
But even if Big Brother is watching you, the Orwellian state is a way off yet. All parties in the Irish experiment see the insurance industry as the key to major adoption of black-box technology. "It's them that should be grabbing this by the balls," said a source. "That's the way to get the accident rates down."
Yet Norwich Union, which is running basically identical technology in its trial, is going nowhere near IBM and the Irish government's data vault. "The data we gather is for the Norwich Union only," said a spokesman. "It is protected by the UK laws on data protection, it's ours, we've spent a lot of money on it and we're not about to just give it away."
So that's one-nil to the cock-up theory versus George Orwell, then.
Being the utter genius that i am (muwahahahahaha) this would be exceedingly easy to defeat.
Besides which, just HOW are they gonna fit it to my car WITH my permission?
Wont happen, cos by that time Labia wont be in power again for the next 40 years.
Body, dead, mine, over. Nuff said.
Besides which, just HOW are they gonna fit it to my car WITH my permission?
Wont happen, cos by that time Labia wont be in power again for the next 40 years.
Body, dead, mine, over. Nuff said.
Scenario one: Scrote steals your car and he realises it is now slowing down and will stop any second now.
Scrote starts looking for another car to steal/car-jack to complete his journey as there certainly will not be a cop car around..
Scenario two: Scrote steals your car and knows that if he comes to a complete stop at any time, that is the end of his journey.
Scrote takes ridiculous risks to avoid coming to a stop.
Yup, seems like a great contribution to motoring...
>> Edited by hedders on Sunday 21st December 11:16
Scrote starts looking for another car to steal/car-jack to complete his journey as there certainly will not be a cop car around..
Scenario two: Scrote steals your car and knows that if he comes to a complete stop at any time, that is the end of his journey.
Scrote takes ridiculous risks to avoid coming to a stop.
Yup, seems like a great contribution to motoring...
>> Edited by hedders on Sunday 21st December 11:16
Its amazing how stupid the Ha Ha tosspot captains of industry and senior civil service are isn't it? Their public school education is fantastic, they can tell jokes in greek, pontificate endlessly about historical fact but present them with technology and they smile, agree heartilly and secretly squirm because they fail to understand a word of it. Within weeks of this rubbish going live there will be boxes on sale to tell the system you are somewhere else. To kid the system you are at home, and no doubt to monitor where others are so you can go and roll them over while they are out. All of that without the reprogramming with a sledge hammer option which of course is always open to everyone. 
It really would be much cheaper to just reprogramme Begg with a red hot poker up his arse.
It really would be much cheaper to just reprogramme Begg with a red hot poker up his arse.
mad jock said:
How about scenario number 3. Scrote carjackers hack into police technology, stop any car they fancy and force the owner out, and drive off.
And scenario number 4 scrote cloned your number plate police gives order to stop as your inthe right hand lane of the moter way in havy traffic
. >> Edited by nightowl on Sunday 21st December 12:24
Black box to reduce insurance fraud eh?
Let me see, shall I drive around with Big Brother watching my every move so he can load my premium, or just rip the box out/scramble it and take a chance?
If anything, this will put insurance fraud UP.
What is this obsession with road deaths all of a sudden? Frankly, given the amount of traffic on our roads and the total vehicle miles driven each year, I'm amazed ONLY 3400 people are dying. I'd also say that car manufacturers have done more for road safety than any pressure group, safety charity, quango or advisory panel ever has or ever will.
As for speed limiters....recently had a near miss with a fire engine. Saw (and heard) it coming up fast behind me, but had nowhere to pull over safely, so I ended up breaking the speed limit (gasp!) in order to get to the nearest safe spot to pull over as quickly as possible. Had my car started cutting out at 30mph I'd have had a fire engine in the back seat, and someone may very well have burned to death as a result. All in the name of safety though...
Let me see, shall I drive around with Big Brother watching my every move so he can load my premium, or just rip the box out/scramble it and take a chance?
If anything, this will put insurance fraud UP.
