Police Class 1 opinions, please...

[flemke]

...on the proposed Government-controlled GPS system that might:

- implement road-charging,
- monitor a car's speed anywhere, anytime, and ignore or punish accordingly,
- help to locate stolen cars, villains on the run, etc., or
- remotely control a private car's speed.

There have been various threads here (including a current one) on some of this, but Police drivers' postings on them have been scarce.
It would be helpful to hear your thoughts on the potential effects on dealing with "real" criminals, and on road safety.

Cheers.

[vonhosen]

If we are going to have it, I don't think it will be limited to these shores.

[flemke]

mungo said:

A very very very bad idea and one I hope will never be implemented

In all respects?

[flemke]

vonhosen said:

If we are going to have it, I don't think it will be limited to these shores.

I'm not aware that it has been proposed yet for the EU, whilst Douglas Alexander and his brainless buddies already proudly declare that it is "inevitable", in some form, in Britain. They have indeed set a nationwide roll-out date of 2014, have they not?
Are you saying that the rest of the EU will "get with the programme" by then, or that before implementation in Britain the project will be halted?

[fluffnik]

mungo said:

flemke said:

mungo said:

A very very very bad idea and one I hope will never be implemented

In all respects?

Yes

Too much surveilence already.

"I have nothing to hide so you can't bloody see it!"

[vonhosen]

http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4

Edited by vonhosen on Friday 5th January 18:14

[flemke]

vonhosen said:

http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4

Edited by vonhosen on Friday 5th January 18:14

At the time of those articles, not at the British stage of "inevitability", but nonetheless sobering.

I am not aware that these issues are anywhere near as close to the surface on the Continent as they are in Britain. It is true that the Galileo system is an answer in search of a question, another political boondoggle inflated by self-important political buffoons (a redundancy?) who can be counted on to scratch around for justifications for it - at the public's expense, naturally.

Considering that the British seem to be amongst the most sheep-like in accepting without complaint whatever political outrage is foisted upon them, it would not surprise me if, even though the concept were tolerated in the UK, it were rejected by Continentals.

Cheers for the links.

Edited by flemke on Friday 5th January 18:32

[vonhosen]

Intelligent Speed Adapation (ISA)is not something that is confined to the UK either.
Trials were ahead of the UK in some European countries & the EU are driving it forward.

www.erso.eu/knowledge/content/20_speed/intelligent_speed_adaptation_isa_.htm

[flemke]

vonhosen said:

Intelligent Speed Adapation (ISA)is not something that is confined to the UK either.
Trials were ahead of the UK in some European countries & the EU are driving it forward.

www.erso.eu/knowledge/content/20_speed/intelligent_speed_adaptation_isa_.htm

Interesting that they have run the trials in Sweden and the Netherlands, which tend to be the most compliant, dutiful, socially-homogeneous nations of Europe.
Why, one wonders, did they not trial them in, for example, Italy and Portugal? After all, those countries have far worse accident records, so surely there would be more to gain from applying the system to them.


An excerpt from the PR summary:

Does ISA have negative side effects?
No negative side effects of ISA were found in the experiments in Sweden [5]. However, there is still some concern about this point. Issues that have been reported include:

Compensation behaviour: there are indications that drivers compensate by driving faster on road segments where the ISA system is not active [50].
Diminished attention: ISA can result in reduction of attention for the road and traffic situation, when the system is not active. This diminished attention expresses itself in, for example, forgetting to slow down when entering a lower speed zone or to accelerate when entering a higher speed zone, but also in forgetting to use the direction indicator [12][65]
Over confidence: it is possible that using ISA could result in the driver completely relying on the speed limit indicated by the system, and insufficiently observing the real-time circumstances.
Feeling frustrated: the speed limiting by ISA can produce frustration in the driver and in other traffic [64][12].
At present there is insufficient insight into the size of these possible negative side effects and their consequences.

