Canada Testing Speed Control Tech

drizzle

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According to this CNN article, Canada is testing a system that uses GPS to determine your speed and the speed limit of your location to make it harder for you to exceed the speed limit. It does so by making it harder to depress the accellerator once you exceed the limit.

There are several things I don't like about this but the biggest is that it is a very small step from this to a system that automatically reports you if you are speeding. Then a small step from that to government tracking of your vehicle.

The article also mentions that these tests have been done already in parts of Europe. Any Europeans have more info about this? Is it being discussed much over there?
 

attowatt

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drizzle said:
According to this CNN article, Canada is testing a system that uses GPS to determine your speed and the speed limit of your location to make it harder for you to exceed the speed limit. It does so by making it harder to depress the accellerator once you exceed the limit.

There are several things I don't like about this but the biggest is that it is a very small step from this to a system that automatically reports you if you are speeding. Then a small step from that to government tracking of your vehicle.

The article also mentions that these tests have been done already in parts of Europe. Any Europeans have more info about this? Is it being discussed much over there?

Welcome to ONSTAR:ohgeez:....... also ONSTAR can listen to you while you are in your vehicle
 

drizzle

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attowatt said:
Welcome to ONSTAR:ohgeez:....... also ONSTAR can listen to you while you are in your vehicle
Yes, I thought of that and almost mentioned it. The difference is that ONSTAR is voluntary.
 

idleprocess

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If the government can automate the collection of speeding tickets, then penalties for speeding need to go down since they'll discover - shockingly - that the ratio of speeding tickets issued vs actual violations is tiny. Less effort to apprehend violators, less penalty.

I don't care if the government needs to "recoup their investment" in such systems - they're not fundamentally necessary for public welfare and I'd rather not see the taxpayers fund such nonsense.

<Rant mode>
Speeding is but one factor in unsafe driving. Having driven a number of "backroads" on a recent road trip, I can state with certainty that there is no uniform theory on highway speed limits. Even within a single state, speed limits on interstate highways will differ (Texas has 70MPH on many interstates, but 65 on others for no apparent reason; I blieve that New Mexico has 75MPH). Federal and state highways are worse - nevermind the blatant speed traps... and why towns are allowed to strangle high-speed arteries and treat them like any other city street is beyond me... if they were so worried about high-speed traffic on the highway, they wouldn't build so close to it, now would they? The point of highways is interstate and intercity travel. If your town has some redeeming features, perhaps some tarvelers will stop, but why impede everyone?

Example: TX highway 121 runs east-northeast from Fort Worth past the northern entrance to DFW airport until it intersects US 75 about 30 miles north of Dallas. It's about the only way to get to the airport if you're northeast of it. There is a town (The Colony) along 121 that has utterly strangled that highway with a series of unsynchronized stoplights and a 55MPH zone along a stretch of 70MPH highway. What's really infuriating is that the entirety of the town is north of the highway. I wouldn't mind the stoplights if they were synchronized and timed to reflect the ~10:1 through:local traffic ratio, but they're not timed and the speed zone just makes it worse. Thankfully, that highway is being upgraded to limited-access. I think I'll make sure to show said town the bird every time I drive past as a gesture of parity after wasting untold hours sitting in traffic for no particular reason.

I think that everyone knows that speeding tickets are more about secondary revenue for government than alleged safety violations. If I'm cruising at 75 MPH on a straight highway with little traffic under good conditions but the speed limit is 65 MPH, where's the dire risk to the public? I can understand pulling drivers over for weaving through traffic at high speeds, cutting other drivers off, failing to yield right-of-way, changing lanes in an intersetction (depressingly common in Dallas), and other behaviors signifigantly more dangerous than safely driving faster than the posted limit.
</Rant mode>
 
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jtr1962

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Another brain-dead "solution" to an imaginery problem. The whole speed versus safety thing has already been discussed ad nauseum anyway here and here. Distracted and/or incapacited (drunk/tired) driving is the real cause of accidents but of course it's a lot harder to think of solutions to that. So much easier to say speed kills, implement yet another nanny-state solution, and also rake in big money in fines. Truthfully, these small towns who make their living off speeding tickets should have this funding source cut off. Let them wither and die. When many cops are assigned a "quota" of speeding tickets then that means something is wrong with the present laws. It's like telling a cop to arrest 10 murderers on any given day. Sooner or later they'll be going after people who aren't even dangerous.

