Multi-Target Photo-Radar System To Make Speeding Riskier 506
mrquagmire writes with this excerpt from Engadget:
"Go easy on the gas, Speed Racer, because Cordon is on its way. Developed by Simicon, this new speed sensor promises to take highway surveillance to new heights of precision. Unlike most photo radar systems, which track only one violator at a time, Simicon's device can simultaneously identify and follow up to 32 vehicles across four lanes. Whenever a car enters its range, the Cordon will automatically generate two images: one from wide-angle view and one closeup shot of the vehicle's license plate. It's also capable of instantly measuring a car's speed and mapping its position, and can easily be synced with other databases via WiFi, 3G or WiMAX."
Position AND Speed (Score:3, Funny)
I am dubious...
So who gets the ticket... (Score:3)
...when my Google car is driving itself above the speed limit?
Re:So who gets the ticket... (Score:4, Informative)
You! The Google car team is clear about that, I am not sure why this keeps coming up again and again. Its you driving the car with aids, what ever they may be.
Re:So who gets the ticket... (Score:5, Funny)
You meant driving the car with ads, right?
This is google we're talking about.
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Then you should always practice safe driving and consult with your doctor before taking a passenger.
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Fortunately here in South Carolina (Score:5, Funny)
Fortunately South Carolina has Bubba.
Bubba comes in many shapes and sizes (mostly rotund). Bubba likes to shoot and shiny objects that Uncle Sam sets up alongside the road.
Bubba works for the good of mankind by filling full of holes things like street signs, street lights, and traffic cameras.
A speed limit sign, or deer-crossing sign you can just about still use even when it is full of holes. Speed cameras are pretty much useless after the first shot.
Re:Fortunately here in South Carolina (Score:5, Informative)
What also helps is that unattended speed enforcement is illegal in South Carolina. An actual living, breathing officer has to have witnessed the violation, made the measurement himself, made actual, person to person contact with the driver, issued the summons, and collected the drivers signature.
Unmanned photo traffic enforcement is a big no-no in SC.
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/31/3176.asp [thenewspaper.com]
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That's interesting- I didn't know that. I really did figure we didn't have detection devices like that because they'd get shot.
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'Course, just before the camera goes, it gets a pic of your plate.
Which is why you do this with your cousin's truck.
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Which is why you do this with your cousin's truck.
So, what, that's any truck with SC plates other than your own? You may want to provide a bit more help and also exclude anyone you live with, including your wife, parents, kids, etc.
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No, this is preemptive action, not a reactive action. You do not shoot the camera while speeding, you shoot it before you go speeding.
That way the camera doesn't get a pick of anyone's vehicle.
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Fortunately South Carolina has Bubba.
Bubba comes in many shapes and sizes (mostly rotund). Bubba likes to shoot and shiny objects that Uncle Sam sets up alongside the road.
Bubba works for the good of mankind by filling full of holes things like street signs, street lights, and traffic cameras.
A speed limit sign, or deer-crossing sign you can just about still use even when it is full of holes. Speed cameras are pretty much useless after the first shot.
I think you're being a bit generous here. A quick survey shows that it takes Bubba an average of at least a half-dozen shots to actually bag that deer on the deer-crossing sign. Also, the camera is going to have taken several "shots" before Bubba can even put down his beer. Hardly a fair fight, I know, but it's the gub--mint we're talking about here, so there you go.
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I know, but it's the gub--mint we're talking about here, so there you go.
Epic win, right here.
Clearly you've been down here!
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Must increase revenue streams. (Score:2)
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And if you don't speed, they don't get revenue.
Funny how that works...
Revenue or Safety? (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems like a very complicated way to collect taxes.
A useful application would be to target those vehicles which are going more than 10% (or 10km/h or whatever) faster than everyone else. That would actually improve safety and make the highway system more efficient (homogenous traffic reduces braking/lane changes and increases throughput). However, that's not the primary goal of highway speed enforcement so it will never happen
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Wow. The multi-target radar system is *more* complicated than your proposal, is it? I'd like to see how you quantify your variables and make it hold up in a court of law.
Look, I'm all for simplicity especially when it comes to rules and laws, but anything that is "relative" is asking for interpretation and hence, more complexity.
