"Police forces in Britain and the US have ordered tests of the new system that delivers a blast of radio waves powerful enough to knock out vital engine electronics, making the targeted vehicle stall and slowly come to a stop."
www.guardian.co.uk/life/news/story/0,12976,1259139...l
Sorry, but if a vehicle travelling at 100mph in a persuit is hit by this beam, and the engine stalls, how will it "slowly come to a stop"?
And if it takes out the electronics, what are the chances of it screwing the ABS, or activating the airbags?
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Can it be modified to turn off the over loud music systems of young men driving slowly through city centres with the windows down.
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I seriously thought this was a joke. It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard and I've had arguments with NoWheels! ;-)
I could be naeve but wouldn't this damage the car? Service indicators, sat nav, all the special electronics on the car would surely be disrupted. I hope if it was ever brought out, someone crashed because the brakes locked or somethign and people saw how ridiculous it was.
A joke
Adam
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And if the driver/passenger just happened to be wearing a pacemaker....
Also collateral damage could be huge if not carefully used, for example, being caught in the "blast" would ruin TVs, mobile phones, low flying aircraft.
Might have been useful at Silverstone, though.
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Suddenly criminals will start to steal cars with carburettors :-)
Besides aren't all electronics supposed to be immune from RF by EU regulations?????? When my car gets a funny signal it just goes into a pre calculated safe mode so there is no guarantee that it will stop every car it is used on. Sealing all the sensitive electronics into RF immune boxes will become all the rage. Also if the police officers are using this around other vehicles are they not going to knock out engines of other cars that are not the one in pursuit, or even other police vehicles?
Is the stoppage permanent or can the criminal just dip the clutch and restart the engine?
teabelly
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Besides aren't all electronics supposed to be immune from RF by EU regulations??????
Yes indeed - directive 89/336/EEC to be precise; although they only have to be immune up to a certain field strength, which this device will have to exceed by a long way.
This has to be one of the most monumentally stupid ideas in along time...
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Sorry, but if a vehicle travelling at 100mph in a persuit is hit by this beam, and the engine stalls, how will it "slowly come to a stop"?
Depends on where it's driving, doesn't it? As with other means of halting a getaway, this sounds like a use-with-care device.
If a hoodlum can be stopped before reaching a high speed, so much the better, and this device might allow that to happen. (In an urban area, I guess it might fry a few other cars in the vicinity, but that may sometimes be a better option than to let it bash its way through them).
I'm not particularly concerned about the safety of anyone who speeds away from the police at 100mph. If they can be stopped without injuring anyone else, I wouldn't be too upset if the hoodlum's safety is compromised.
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tell you what NoWheels, why not, next time you are tavelling at even 30mph, try turning the engine off, and seeing how controlled your stop is. Now imagine that happening during a persuit at extreme speeds.
It's not the safety of the low life I'm concerned for, it's that of any unfortunate who happens to be around when the targeted car is suddenly and violently stalled and goes careering out of control.
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tell you what NoWheels, why not, next time you are tavelling at even 30mph, try turning the engine off, and seeing how controlled your stop is. Now imagine that happening during a persuit at extreme speeds.
my thoughts exactly. That's why I said it "sounds like a use-with-care device"
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I would have thought this sort of device would be used with extreme caution and {in common with existing methods such as stingers (UK) or fishtailing and shooting out tyres (US)} in a limited rage of circumstances. In the same way that the US police wouldn't (I'd hope) shoot out the tyres of a speeding car on a busy highway, they'd be unlikely to use this device in similar circumstances. What they be able to do, however, would be to use this device at a moment's notice when the prevailing conditions permitted (e.g. when a fleeing car is forced to stop or slow down briefly) and without putting the lives of the police involved and any passers by at any risk.
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Sounds like it would kill anyone with a pace maker ...
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I did exactly this once, just after passing my test. Dad had let me borrow his Rover SD1 to go to a party. Coming home in the early hours, I thought I'd switch the engine off and coast up to the house without waking anyone up.
The result? No brakes and no steering (well, not without superhuman effort anyway!). Needless to say I didn't try that one again.
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I remember reading about this some years ago, and assumed that the idea had been shelved when it occurred to someone that if the reverse situation occured (i.e. a criminal got hold of one) it might not be so desirable.
I rather like the idea of cops and robbers trying to zap each other's vehicles, rather than shooting one another, though...
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Oops! "occurred..occured" - you choose!
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All I can say is that if I was being overtaken by a stolen car and was caught in the crossfire, I and my lawyers would have a serious sense of humour failure.
Car. Phone. PDA. Laptop. Watch. Keys to other cars. Digital Camera. Camcorder. iPod. All data held on any of the aforesaid. All gone, potentially.
Might be useful if you could point it at speed cameras, perhaps? It might do some good that way. ;-)
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There were reports of devices under development which could be programmed to restrict car speeds to those prescribed in speed limited areas as located by Satnav. I wonder if this idea could be further developed to include a device as described before, sensitive to traffic cops radio disabling pulses, restricting the car speed to say 10 mph. If said device were to be shielded or otherwise tampered with the car will not run.
I read somewhere that certain radio towers knocked out car ignition systems. It could be feasible.
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It could be feasible.
It's perfectly feasible, today. All you need to know is how much collateral damage you are willing to inflict.
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Its more than feasible, its been done. This technology is a direct spin off from military weapons based on EMP (electo magnetic pulse) technology, used among other things to scramble aircraft and misile systems.
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Yes, but never fitted to a police car to stop another vehicle. That technology could be repackaged, though, which is what I meant by "feasible".
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I have always held the EU will eventually implode under the own weight of its monumentally idiotic seat-warming bureaucracy and I stick to my position.
