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Wireless Networking Privacy United States Hardware

RFID for Automobile Tracking 439

Posted by michael from the car-talk dept.
mindless4210 writes "The U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration has called on four of the largest RFID manufacturers to jointly develop dedicated short-range communications technology systems for a trial as part of the agency's efforts to cut road fatalities in the U.S. by 50% within 10 years. The DSRC prototype initiative is a prerequisite for introducing new roadway applications such as issuing alerts to drivers about impending intersection collisions, rollovers, weather-related road hazards, or warning a driver that his vehicle is going too fast to safely negotiate an upcoming curve. The FCC allocated the entire 5.9 GHz band to DSRC applications some time ago, making the development much more feasible. Any DRSC system would require DRSC technology to be built into new vehicles."
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RFID for Automobile Tracking More

RFID for Automobile Tracking

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  • Goodbye privacy (Score:2, Insightful)

    by mindless4210 ( 768563 ) *
    Can you even begin to think about the privacy implications of something like this? I know that I will never buy a car with RFID tracking capabilities built into it! What happens when the government agencies that don't care so much about your rights--CIA, FBI, NSA, police, whatever--decide that this system can be very useful for them? There's a million things that could go wrong

    This is the article that I originally posted [dailywireless.com] to slashdot.
    • Can you even begin to think about the privacy implications of something like this? I know that I will never buy a car with RFID tracking capabilities built into it! What happens when the government agencies that don't care so much about your rights--CIA, FBI, NSA, police, whatever--decide that this system can be very useful for them? There's a million things that could go wrong

      The Man is out to get us guy. But I got my M-16. The only way they'll put RFID in my car is by prying away my cold, dead hand

    • Re:Goodbye privacy (Score:2, Insightful)

      by blutrot ( 734054 )
      And do you think that they are going to give you the option to not buy a car without RFID capabilities? This is something that will probably be pushed onto us with or without our consent.

      I agree with you on the privacy issues, I just don't think we will be given much of a choice on whether these go into cars or not (unless you can successfully lobby the government not to).
    • my 84 vw rabbit won't ever have RFID!

    • Re:Goodbye privacy (Score:2, Interesting)

      by meshe ( 768681 )
      They already track you with GPS without your permission (Cops Challenged on GPS Use [wired.com]), why should they stop there?

    • Re:Goodbye privacy (Score:5, Informative)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @04:17PM (#8852249) Homepage
      if you would have read the article the RFID transmitters would be in signs or markers along the roadway and your car would have the reciever.

      in fact most of what they want has nothing to do with rfid at all...

      • Re:Goodbye privacy (Score:5, Funny)

        by Kenja ( 541830 ) on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @04:27PM (#8852411)
        Hey now. If we all went around reading articles before jumping to parinoid conclusions, what kind of Slashdotters would we be?

      • Re:Goodbye privacy (Score:5, Insightful)

        by mindless4210 ( 768563 ) * on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @04:28PM (#8852434) Homepage Journal
        Well, the technology is called DSRC, which is a form of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification). DSRC uses radio frequencies to collect the data, which could be considered the identification part of the process. Either way, it's a network of sensors which pick up data from transmitters--RFID.

        And yes, I read the article--I posted the damn thing.
      • Well heck, if all they want to do is give me traffic conditions why don't they use the existing special equipment. To paraphrase the Blues Brothers Movie:

        "We have both kinds, FM _and_ AM!"

        TW

      • Re:Goodbye privacy (Score:3, Insightful)

        by s0l0m0n ( 224000 )
        Perhaps you should read and understand the article before you tell everyone else to.

        There is clear mention of using the technology for toll road systems..

        "Proponents of the technology maintain that DSRC systems will also be able to replace existing highway RFID applications such as automatic toll collection systems like EZ-Pass. "There is nothing that current systems do that DSRC systems won't be able to do in a breeze--while it's idling in fact," says Richard Schnacke, vice president of industry relation

    • Re:Goodbye privacy (Score:3, Interesting)

      by swordboy ( 472941 )
      I know that I will never buy a car with RFID tracking capabilities built into it!

      The car might not, but the tires [aiag.org] will always have them.