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I like taxes that I can legally avoid paying, though.
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Ok fine then... (Score:3, Interesting)
Then WHEN this has been implemented for a while... and tickets go up.... and there is no difference at all in accidents or deaths....
can we THEN admit that we have hit the point of diminishing returns wrt enforcement vs actual safety?
We keep seeing more rules or better enforcement... and yet.... don't seem to see corresponding improvements in safety. In fact, the only improvements in real safety that I have seen, have all come from safety devices in cars, like air bags.
We saw it in NY, when talking on phones was banned, and a study was able to verify that yes, people really were switching to headsets or not talking... more than a 60% drop in OBSERVED use...but.... no change at all in deaths or accidents. Yet somehow... that was explained away as not having any meaning (because if the report doesn't say we need more enforcement and more penalties, then its clearly not valid right?)
Re:Ok fine then... (Score:5, Informative)
wow, those are interesting claims. data references please?
because my sources say speed cameras DO work, and on TWO DIFFERENT continents.
http://www.physorg.com/news140443278.html [physorg.com]
http://alttransport.com/2010/10/7966/ [alttransport.com]
nice try, Speed Trollster.
Fortunately... (Score:2)
...It costs a billion dollars.
Two anomalies (Score:3)
First of all, what is the freaking speed limit on that road?
The only cars in the green are the ones coming to a stop in frame.
Second, I spotted one car with a green indicator accelerating away from a following car with a yellow indicator. So the thing isn't really discriminating accurately.
If I'm ever popped by this system, that piece of video will be my defense.
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It looks like the lowest yellow is 40 and the lowest red is 50. One thing I noticed in addition to your finds is that there seems to be a bit of lag in the decrease of speed ratings, but there doesn't seep to be a corresponding lag in the increase.
Re:Two anomalies (Score:4, Interesting)
Or they can get you to plea to a non-moving violation. I didn't properly stop at a stop sign once (did a rolling stop) and got a ticket. The judge told me to go speak with the prosecutor who immediately offered me a deal to lower it to a non-moving violation (parking on the pavement). My choices were then a) Try to fight the ticket, possibly losing and getting a fine plus points on my license, or b) accept the plea in which case I pay a smaller fine and have no points added. I picked b.
In hindsight, it's the perfect setup for the government. They don't need to do whatever administrative work is needed to do to add points to your license (contacting insurance companies and the like), they don't need to deal with people fighting the tickets, and they tend to collect the somewhat smaller payments right away.
Oh, and since that day, I come to full stops at all stop signs. Not getting a second ticket for that!
Could be used to catch other unsafe drivers (Score:3)
They also need to take current conditions into account (wet roads, fog, etc.) to determine if someone is breaking the basic speed [wikipedia.org] law, even when they are driving below the posted speed limit.
And if they can do all that, they can objectively determine if you're tailgating (driving on a road too close to the vehicle in front, at a distance which does not guarantee that stopping to avoid collision is possible [wikipedia.org]).
Because so many people tailgate according this definition, this technology has the potential to make roads a lot safer!
Video (Score:2)
The Police State (Score:2, Interesting)
Speed Limits are arbitary limits which do not take into account
- Weather
- Vehicle type: are you a sports car or a truck
- Driver skill / fatigue
I think most western countries have passed the sweet stop of punative surveilance vs safety 10 years ago. It is now about revenue raising for states that are cash strapped. The cordon system takes this to a new level. In fact I thought of developing a system like this, and thought no, as it doesn't do the public any good.
What would be better is a fine system that is
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There is no reason why government could not calculate the monetary cost of speeding (ie increased accident rate caused by speeding).
Well, that depends on whether an accident is "caused" by the speeding or not. This is a pretty complicated question. The investigators often report 'speed is a factor', however speed is obviously a factor in every crash. In every single crash, if they'd been going more slowly it either wouldn't have happened or would have been less serious.
Those sort of studies often competely ignore statistical variance too. For example, sometimes here on a holiday weekend there'll be no fatalities, and sometimes there'll
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I don't know about other states, but in California what you wrote simply isn't true. The speed limit is a Prima Face limit; if the officer feels that you're driving too fast for conditions, he can cite you with CVC 22350 (same VC used to cite speeding above the posted limit.) The only difference is that he'll have to prove your speed was unsafe in court*. Vehicle typ
Can it nab red-light runners too? (Score:3)
If so I want a dozen of these in my city. On my drive into work this morning three cars zipped through the red light 2.5 seconds after it had changed. On my walk during lunch hour at another intersection I watch 2 more vehicles blow through the just-barely red before they entered the intersection.