What is this obsession with road deaths all of a sudden? Frankly, given the amount of traffic on our roads and the total vehicle miles driven each year, I'm amazed ONLY 3400 people are dying. I'd also say that car manufacturers have done more for road safety than any pressure group, safety charity, quango or advisory panel ever has or ever will.
As for speed limiters....recently had a near miss with a fire engine. Saw (and heard) it coming up fast behind me, but had nowhere to pull over safely, so I ended up breaking the speed limit (gasp!) in order to get to the nearest safe spot to pull over as quickly as possible. Had my car started cutting out at 30mph I'd have had a fire engine in the back seat, and someone may very well have burned to death as a result. All in the name of safety though...
article said:It's very, very important that there no first step at all! - Streaky
However, Bert Morris, deputy director of the AA Motoring Trust said: 'People don't like the idea of Big Brother taking over their driving. In years to come that might be acceptable, but it's very, very important that there's a step-by-step approach.'
>> Edited by streaky on Sunday 21st December 12:52
deltaf said:The EU will make it a regulation and you'll be expected (probably under pain of severe punishment) to accept it ... and no doubt you will have to pay to have it installed as well! - Streaky
...
Besides which, just HOW are they gonna fit it to my car WITH my permission?
...
This is yet another example of two things:
1) Goverment's need to interfere with our lives.
2) Business's need to find something else to sell.
I wonder how much this latter point has to do with the number of speed cameras, traffic signals (permanent and temporary), cones, etc. on our roads.
And how many have seen this common scenario:
a) Install roundabout to make traffic flow easier.
b) Install 'peak-time' traffic signals ... to sell another set and to muck up the traffic flow that was eased by the roundabout in the first place.
c) Make the signals operate 24 X 7 ... to really muck up the traffic flow, and justify some other measures.
d) Install fncing to obscure sight-lines at approaches ... to make it safer! Eh?
.
e) Paint new lines around roundabout ... for no obvious reason.
f) Restore lines to previous markings ... because the second set didn't work.
g) ... (continue in similar vein).
Reminds me of the days prior to the French Revolution ... when work was being created to keep people busy and earning
.
Streaky
1) Goverment's need to interfere with our lives.
2) Business's need to find something else to sell.
I wonder how much this latter point has to do with the number of speed cameras, traffic signals (permanent and temporary), cones, etc. on our roads.
And how many have seen this common scenario:
a) Install roundabout to make traffic flow easier.
b) Install 'peak-time' traffic signals ... to sell another set and to muck up the traffic flow that was eased by the roundabout in the first place.
c) Make the signals operate 24 X 7 ... to really muck up the traffic flow, and justify some other measures.
d) Install fncing to obscure sight-lines at approaches ... to make it safer! Eh?
. e) Paint new lines around roundabout ... for no obvious reason.
f) Restore lines to previous markings ... because the second set didn't work.
g) ... (continue in similar vein).
Reminds me of the days prior to the French Revolution ... when work was being created to keep people busy and earning
. Streaky
Whoa, hold on a minute, forget the technology, WHY IS SO MUCH TIME AND MONEY BEING SPENT ON THIS? we know that road fatalities are hardly killing us off as a species, more people die in DIY accidents so why the urgency to introduce such draconian and controversial measures? Road Safety? do f**k off!
Streaky said:
c) Make the signals operate 24 X 7 ... to really muck up the traffic flow, and justify some other measures.
My experience has been that when a set of traffic lights stop working, even at major junctions, that most drivers act responsibly and there are no accidents, and no serious hold ups...
I think that a lot of traffic lights could be removed and just have turning lanes in the middle as they do anyway, you would just have to give way to the bigger road.
>> Edited by hedders on Sunday 21st December 14:07
As commented - the technology is a sinch to defeat. It will have a certain amount of the data dependant on GPS - which is a low power radio signal from space. To be honest, even cloudy environmental conditions can affect GPS reception and what happens if you use is the Dartford tunnel each day - do you get free insurance for the time that you are in the tunnel?
