Another Driver Chooses To Believe GPS Over The Reality Of A Cliff

from the the-machines-are-taking-over dept

Ah, yet another tale of a British driver turning on his GPS unit and turning off his brain: a guy in Yorkshire left his car teetering over the edge of a cliff after blindly following his GPS down a narrow, steep path. The GPS said it was a road, and the driver seems to have let that override his common sense, as plenty of people are wont to do. Drivers often like to blame the technology for taking them down some treacherous path, but it's not as if the device simply suggested a suboptimal route, or drove the car itself. The infallibility some people see in technology is troubling, since they seem to see things like GPS units as perfectly acceptable replacements for their brains.

Filed Under: driving, gps

Massachusetts Wants GPS Driving Tax, Too

from the big-brother dept

For several years, authorities in Oregon have been pursuing a plan to put GPS units in every car in the state to track and tax drivers' mileage. Now, Massachusetts wants to get in on the act, and replace its gas tax with a mileage-based tax (via Boing Boing) generated by GPS units in cars. The state wants to ditch its gas tax because rising fuel efficiency is leading to decreasing tax revenue, so the new plan would instead charge drivers a quarter of a cent for each mile they drive. The state's governor is talking not just about boosting tax revenue, but says he likes ideas that are "faster, cheaper, simpler." It's not clear how replacing the current gas tax by forcing drivers to install GPS trackers in their cars and building an infrastructure to gather data from them, then assess and collect a mileage tax will be fast, cheap or simple. This doesn't even mention the myriad privacy concerns of giving state employees access to records of Massachusetts drivers' activity. This idea continually pops up, whether as a tax idea or a new way to charge for auto insurance -- but it never seems to hold any more value beyond a soundbite.

Filed Under: driving, gps, massachusetts, monitoring, tax

More Not-Entirely-Useful Tech Tries To Stop Texting While Driving

from the wut-r-u-tryin-2-do-2-my-fon-dad dept

While legislators try (and fail) to ban the use of mobile phones while driving, the market for technology to kill phone use while driving is heating up. Last month, a company announced a device aimed at stopping teens from talking while driving, though it appears to have plenty of pitfalls. Now comes "Textecution" (a piece of software for Android phones) that kills a device's ability to send or receive texts when it detects the phone is moving at more than 10 miles per hour. The application's developers intend for parents to install it on their kids' phones so they can't text while driving -- assuming, of course, the kids have a G1 handset. That's a significant hurdle in itself, as it's hard to imagine that, as with so many other things, kids won't find it too hard to circumvent. Also, the application can't tell when a kid is actually driving a car, or simply riding in one, or riding on a bus or train, or in another situation where they're moving faster than 10 mph, but not driving a car, and perfectly able to safely text. It really appears that this software isn't much of a solution, but rather window dressing that makes parents think they're doing something to protect their kids. But isn't installing some easily defeated application on your teenager's phone to put your mind at ease simpler than trying to teach them responsibility?

Filed Under: driving, text messages

Traffic Camera Companies Looking To Give Gov't More Ways To Spy On You As You Drive

from the you-have-no-privacy-anywhere dept

There's been plenty of backlash against red light cameras (which often increase the number of accidents) and speed cameras (which seem to have problems with accuracy). However, that's not stopping the manufacturers of those cameras from trying to get governments to buy even more of them for other purposes. A few folks have sent in a story from TheNewspaper (a site that actively fights against the spread of traffic-related cameras), noting that the two big firms in the space are pitching the cameras to governments for surveillance purposes, to keep records and data on motorists. They talk about using it to recognize license plates on stolen cars, but you can imagine it's only a matter of time until it also puts together a nice database on where you traveled when. It's yet another step towards proving the saying that you no longer have any privacy anywhere. At least not from the government. Maybe next up, they'll look to just put cameras directly in your cars, like some taxis have these days. That way they can track what you're saying as well.

Filed Under: cameras, driving, surveillance

Forget Driving While Texting, Now There's Train Conducting While Texting...

from the im-nt-pying-attntn dept

As you probably heard, Friday afternoon there was a tragic train crash in California, killing a bunch of people. There were some rumors going around over the weekend, and now the press is picking up on a report that the engineer of the Metrolink train that missed a signal leading to the crash may have been text-messaging with someone moments before the accident. It's the type of story that the press loves, though there's not that much evidence other than the claims of the kid on the other end of the text messages. Just as politicians are now pushing through "driving-while-texting" bans, you have to imagine that this will also help push along those initiatives. But, once again, the same issue comes through. The problem isn't text messaging: it's people in control over big, powerful machines (cars or trains) not paying attention the way they're supposed to be paying attention.

