It's all very well, until they (the govt.) realise that a gigabyte or two of memory costs under £10 and will record a year of data. Downloaded, with perhaps a GPS tracker (£50) and the fines will be in the post shortly after the data is downloaded at your next service or MOT.
Now where did I put my tinfoil hat?
;-)
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Now where did I put my tinfoil hat?
Keep it firmly on your head, like mine! You have a serious - to say the least, and a worrying point.
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It'll be on the market a week before someone hacks it, and posts a dozen ways to circumvent it all over the internet. Plug in modules that replaced the stored data with something inoffensive, plug in boxes that modify the datastream before it is logged.... the possiblities will be endless.
Look at the cheap diesel tuning boxes which tell the ECU one thing when the engine is doing another. Same principle, and readily available.
Cheers
DP
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It'll be on the market a week before someone hacks it and posts a dozen ways to circumvent it all over the internet.
Don't you bet on it, should "the authorities" be keen on the idea. Let us suppose that there are tamper-proof devices (cf. tachographs, speedometers) and a very stiff penalty for "tampering" - in any case, the vast majority of people will not "tamper".
If not today, then possibly tomorrow. More and more schemes, from ID cards to "road charging" to the DNA database to centralised health records to fingerprinting when boarding at airports are coming into opertaion, or being proposed.
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You know sometimes when I hear of things like this I am quite glad to be of a generation who were, by and large, able to enjoy their cars. The younger people will continue to be offered better cars than we were able to have but they won't be allowed to have fun in them. That will be illegal, or at best considered immoral. Quite comforting to be an old goat sometimes !
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I saw something like this on the "news" the other night, Parents can buy this gizmo that sits on the dashboard (plugs in cigar lighter) and monitors "newly passed" sons/daughters driving style. It was using a 3-light system, if they were driving ok, the light on it would stay green, something a bit risky flashed the orange, and if they were being silly, then the red would light. This not only provided a visual aid to said offspring, but each time either the orange or red was triggered it sent a "fault" description back to "daddies" home computer, whereby, he could "go through" in list form, the driving faults with offspring when they got home and explain things properly.
Seemed like a good idea to me, but where you get them from i don't know!
Billy
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That sounds like a brilliant toy, I wonder how many times you can get the red light come on in a single journey to work... might be fun finding out. :-)
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That sounds like a brilliant toy I wonder how many times you can get the red light come on in a single journey to work... might be fun finding out. :-)
lol! That's exactly how I would have interpreted such a device in my youth! :-)
Don't get me started on those speed readout thingies at the side of the road. I know they're not supposed to be a challenge, but...... ;-)
Cheers
DP
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Don't get me started on those speed readout thingies at the side of the road. I know they're not supposed to be a challenge but......
They (smiley/frowny faces) are called "SIDS" ("Speed Indicator Devices"). They aren't a challenge, because they're set up to silently log speeds above a set limit (e.g. 45 in a 30MPH limit).
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they'reset up to silently log speeds above a set limit (e.g. 45 in a 30MPH limit)
and dissolve the driving licence in your pocket by laser technology (courtesy of Car magazine, several decades ago)
:o}
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Parents can buy this gizmo that sits on the dashboard (plugs in cigar lighter) and monitors "newly passed" sons/daughters driving style. It was using a 3-light system.
How can a box reliably judge the actions of a driver? I can just imagine it. You're driving along when someone pulls out of a junction. Fortunately, your anticipation skills and quick reactions help avoid an accident. However, the decelerometer (is that a word?) trips and you get a Red Light for your parents to have a go at you for!
Similarly, a kid driving all over the show, straightlining roundabouts and cutting people up, would get a green light because that dangerous activity would trigger no sensors.
If you trust your kids so little that you would trust this Silly Little Box over them, you have serious problems.
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straightlining roundabouts
Quickest way through them. What on earth is supposed to be wrong with it? Doing it badly, or at the wrong moment, is another matter of course, but when you're howling up the outside lane overtaking everybody it more or less imposes itself. Of course you owe it to everyone to execute the whole thing tidily and without what one might call 'offence to the men of Erin'. That includes frightening other drivers or giving them good reason to swerve or brake heavily. If they do it for no good reason, well, they would probably be doing it anyway.