    • Re:Goodbye privacy (Score:5, Funny)

      by kabocox ( 199019 ) on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @04:26PM (#8852390)
      The state where I live in even requires for these little metal signs to be mounted on the outside of my car with a unquie identifier! Can you believe it? There is a law that I have to have a little sticker on it, which I have to pay for every year also! Am I just renting my vechile from the goverment? I also heard that the Federal Government requires a unquie SN on each an every vechile made! That number is printed on parts all over your vechile and hidden from view.

      I don't know about you, but I don't have much faith that I have ever had any privacy while in a vechile on a public road.
      • Not to mention requiring an id card with a not so flattering picture of yourself in order to drive such a vehicle. I've seen these ID's, they are horrifying! They have all kinds of personal information on you... like your name, your address, height, weight, etc. Where on earth did we ever go so wrong?
      • Being able to identify something is a little different than being able to track it.

        In some ways, using a car does seem to lessen you privacy, primarily in that law enforcement seems quite confident in searching your vechile without a warrant.

        Best way to smuggle drugs? The local bus system.

    • I've fallen asleep on the road before.. woke up just in time to avoid a head-on-head high speed collision with a weighty Buick. An 18-wheeler truck nearly drifted into my bus as I was commuting up to NYC one morning..then the driver woke up..steered away, then fell asleep again and almost hit us a second time. How many people forget to look left pulling into an intersection? How many bad cell phone drivers are out there? Even if this system is abused and I end up paying $5000 in traffic fines down the r
      • I'm going to have to agree with you on that one. Yesterday I nearly got T-boned at a small city intersection because a blonde who was busy chatting with her car full of girl friends didn't bother to stop at the stop sign.

        I think we all make mistakes like that now and then... and paying for them would be a very healthy reminder not to do it anymore.

        Are you listening to me Bill Janklow?
      • I've always said that if cars weren't so useful, they would have been banned a long time ago for safety reasons.
    • I know that I will never buy a car with RFID tracking capabilities built into it!

      Your state will just put it in your license plate. Watch for it.

      After all, they already hang a number on your car and require it to be visible - to eyes and to OCR cameras. Why not require it to be readable by radio, and save themselves some cost and flakeyness by replacing cameras with transcievers?
      • "...they already hang a number on your car and require it to be visible - to eyes and to OCR cameras."

        I've wondered about something pertaining to this. Is there anyway you could mount a cover for you plate that was maybe polorized or something? Basically can you cover it with something that makes it perfectly readable by the human eye, but, would screw with a camera trying to read it?

    • "I know that I will never buy a car with RFID tracking capabilities built into it!"

      What if they throw in the tinfoil undercoating at no extra charge?

  • "it's for your safety" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @04:12PM (#8852174) Homepage Journal

    [...] such as issuing alerts to drivers about impending intersection collisions, rollovers, weather-related road hazards, or warning a driver that his vehicle is going too fast to safely negotiate an upcoming curve

    Riiiiiight... they're wanting this system incorporated to protect you. They'd never dream of setting up receivers in traffic lights at (major) intersections to track the movement of people. Watch: it will be a crime to disable these systems, "for your safety" of course.

    Yeah, yeah; I may need a tinfoil hat. Ask yourself, though, do you feel safer?
    • "Ask yourself, though, do you feel safer?"

      I'll learn to hack my car so I don't have to deal with it. Even if my car gets it's own tim foil hat. But..... all those idiot, dumbass drunks out on the road at 2am will get busted and not hit me. I do feel safer.
      • And what happens when they make bypassing such a system illegal? In most states you are required to use your seatbelts, headlights, turn signals and other car equipment during the normal operation of your car. Making hacking this component of your car a crime or just not using it would certainly not be too difficult given our lawmakers.
    • RTFA

      That is all.

      • Re:"it's for your safety" (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Alsee ( 515537 ) on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @06:43PM (#8854164) Homepage
        I for one did RTFA. And as far as I can see the parent poster was right. The article indicates this system could replace "EasyPass" type systems. This indicatez that the car-tag *MUST* be able to transmit a unique ID code for your car.

        Massive Big-Brother issues here. They could build up multi-year databases of everywhere you've driven. What stores you shop at (everything from grocery shopping to sex-toy shops). Where your friends' houses are. Whether you go to chuch/synagog/mosque, and how often. Whether you meet your secretary every month at the local no-tell-motel for an affair. Yep, by correlating records they can see who you regulary meet up with and where. The data mining protential is enormous.

        Oh yeah, they can also track speeding with it. A great excuse to implement such tracking, and the least of our worries.