Filed Under: collision, driving, texting, trains

Turns Out Drivers Not So Interested In Big Brother Style Car Insurance

from the please-don't-spy-on-me dept

Four years ago, we wrote about the concept of "Big Brother-style car insurance," where drivers would agree to have special black boxes attached to their cars which would transmit all sorts of info to the insurance company about their driving habits, including how much, when and how fast they drove. Those drivers who drove safer (or at safer "times") were offered better rates. We were actually quite surprised in 2005 to hear the company behind the most intrusive of these programs, Norwich Union in the UK, claim that the early tests were going so well that it was expanding the program. Three years later, we now learn that the "going so well" part may have only been on the insurers' side, rather than the customers' side. In a post talking about why such surveillance insurance plans are a bad, bad idea, the EFF also points out that Norwich Union has just ditched its offering, noting that... well... almost no one signed up. Turns out that people aren't so keen to sign up for Big Brother Brand car insurance after all. The "going well" part was actually all just wishful thinking, as the company says that it thought people would sign up only to discover that they didn't.

Filed Under: driving, gps, insurance, monitoring

Freaking People Out With Fake Speed Bumps Doesn't Seem Smart

from the disaster-in-waiting dept

While it might seem like a cool idea at first, the idea of using fake speed bumps presented as an optical illusion painted on the pavement just seems dangerous. Sure, it may get drivers to slow down, but tricking drivers into thinking there's something in the road when there isn't just seems like the sort of thing that ends badly. Besides, in various areas where speed bumps are useful, wouldn't this just mean that drivers who knew they were fake would ignore them? That is, in fact, what tests of the painted on speed bumps found -- the impact was rather brief. Besides were real-life actual speed bumps really that big a problem? Sure they cost more, but it seems like they're going to be a lot more effective.

Filed Under: driving, optical illusions, speed bumps

Driving Distractions Are, Indeed, Distracting

from the who-knew? dept

This shouldn't come as much of a surprise (if at all), but as Slashdot points out, there are many driving distractions out there, and all can be potentially dangerous. The study found that it's not just mobile phones, but eating or changing the radio station or even talking to others in the car. Basically, what the study found was that when there's cognitive overload from too many tasks performed simultaneously, activities that are more core may squeeze out less developed processes. Thus, speaking and listening (which are learned at a young age) are likely to squeeze out more recently learned processes, such as driving.

While this isn't at all surprising, what does it mean for the various attempts to legislate against driver distractions? Despite some attempts to ban distractions one by one, it's never going to be possible to ban all driver distractions. You can't make it illegal to talk to someone else in your car or even to change the radio station while driving (though, who knows...). The real issue shouldn't be to focus on banning each and every driver distraction, but in educating drivers to the dangers they face with those distractions, making it clear that they need to be extra careful while engaged in any such activity, and that it's best not to do any such thing in heavy or highly variable traffic. Yes, there will always be some folks who ignore this and assume they can drive just fine with these distractions -- but those people would do the same thing even if the distractions were banned.

Filed Under: driving, driving distractions

'Autonomous' Driving Could Turn The Old-Fashioned Kind Into A Hobby

from the driving-progress dept

My esteemed co-blogger Adam Thierer points out that General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner is touting a future of "autonomous driving." Adam is against the concept, worrying that future generations will be deprived of the excitement of controlling your own vehicle. Luckily, I don't think Adam needs to worry. Even after autonomous driving becomes sophisticated enough to be deployed on real roads, it will still take decades for people to transition to all-autonomous vehicles. Moreover, the market is likely to continue catering to old coots like Adam who want to continue driving their cars the old fashioned way, so there will be human drivers on the road for the foreseeable future. That, in turn, means that autonomously-driving cars will have to know how to share the road with human beings for the foreseeable future. It will be many decades before we could even start seriously discussing banning non-autonomous cars from the roads. More to the point, history suggests that when technology makes a day-to-day activity obsolete, it doesn't disappear. Rather, it become a hobby. A half-century after the introduction of the automatic transmission, there are still plenty of people who prefer to drive a stick. People haven't needed to hunt or fish for food for decades, yet hunting and fishing are now popular hobbies. The same is true of traditional housework activities like weaving, knitting, and quilting. It no longer makes economic sense to do these things in the home, but people do them anyway because they enjoy it. By the same token, if autonomous driving someday makes traditional driving obsolete, that won't make it go away. It will simply mean that it will become a recreational activity rather than an unavoidable part of daily life. When he's 60, Adam will still be able to zoom around in his sports car on the weekends, but on his morning commute he might have the option to ignore the Northern Virginia traffic jam and focus on writing his latest Luddite screed for the Technology Liberation Front.

Filed Under: autonomous car, driving, hobby
Companies: gm

Australia To Test Cars That Won't Let You Speed

from the slow-down,-dave dept

About a year and a half ago, we wrote about plans by transportation authorities in London to test a system that would force drivers to slow down if they were going over the speed limit. We haven't heard much about the tests since then, but it appears that similar tests will soon get underway in Australia (found via TLF). The system involves a GPS-based device that would track where you are against a database of speed limits to determine if you were going over the limit. The system can be programmed to react in three ways. At the lowest level, it would beep at you if you're speeding. A step up from there is where it would automatically cut the gas to slow you down, though there would be a manual override if the driver needed it. Then, there's a third level, where there would be no manual override. It's unclear how widespread the use of this device would be, but apparently there are some discussions about requiring it on all cars -- or (more likely) just for repeat speeding offenders. As we noted when the London tests began, this is attacking the symptom (speeding) rather than the actual disease (bad driving).

Filed Under: australia, driving, gps, speeding