don't know whether anybody else read about this .... but ....

speeding drivers will soon be caught by a lens the size of a drop of water embedded in the road. A new generation of smart road-studs which can detect speeding cars, warn of fog and ice and even talk to each other is being developed by a British company. Thousands of the new eyes-in-the-road could be buried in our streets by the summer. Secret tests are being carried out in Spain. They are linked to a central computer and don't need a flash or film. They can read number plates and warn drivers of danger.

While these studs obviously have some good uses ... fog ... notifying emergency services of accidents etc ... there always has to be a downside to these good ideas

 

Surely things like this will result in drivers spending too much time looking at their speedos and not the roads?

 

God as if we had enough to contend with!!! heaven help help us if these sorts of thing reach our shores.

 

I've seen the blurb for these.

Cats eyes are only a few mm above the surface of the road. Not sure how they are supposed to work. The angle is all wrong to get a good photo of the numberplate, and the lenses will be covered in all kinds of cr*p to obscure the lenses.

In any case what about those cars that have number plates stuck on the bonnet?

 

Its OK - its just fancy thoughts at the moment - the technology is there - but NOT cheap enough to put into the middle of the road!! - there are easier ways (and Cheaper!)

Pete

 

Pete - I'm not saying that you are wrong again, but I have read a great deal about the 'benefits' of these cats eyes over the past 5 years. They can now be produced for <100 pounds. The original development was to warn road users that there was other traffic in the vicinity during fog and heavy rain. Whan a car passed over a cats eye, all the other cats eyes within a predetermined distance would flash orange. Recent addition of a minature fish eye camera connected to a SPECS type system suddenly make them revenue generators. My understanding is that they are already on test in the UK

 

Is this a joke???? I sure hope so!!!!

 

These studs are around already .... fog warning catseyes are already being tested in the Pennines near Rochdale. Drivers in Paris and Japan already have them ....

The studs are being developed by a Kent firm called Astucia ....

 

Bex,

Theres a world of difference between a cats eye that uses sensors to detect fog, ice etc and one that can produce a legally binding photograph in all wheathers, at night and at that very acute angle.

The only way this would work is if the cats eye did the sensing and it was connected to a post or gantry mounted camera

I've seen the fog and ice ones demo'd on tomorrows world. I suspect the speeding ones are just people FUD spreading and because of the current jihad against motorists we believe it.

 

that said when I started driving 18 years ago, the thought of a GATSO camera would have been prepostorous...... technology seems to move at a huge rate of knots these days.

I just finished reading the Prometheus Affair, by Robert Ludlum. It's a kind of modern day 1984.

Dave

 

Neil, that may well be true ... but at the end of the day .... when we're all forced to drive cars that will automatically slow down to the appropriate speed limit regardless of the speed you want to drive at ... the studs will be superfluous .... and we've all seen the TRL testing out the car

 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>Originally posted by Rebecca:
<B>
Neil, that may well be true ... but at the end of the day .... when we're all forced to drive cars that will automatically slow down to the appropriate speed limit regardless of the speed you want to drive at ... the studs will be superfluous .... and we've all seen the TRL testing out the car [/quote]

Yep. There are serious flaws with that idea too. For a start GPS does'nt do height very well. Therefore if you cross over a 30 limit road and you are on the motorway then the limiter will automatically wack your speed down from 70 to 30 . Just watch those pile ups

Also if the system is modified to use a CDROM based map system then who pays for updates? Who pays for the installations?
CDROM based SATNAV systems are currently around 1500 quid with 100 quid a pop updates.


How will such a system work across Europe with it's different speed limits and regulations?

The TRL car has been driven in ideal conditions. If they would let me(or any one else for that matter) have a go in it i'm sure I could find a number of significant flaws in it.

Remember what you have seen on the TV can hardly be called unbiased reporting.

I'm not 100% against the idea. Having a system that limited you to 30 through towns but did'nt restrict on the open road would seem to be a suitable compromise. BUT even then you still have the above issues to contend with.

This will probably happen in the next 10-15 years, but I expect a serious backlash when the accident rate does'nt drop by that much and actually increases as people switch off their brains and just pootle along.

 

See