Rather than citations, I'd like auto-cannons installed to gun down the offenders.
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If you lived in an area that has red light cameras (like mine) you might feel differently. In a perfect world where the police were angels who distributed perfect justice for free, it's probably a good idea. I might even go with the autocannons. Because the problem you describe is very real and very dangerous. And those guys are assholes.
But in real life, what happens is the local police department makes a deal with private companies, the private companies manage the equipment (putting them in the odd p
EZ-Pass? (Score:2)
In New York State, passage on many of the highways requires tolls. Many of us use an electronic system called EZ-Pass to pay the tolls. It's especially pleasant to avoid having to roll down the window during the cold winter.
Instead of all this fancy monitoring gear, you could just look at the times from toll to toll. It would be impossible to prove that a vehicle was never speeding, but easy to prove that it definitely was speeding.
I already feel my environment is overly draconian so I've never been one to
Stay close (Score:2)
Based on that video, I should just drive close enough to the car in front of me that half or less of my license plate is readable by the camera. Thanks for increasing road safety, automated ticket systems.
Although it would be resource intensive I think they still need to do driving tests that realistically assess driving skill and assign speed limits accordingly. That's the only way I would accept the new personal electronic vehicle speed monitoring systems that are starting to hit public use. Theoretica
You don't want 100% compliance (Score:3)
Victoria Australia has 99+%* speed limit compliance on some highways and its accident count has been steady for a while and the deaths per distance driver has increased in step with the speed limit compliance. This year was on track for being worse than last year except the police decided to stop writing tickets as a protest for more money which resulted in an increase in speed and a drop in the accident rate.
They run a "Wipe off five" ads here which came from badly done report on crash rates out of South Australia university* that forget to take into account increased traffic density increasing accident rates. They claim by going just 5 km/h over the limit doubles the chance of an accident*. What they don't say is that is true for about 25 km/hr over the limit (as per Solomon quoted elsewhere here). They didn't point out that slowing down everyone increase tail gating which is something like 4000 times more likely to cause a death*.
Of course using traffic from Adelaide for any other city is like using traffic data from Billings Montana for Los Angles, Rome or Cairo.
Victoria currently has about 350 people a year die in traffic accidents*. World wide trends in stats show that number is somewhere between 20 and 100 high than it should be*. I figure the "wipe off five" campaign is killing an extra 30 people a year.
They use the distance over time cameras between Sydney and Melbourne in Victoria and have for years. The police stopped counting a number of single victim accidents in the road stats as well. Apparently stressing out drivers so bad they have a stroke and kill other people doesn't count as a "road accident" anymore since it was a "medical problem"
* data can be found on VicRoad's annual reports and crashstats web sites and backed up references found in a wonderful bit of fiction published by the Victorian Auditor-General.
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More likely: it's a demonstration by the manufacturer, where limits for red/yellow have been placed much lower than normal.
With regular speed limits, traffic would be zipping by so fast, you wouldn't be able to read the plates or the tags.
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Re:You Lose (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead of complaining about tickets, run for office or attend government meetings and propose changes.
Yeah, that'll work.
'Look, I know you get a sizeable amount of your revenue from taxing those who drive at more than X mph, but you really should stop because it's very silly.'
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Propose to raise income tax at the same time, so revenue stays the same.
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Simple solution. Stop speeding. If people didn't speed, then the government wouldn't get any ticket revenues, and would be forced to find another income source (such as a direct tax). Personally, I'm glad that there are so many morons out there who pay extra taxes in order to reach their destination a few minutes quicker. Less tax burden for me!
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Stop speeding. If people didn't speed, then the government wouldn't get any ticket revenues, and would be forced to find another income source (such as a direct tax).
While keeping the laws against speeding on the books and continuing to enforce them against everyone else who didn't stop speeding? Obsolete laws don't get repealed.
