Safe Speed Forums

Slashdot reports an interestng article on how California proposes to put GPS devices on all new cars to track how far people drive and tax them accordingly. The slashdot article contains many comments. Could it be used to gather speed information?

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I stole this .sig

This is completely off-topic. It's a taxation issue, not a road safety one, and anyway - with oil being the biggest lobby in US politics (how else do you explain the Iraq war) what is the likelihood of this proposal seeing the light of day.....

IMO, it's bang on topic and there are similar moves to foist such devices on us in EU and UK. FWIW, I've seen enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that, should the Government get away with fitting transponders to every car for taxation purposes, they would use that equipment for automatic enforcement not only of speeding but parking, encroachment into bus lanes, etc. etc. with the driver deemed guilty until proven innocent.

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Will

Thanks for your comments, r11co and willcove. We are doing well on slashdot today. Here is an article on self driving vehicles, that would be incapable of breaking the limit, if it ever happens. Here is the article.

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I stole this .sig

The japanese are looking into this. The big problem is how they integrate with non self navigating vehicles. Especialy bikes which cannot be controled in this way.

They are looking at unique motorway lanes.

On the other hand...would you trust one!

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Speed camera policy Kills

... and I reckon that article is about on the money. We will get autonomous vehicles (or at least, vehicles controlled by the road) within a couple or three decades. We'd be as well to accept that because one of the ways to reduce congestion is to increase road capacity by decreasing inter-vehicle separation; and the only way to do that safely is for drivers to give up some control of their cars.

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Will

I still think that THIS particular proposal will be dead in the water. These sorts of moves need some commercial 'support' (cash for political favours ) to get government approval, so if it is being mooted as a solution to the problem of reduced tax due to reduced fuel consumption you can be certain that the biggest commercial interest will win the debate ie. the oil companies.

Maybe in 50-60 years' time however,......

I used GPS on combine harvesters in the USA for 2 seasons and am not impressed by the accuarcy. Admittedly that was 97 and 98. However it game co ordinates to 6 decimal paces and elevation in feet. It all sounds very accurate intill you park you combine right slap bang on the USA/Canada border and acording to the box of tricks in the cab the Yanks need to move south by nearly half a mile.

Not incapable of killing people though.... But then if speed rather than body count you are bothered about thats OK

A friend of mine is a pilot for United Airlines. Experienced in fly-by-wire aircraft. He said they occasionaly have to re-boot the system in flight because of glitches..

Things happen far faster on the roads than in the air...not the sort of thing I would want to do whilst in the motorway at any speed.

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Speed camera policy Kills

It does beg the question though -- once everyone has a speed-limited car and road deaths are still going up, what will they do then?

Its sensors still would not be able to detect the child who will run from between parked cars.

Think I still prefer to use my own two eyes to check under the car for a foot or a ball ... and any other clues as to "enemy about to step out or cycle out in front of me" ... like park, playground, school, cycle lane....

If I am "reading the paper" per the paper and my car's sensors fail to respond ... then I am in trouble.

Besides ... I do sometimes read my paper in the car... either Wildy or my son (now completed his Pass Plus ) is driving Funny how he now likes to drive his Mama to the shops all of a sudden He used to hate shopping.....

Exactley what it does

Our trucks are all fitted with telematic trackers, not only does it track position & speed, it defines the speed limit of the road and reports & highlights vehicles in red should they go over the speed limit.

They are planning to make all trucks mandatory with the device.

This is yesterdays tecnology, all my vehicles are live tracked on the internet. I even know exactley where the vehicle is when the cab door is opened.

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Steve