Vipa

Discuss

A continuation for the thread

http://bbs.scoobynet.co.uk/showthread.php?t=408758

Jap2Scrap

Again?

To anyone that doubts it's coming...

Have you seen references to testing being undertaken at the University of Leeds? Well I work there and I'd like to draw your attention to the following .pdf files if I may. If you take the time to read through them you'll see it's very real, it's very viable and the tests are being undertaken with such a pro-bias it's unbelievable that a University is doing them.

ISA testing

Previous trials at bottom of page

project homepage

Have a read if you can spare the time.

dr_ming

politicians pipe-dream. The infrastructure will be cripplingly expensive to install, and given that we live in a country where successive governments have been incapable of organising pi55-ups in breweries, it will take decades to install. It it ever does happen, you will almost certainly be able to get your ECU hacked to turn it off (in exactly the same way you get a re-map now). so, all in all, a load of b0ll0cks. Thankfully. Oh, and I work for a company that is involved in developing this stuff (hangs head in shame).

GC8

Why not just tattoo a barcode on my neck, stick a chip up my **** and be done with it? That peopel will idly sit by and watch this fascist crap be forced upon them amazes me.

Surely in a free society subjects/citizens are free to break the law? (consider this for a moment; you cant possibly be about to say that Im wrong can you? We are free to abide by the law or to break it; if we break it we have to accept the consequences). The notion that the state can put a mechanism in place thats designed to prevent this should scare the ****e out of people.....

This gives a whole new meaning to the 'forces of social control' doesnt it?

Citizen Simon (Power to the People!)

Clarebabes

a) WE will be paying for it;
b) It makes them money and gives them control so they will MAKE it work and install it quickly
c) Penalties for hacking will also make them money and give them control. (We lose either way)

Shame on you for working for the enemy. Please leave and encourage your colleagues to do likewise.

Vegescoob

I have posted before how totalitarian regimes, dictatorships and police states seem to have no trouble finding people to enforce the system. USSR, GDR, North Korea, Zimbabwe etc.
Remember some large corporations stand to make profits from all this.
Look at how much we as individuals and through our taxes pay for "security" for our cars, houses, business premises etc. All because those charged with our security, the politicians at the top, have failed utterly.
They will seek to convince the population that more restrictive measures are the answer. Believe them at your peril.

Clarebabes

I will not believe it, that is because I am interested in cars and car-related issues. What about Joe public. They believe the hype. How we going to get it over to them that they're being brainwashed like the global warming issues?

Ask 100 people on the street what the main cause of accidents is......

dr_ming

I don't work for the enemy directly. The government is too stupid to do this stuff themselves, so it's subcontracted out.

Another kick in the teeth for the motorist in the UK is that most other European countries do not have plans for ISA. So if it is introduced, it is yet another reason for the vehicle OEMs to hike the prices of UK cars.

Vegescoob

That's the power of drip feeding. Remember advertising, PR, spin, call it what you want, works, otherwise so much wouldn't be spent on it.
Dress it up with "statistics", "experts" and it must be true.
Just point me to any really independent statistics and experts.

hedgehog

The infrastructure for it is already in place and is sitting on a hill near you. In fact the company who run the M6 toll have just bought all the old ITV transmitter masts. I guess they are going to send us "Toll Road Television?"

As for expense, well, your idea of expense is a trivial matter compared to the potential for income. There are 25 million cars on the road each doing about 12,000 miles per year. If it was to be charged at, say, Ł1 per mile how much would that be per year?

The government are not going to organise this, they are going to contract it to others who are driven by a turnover beyond the dreams of most companies and a captive (almost literally) customer base. MacQuarie, who have just bought the masts, have already met with the Transport Committee, on 2nd Feb, to discuss their plans for the expansion of road charging. The mapping of the country for the system is due to be complete in September. Leeds has at least 20 test cars on UK roads, some other EU countries have several thousand test cars on the road.

This is not going to go away, nor do I think MacQuarie are going to wait decades to tap into that revenue stream when many of the tricky systems are already in place.