        -
      • I have not yet RTFA, but it seems to me this is a government program that should have 100% of its funding cut. Our government has no business spending money on this kind of thing no matter for safety issues or for tracking us. For those in doubt please refer to your Constitution Article I Section 8.

  • RFID Overlord (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ckwop ( 707653 ) * on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @04:12PM (#8852175) Homepage
    It's one of those privacy tradeoffs that actually looks quite good.
    RFID couldn't be used at this stage to track all the cars in the USA
    so the chance of it impinging on your privacy is rather low.
    However, with estimates of a 50% reduction in road deaths.. That's quite a dividend.

    I for one welcome our new RFID overlords :)

    Simon.

  • Only one problem... (Score:5, Funny)

    by taped2thedesk ( 614051 ) on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @04:14PM (#8852202)
    Now I just have to figure out a way to get my car into the microwave...

    • Re:Only one problem... (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It's really very simple!

      1. Open microwave door
      2. Drive in car
      3. Close microwave door
      • So now you're trapped inside a microwave, since the handle's on the outside.

        If you get desperate there's more nutrition in the steering wheel than the seat covers.
    • Now I just have to figure out a way to get my car into the microwave...

      Don't you know that you can't put metal in a microwave?

      What this means is that you are going to have to wrap your car in tinfoil.
  • If i put my car in the microwave the dash will explode?

  • In related news... (Score:3, Funny)

    by The Jonas ( 623192 ) on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @04:16PM (#8852221)
    ... tin foil hat and used car sales skyrocket.
    • Funny, but insightful.

      If people start getting busted for speeding thanks to these RFID tags, and it becomes public knowledge that thats the REASON they are getting busted, then used cars sales will shoot through the roof. Maybe I should invest in carmax.

      Not only that, but they just created a new, illegal, black market for non-RFID vehicles.

      Imagine that.

      • Re:In related news... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by DaHat ( 247651 )
        Perhaps, but imagine an extended RFID system.

        Bridge mounted systems take a quick reading of each and every car passing by them, if they do not provide RFID info a picture would be taken and it's license plate information hit against a database to determine if the vehicle should have such a system.

        A month later, you as an owner of a black-marketed RFIDless car receive a fine and a court summons for driving an illegal vehicle.
  • ..I'm all for improving highway safety, but in a grand cosmic sorta way, we're kinda fvcking with the order of nature here. Certain numbers of people HAVE to die and the couple hundred thousand taken out by cars and trucks every year is an effective way to curtail the population, especially the idiots prone to substance abuse (I'm one of them, but my numbers haven't come up yet...I'm excited for tomorrow though..)
    And plus, if we put RFID tags in cars, Ashcroft has won. And thats no good.

    • Re:..Population Control... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by leerpm ( 570963 ) on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @04:32PM (#8852486)
      Unfortunately, it not always the dumb, drunken hick in his pick-up that ends up dying. It is the mother and her two children, in the minivan he ends up blindsiding.

      One of those children might have been the next Albert Einstein.
    • Certain numbers of people HAVE to die and the couple hundred thousand taken out by cars and trucks every year is an effective way to curtail the population, especially the idiots prone to substance abuse (I'm one of them, but my numbers haven't come up yet...I'm excited for tomorrow though..)

      I really hope you ride a motorcyle, so that you can ONLY take yourself out.......actually, that would be a great way to "handle" repeat DWI offenders.

      DWI in cars have this nasty habit of killing OTHER people, whil
    • You should forget cars and attack the entire field of medicine. Modern science and technology has taken diseases that used to be common and fatal and all but wiped them out. People are recovering and living long, normal lives after injuries that would have killed them within hours or left them unable to function in earlier centuries. Life expectancy has gone up by decades. Many women who are unable to reproduce naturally are contributing to the gene pool through alternative procedures. For that matter, huma
  • And you thought red light cameras were bad. Think about using technology such as this to find out a distance traveled in a certain amount of time. If each tag is tied to a specific vehicle, you could be getting all sorts of traffic citations in the mail. I think this is a horrible idea...
  • ...
    applications such as issuing alerts ...
    (while seated in a board meeting, 28th floor overlooking metropolis, a small internal voice speaks)

    "Sorry for this brief intrusion. This is your government speaking. The RFID tag embedded in your ass notified us moments ago. It appears as if you want to fart. This is just a warning - farting now, may be a bad idea, and could have unexpected consequences, and possible adverse career effects."