[bluepolarbear]

flemke said:

I'm not aware that it has been proposed yet for the EU

The EU has spent billions of your Euro's designing and launching their own GPS satellite system with the express aim of controlling vehicle speeds across Europe.

[flemke]

bluepolarbear said:

flemke said:

I'm not aware that it has been proposed yet for the EU

The EU has spent billions of your Euro's designing and launching their own GPS satellite system with the express aim of controlling vehicle speeds across Europe.

Is that so?
I've just googled it, and almost everything that came up was what I remember hearing at the time:
- EU did not want to rely on US GPS system,
- manifold commercial and civil applications,
- significant military uses,
- another manifestation of Europe's establishing itself as an important independent global power; in the spirit of Airbus, European Space Agency, and other colossal wastes of money.

One of those intended civil applications may well have been road-charging and control of private vehicles, but certainly the latter was not highlighted as the express aim.
What are the chances that its cost would have been agreed to if that had been its admitted primary purpose?

Edited by flemke on Friday 5th January 19:23

[TripleS]

vonhosen said:

If we are going to have it, I don't think it will be limited to these shores.

It should be limited to other shores, if it is applied at all!

Best wishes all,
Dave.

[7db]

I can't even get my bloody starter to stay in my engine bay and keep working. I can't imagine any GPS device isn't going to fall out / under a tin foil hat / get quite damp / be situated next to an electromagnet

[TripleS]

bluepolarbear said:

flemke said:

I'm not aware that it has been proposed yet for the EU

The EU has spent billions of your Euro's designing and launching their own GPS satellite system with the express aim of controlling vehicle speeds across Europe.

When this subject arose in another forum, one contributor offered the following comments:

The problem here is that all this is mostly sponsored by Tony Blair,
who cheerfully admits to being so technically illiterate that he cannot
even send an email, much less understand technical things like why big
IT projects don't work.

The global positioning system that they intend to use is Galileo, which
apart from one placeholder satelite hasn't even been launched yet. The
people doing the launching are the Russians, on account of the Americans
don't fancy helping us build a GPS-monopoly breaker.

So, once this as-yet unbuilt system is built, he intends to use the
closed and encrypted signals from it as a GPS system for black boxes
fitted to every car etc. in the country (although how this is going to
happen after the expected ID cards flop and mini-recession god only
knows).

The black boxes are going to have to be untamperable-with, except they
won't be since the system will get analysed and fiddled-with by every
backyard cyperpunk and tinkerer in the world. There will also be big
legal bills as people dispute unusual charging on the devices, marital
problems as spouses find out where their other halves have been, and
assorted hassle as people start building jammers.

Finally, what if the consortium running Galileo thinks "Hey, we're
running short of money. Let's sting the UK government for a bit more by
threatening to cut their signals..."?


Make of that what you will, but if that is true it doesn't
sound like an immediate threat by any means.

Best wishes all,
Dave.

[LongQ]

flemke said:

Interesting that they have run the trials in Sweden and the Netherlands, which tend to be the most compliant, dutiful, socially-homogeneous nations of Europe.

Hmm.

Really?

[LongQ]

flemke said:

- significant military uses,

This will be the one.

The Airforce for example ... er. oh, well, maybe not then. Hardly justifiable really.

So it'll be the Navy ... er, hmm, well. Well look minesweepers are quite expensive things and thos inflatible devices cost a bob or two and it is really important for the people in them to know where they are so they don't end up in Iran, for instance, when they should be in Iraq.

Or should that be the other way around?

Mind you I guess the success or failure of that de-ends on which company you get to do the mapping and the system programming.

[flemke]

LongQ said:

flemke said:

- significant military uses,

This will be the one.

The Airforce for example ... er. oh, well, maybe not then. Hardly justifiable really.

So it'll be the Navy ... er, hmm, well. Well look minesweepers are quite expensive things and thos inflatible devices cost a bob or two and it is really important for the people in them to know where they are so they don't end up in Iran, for instance, when they should be in Iraq.

Or should that be the other way around?

