Would you support the government require that all new cars (and all cars, after 5 years) be equipped with speed governors that use GPS - meaning, you couldn’t exceed the posted speed limit for any road you were on?
Assume you could deactivate the governor in an emergency, but you’d have to justify your actions after the fact.
If instead of a government mandate, would you install such a thing on your own vehicle for a (arbitrary: 50%) insurance discount? How about your teenager’s car?
History note: one old thread approaching this subject is here, and Spiny Norman hit on this question in this thread but apparently nobody took him up on it.
My problem would be that if you can use technology from GPS to enforce speed limts, it isn’t hard to imagine that anyone and everyone coud be tracked whenever they are driving.
There would appear to be some serious civil liberty issues here.
Merely having it voluntary on a discount of insurance is a smokescreen, I cannot imagine any law enforcement agency not using such a valuable resource and pressing for compulsion.
I wonder how many R.T.A’s are caused purely by speed rather than poor judgement ?
I have a problem with the government “actively” enforcing a law all the time over everybody. It is like using a leash on dog and should never be mandated.
If insurance companies offered discounts to install speed governors, I might consider it.
BTW, some cars (like my Talon) already have speed governors. This is mostly a safety/liability thing for the manufacturer, since it keeps the car under 130 m.p.h.
Having played with something similar at one of my old jobs, I can honestly state that those things aren’t worth a damn. The units I used lost signal constantly, were unable to keep track of the vehicle accurately, and had terrible performance in general. I will not have such a device installed in my car, unless forced at gun-point to do so.
Imagine this scenerio: You’re zipping along the interstate in one of these cars, it’s brand new and only a handful of people have them. Some fumble thumbs has made a mistake in programming the database with the speed limits, so the section of highway you’re about to enter is listed in the database as having a speed limit of 15 MPH instead of 70 MPH. How long do you think you’ll survive once the car decides you need to be going 15 MPH instead of 70 MPH (or faster) like everyone else?
If they made me put one on my car, I can assure you that it would have a constant string of malfunctions.
“Gee, I can’t imagine why the Speed Governor’s circuit board keeps getting fried by electrical surges. Must be a design flaw.”
I would say if such a thing was implemented speed limits would have to be raised to the enforcement tolerences. If this were done and there was a manual override such as a switch (maybe justification would be needed afterwords) and an emergency override such as flooring the car will allow higher speeds for 20 seconds or so and there was no tracking of the car (in gps you are tracking the satalites they are not tracking you) I might buy into it.
None. All RTAs are caused by bad judgement. If you’re travelling too fast for the conditions, that’s bad judgment. If you’re drunk, that’s bad judgement. If you’re driving too slowly, that’s bad judgement.
But it’s a catchier slogan to say “Speed Kills” instead of “Bad judgement causes accidents.” Governments and police forces prefer automatic systems to obtain convictions. They are cheap (who do you think will have to pay for GPS speed monitors in cars, the Government?), easy to install and maintain (easy for the Government and police, that is), and pay for themselves (e.g. GATSO cameras).
God forbid that people might be able to judge road conditions for themselves. If they were allowed to do that, they might make other judgements for themselves. And disagree with the Government.
No, none at all. The satellites do NOT track the gps receiver. The gps receiver locates it self based on information it receives from the satellites. The information flow is all one way - from satellites to receiver.
I work with GPS receivers, and this misconception pisses me off a lot.
Oh, and by the way. I object to it on technical grounds. You would have the whole database accuracy problem, not to mention that individual receivers would locate the edges of the speed control zones differently and cause no end of chaos.
You would need cars with an internet access that update their databases automatically. You need cars capable of avoiding collisions (based on speed and range.) You need a system to keep the databases themselves up to date. And, as mentioned above, what about cars that don’t have it?
Not practical, too expensive, and just plain not a good idea.