BTW, what annoys me all the more, and I think wasn't mentioned in either of those lengthy threads, is the trend towards preemptive justice nowadays. The law used to hold that there can be no legal recourse unless some actual damage to persons or property occurred. Nowadays the trend towards "preventative" laws has people being fined because they're doing something that somebody else perceives as harmful. It doesn't even seem to matter if the act actually has a high potential for harm, either, just that it "seems" dangerous enough to enough people to get their lawmakers to make a law against it (i.e. emotion-driven lawmaking at its worst). Speeding is but one thing. We also have gun control, and lots of other innane laws. For example, NYC seems to have a thing against sidewalk cyclists even though the number of people killed by wayward cyclists annually, both on the street and sidewalk, is never in the double digits, and usually zero. In fact, far more people are killed by cars on the sidewalk in a year than are killed by cyclists on streets and sidewalks combined in a decade. Regardless, because this act "seems" dangerous to enough people, laws were made against it. There are loads of other such inane laws as well. For example, walking between cars in a subway train was recently prohibited. Orwell's 1984 is indeed coming to pass, just in a more stealthy way. I sincerely hope this trend of silly laws and too many laws is reversed in the coming years. We need to start taking useless laws off the books, and revising other laws, such as speed limits, to reflect reality.
 

LEDninja

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The cell phone companies up here in brrrrland are offering parents the ability to monitor their kids location via GPS cellphone. I think une of them offers speed monitoring as well. All for a fat fee of course.
 

Pydpiper

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LEDninja said:
up here in brrrrland

You do know you are farther south than 14 States right?.. :)

The phone tracking provides alot of oppertunity, great if you have kids, bad if your one of them..
 

jtr1962

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idleprocess said:
Even within a single state, speed limits on interstate highways will differ (Texas has 70MPH on many interstates, but 65 on others for no apparent reason; I blieve that New Mexico has 75MPH). Federal and state highways are worse - nevermind the blatant speed traps... and why towns are allowed to strangle high-speed arteries and treat them like any other city street is beyond me... if they were so worried about high-speed traffic on the highway, they wouldn't build so close to it, now would they? The point of highways is interstate and intercity travel. If your town has some redeeming features, perhaps some tarvelers will stop, but why impede everyone?
Welcome to the era of legislated speed limits. Setting limits used to be solely the province of traffic engineers. They would measure the speed distribution of vehicles under free-flowing traffic conditions, and set limits accordingly. The time-proven practice of using the 85th percentile on urban roads, the 90th percentile on two-lane highways, and the 95th percentile on limited access highways, all rounded up to the nearest 5mph, worked well for decades. Besides setting speed limits, they were also used to set minimum speeds on limited access roads. Typically they used the 10th or 15th percentile speed for that. Ironically, thanks to legislated limits, the speed limits on many roads are actually about the same or even less than a properly set minimum speed would be. Small wonder quite a few drivers nowadays regard speed limit signs to mean that you should be driving at least this speed, if not faster.

Setting limits according to traffic engineering practice all changed with the enactment of the 55 mph limit. Now speed limits were legislated. Even with its repeal, many localities realized the huge increase in speeding ticket revenue they saw, and were reluctant to give that up. Therefore, they either kept the old limits in place, or sometimes grudgingly raised them by 5 or 10 mph bowing to public pressure, yet still keeping them low enough to fill some daily quota. Naturally, there is inertia to go back to the old way of setting limits because for many towns their primary revenue source would disappear. Even in the absence of such pressure, the fact is that legislators don't like the numbers traffic engineers come up with for setting limits, and therefore artificially impose state or local absolute maximum speed limits. Even more tragically, unrealistic speed laws have caused drivers to disregard other traffic laws on the guise that if going over the limit is safe, they it probably is also safe to run a red light, or change lanes without signaling, or run a stop sign. We really need to undo the decades of damage by returning the setting of speed limits solely to traffic engineers.