Then you can simply fit a lump of metal around the receiver and hey presto - no signal. What happens then? Does it give you free insurance or just ramp up the costs.....
Oh, and one final comment - the US Military has the final say on the accuracy of GPS. If they want, they can turn off the accuracy and hence render it pretty useless (its not happened in some time by the way). The EU is launching a similar system now, but it wont be full coverage for at least 1 year and uses a different technology anyway. So, invest in GPS today and have to replace them all in a couple of years time with something else.... looks like a bit of a technology cul-de-sac to me....
Then you can simply fit a lump of metal around the receiver and hey presto - no signal. What happens then? Does it give you free insurance or just ramp up the costs.....
Oh, and one final comment - the US Military has the final say on the accuracy of GPS. If they want, they can turn off the accuracy and hence render it pretty useless (its not happened in some time by the way). The EU is launching a similar system now, but it wont be full coverage for at least 1 year and uses a different technology anyway. So, invest in GPS today and have to replace them all in a couple of years time with something else.... looks like a bit of a technology cul-de-sac to me....
It can't happen...it's physically impossible!!!
In the first article, they spoke of the little electronic box that interprets you pressing the pedal to send signals to the engine. What happens to the millions of cars older than 5-10 odd years still on the road that still have mechanical throttle linkages?
All the old classic cars, kitcars etc etc would have to covered by any new rules as well, and that's all purely mechanical too. Something like this would completely kill off the performance car market, which is something a large number of people make their sole living off...I can't see that happening!
What about bikes? Surely they can't not include bikes as well...and anyone, even with no common sense at all can see that suddenly cutting the power of the bike could have disastrous consequences - unbalancing the rider, and causing an accident. To the same degree, what about powerful cars...cut the power suddenly, and you'd get snap oversteer, which could quite easily cause serious accidents. You then might get government officials saying "Ok, we'll not install the system in bikes, or performance cars..." but where does the line for performance cars get drawn...?
Add to that the governments total ineptitude for IT projects (usually, they seem to take the cheapest possible quote for any given project, then just throw more and more money at it until it's so overdue and overbudget that it gets forgotten about) and the totally overwhelming lack of support that everyone but the brainless-anti-speed brigade (which, let's face it is a tiny number) will exhibit for the project, and can you really see this happening...at all?
And if it does, I'm moving. This government can stuff the extortionate petrol duty, horrific road tax, cash-machine-speeding fines, sky-high insurance prices and big-brother car control systems right up their stupid arses - I'm off to Australia or New Zealand.
In the first article, they spoke of the little electronic box that interprets you pressing the pedal to send signals to the engine. What happens to the millions of cars older than 5-10 odd years still on the road that still have mechanical throttle linkages?
All the old classic cars, kitcars etc etc would have to covered by any new rules as well, and that's all purely mechanical too. Something like this would completely kill off the performance car market, which is something a large number of people make their sole living off...I can't see that happening!
What about bikes? Surely they can't not include bikes as well...and anyone, even with no common sense at all can see that suddenly cutting the power of the bike could have disastrous consequences - unbalancing the rider, and causing an accident. To the same degree, what about powerful cars...cut the power suddenly, and you'd get snap oversteer, which could quite easily cause serious accidents. You then might get government officials saying "Ok, we'll not install the system in bikes, or performance cars..." but where does the line for performance cars get drawn...?
Add to that the governments total ineptitude for IT projects (usually, they seem to take the cheapest possible quote for any given project, then just throw more and more money at it until it's so overdue and overbudget that it gets forgotten about) and the totally overwhelming lack of support that everyone but the brainless-anti-speed brigade (which, let's face it is a tiny number) will exhibit for the project, and can you really see this happening...at all?
And if it does, I'm moving. This government can stuff the extortionate petrol duty, horrific road tax, cash-machine-speeding fines, sky-high insurance prices and big-brother car control systems right up their stupid arses - I'm off to Australia or New Zealand.
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