#OccupyInterstate Everyone drive 45 MPH in the 40-Minimum-to-75 MPH zones this Thanksgiving weekend!
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You're paranoid.
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You should still follow posted speed limits, even if you don't agree with them. Instead of complaining about tickets, run for office or attend government meetings and propose changes.
You'd be better off talking to the engineers that work on the recommendations. They'll give you an intelligent response to any questions/suggestions and, as a bonus, you won't feel dirty for dealing with politicians directly.
Re:Oh Lord. (Score:5, Insightful)
I would be tempted to say that if you can't speed anymore, then the device has done its job. Supposedly, speed limits are here for the good of the people.
Now, if only those speed limits were defined in a sensible fashion. How many times have I seen 2x 3 lanes highway limited at 50kph ? (I live in France)
I'm sure in the US there are also those places where the speed limits are just... insanely ridiculous.
So, when it was down to getting caught by the occasional police officer hidden in the bushes, the game was fair. If those automated radars become commonplace, then for the game to remain fair, they *must* revisit speed limits in most places. Because if we have to respect those speed limits *everywhere*, driving is going to become a PITA pretty soon. And nobody will benefit from this.
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I would be tempted to say that if you can't speed anymore, then the device has done its job. Supposedly, speed limits are here for the good of the people.
Now, if only those speed limits were defined in a sensible fashion. How many times have I seen 2x 3 lanes highway limited at 50kph ? (I live in France)
I'm sure in the US there are also those places where the speed limits are just... insanely ridiculous.
So, when it was down to getting caught by the occasional police officer hidden in the bushes, the game was fair. If those automated radars become commonplace, then for the game to remain fair, they *must* revisit speed limits in most places. Because if we have to respect those speed limits *everywhere*, driving is going to become a PITA pretty soon. And nobody will benefit from this.
As you seem to have grasped--but not articulated--speed limits are not for the good of the people, they're for the good of the revenuers.
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My response to this is... "sometimes."
The fact is, while high speed limits may not have a direct impact on frequencies of accidents, they do have a significant impact on severity of an accident as well as overall societal fuel consumption.
While vehicle-vehicle accident damage does tend to scale with speed differential, accident damage also has to do with speed differential
Re:Oh Lord. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm surprised that fuel consumption, being a big national issue, hasn't gained traction with the speed limit people. The state next to mine even recently increased their speed limits on a major road from 65 to 70, so all those SUVs can go even faster and burn even more fuel (no engine technology in the world will save you from speed-squared drag).
Lowering the speed limit is an extremely inexact way to reduce fuel consumption. Plenty of people will simply ignore it as they do already, and to the extent that they don't, you create a disincentive for people to buy vehicles that consume less fuel because their gas-guzzling monster truck won't hit them as hard in the pocket book at a lower speed. If you want to reduce fuel consumption then you raise the gas tax. Then if I still want to drive fast, I can buy a car that gets 30MPG at 80MPH and everybody's happy.
I also think that all those people who speed on their commutes must have failed math, because going 75 instead of 70 only saves you a theoretical 100 seconds (not even 2 minutes!) over 30 miles, which is generally erased by slowdowns at an interchange or a traffic light. Going 75 versus 65 only saves you 220 seconds - less than four minutes - over 30 miles. About the only time speeding makes sense is on very long trips or if every second counts.
And driving 85 instead of 55 will save you more than 10 minutes. Each way. If you're commuting five days a week that's a hundred hours a year. I don't know anybody who couldn't use an extra hundred hours a year.
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they *must* revisit speed limits in most places.
I'm sure they will, and adjust the speed limit downwards a bit more to generate even more revenue. Be careful what you wish for.
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So, when it was down to getting caught by the occasional police officer hidden in the bushes, the game was fair.
No, if he had to hide in the bushes he obviously not being highly visible and setting an example to everyone to be safe. He's a predator looking to slap someone with a ticket.
Re:Assholes in the wrong lane (Score:4, Insightful)
If police would just enforce the keep-right-except-to-pass law, 90% of the traffic problems go away within a year. It would do a hell of a lot more to reduce speeding too, as most of that is born out of a desire to not get stuck behind one of the assholes you mentioned.
