h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Two stories from outside the UK have caught my eye this week.

In the first the U.S. Department of Transportation is funding state governments to use GPS to track vehicles wherever they go and then levy mileage-based road tolls. Now I know that HMG here in the UK is already looking at such systems but think how much of an easier time they would have introducing this if other governments were doing the same thing.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5982762.html (US)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3903347.stm (UK)

The other story was that the Canadian government is testing a GPS (again) based system that would stop speeding, although in general I don't approve of speeding I'm not sure how I'd feel about not having the option (sometimes the easiest way to avoid an accident is to hit the accelerator).
http://www.cnn.com/2005/AUTOS/12/01/canada_gps_speed/index.html

I doubt that the actual taking over the drivers control of the accelerator will work.
A better way would be for the car to record how much time was gained by speeding and refuse to start for twice that amount of time the next morning....of course there's no revenue in that, but it would stop speeding altogether.

If theres one 'freedom' Americans love most, it's their cars, and the ability to have complete control over them. We can understand if we get caught by the police doing 10 over, we get a ticket. What we won't tolerate is some device tracking us.

Case in point:
A few years ago the Pennsylvania Turnpike started using Ezypass for paying tolls along that road. Its a very efficient system, you have a pass in your car and as you go by the toll booth at any speed up to 50mph through the magic of electomagnitism and computers you get electronically billed for the toll. Cuts down on congestion alot. I love it. Then Penn Tpk got the great idea that- Hey! We can make more money if we start issuing tickets for speeding based on the time it takes for the car to travel the distance between toll booths. If it takes you 45 minutes to drive 45 miles you were averaging 60mph which happened to be 5 over the speed limit at the time. So they started issuing tickets and, surprise surprise, people stopped using Ezypass, stopped using the Penn Tpk and started sueing everyone. On top of that they wrote their congressmen, senators and the governor. Those tickets never got collected and no more were issued.

Americans get very defensive if you start messing with our cars. One thing that I am surprised that there isn't an uproar over is the fact that all GM cars (In the US for certain, possibly worldwide) have the equivalent of a Black Box in them now. They record speed traveled and lateral g forces and everything you could possibly want. It also rumored to have a GPS system in it, which wouldn't be too far a stretch seeing as OnStar uses GPS for some of it's functions. Thank God I have a '95, all this new big brother crap only started about 2 years ago.

When you sit down and think about it, it's kinda unnerving how easy it would be to track someone given the right equipment.