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'Black box' cuts police crashes

Police car black boxes will record details of accidents

Data recording machines are being fitted to Northamptonshire police cars to help improve their safety record.

In the past 12 months, 356 police vehicles in the county have been involved in collisions on the county's roads, and 13 officers injured.

The "black boxes", which will record how the vehicle was driven at the time of any incident, are being fitted to 70 marked police vehicles.

Police hope the device will also cut the cost of police vehicle insurance.

A police spokesman said: "We are keen to reduce collisions and associated stress, injuries and costs."

If the one-year pilot scheme is successful, the black boxes will be fitted to the force's 393 marked and unmarked vehicles.

From:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/northamptonshire/3603208.stm

In the past 12 months, 356 police vehicles in the county have been involved in collisions on the county's roads, and 13 officers injured.

If the one-year pilot scheme is successful, the black boxes will be fitted to the force's 393 marked and unmarked vehicles.

As I have been predicting, Speed Cameras will soon be obsoleted by much more effective technology. This doesn?t mean you will be able to break the limit, though - far from it. The new goods will guarantee that speeders can be detected each time they blip over the limit. In this case, policing policy will be scaled according to gravity of the event, because there will be too many otherwise to be politically acceptable. I reckon road charging is the way they will go, with a higher charges for blippers.

So in Northamptonshire 90.5% of their vehicles had an accident last year. Sorry but that is pretty scary. I thought these people had to drive to a higher standard than the rest of us. That makes police accidents worse than even us bikers

http://www.northants.police.uk/default.asp?action=article&ID=5336
26/08/2004


Police officers are currently sharpening up their driving skills in suitable locations across the county.

All drivers are being sent on refresher courses as Northamptonshire Police in readiness for the formation of the Force’s new incident resolution teams in the autumn.

Sergeant Daemon Johnson, of Northamptonshire Police’s Driver Training Unit, said the roll-out of refresher courses – taking in around 250 qualified officers - would take several months to complete.

But he said it was essential that all police drivers, both at standard and advanced levels, were fully across the safety criteria guidelines set out by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) earlier this year. These guidelines clearly put safety at the forefront of the mind of every officer.

He said: “The basic driving course is already underway and is demonstrating to officers how best to stop a vehicle safely and how best to protect the scene of an incident or collision.

“These course refreshers will usually be staged in easy-to-access housing estates such as the Hunsburys or Wootton Fields in Northampton.

“Residents in these areas will clearly spot officers out training in high-visibility jackets with cones in the road.

“We would urge members of the public who have any policing concerns to come out and have a chat with us, especially if they have any intelligence or other information which we can follow up.

“Training will also take place in areas which are considered the biggest crime, disorder or anti-social behaviour hotspots in any given area.”

Every police pursuit that now takes place on the county’s roads will have the emphasis on safe resolution, with officers receiving high-quality training to meet the public’s expectations.

Officers are being instructed that they should steer away from high-speed chases that can potentially put their own welfare and those of suspects and other road users at risk.

Instead, officers are being urged to use all tactical options at their disposal to bring a pursuit to an early and safe conclusion.

Sergeant Johnson added: “This new training will be focused towards ensuring that the right people have the right skills and that the right people are in the right place at the right time to focus on the service required of them by the public.

“These newly-skilled officers will then be able to more effectively deal with today’s crime today.”

there is a danger of blurring three issues here.

Is that a climb down or a contradiction? You fully realise that if every speeding "offence" could be detected the whole nation of drivers would be banned in the first week.

The thing that scares the hell out of me is that you will decide that "gravity" is equivalent to the numbers of miles per hour over the limit

When will you realise that things are not so simple? Road accidents are a problem in psychology, not a problem in physics.

I can already hear the calls for these boxes to be fitted to all cars. There must be other groups who will help us fight this. Civil liberties groups for example - nobody wants 'big brother' to know where they are at any given time.

I can already hear the calls for these boxes to be fitted to all cars.

There must be other groups who will help us fight this. Civil liberties groups for example - nobody wants 'big brother' to know where they are at any given time.

"Even paranoids have enemies," pronounced a bumper sticker on the back of a ratty old Ford I spotted several years ago. I suppose my reaction was vaguely sympathetic, considering a mild disposition in that direction, especially when it comes to the meddling of the nanny state in my personal affairs. I was reminded of the nanny's omnipresence when the subject of automotive black boxes was raised in a recent issue of the Wall Street Journal. The piece concentrated on the question of how the data from air-bag "Event Data Recorders" or EDR's, can be stored and employed. Who owns the data? The owner of the vehicle? The government? Trial lawyers? The police?

All current GM and Ford automobiles and trucks contain EDR's that capture a mass of vehicle data five seconds prior to a crash; speed, throttle settings, braking activity, cornering forces, etc. Other manufacturers are sure to follow, especially if government regulations mandate such devices in the name of safety. (And aren't all such regulations promulgated in the broad-brush panacea of "public safety"?)

Not only will your future automobile probably contain an EDR, but under the hood will be a neat little computer called the OBD, or On-Board Diagnostic system. It records engine data, presumably to help technicians perform proper maintenance and make the repairs. But critics claim that OBD's have the potential of poking into the driving habits of the owner to a point of invading privacy, much like their sister EDR's.

("Sir, your OBD and your EDR indicate that you drive at a steady 75 mph, which is illegal, that you fail to change your oil at the correct intervals, that you drive one-handed while using your cell phone and pick your nose at red lights. This voids your warranty.")