    .. another save by Uncle Sam.

  • yes!! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by koan ( 80826 ) on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @04:18PM (#8852265)
    I can't wait till the readers are mounted at stop lights and over passes to monitor your speed...5 miles or more over and you get a ticket in the mail =)
    watch fatalities, gas consumption drop and attitudes improve.
    I am for that 100%

  • No mention of tracking (Score:5, Informative)

    by kevin_conaway ( 585204 ) on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @04:20PM (#8852294) Homepage
    Everytime someone mentions RFID, the privacy people get to sound off about being tracked and the government being out to get them

    The article makes no mention of using this technology for anything other than alerting drivers about road conditions and paying tolls. Even the article title here on slashdot is misleading in that regard.
    • Damn good point. People hear RFID and assume: "they're going to track me... jack booted government thugs... etc" without thinking of the positive uses. It's actually kinda like the RIAA's reaction to KAZAA: focus solely on the negative uses in order to ignore the positive uses of the technology. If, as the article states, these are used positively, I don't get the hubbub.

      Did slashdot people cry out about VIN on cars as well?

    • Re:No mention of tracking (Score:4, Insightful)

      by athakur999 ( 44340 ) on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @04:25PM (#8852377) Journal
      The problem is that in the current paranoid political climate, anything like this can be turned against you. Witness the case a few weeks back where the FBI used OnStar systems in cars to eavesdrop on people.

      If Ashcroft and company can find some way to turn this system into a tool for the "war against terrorism", you can damn well be sure they will.

      • Re:No mention of tracking (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Dude, in any political climate, anything like this can be turned against you. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
    • 'Nuff said.
    • Absolutely. While I'm as much for privacy as the next guy, this doesn't alarm me that much. This is really no different then OnStar, GPS Nav or even your cell phone, all having GPS locators installed. In fact, I was in the Verizon store last week and was informed that they face a $500 fine if they sell a phone that is not GPS enabled. For 911 tracking, of course :/ I know I'd like to know if there's a jam on my way to work and I need to take an alternate route or be late to the board meeting. The alternati
    • and paying tolls

      Exactly. Which indicates that it broadcasts a unique tracking code for your car on demand.

      Once you have that as a fairly standard feature in most cars then it becomes trivial to set up such scanners for any of a hundred "good" reasons. And for that data to be recorded in a database somewhere. Obviously if it's being used to pay tolls it must be illegal to tamper with them. And the more it gets used for the more mandatory they become and the harsher the laws surrounding them become.

      Once i

  • And this just in from Virginia, (Score:4, Funny)

    by The Ape With No Name ( 213531 ) on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @04:20PM (#8852297) Homepage
    House of Delegates bans detector-detector-detector-detector ... ad-infinitum

    RICHMOND, VA (AP) -- The House of Delegates has sent a bill to Gov. Warner making blocking RFID on cars illegal. They also appropriated $5 million to the State Police to equip trooper's cars with RFID blocker detectors and have set aside a portion of that money to buy RFID blocker detector-detector-detectors and made the posession of RFID blocker detector-detectors illegal. Any further detector-detectors will be made illegal barring a Commonwealth-wide brain explosion trying to understand it all. Virginia State Troopers are renowned as the Grey-Wheeled Wild Weasels because their cruisers resemble law-enforcement scale versions of electronic warfare airplanes used in Vietnam. The average cruiser has 4 alternators and 20 batteries used to power hundreds of radios, radars, VASCARs, remote rectal probes and other detection equipment, thus rendering the Old Dominion deserving of its nickname.

  • RFID? (Score:5, Funny)

    by andy1307 ( 656570 ) on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @04:20PM (#8852301)
    First a chip in my head [slashdot.org] and now a RFID chip in my car. I'd be worried if i was interesting enough to be tracked.

  • beep! (Score:2, Funny)

    by thebra ( 707939 ) *
    warning a driver that his vehicle is going too fast to safely negotiate an upcoming curve

    I hope it doesn't beep, that could get annoying real fast. :)

  • Who sets standards to warn you (Score:5, Insightful)

    by millahtime ( 710421 ) on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @04:20PM (#8852309) Homepage Journal
    "weather-related road hazards, or warning a driver that his vehicle is going too fast to safely negotiate an upcoming curve."