Re:Assholes in the wrong lane (Score:4, Insightful)
while I'm cruising at 70mph in the "fast" lane
That's precisely the problem. Even if you're driving faster than everybody on the road, nobody should be "cruising" in the left hand lane. It's for passing only and that's the law in a lot of places.
If you think changing lanes is so dangerous, then yes, you probably should stay in the right lane all the time. Because it's really not that big a deal for thet vast majority of drivers. Some people aren't comfortable behind the wheel and that's ok, but you shouldn't make everyone else pay for it (especially when there's a sign every mile telling you to get out of the way).
Re:Oh Lord. (Score:4, Interesting)
How about you just don't speed, you jack-off...
Research has repeatedly shown that the safest drivers are around the 85th percentile by speed. If lots of people are breaking the speed limit, then it's set below that level. If the limit is set below that level and you drive below it, you're a more dangerous driver than many of those who are speeding.
Re:Oh Lord. (Score:4, Insightful)
The 85th percentile of what?
Oh, of the speed people are going because of where the speed limit is set.
All speed limits are initialized to federal standard guidelines.
Almost never is a speed limit changed, except when the local OCD mommies get a hair up their ass and lower a perfectly good 50 to 35 for a 24/7 school zone, or a 40 to a 25 because their similarly brain-addled kids can't be trusted to stay the fuck out of the street.
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The 85th percentile of what speed people would do if they were left to their own judgement, actually
Re:Oh Lord. (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you know how I can tell you've never driven in "reasonable and prudent" Montana? There are no speed limits except for trucks. So therefore, how could the posted speed limit be 65?
http://www.us-highways.com/montana/reasonable.htm [us-highways.com]
http://www.us-highways.com/montana/mtspeed.htm [us-highways.com]
However, that law doesn't appear to be in effect anymore. reasonable and prudent was literally, what you and the officer agree is a safe speed due to the conditions. If it is 80, go 80.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_the_United_States#Montana [wikipedia.org]
Re:Oh Lord. (Score:4, Interesting)
FYI: Montana was coerced by the federal government to switch from reasonable and prudent to fixed limits by the threat of losing federal highway funds.
Interesting read [hwysafety.com] about accident rates related to the reasonable and prudent years.
Summary for the tl;dr crowd:
Re:Oh Lord. (Score:5, Interesting)
Depends on the autobahn, only some are unrestricted.
It used to be (here at least) that the speed of a road was set at close to the 85th percentile (no one wants to read that the speed limit is "46.8734mph", so there's a bit of rounding).
When the hand-wringers got all uppity about a few bad crashes (hello, random cluster) the limits were reduced. This was hailed as the answer due to the lower accident rate next year (oh, hi there Regression to the Mean). Then there were a few more accidents (cluster), speed cameras brought in, accidents dropped again and the hand-wringers went away happy. Until the next cluster of course.
Meanwhile the various councils and private companies/partnerships who run the cameras realised they were cashing in big-time. So more cameras went up, more limits lowered, more money made; all was good with the world if you were a civil servant (or an importer of cameras, as some "expert" witnesses were...bias, really?) until the cracks began to show.
i.e. people started to ask why regression to the mean hadn't been accounted for? Why other measures were not tried first? Why cameras were place in areas without a history of speed related accidents? Where was the money going? Why was speed the only focus? etc.
Then, of course, there is a bit of human psychology. Negative reinforcement is one. You break the limit, nothing happens, so you feel safe to break the limit again.
The limit feels too low, so you start to do other things (e.g. tailgate, make more lane changes, whatever) to try and bring the state or arousal back to a level you feel comfortable with. Or you stick to the limit and nod-off due to boredom. Crunch.
Trials have been done with removing traffic lights, road markings and other measures to make roads "feel" more dangerous. Result? Drivers took more care. Problem is these measure cost money to implement and raise no revenue.
And finally, there is my one of my pet hates. Moronic parents who *MUST* drive their brat to the school gates. There are the same hand-wringing excrement who campaign for cameras and cause major problems by double-parking and disgorging their progeny into traffic. Here's an idea: park away from the school and WALK your little precious to the gates. Not only will that ease congestion, but you can take the time to teach them road safety (assuming you know any). And let's face it, it's probably the only exercise the wee bugger will get.
