Netherlands The Latest To Propose Mileage Tax That Requires GPS For Tracking Driving

from the what's-wrong-with-the-gas-tax? dept

Matthew Cruse alerts us to the news that the Netherlands is the latest in a long line of governments that are considering a "mileage tax" that would require drivers to have GPS devices that track how far they drive, and then tax you for every mile driven. Various US states, including Oregon, California and Massachussetts have toyed with such ideas, and while some in Congress have pushed for it on a national scale, the Obama administration has come out against the idea.

There are lots of problems with the idea, including the privacy implications of the government collecting data on your driving habits. Plus, the massive expense of equipping cars with such devices should not be underestimated. But, the biggest question of all is why such a thing is needed at all. We already have taxes on fuel, which approximates the same thing (the more you drive, the more you pay) which doesn't have the same expense or privacy implications and has the added benefit that it helps encourage more fuel efficient driving. The idea to do a GPS-based mileage tax seems like one of those things that politicians come up with because they want more money, and they get infatuated with some new technology, without thinking through the implications (at all).

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New Zealand Says You Can't Use Your Mobile Phone For Navigation While Driving

from the because-that-would-upset-the-GPS-device-makers dept

Brendan was the first of a few to submit the story that New Zealand is telling people that they can't use their mobile phones for navigation purposes, even if that phone is mounted on the dashboard like a regular GPS navigation device. Regular GPS devices are fine... but a mobile phone acting just like one of those devices? That's illegal. Why? No one seems to be saying, but you can bet the standalone GPS makers are happy about this... Update: Well, that was fast. Given public backlash, the gov't has already decided to back down and rewrite the laws to allow mobile phone navigation systems.

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Following Your GPS Over A Cliff Is No Excuse For Bad Driving

from the in-case-you-were-wondering... dept

Verve alerts us to the news that one of the many drivers who have been chronicled following their GPS over their own common sense has discovered that "following my GPS" is not an acceptable defense in court. In this case, the guy followed the GPS's commands down a "narrow cliffside path" until the car got stuck against a fence, overlooking a sharp drop. He's now been convicted of "driving without due care and attention." The prosecutor wasn't exactly kind, but apparently the following was convincing to the judges:

The path was not designed for motor vehicles yet Mr Jones slavishly continued to follow the satnav system to the point where his eyes and his brain must have been telling him otherwise to such a degree he was not exercising proper control of the vehicle

I might have been an idiot for taking the wrong road or carrying on but I have not driven without due care or attention.

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German Judge: If Sex While Driving Is Legal, Why Isn't Driving While Phoning?

from the those-deep-philosophical-questions dept

Six years ago, we noted in passing that a court ruling found that driving while having sex is perfectly legal in Germany (separately, it's apparently a popular practice in Russia). Part of the point was in discussing the troubling trend to try to pick off each and every "distraction" to outlaw -- and it seems like a judge in Germany is wondering the same thing. The judge, issuing a fine for a driver talking on his cell phone, started questioning whether it was legal at all to fine drivers for talking, noting how many other driver distractions were perfectly legal -- including sex, masturbation, shaving, changing the radio station and others. The judge isn't necessarily saying it's good to do those things (in fact, he notes the opposite), but he's questioning the constitutionality of banning just one of many distractions, and has apparently sent the issue to Germany Constitutional Court to examine the issue.

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AT&T Won't Give Up On Mobile TV, Now Wants To Sell You $1300 Gear To Watch Cartoons In Your Car

from the that's-a-lot-for-some-cartoons dept

Despite a ton of hype from its backers over the years, there's been very little interest in mobile TV services -- especially with the current subscription-based model. AT&T launched its mobile TV offering using Qualcomm's MediaFLO service last year, and given the lack of news about it, it doesn't seem to have set the world on fire. But AT&T doesn't seem to have learned too much from that experience and adapted its business model to a new satellite-based mobile TV offering that's made for in-car use, preferring instead to trod the same path with a sizable monthly service fee and expensive equipment. For just $1299 for the equipment (not including professional installation) and $28 per month, its CruiseCast service will deliver customers 22 channels of TV and 20 audio channels. Even if these weren't trying economic times, the pricing seems pretty prohibitive, and it's hard to imagine this service will find much more success than other similar efforts. Further, it's really difficult to see a future for any sort of mobile TV service that's built around the subscription model, especially when it tries to force customers back into linear programming schedules, and give up the control that their DVRs and other on-demand technologies offer.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Missouri: Text Messaging While Driving Is Fine, As Long As You're Over 21