    Who decides when a car is going to fast??? I live in Michigan and if your going the speed limit that's to slow. Would they warn you based on a spped limit or what the road is rated at. The expressways here are rated for safe speeds at 20 or 30 miles an hour faster than the speed limit. This is also different depending on the car. A jeep can topple over easier than a grand prix (for example). Who decides these things????
    • The expressways here are rated for safe speeds at 20 or 30 miles an hour faster than the speed limit. This is also different depending on the car. A jeep can topple over easier than a grand prix (for example). Who decides these things????

      Although it would be awesome if they actually did account for the particular vehicle you were driving. It would just be too great to be allowed to go twice as fast in my little sports car than some idiot in his Hummer, legally!

      Imagine if speed limits were actually t
    • That's the problem with speed limits to begin with. On highways and outside of residential areas, "Sane/reasonable" is a good way to deal with speed limits for the most part -- e.g. a 20 year old car with a blown cyl (yes.. people drive with burnt out cyls all the time) and no suspension travel left is less likely to travel safely at 65mph while a brand new car might be stable on flat roads at speeds in excess of 100mph. The problem is the few jackasses would ruin that for the whole. Montana did it for quit
    • The car's onboard computer could set the standard, using data obtained from the tags it's driving past.

  • What.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RetroGeek ( 206522 ) on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @04:21PM (#8852316) Homepage
    no one has ever heard about driver training?

    Let's get the idiots off the road.

  • RFID to track you (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MrRuslan ( 767128 ) on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @04:21PM (#8852317)
    i don't see it as a big privacy concern...it's like saying a licence plate is a security issue...i mean take the tin foil hats off...your cell phone notifys where you are and even if it dosent if the wanna find you or track you they will and you wont even know about it...any type of comunication device can be tracked by triagulation....example is you have 2 microphones 100 yards a part and somone screem or a gun is fiered...as the sound hits the mics at difrent times and based on the location of the mics and the data they recive you can calculate the exact location of the source...same thing can be done to anything like radio waves and other frequincies...if you dont like it then move to garaho land ...other than that no reason to worry.

  • The benefits do not require identificatication. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by David Hume ( 200499 ) on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @04:21PM (#8852326) Homepage

    The DSRC prototype initiative is a prerequisite for introducing new roadway applications such as new roadway applications such as issuing alerts to drivers about impending intersection collisions, rollovers, weather-related road hazards, or warning a driver that his vehicle is going too fast to safely negotiate an upcoming curve


    No, the DSRC prototype initiative is NOT a prerequisite to introducing the proposed new roadway safety applications. None of the proposed safety applications require individual identification of a vehicle. An application could issue the planned alerts and warnings without specifying or identifying the vehicle or its owner. If you are issuing a warning about a road hazard, or that vehicle is going too fast to make an upcoming turn, the identity of the vehicle and of the owner are irrelevant.

  • Cheap RFID pretty much undermines their entire business.

  • The Glass That's Half Full (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @04:22PM (#8852341) Homepage Journal
    This morning some maniac is shooting down the road. Weaves between cars with about 1 foot clearance, at ~80 MPH. Then comes to an agri truck which is going to slow for him. He passes it on the shoulder, narrowly averting disaster, where the car could have rolled and could have been run over by the larger vehicle.

    With driving habits like that it's only a matter of time before someone is injured or killed. I may see one patrol car a week on this long heavily travelled stretch, usually on Friday.

    Short of trackng drivers with a satellite the authorities aren't going to know it even happened. Then there's the matter of who was driving the car. Much to my chagrin, after a hit and run, I found the San Jose, CA, police could care less if I have a license number, description of car and could identify the face of the driver. Just fill out the forms and your insurance company will take care of it.

    It's hard to feel one way of the other about this. How does John Ashcroft feel about it? I'll probably trend the other way, but I don't think this will solve anything.

  • Much infrastructure required (Score:3, Interesting)

    by zuikaku ( 740617 ) on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @04:22PM (#8852343)
    Even with a range of 1 km, a lot of sensors will have to be installed to get total coverage. I suppose they could just confine themselves to the highways (at least at first), but IIRC the majority of accidents occur on surface streets.

    Then again, perhaps they could team up with private companies to install this and WiFi into street lamps, kinda like this plan [theregister.co.uk] in the UK. That might get things rolling a bit faster.