The best thing they could do is bring back the traffic police. But then a trained traffic officer does on raise revenue, they merely help make roads safer, catch criminals and save lives. What does that matter when one has beans to count, eh?
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There are lots of other reasons to change a speed limit - even more sinister is why some roads are at 45 or 55 when all the safety data (lane width, curves, traffic volume, ingress from blind side streets, etc.) clearly says they should be at 35, US1 in parts of South Dade County fit this description for quite a while - they did it to keep a number called "Level of Service" higher so they could continue to receive federal funds for the road.
The easiest way around here to get a new traffic light or speed lim
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So, if current speed limits are set by this 85th percentile rule, it follows that the safest speed is the actual speed limit. Therefore, you still shouldn't be speeding.
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"Reporting on these results in 1971, academics West and Dunn confirmed the findings of Solomon and Cirillo,[11] but found that crashes involving turning vehicles accounted for 44 percent of all crashes observed in the study and that excluding these crashes from the analysis greatly attenuated the factors that created the U-shape of the Solomon curve.[12] In 1991, Fildes, Rumbold, and Leening collected self-reported crash data from 707 motorists in Australia with less than 200 reporting they had been in an a
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I don't know, I tend to drive slower when I do that.
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How about you just don't speed, you jack-off...
I'd like to point out to you that most speed limit are ridiculously LOW.
Case in point, the expressways in the major metropolitan city in the U.S. called Chicago where the speed limit on the expressways is 55 MPH. From my estimation, the number of drivers at or below the speed limit is approximately 5%. I also estimate that the average speed of all drivers is approximately 70-75 MPH.
Now what does this tell you about how "reasonable" the posted speed limits are?
As a matter of fact, those who drive the speed l
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I grew up and lived in Michigan for most of my life until 2005 when I moved to Chicagoland. I was amazed at how many people did not respect the left lane to be reserved for those that want to pass or go faster. I guess I have since gotten used to it. Now the left lane is seldom where you want to be for the reason you just stated. I find myself going slower in that lane than others.
Oh, and I would second that there are seldom people driving the posted speed limits in Chicago when not in rush
Re:Oh Lord. (Score:4, Informative)
This is true of Illinois as well.
A person, driving at less than the normal speed of traffic, shall drive in the right-hand lane available for traffic or as close as practicable to the right-hand curb or edge of the roadway. See 625 ILCS 5/11-701(b).
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Great idea big brother!
Better yet, let's put one in your head instead.
That way the police, government, your employer and your wife will always know where you are.
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This would actually be the optimal solution, because as soon as this becomes ubiquitous, some 18 year old with some time on his hands is going to crack the system to route all speeding messages to localhost, and send out nothing but dummy "everything's cool, no speeding detected" packets to the police database at whatever interval is required to verify that the system is still online, actual speed of the car be damned.
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GPS does not work all over and in cases it can (Score:2)
GPS does not work all over and in cases it can say you are on a side road when you are on the highway next to it.
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Funny how in the end you still leave it to where money can be raised by the government.
Modify your plan to protect the privacy of the driver by:
Require all cars to have a GPS system that is always on, calculates the car's speed, checks the car's location against a database of published speed limits and keeps the car from being able to exceed the posted speed limit.
That would eliminate the need to report anything to the government.
The only downfall is no more revenue from speeding tickets.
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If staters were as concerned over highway safety as they are with speed, think of how wonderful our highways would be.
Speeding tickets bring in money. Improving roads to improve safety costs money.
QED.
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My impression is that it's mostly a speed tax and revenue generation. The studies seem to be conflicted on whether or not a speed limit is safer overall.
The only consensus is that when an accident happens, it's more likely to be fatal at higher speeds... No consensus on whether or not it actually reduces incidents. Some studies say that more deaths occur with higher speeds... But my 5 minutes of research isn't turning up much to answer the question clearly.
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Or, more fundamentally than that, do accidents increase with speed? Montana says no...
And does speed increase with speed limits?
I know in the UK there have been cases where increasing speed limits lead to reduced speeds on the roads; when the limit was set way too low people ignored it and drove as fast as they liked, whereas when the limit was raised to a sensible level they stuck to it.
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Gee, a state with a million square miles and six cars doesn't find speeding to be a problem. Who'd a thunk it.