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In USA (as usual) they used to have thee sort of radio contolled cars, launched from the police pursuit car, it had a long bendy aerial on the roof and was supposed to shoot under the car being chased and deliver a big electro discharge to the vehicle that took out the ECU, I think it was just in one area, about 5 years ago, it was on the television.
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"sort of radio controlled cars, launched from the police pursuit car"
I want one of those, if it can go at that sort of speed!
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There's no way of accurately targetting an EMP pulse. It would knock out anything electronic depending on the size of the discharge.
What if they missed and knocked out an innocent driver's car? Big bills for that repair methinks.
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Depends how accurate you want it to be, in fact most of the military research effort has been in directing EMP weapons.
Reasons being you dont have to generate quite so many megapulsewotsits if you can concentrate and direct those you can generate, and you dont want to pulse your own weapons platform.
I understand the US military got the beam quite narrow.
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I understand the US military got the beam quite narrow.
I bet they still haven't got the hang of not pointing it at their allies though ;)
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I have always held the EU will eventually implode under the own weight of its monumentally idiotic seat-warming bureaucracy and I stick to my position.
Err, what does this have to do with the EU? It's an American development being trialled in the UK:
The Guardian report at www.guardian.co.uk/life/news/story/0,12976,1259139...l says:
"Police forces in Britain and the US have ordered tests of the new system that delivers a blast of radio waves powerful enough to knock out vital engine electronics, making the targeted vehicle stall and slowly come to a stop.
David Giri, who left his position as a physics professor at the University of California in Berkeley to set up a company called ProTech, is developing a radio wave vehicle-stopping system for the US marine corps and the Los Angeles police department."
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Heh. We moan about the police going after the "innocent motorist" with speed cameras etc, and yet we're not even prepared to let them try something that will help catch serious criminals. If too many people get their electrics knacked as a result they'll have to stop using them. As far as I'm concerned, they're more than welcome to at least try them out.
I would much rather my car was stopped by a burst of radio waves than by ploughing headlong into an escaping criminal. What other alternatives do they have.
And anyway, it'll be interesting to see what VIPs have installed on their cars (like run-flat tyres etc) to counter the effects of these things. They won't want to risk being stopped dead by someone who's got hold of one.
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"someone who's got hold of one"
And what if that's someone who shouldn't? The first time a pursuit helicopter gets shot out of the sky with one, there will be some very awkward questions, I imagine. This is a Can of Worms...
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Let's not scream before we're bitten. It's a test, that's all. If it's going to do all the nasty things in this thread, it won't pass the test. Well, OK, it SHOULDN'T pass the test.
I'm more than happy for the police to have a method of stopping my car if stolen that results only in it needing a replacement ECU. The alternative is likely to be it stopping in a smoking pile of junk.
The radio-controlled car was dropped after testing. It was rocket powered and steered by the police observer, so could go astray and cause a fire, or take the legs out from under a pedestrian, not that there are many of those in the US. :-)
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I see what you're getting at GOG but it was hinted that it was going to be used for speeding traffic as well.
Regarding your comments about not passing the test, you'd like to think so wouldn't you? Imagine in 1994 pitching the GATSO.
"Well - we have this box at the side of the road - completely unmanned, it will emit radar and detect a speeding driver and then take a photo! We could call it a revenue camera!"
*murmurs of approval from committee*
"Better call it a s a f e t y camera so the public think it's ro reduce accidents."
I ask you - would you approve that? No - but they did.
Adam
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"Let's not scream before we're bitten"
Point taken, but I first read about this at least five years ago, so either it doesn't work, or it does but there are the various risks outlined above. If the latter and I was a criminal, it would be very high on my wish list...
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To quote from the guardian website that "pdc" posted
"The bulk of the device is designed to fit in a car boot and consists of a battery and a bank of capacitors that can store an electrical charge. Flicking a switch on the dashboard sends a burst of electricity into an antenna mounted on the roof of the car. The antenna then produces a narrow beam of intense radio waves that is directed at the vehicle ahead."
Well lets hope the bloke holding the antenna is a good shot, otherwise he could end up immobilising his own car instead of the bandit car!!
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"lets hope the bloke holding the antenna is a good shot"
And is wearing rubber gloves and a Faraday cage....
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"The bulk of the device is designed to fit in a car boot and consists of a battery and a bank of capacitors that can store an electrical charge."
Highly portable then
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Yes, Very Interesting !! At the sort of frequencies that have a controllable and directional beam width a 3 Degree beam width is possible. This produces about a 25 metre wide beam at 50 meters range and a car is only 2 metres wide and an ECU is only 20 cm wide. This would require tremendous amount of RF power. Low frequencies are very difficult to direct and form a near field power pattern that would knock out the police vehicle. Either the guy has discovered a clever way of penetrating the car body/cabling/ecu or he is relying on the driver having some fillings in his teeth he can rattle. Having said that a useful device if they can control it but a 25m wide beam will could knock out quite a few vehicles around the target.
An EMP ( Electro Magnetic Pulse ) would do the trick but they are mostly Omni directional and would take out the police car as well I suspect. The article refers to RF so EMP is out. The manufacturer spend millions on protecting the ECU from interference so the long term solution is to have a built in device that allows an encoded signal transmitted from the police to shut a car down in a controlled fashion. Oh very futuristic but 10 years would see it in service. I must design that tonight and get it patented. When I think about it I’ve already got one. If I bleep my remote ( panic button ) at the car then the engine is running the fuel pump and immobiliser cut in 30 sends later Regards Peter
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I must design that tonight and get it patented.
Give me a call when you're ready if you want some help!
(that will also put garage bills in perspective!)
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