  • Easier, cheaper, way. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tomhudson ( 43916 ) <barbara,hudson&barbara-hudson,com> on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @04:23PM (#8852357) Journal
    If they were really interested in reducing road fatalities by 50%, there are easier, cheaper ways that can be implemented today!
    1. Compulsory seat-belt use (works in my area)
    2. Mandatory helmet laws for motorcyclists (agan, works in my area)
    3. Zero tolerance for liquored-up drivers
    4. Restricted permits for new drivers (no rush hour, no driving between sunset and sun-up, etc).
    5. Governors on all engines so that it's not possible to exceed the speed limit
    6. Increased penalties for racing, reckless driving, etc.
    7. Removal of so-called "restricted permits" for people who have accumulated too many demerits.
    8. Mandatory retesting for anyone who has lost their license because of moving violations or booze.
    9. Get rid of "road tanks" (SUVs) that make people think they're invulnerable.
    Of course, the above aren't techno-sexy ways of saving lives. But they would work. And, for those who are going to point out that these are unreasonable restrictions on freedoms, there's no such thing as a "right" to drive. It's a privilege.

    • Re:Easier, cheaper, way = no way! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by adzoox ( 615327 ) * on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @04:37PM (#8852536) Journal
      1. Compulsory seat-belt use (works in my area)
      2. Mandatory helmet laws for motorcyclists (agan, works in my area)
      3.Zero tolerance for liquored-up drivers
      4. Restricted permits for new drivers (no rush hour, no driving between sunset and sun-up, etc).
      5. Governors on all engines so that it's not possible to exceed the speed limit
      6. Increased penalties for racing, reckless driving, etc.
      7. Removal of so-called "restricted permits" for people who have accumulated too many demerits.
      8. Mandatory retesting for anyone who has lost their license because of moving violations or booze.
      9. Get rid of "road tanks" (SUVs) that make people think they're invulnerable.

      AND

      "...there's no such thing as a "right" to drive. It's a privilege."

      I hate when people try to justify socialism or communism.

      How do you KNOW 100% that the seat belt laws work, or that helmut laws work? The ONLY thing that is known is that it raises revenues for police departments.

      It serves to add confusion to honesty. There ARE instances where it's OK not to have on a helmut on and there ARE instances where you may not have your seat belt on (ie, getting your wallet out or scratching your unmentionables) - you want to have to go and explain that in court? You want the judge to believe you?

      I'm in agreeance with points 6, 7, and 8. but the others are nonsense and then justified with "right and privelege talk" - it is MY right to do whatever I want in this country - it is MY responsibility to make others safe and NOT infringe on the well being and laws of this country!

    • Re:Easier, cheaper, way. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by elmegil ( 12001 ) on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @04:40PM (#8852568) Homepage Journal
      Get rid of "road tanks" (SUVs) that make people think they're invulnerable.

      Unless you define that to mean the very top end of the class, you can just bite me :-). I need my SUV to cart around materials to fix my house (large sheet goods etc.) DON'T get me started on the idiots (Menards/Home Depot in this area) who let you "rent their truck" to take stuff home, when the damn truck is never there and you can't just sign your name to a waiting list, you have to waste your day HOPING that the previous fool returns it on time. You think that if I need to work on my house I have time to spend sitting in Home Depot waiting for Godot?

      Yes there are morons out there who buy SUV's for stupid reasons like thinking they'll be invulnerable, but there are plenty of us who have practical reasons not to want a pickup (did I mention that the pickup has the same "invulnerable" problem?) and not able to settle for a "regular" car.

    • Re:Easier, cheaper, way. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Rorschach1 ( 174480 ) on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @04:40PM (#8852582) Homepage
      Here's one: Introduce accountability. A large portion of the population turn into total a$$holes when they feel anonymous, whether they're behind the wheel, part of a crowd, or chatting online behind a screen name.

      Yeah, I know the standard Slashdot line says that anonymity is a good thing. In this case, I say it's not.

      Check out drivecam.com. They've got a commercial product that records video for 10 seconds before and after an accident. Keeps the drivers honest, but imagine if everyone (or a large portion of the population) had these installed. Imagine that you could manually trigger the capture by hitting your horn. I'll bet that'd make some folks think twice about weaving in and out of traffic or running red lights.

      Such a device wouldn't even be too hard to implement. You could do it with a single-board Linux box, a couple of USB cameras, and a cheap accelerometer. Maybe $300 or less in hardware. Convince the insurance companies of their merits and maybe they'd be free.