Vegescoob

Don't you just love "representative democracy"?

dr_ming

Road tolling is another ugly spectre that looms on the horizon and, as you rightly point out, is much closer to implementation than ISA. Fortunately, even this requires still-to-be agreed legislation from the EU, and numerous draft comminications standards waiting to be ratified by the ISO.

Luckily for us, these organisations suffer huge inertia. So hopefully a few of these greedy corporations, who (IMHO) have jumped too soon, will go bankrupt due to the long wait before they can generate any cash flow.

I have to confess that I am slightly confused by the TV mast thing - terrestrial analoge TV is due to be with us until (circa) 2017, so the masts don't become redundant until then at the earliest?

Synthesiser Patel

which part is 'Intelligent' please..?

hedgehog

Just because you only have one mast doesn't mean that you only have one antenna. Clue of the day: The mast will not be used to transmit.

dr_ming

You don't say. However, road tolling and ISA will almost certainly use DSRC, which operates in the 5.9GHz band, uses transmitter powers of a few tens of watts, and is relatively short range - thus the base-stations need to be near the roads.

Since Analogue TV is in the ~400MHz to ~800MHz band with transmit powers of (typically) 100's of kW, the masts are generally stuck in the middle of fields miles from anywhere, and they are relatively few and far between (even if you include the vertically polarised repeater stations), so they don't make particularly good DSRC base stations - it's much more likely that they will be used as repeater stations back to the control centres.

speedking

Just browsing jap2scrap's first reference:

Table 17: With a mandatory ISA system and fixed speed limits you may get a 7% reduction in accidents that occur within 10km of your home address. Is it worth it? Makes no mention of injury reductions. Some of these accidents probably cost a few hundred pounds of insurance money and don't involve the authorities at all.

"affective", "vehilces" nice proofreading

Note from Table 13 that motorcycles are listed as not being ISA capable. Time to dust off my licence. (I know hedgehog has said differently.)

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

I had a look at the 'local ISA' thing on the project site. Either they, or I, are missing a very simple fact: it's inevitable that many of the accidents which occur, occur near the driver's home just because every journey either starts or finishes there?

Jap2Scrap

I thought EXACTLY the same thing.

To be fair, thinking back to research and dissertations I've been involved with it's actually of a very poor standard and is very sloppily presented and researched. That's what scares me most. The author has an obvious hard-on for ISA and is not being truly objective in his research.

Jap2Scrap

I've been thinking. If this is as real a threat as it would appear to be, why hasn't Jeremy Clarkson picked up on it yet? It would seem to be the kind of thing to be certain of a slating on TG but it's had no mention as yet.

Perhaps the focus should be on spreading the awareness through media such as TG. Maybe someone could word an email that doesn't sound like it's written by the author of The X-Files but gets the point across and submit it. If enough people write in on the same topic it's bound to get a reaction.

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

If you were potentially sitting on the technology rights for a Ł2.5 BILLION contract, your ability to be scientifically objective would probably take a knock too.

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

Actually the 'local' idea is even more flawed than that. If 'local' is defined as being within 5km (which is what I think they were suggesting), then for a typical journey, that probably encompasses ALL the local roads with their roundabouts, complex junctions, pedestrians etc at that end of the journey. Travel more than 5km and you're inevitably going to be using A roads and motorways - which are both our fastest and our safest roads.

There's something definitely wrong there. The researchers can't possibly be misinterpreting the facts that badly, can they?

Jap2Scrap

Agreed, but research at a Uni doesn't quite work like that. The research fellow can't be personally tied up with any technology rights per sé. Granted, the University will have a stake in the intellectual property, but the value of that varies. It's also worth considering that the technology being used in the test vehicles isn't new as such, it's more a new use for existing technology. Someone somewhere will score big-time on this but it won't be the guy writing that paper.