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IIRC, speed does not increase the likelihood of an accident, but it does increase the severity when they occur.
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Read "acceptable range" as "tolerance of the measuring device". If they set a hard limit at the actual limit, they'd lose in court too often to make a profit.
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pro: Who hasn't been passed by a jerk going 15 (at least) over the limit and wished there were someone around to catch them.
con: Does anyone have 'perfect speed' all the time? Especially coming down hills or just going with the flow of traffic?
I've never seen my cruise control be more than about 2-3mph over whatever I've set it at, even on downward slopes.
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I've never seen my cruise control be more than about 2-3mph over whatever I've set it at, even on downward slopes.
This isn't meant for *just* rural roads.
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I actually wish they'd spend more time addressing your pro point. Rather than just making sure people aren't speeding, how about making sure people aren't passing people at too great a difference in speed? Or cutting people off with too little space?
Of course I agree. Simple speeding is a lesser danger on the road. It's just easier to spot speeders than unsafe driving practices (for a computerized camera)
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If these work on acceptable ranges, will they also ticket drivers who are causing hazardous conditions by driving too slow?
Re:a balanced view? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is safest to pass quickly and get back into your lane. It's unsafe to pass at a differential of 2-3 mph ("micropassing") because you end up on the wrong side of the road for a long time, giving more opportunity for bad things to happen (an intersection approaching, other people pulling out to pass, the guy you're passing speeding up, etc.)
The earlier poster who gets angry when someone passes him quickly, is sadly symptomatic of a lot of so-called "good" drivers. They have to feel in control of the other traffic, or else they become angry and uncomfortable. The speed that they like to do is "perfect", anybody who wants to pass them should have left earlier, and anybody slow in front of them needs to start paying attention.
If it weren't on the road, we would call these people "control freaks". It's the same people who speed up when they see someone is trying to pass them. They don't give a crap about any other human being on the road, they only care that the lemmings behind them stay nicely in line behind.
If that poster is still reading: why does it make you so angry? What is wrong with someone going past? You're going to get to your destination at a pace you are obviously happy with , since you chose to go at the speed you are doing; so what is wrong with someone else getting to their destination at their pace? It doesn't affect you..
Re:a balanced view? (Score:4, Insightful)
Man, you need to be modded up. People passing me aren't doing anything to me. It doesn't phase me in the slightest. The person who cuts me off just to prevent me from passing because they think it would be safer (or slamming on their brakes when you get a little too close to the guy doing 15 under in the "passing" lane), are the ones who are actually risking people's safety. Stop playing games! The rest of us are just trying to get from point A to point B. This whole country is filled to the brim with busy-bodies whose only method of elevating themselves is to bring other people down.
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This is quite insightful. Thanks!
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Not every one.
The local camera trappers have scads of cases of people getting flashed daily, sometimes multiple times per day, even going at ridiculous speeds (they had one person doing 100-135 mph in a 65 zone in literally dozens of instances.)
P.S. You're not supposed to break the limit when overtaking, either.
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I've seen toll roads do this as well. They give you a stamped ticket when you get on, and check it when you get off to determine how far you were on the road in order to determine your appropriate toll, and your average speed as well to determine if you need a ticket. Solution? Stop at one of the restaurants that are at service depots on the toll road for lunch, speeding all you want to get there and all you want on the way out. your average speed will still likely be less than the speed limit unless your l
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This kind of defeats the purposes of speeding to begin with. Most of us don't do it for the fun of it, we do it because we're anxious to be where we are going.
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well if you're going to be driving all day, you're going to stop to eat at some point anyway, what better time is there?
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When will we get targetted EMP ? Is is there yet ? :)
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You will know that targeted EMP is out there when there are no more high speed pursuits by police because they can just disable your car if they get close enough.
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Not My car. 1972 Diesel with no electronics to speak of.
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All of them. [roadblade.com]
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Amateur. [google.com] :)
But seriously, it is kind of weird to me that they didn't line up the lines dividing the lane, very much offends my OCD. Georgia, what a strange state you are.
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Being able to target multiple vehicles is a huge differentiator. Otherwise, they're practically useless on a busy road. If your goal is to enforce speed-laws on a busy 4-lane highway, this will make a big difference.
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Back out east the traffic has a c