BTW, good rant! :rock:
 

Lynx_Arc

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I can see one problem with a gadget that wont allow you to break a speed limit.
If you have ever got on a 2 lane road (one lane each direction) behind a slow moving car or semi truck and have had to pass them quickly you soon find yourself exceeding the speed limit for a short period of time till you are in the clear back in front of the slow vehicle in the right lane. If you had a speed throttle you may find yourself having trouble passing them in all but very long stretches of road.
With cars that have manual transmissions it is easy to be going faster downhill by up to 5-7 mph than the speed limit and without constantly observing the speedometer.
My guess though is they wont use altitude so if you were going off a cliff at 100 mph straight down they probably wouldn't know to ticket you for speeding.
Add to all of this trying to figure out which roads are what speed limits and which authority is given the notice for speeding you have yourself a possible nightmare including trying to defend the technology in court
 

dtrego

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jtr1962 said:
...snip...
Truthfully, these small towns who make their living off speeding tickets should have this funding source cut off. Let them wither and die.
...snip...

For a story about something just like this in my neck of the woods, go to www.newromesucks.com - New Rome was a small village near me with such a bad reputation that the State of Ohio crafted legislation to wipe it off the map. NewRomeSucks was one guy's (not me - I never got a ticket there. Honest. :D) effort to fight back. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the archive link - hours of entertainment!

- Dwayne
 

drizzle

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All good arguments Lynx. I hadn't thought of the elevation being taken into account. Nice to know you wouldn't get a ticket as you fell to your death over a cliff. :D

From the article, I gather that it would be harder to depress the accellerator if you were speeding but not prevented altogether. I still don't like it. As you mentioned passing could be a serious problem. Imagine going out to pass a slow vehicle and being thrown off because all of a sudden the accellerator is pushing back trying to slow you down. That would be potentially deadly.

As for the speed limits and jurisdictions, I don't see that as such a big deal. It's just a matter of someone filling in a database and keeping it up to date. Oh wait, that's right this is the government we are dealing with. Okay, so that is a new multi-million dollar per year agency just created. :)
 

Size15's

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It would be fair better if such tracking systems fined you if your driving was significantly different to the vehicles around you. For example, it is common in my experience for the natural flow of traffic to exceed 90 mph for many miles of motorway (70 mph speed limit). Many roads have a 30 mph limit for no obvious reason (people tend assume they are 40 mph zones. Additionally, many roads have 30 mph limits that really should be 20 or less.

If the traffic is flowing then you're not speeding imho unless you are driving significantly faster than everybody else.

They better fine people for driving too slowly (were applicable) as well!
 

yuandrew

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GPS tracking sounds pretty new but then I have also heard of speed cameras (Think of a red light camera but hooked to a radar gun to photograph drivers exceeding the speed limit by a certain margin) That sounds a lot cheaper and it is already implimented in some areas

GPS tracking and speed reporting is not too new though; some one I knew in high school had his parents install this "stupid GPS tracking device" in his vehicle after he was tickted for speeding. Not only does it report how fast he is driving to his parents via E-Mail or Cellphone Text-Message but it also tells them where he is (It can be programmed to report if he is arriving at school, work, home") and it will even report how fast the vehicle is accelerating or engine RPM.

Not to mention you could remotely lock and unlock the doors by phone (I heard you can also lock the door in a way that it cannot be opened from the inside; useful if you find you child driving somewhere when he/she is unauthorized and want to "trap" him/her in the vehicle and force them to go home and you can even disable the engine as well (That is what I think is the bad part, if you cause the engine to stall while on a busy highway; it could result in a rear end collision or accident)

There are many companies that actually provide the such services but the only one I've heard of is All-track USA.

http://www.alltrackusa.com/
 

drizzle

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Yuandrew:I don't have a problem with either of the things you mentioned. In the case of the radar gun/camera it's not tracking or controlling my vehicle while I'm driving. In the case of the service, like ON-STAR, it's voluntary, at least for the parent. :)

For me it crosses the line when it's the government that wants to track or, control my vehicle. I still can hardly believe it's even being considered.
 

offroadcmpr

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yuandrew said:
GPS tracking sounds pretty new but then I have also heard of speed cameras (Think of a red light camera but hooked to a radar gun to photograph drivers exceeding the speed limit by a certain margin) That sounds a lot cheaper and it is already implimented in some areas

GPS tracking and speed reporting is not too new though; some one I knew in high school had his parents install this "stupid GPS tracking device" in his vehicle after he was tickted for speeding. Not only does it report how fast he is driving to his parents via E-Mail or Cellphone Text-Message but it also tells them where he is (It can be programmed to report if he is arriving at school, work, home") and it will even report how fast the vehicle is accelerating or engine RPM.