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>> straightlining roundabouts Quickest way through them. What on earth is supposed to be wrong with it?
Nothing. I do it all the time. I think you've been unfair with your quoting there. What I said was:
straightlining roundabouts and cutting people up
The operative word there being 'and'. I was visualising a car straightlining a roundabout and in doing so, cutting another car up.
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Sorry pendulum. Of course.
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"Seemed like a good idea to me, but where you get them from i don't know!"
Try
www.davisnet.com/drive/
JH
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I might have been dreaming this but I'm sure a read a piece about BB's in either fast beemers or Mitsi Evo's so that the manufacturer can tell if you've done a track day and therefore invalidate your warranty.
The new Nissan GT-R has an electronically limited top speed (to 112mph). However when the on-board GPS detects that you are in close proximity to a race track, the speed limiter is switched off, allowing 190mph performance.
Not sure if the limiter is fitted for the Japanese market only? Apparently there are "speed limiter defeaters" available. And several tuning companies have hacked the 'unhackable' ECU.
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ISTR that 112mph is the Jap equivalent of 155mph ie: a voluntary limit used by some makers. Almost certain to not be applied to uk bound cars.
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112mph is the Jap equivalent of 155mph
How depressing that sounds somehow... Fortunately though Japan's leading manufacturers have made some incredibly potent machines in the past and are probably still doing so.
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ISTR that 112mph is the Jap equivalent of 155mph ie: a voluntary limit used by some makers. Almost certain to not be applied to uk bound cars.
No, 112mph (actually 180km/h) is a legal maximum speed for cars to be allowed to be registered in Japan. The speedos in japanese registered cars therefore only go up to 180km/h. There is, however, a "voluntary" limit to not exceed an engine power of 280hp.
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"Parents can buy this gizmo that sits on the dashboard (plugs in cigar lighter) and monitors "newly passed" sons/daughters driving style."
Just imagine if parents could have done that in the 60`s when we had our bikes.
Mom to Dad (sitting on the little upright sofa watching the monitor)
"Bert, (aged 16) is doing 100 MPH down Bullcliffe hill" ( local single carriageway `racetrack` woods on both sides)
"and who`s that woman on the back?"
Both parents peer into the monitor as the semi guided missile takes a turn of the steering damper at 105.
Wow !. we were free as birds, don`t know how you kids all take the monitoring these days.
Probably not even allowed out alone until 17... on foot... ;)
(if the local rag is to be believed)
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We have these systems fitted in our work cars - think they're by Siemens. Stores about 70 seconds on a loop - can tell whether the blue lights/noise is on as well as speed and how the car is being driven (harshly/smoothly etc).
They are supposed to be only set off by an accident, but I do know of a couple of occasions where speedbumps have set them off.
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There's a case in today's daily mail about a serious accident in Birmingham involving a Range Rover, the police gave evidence on how the vehicle was being driven from information gathered from the air bag e.c.u.
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Welcome to the world of HGV driving with the spies in the cab and have been for years, thats without all the brown nosing spies that we have to work with these days.
We used to work with a company spy some years back, we called him 'tacho, the spy in the cab'
Next it will be car speed limiters, i can already forsee the threads.....
Why oh why do these car drivers overtake each other with only 0.00005 mph difference, they clog the lanes up, thick as two planks the lot of 'em.
What gives them the right blah blah blah.
Is bacofoil still the strongest.
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Is bacofoil still the strongest.
No, if you use a metal colander, the holes give the head ventilation without allowing your thoughts to seep out and be detected. Make sure the handle is facing forward though, otherwise bad things can happen.
Why is there a black car outside? I'll just go and................................................
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What about a compromise? How about a system that only locks information into memory when the vehicle is involved in an accident (acceleration sensors triggered / airbag deployed etc), and otherwise automatically erases when the ignition is switched off?
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It talks about it in the Range Rover and Discovery handbooks too.
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