Two computer brains -- one under the hood and the other packed in your air bag system -- record your every move behind the wheel; seemingly harmless enough unless you're involved in a crash or a breakdown, when all that data becomes somebody else's -- probably to your detriment.

Moreover, most manufacturers are offering satellite uplink connections to your vehicle. General Motors 'OnStar' system is prototypical and probably the best known. This looks good at first glance; a simple device for service information without penalty. So too for computerized toll payments like New York State's "EZ Pass" system that permits motorists to ease past toll booths while paying later. A neat convenience that helps to ease congestion. But the potential for mischief is great. ("Sir, the computer says you ran between toll stations A and B at 86 mph, which is 21 miles an hour over the legal limit. You are therefore fined $600 and your license is suspended.") New York authorities deny that such expansion of "EZ Pass" is intended, but that capability is within easy reach of the Big Mamma computer controlling the system.

Add photo radar and other highly sophisticated traffic monitoring devices already in use in Canada and Europe and we face the possibility that all vehicular traffic can be monitored at all times. It's a lay-up with modern computer technology to keep track and record the movement of every motor vehicle in the nation. It could be justified on the basis of safety (of course), speed monitoring, emergency scene responses, gridlock avoidance, etc.

Want to know where every suspected drug dealer, Arab flight student, anti-government dissident, child molester, rapist or Mafioso is driving at the moment? Just hit the "enter" key.

We have opened Pandora's box with the computer. How we square it with privacy issues is a dilemma. We are continually shocked to learn how much data is already stored regarding our personal lives, particularly relating to health and financial issues. But one refuge from the probing eye of Big Brother remains the personal motor vehicle. We can still move about with relative freedom, presuming we obey a few simple rules of the road.

But the potential for intrusion by all manner of snoops ranging from police agencies, insurance providers, government safety types, employers, etc. is on the horizon. Presumably legislators of all political persuasions will rally to prevent any such insidious peeking, leaving only we closet paranoids to fret.

But make no mistake, the ability for computers to look over our shoulders ever millisecond that we are behind the wheel is a clear and present danger. One can only hope that concerns for "public safety" will not totally destroy freedom in this rare and cherished sanctuary of personal privacy.

If road accidents are confined purely to psychology, I would be happy enough to treat them via public service ads, signage, standards education and what have you. Indeed, this has a role to play, and one of my justifications for supporting limits and their enforcement is that they reinforce a common driving culture, where certain standards (not just acceptable speeds) are in-violable.

Unfortunately, accidents due to bad driving also spill out into the physical and affect me, my family, friends and strangers who might have been my friends. Whether or not you are right in your assertions, I would rather that bad drivers (which seem to be increasing in number) be travelling within the limit than over it.

The new goods will guarantee that speeders can be detected each time they blip over the limit. In this case, policing policy will be scaled according to gravity of the event, because there will be too many otherwise to be politically acceptable. I reckon road charging is the way they will go, with a higher charges for blippers.

If road accidents are confined purely to psychology, I would be happy enough to treat them via public service ads, signage, standards education and what have you. <<snip>>.

Unfortunately, accidents due to bad driving also spill out into the physical and affect me, my family, friends and strangers who might have been my friends. Whether or not you are right in your assertions, I would rather that bad drivers (which seem to be increasing in number) be travelling within the limit than over it.

basingwerk said:
I never break the speed limit

I am on the verge of giving up reading your diatribes because, while they look impressive

you are just going to great lengths to talk a lot of rubbish.

BW, are you deliberately ignoring the possibility that by slowing down the average/below average drivers to below 'natural' speed for the road conditions you may increase accident rate/average severity. Say, they might become bored with the road and start hollywood-style conversations (facing the passanger)/obsessed with the speedo/ etc. Pedestrians might become complacent and wander into the road more. Could the KSI(of speed) function have a local minimum at some optimal speed?

<snip..>I have been ignoring the possibility that by slowing down the average/below average drivers to below 'natural' speed, you may increase accident rate/average severity.

I have done this on the following count. Bringing such parameters into the discussion introduces many new concepts on which I have no data. Things such as "natural speed levels" may or may not exist. There may or may not be a correlation between perceived speed and focus levels. There may or may not be an advantage gained by such a correlation over and above the increases in risk due to impact and reaction limits, but again, I have no data on that, and in any case such data would be highly suspect (to me at least) due to it's abstract and dependant underpinnings, and its potential for political exploitation from both sides.

Like Gatsobait's .sig, keep everything as simple as possible, but not simpler (or something like that). I know your aversion to common sense (no insult intended, I know exactly what you mean), but at one level at least, this has to 'make sense'.

The above <lines on psychological evidence> strikes me as a rather unscientific approach

Any data, suspect or otherwise, are better than none at all

Data that may ultimately save lives should be sought with vigour, don't you agree? The assumption that certain data are irrelevant because they are not available defies logic.

What do you mean by your post, BW? The argument advanced by SS is that the simple accident causation model that does not include driver psychology does not 'make sense', i.e. that this model is 'simpler than is possible' to paraphrase GB's signature. Is your counterargument to this 'we have no data on this so let's carry on with the set of assumptions that do not rely on such data'?

Incidentally I think that the 'black box' transmitters have the potential to clarify considerably the accident causation picture. Provided these are tested on a sufficiently large and representative sample of the driving population, they could reveal the true relationship between 'bending the speed limit' and insurance risk, and hopefully and more importantly - the KSIs. This will be part of the data that we are missing now, I hope

...we are stuck with prevention andmitigation fot the foreseeable future. I am sure you will agree with me that head-on collisions are very painfull, and head-ons at high speed hurt a heck of a lot more than head-ons at low speed. I know this from experience!