      So cry all you want about the lack of privacy. As long as you're driving on public roads, with other people's lives depending on your behavior, you've got no right to be anonymous.

  • Fundraising (Score:2, Insightful)

    by bludstone ( 103539 )
    Well, I guess police wont have to worry about funding anymore.

    Link RFIDs to the already instated Cameras and the auto-fined-mailer and youve got a steady stream of income from speeders.

    Not that this would _EVER_ be abused for something like this. Its for our saftey.

    *cough*
  • Let's hook it up with the electronic billboards mentioned earlier today!
    "Hey irving47! You wanna slow it down a bit? You have 10 seconds to comply!"

  • nothing to worry about... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @04:25PM (#8852380) Homepage
    This is only very Loosely connected to RFID. in fact it's mostly journalist and executive hype throwing around a tech term to try and sound informed...

    This will mostly amount to another alarm to annoy the driver....

    "bing! you are exceeding the speed limit for this zone...."

    "bing! there WAS a 13 car crash 3 miles from here underneat the "no reported road problems" sign...."

  • I wonder about data storage (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dark Paladin ( 116525 ) * <jhummel.johnhummel@net> on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @04:25PM (#8852381) Homepage
    On the one hand, I'm not sure I oppose this system on principle. There's a lot of bad drivers out there (I'm lookin' at you, California and Utah), and something to say "Hey, assmuch, would it kill you to slow the hell down and stop putting on your mascara eating a bagle talking on your cell phone to your wife and just friggin' drive your car?"

    On the other side, there's two things that I believe in:

    a) Visible Law Enforcement

    b) Leave the rest of us alone

    You don't "punish" the innocent for the crimes of the guilty. You want to make the roads safe? Get more cops driving out there. Last time I checked, having more police (assuming good training, obey civil liberties, etc) on the roads tends to majorly disrupt crime of most kinds - whether its speeding, accidents, selling drugs, whatever. Those of us that are innocents will wave to the nice policeperson as we drive by knowing that Mr. Cruise Control keeps us from getting pulled over, while the idiot who likes to ride my bumper because I don't want to go 80 in the 65 MPH zone will think twice before passing on the right shoulder.

    Without making me feel like a criminal in my own car because it has to remind me how to drive.

    Just my $0.02. I could be wrong.
  • The DSRC system will be more like a peer-to-peer system in which either end of a link can initiate a transaction; traditional RFID systems operate in a master-slave arrangement. This peer-to-peer architecture will be necessary because many planned applications are vehicle-to-vehicle ones, not involving the roadside RFID readers at all.

    Excellent. So I'll be able to send a message to the jerk behind me, telling him to "STOP FRICKEN TAILGAITING, YOU NIMROD!"

    Either that or share MP3's...

  • New use? (Score:2, Funny)

    by 99bottles ( 257169 )
    Will this thing send me the phone number of the jack ass in front of me so I can call him and get him out of the fast lane?
    Better yet, how about the number of hottie in the convertable next to me? ...hey, I'm beginning to like this thing.

  • Is tracking *ever* ok? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Infonaut ( 96956 ) <infonaut@gmail.com> on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @04:28PM (#8852431) Homepage Journal
    This isn't a flamebait question. I always react negatively to news that the government is getting ready to implement some form of monitoring or tracking. But lately I've been wondering how much of this reaction is just knee-jerk fear of an Orwellian future that may never come to pass. For example, there are cameras all over NYC, London, et. al., tracking people as they walk the streets, go into businesses, and so on.

    I guess my real question is this: when is it OK for the government to implement surveillance, tracking, monitoring, etc. in order to save lives? Or are we so afraid of own governments that we can't afford to allow such things?

  • If they have a RFID chip in your car, it's just an incremental change to link the chip to your engine. IF the "authorities" want to stop you, they know exactly where your car is and they can turn it off....just like Tom Cruise in Minority Report.

  • RFID for vehicles seems crazy to me. RFID only works when the tags are carried by cooperative people.

    When RFID tags are carried by people who may not be cooperative, or in situations where they can be damaged or switched to another vehicle, there can be chaos. Remember the RF of RFID refers to "Radio Frequency". That means they can't be put in a steel box. They must be exposed.