Not to mention you could remotely lock and unlock the doors by phone (I heard you can also lock the door in a way that it cannot be opened from the inside; useful if you find you child driving somewhere when he/she is unauthorized and want to "trap" him/her in the vehicle and force them to go home and you can even disable the engine as well (That is what I think is the bad part, if you cause the engine to stall while on a busy highway; it could result in a rear end collision or accident)

There are many companies that actually provide the such services but the only one I've heard of is All-track USA.

http://www.alltrackusa.com/

Yup, heard of those. Before my friend got his car and license, his parents always threatened to put one of those in his car. So when he got it, we searched the car to make sure that it was clean. lol
 

gadget_lover

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Driving home tonight I saw a car blow by at 90 or more (4 lane interstate) and having to change lanes to gow around cars. I was uncomfortable when I saw him swerve from lane to lane as he passed me. I would have liked him to have some automatic limiter.

As I recall, the law here says that you are not allowed to exceed the speed limit when passing either.

When it comes to passing, it would be a lot safer if you could be sure the aproaching car was doing 65 and not 95. This is especially hard to determine when at night or when you have only a moment to commit to passing.

I actually like the idea of an automatic speed control. I could be sure of the speed of the approaching traffic when I pull out of a parking lot. I could relax and not worray about speed traps. There could be some good come from it.

I'd rather that it not be done in such a way that it can be used for enforcement.

People should realize that it does not take satellites and GPS to automate the process of tracking you. Cameras and computer imaging has progressed to a point where it is trivial to track you movements via traffic camera's and Optical character recognition of your license plate.

It's also trivial to track a cell phone that is turned on. They communicate periodically with the cellular network so the cell phone company knows where to route your call. There is software to triangulate the cell phone signal to locate (within a few hundred feet) your location. This is enough to determine if you are speeding significantly.

Me? I'm not as worried about big brother as I am hackers. Imagine the fun if a hacker broadcast a bogus signal on the GPS frequencies that tells your GPS that you are 3 blocks off the freeway in a 35 zone instead of in a 70 zone. Fun and Games.
 

oldgrandpajack

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Personally, I think accelerometers should be included in the package, with their data recorded along with speed infractions. The package should also include a device to determine if the vehicle is tailgating. It should also be wired to determine how turn signals, brakes, and the accelerator are used. The total package would not only be able to determine if a vehicle is speeding, but also if it is weaving, sliding, peeling out, tailgating, if it isn't using turn signals, and does Texas stops. The data should go to the State, but not for enforcement purposes (except in case of accidents, and/or suspected criminal activity). The States should share the data with all auto insurance companies, first and foremost. Auto insurance companies would then use the data, to determine what each individual should pay for auto insurance. The data could also be used to help determine life, health, and disability insurance rates. The data should also be given to lawyers and law enforcement, in case of auto accidents, to help determine who's at fault, for civil and criminal purposes. The vehicles owner should also be able to access the information.

If the device determines it's likely the driver is driving recklessly, drunk, or impaired (for whatever reason), the engine should turn itself off, the first time the car comes to a stop. A code would have to be entered into the onboard computer, by an agent from your insurance company (for a fee), in order to restart the car. Of course, law enforcement would probably have an eye out for cars that won't restart at intersections, breatholizer in hand. :) Actually, law enforcement should probably be notified, so they can help with traffic problems, around the stalled vehicle.

In New York State, auto insurance is capped, for high risk drivers. All the other drivers are subsidizing the high risk drivers auto insurance, through higher rates. I believe this should be changed, so that everyone's driving habits determines the amount they are charged by insurance companies. No caps and no subsidies. Auto insurance should be manditory in all 50 States.

This would allow people to drive fast, even if it's against the law. But, it would be reflected in their auto insurance bill. Wouldn't make speeding legal though, and law enforcement would still be out there patrolling, and able to pull you over for any traffic violation.

EDIT: Insurance companies would determine how the device is programmed, in order to determine if the vehicle is being driven recklessly, or by someone drunk or impaired. The vehicle owner could shop around for insurance.
 
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