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

Maybe not, but he'll get his name in lights and probably ensure that the University wine cellar remains well stocked for some time to come.

speedking

There doesn't appear to be any attempt to quantify how many accidents even had a speed related cause. There is a leap of faith in taking the values from Table 15 and applying them to local travel. By its nature local travel involves congested roads, junctions etc. where speed control is likely to be less effective at KSI reduction.

But I can see where this is heading. I wouldn't mind speed control on local journeys, I'm usually warming up or cooling down the car. Journeys are short, so time saved by speeding is very small. Roundabouts etc. mean that I'm less able to speed anyway. But this acceptance is the thin end of the wedge for national implementation. therefore all minor proposed implementations must be resisted.

Vipa

Just sent an e-mail to Top Gear airing my concerns and suggesting they need to run an article on national tv....

Let's see what kind of response I get (if any)

Would help immensly if they got loads of e-mails all asking for an article re ISA to be aired.....

So come on... the e-mail addy is - top.gear@bbc.co.uk

Jap2Scrap

Nice work.

I'll email later today from my Uni address pointing them at the research here. That should lend a bit of credibility to it.

Vipa

Nice one....

Top Gear (especially JC) is exactly the kind of forum needed to show ISA to the masses for what it really is..... Get everyone talking down the pub!!!!

Paul

PS This is what I sent (tried to keep it intelligent rather than moaning about not being able to go as fast as I want!)

"Sirs


I am reading more and more about Intelligent speed adaptation (ISA) on motoring forums and bulletin boards and recently an item on ‘Country File’ brought the concept of ISA to the masses (ok… the farming community) via TV!

From what I read and hear ISA is in the testing stages and there is rumour and evidence that such a system of external vehicle speed control could be in mandatory use country wide within a decade.

I feel that if implemented the UK could witness the biggest change (good or bad) to personal transportation (and personal choice) since the invention of the motor car!

I feel very strongly that the Top Gear audience, indeed, the motoring community at large would benefit from your program introducing the concept, implications, pros and cons of such a system and prospect in your own inimitable style.

Kind regards



Paul Hennessey

(a very concerned motorist!)"

dr_ming

The other thing that I bet the research hasn't though about is the possible negative effects of ISA on people's driving behaviour.

At present, it's down to the intelligence, experience and common sense of the driver to set his or her speed, dependent on driving conditions etc. Most people do think whilst they drive, and make intelligent, informed decisions about their speed.

If they are no longer able to partake in this decision making process, it may be that people start to drive 'go-kart' style, i.e. drive everywhere with 100% throttle pedal input, letting the ISA system dictate their speed. If drivers become less involved in the actual task of driving (and further distracted by the ever growing range of gadgets in modern vehicles), they are less likely to be giving the task an appropriate level of concentration - possibly leading to more accidents, not less.

Jap2Scrap

I have mentioned your concerns in the email I just sent to Top Gear dr_ming. I've also pointed them at the research and just hope they feel they can put a researcher onto it.

We'll see.

AndyC_772

iTrader: (2)

dr_ming: you're absolutely right - and unfortunately, the behaviour of a large number of unwilling drivers in a variety of cars over a long time, is something which they can't model or experiment on.

Given that every car would be GPS-limited to exactly the same speed, I predict nose-to-tail 70.0mph traffic on our motorways, as a direct result. Everyone can just floor the throttle, sit in whichever lane they like and nod off. No thought required at all, until something unexpected happens of course.

Now imagine coming up a slip road and trying to find and move into a gap in such traffic. Remember, the only control you have to move relative to the stream of traffic is now to slow down - you can't speed up to nip into the gap and then ease off.

Now imagine what happens if there's a 30mph road running parallel to the motorway. GPS can't necessarily tell which one you're on - any sat nav user knows that. The ISA box decides the limit is 30 and slams on your brakes without warning. Result, one totally avoidable, pointless pile-up.

In fact the consequences of an ISA box failure don't bear thinking about. You have electronic signals controlling your brakes and throttle - and remember, the system won't have been thoroughly tested in every make & model of car, so you're not looking at a system as reliable as ABS which has. Potentially, one dry joint and you're heading flat out for the horizon with no brakes.