    The government of the state of Oregon in the U.S. proposed to tax people by the number of miles they drove in Oregon counti

  • first off (Score:3, Insightful)

    by geekoid ( 135745 ) <dadinportland&yahoo,com> on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @04:44PM (#8852615) Homepage Journal
    A large percentage of accidents are cause by someone not paying attention. Like going through a red light while distracted, or not being able to respond in time to a sudden stop. Usually, when people are near an accident, they are paying attention becasue the traffic conditions have changed.
    It would only be a matter of time before any warning was deligated to 'background noise'/

    Secondly, I imagine this turning into the device that Corbin Dallas had in his cab in 5th element.

  • In the year 2010 on the freeway (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gone.fishing ( 213219 ) on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @05:02PM (#8852900) Journal
    I'm late for work, I jump in my underpowered Toyota Pyris hybrid and rush off for work. Manage to get it up to 66MPH and hear the speed alarm at just about the same moment I see the printer shoot off a slip of paper. A speeding ticket. These tickets have evolved to a sort of tax. The automated equipment can't take your license and can't stand up to cross examination in court so, they don't count as points on your driver's license so you are emailed a ticket you have to pay. In essence, a speed tax. I owe another $108.00. Third time this month!

    A couple miles down the roadway, My GPS beeps and tells me that I should take an alternate route, there is congestion ahead. I'm sick of this because everyone else gets the same message and everyone is told to take the same alternate route. I'll ignore the advice today. Chances are, enough people will leave my route so that it will open up.

    I use my voice activated phone to call the office and tell them I'll be a bit late, traffic is heavy.

    The road ahead is jammed, it is not moving at all. I swerver to the right to make an exit but my radar screams! I look over my shoulder and see a car a hundred feet behind me. The alarm doesn't think that is enough room. I hear someone say "Go ahead" and I make my lane change. This intercar communication is pretty cool but it seems like almost every night you hear about a case of road-rage where someone got really pissed about what they heard. Maybe it isn't great for people with anger managment problems. I say thanks and catch my exit in a nick of time.

    Golden Arches show up on my LCD display and I push the icon to place my drive through order. I'll swing in and pick up my coffee and muffin and my bank card will be debited. It is pretty cool how they know so much about you but I've heard that there are some slammers out there who routinely debit people as they drive by. It hasnt happened to me yet though.

    I arrive at work and turn my car over to the valet. He can drive it slowly without the key within one mile of where I dropped it off. It is a nice service to use in this part of the city, things are pretty congested around here. I'm not worried, I can tell where my car is from my desktop, I can also monitor the wife and the kids!

    I don't know how we did it back in the first part of the century! Only problem is that I gotta work 13 hours a day to pay for all this convenience!

  • Here's where this would be really useful (Score:3, Interesting)

    by davinciII ( 469750 ) on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @05:04PM (#8852925)
    Last week my wife and 2 year old were involved in a serious accident. They were hit from behind while driving 45 by a driver going 120.

    Luckily they're both fine. But, as expected, this driver had no insurance. Since it seems most accidents are caused by the uninsured/underinsured, why not use this technology to keep the cars off the road?

    You could put in rfid readers at the gas pumps, which would look up your VIN (embedded into your rfid, or hashed, or whatever) before allowing you to pump gas. The insurance industry would gladly fund the product. Your rates would go down when everyone is insured.

    There are a few issues to work out, such as how you fill your lawnmower, but creative people could solve those with little effort.

  • Reduce deaths? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DamienMcKenna ( 181101 ) <{moc.annek-cm} {ta} {neimad}> on Tuesday April 13, 2004 @05:49PM (#8853485)
    Instead of invading our privacy, again, how about:

    1. Make the driving tests more difficult, meaning less bad drivers pass them.

    2. Mandate annual vehicle inspections - many States / counties don't require them and they should. You don't need a brand-new vehicle to run the kids to school, but on the other hand, your twenty-year-old falling-apart-at-the-seams POS needs to be retired.

    3. Put the money into hiring more cops to actually crack down on traffic violations, like running red lights, etc.

    4. As a follow-on to #2, offer federally-assisted trade-in vouchers with a sliding rule - the older your car * the poorer you are = higher trade-in amount.

    5. A Federal plan to repair the trade-ins from #4 that are worth fixing, if it gets another few good years from them.

    6. Subsidise clean-fuel vehicles - electric, hybrid, etc. Get rid of gasoline/petrol gorram it!

    Just my $0.02 writing as a 28 year old who learned to drive last year and passed the Florida driving test first time despite not doing very well.

    Damien

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