Mind you I guess the success or failure of that de-ends on which company you get to do the mapping and the system programming.

I didn't vote put the bloody system up there, I'm just stating what I believe to have been the public justification.

Was the US GPS system not originally a military project?

[flemke]

LongQ said:

flemke said:

Interesting that they have run the trials in Sweden and the Netherlands, which tend to be the most compliant, dutiful, socially-homogeneous nations of Europe.

Hmm.

Really?

I was alluding to their driving behaviour, not to their propensity to tolerate drug-taking and prostitution.

Can you think of another EU state (excepting maybe Luxembourg) that is more as I described?

[LongQ]

flemke said:

LongQ said:

flemke said:

- significant military uses,

This will be the one.

The Airforce for example ... er. oh, well, maybe not then. Hardly justifiable really.

So it'll be the Navy ... er, hmm, well. Well look minesweepers are quite expensive things and thos inflatible devices cost a bob or two and it is really important for the people in them to know where they are so they don't end up in Iran, for instance, when they should be in Iraq.

Or should that be the other way around?

Mind you I guess the success or failure of that de-ends on which company you get to do the mapping and the system programming.

I didn't vote put the bloody system up there, I'm just stating what I believe to have been the public justification.

Was the US GPS system not originally a military project?

Sorry flemke, my comment was not intended to be a jibe at you, more the smoke screen from Brussels. I should have been clearer.

Yes the US GPS system was and still is a military project and it was only a few years ago that they allowed the public muppets (as the US militry probably think of us) to get the better resolution signals that resulted in the boom of all things GPS.

Prior to that the accuracy was a factor of 10 or more less even when the signals were not being blocked for military purposes.

My guess is that the EU were put forward and approved before that time and have had to be justified in as many mays as possible ever since. One justification is (or was) that the EU system would be more accurate and more reliable than the obviously much older US design.

Plus at some point those old satellites will need replacing ... and so on and so on ....

Personally I'm not worried about it. By the time it comes to anything I am fairly sure I will have lost the will to live.

[Flat in Fifth]

My car has both a data logger and a tracker which is part of some fancy communications set up. I don't have much say in it, but to be honest I'm of the VH mindset that I really need my licence and I'm not going to do anything consistently which puts that at risk. Hence I put up with it.

But the question of the limiters etc really boils my wee.

On the question of dealing with road safety and ISA, it's bollox utter bollox.

There is abso--lutely no fricking way they could keep the data sufficiently up to date to avoid major problems.

It's one of those academic theories that you have a digital map that knows all the limits and it plots where you are and so on.

Firstly it would have to be far far far far more accurate than the GPS system. Anyone with satnav knows that these work by figuring out where you are and then tries to determine where you are on the map. In areas with high road density you can see the system going "I'm on this road... oh shit, we've just gone right where there isn't a bend, so I must be on this road... Oh bollox no it isn't it's this road.. OK off we go."

Then we have the situation where new roads are built. The satnav goes through the 'where am I?' routine, decides you're in the middle of a field and reverts to that until it fits a road. Every couple of months or so there is one road I use which is not on the up to date map. So there I am zapping along at warp factor 8 with the satnav showing I'm in the middle of nowhere. Then it finds a country lane that it thinks I'm on and starts to plot that. What would happen when it decides that I really must turn left at this T-junction that I'm approaching at 110?? Slow me down? Slam the brakes on? Very nice for that artic I've just overtaken and moved back into lane 1 on this motorway class road I'm on!!!!

And what happens if you are not on a road recognised on the map, does the limiter default to what? No limit? 30mph? 20mph? stop?

No it's utter bollox and any politician who introduces it deserves to be shot. In fact I'll go so far as to say this, I'd actually pull the trigger and pay for the bullet out of my own pocket so dead set against it am I.

And that is someone speaking who already has to suffer a data logger and tracker remember!

edited much much later for multitudinous typos, and yes my wee is still simmering.

Edited by Flat in Fifth on Saturday 6th January 07:58