from the disparate-impact dept

Laws that ban individual activities -- like cell phone use -- while driving are often little more than political hype. Singling out specific activities for bans doesn't do much to address the root problem of unsafe driving, which remains the issue regardless of its cause, while also generating the implication that if a specific action while driving hasn't been banned, it's okay and safe. Nevertheless, plenty of states have moved forward with laws banning talking on cell phones while driving, and more recently, texting. Next, they'll have to ban using the mobile web, or IM, or playing Tetris on your phone while driving, since they've left these (and plenty of other activities) out, but we digress... In any case, Missouri's legislature has taken the silliness one step further by banning texting while driving, but only for drivers under the age of 21. If you accept the supposed need for these sorts of laws, how could you argue they should only apply to those under 21? What happens on a person's 21st birthday that suddenly makes texting while driving acceptable and safe? Answers in the comments, please...

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Boston Trolley Accident Sadly Shows, Again, That Cell Phone Bans Alone Don't Really Work

from the accountability? dept

The driver of a Boston trolley that caused a crash that injured about 50 people was apparently sending text messages at the time of the accident, despite a transit authority ban on such activity. This latest incident comes after the horrible crash in California last year that killed scores of people, in which the train conductor was said to be texting, and highlights how bans like this, whether covering the drivers of trains or cars, really aren't effective. A reasonably intelligent person driving a trolley or other mass-transit vehicle doesn't need a ban to tell them that texting while driving isn't such a good idea. If they aren't smart enough to figure that out, they're probably just going to ignore the ban anyway, like this driver in Boston, undermining the point of the rule. Again, it goes back to personal responsibility, something that politicians and rulemakers won't be able to conjure up out of legislation, try as they might. This isn't to say that people like trolley drivers should be allowed to text while working -- far from it. But to think that putting a ban into place will, in itself, simply and easily eliminate the problem and make everybody safer is misguided.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Another Driver Chooses To Believe GPS Over The Reality Of A Cliff

from the the-machines-are-taking-over dept

Ah, yet another tale of a British driver turning on his GPS unit and turning off his brain: a guy in Yorkshire left his car teetering over the edge of a cliff after blindly following his GPS down a narrow, steep path. The GPS said it was a road, and the driver seems to have let that override his common sense, as plenty of people are wont to do. Drivers often like to blame the technology for taking them down some treacherous path, but it's not as if the device simply suggested a suboptimal route, or drove the car itself. The infallibility some people see in technology is troubling, since they seem to see things like GPS units as perfectly acceptable replacements for their brains.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Massachusetts Wants GPS Driving Tax, Too

from the big-brother dept

For several years, authorities in Oregon have been pursuing a plan to put GPS units in every car in the state to track and tax drivers' mileage. Now, Massachusetts wants to get in on the act, and replace its gas tax with a mileage-based tax (via Boing Boing) generated by GPS units in cars. The state wants to ditch its gas tax because rising fuel efficiency is leading to decreasing tax revenue, so the new plan would instead charge drivers a quarter of a cent for each mile they drive. The state's governor is talking not just about boosting tax revenue, but says he likes ideas that are "faster, cheaper, simpler." It's not clear how replacing the current gas tax by forcing drivers to install GPS trackers in their cars and building an infrastructure to gather data from them, then assess and collect a mileage tax will be fast, cheap or simple. This doesn't even mention the myriad privacy concerns of giving state employees access to records of Massachusetts drivers' activity. This idea continually pops up, whether as a tax idea or a new way to charge for auto insurance -- but it never seems to hold any more value beyond a soundbite.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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More Not-Entirely-Useful Tech Tries To Stop Texting While Driving

from the wut-r-u-tryin-2-do-2-my-fon-dad dept

While legislators try (and fail) to ban the use of mobile phones while driving, the market for technology to kill phone use while driving is heating up. Last month, a company announced a device aimed at stopping teens from talking while driving, though it appears to have plenty of pitfalls. Now comes "Textecution" (a piece of software for Android phones) that kills a device's ability to send or receive texts when it detects the phone is moving at more than 10 miles per hour. The application's developers intend for parents to install it on their kids' phones so they can't text while driving -- assuming, of course, the kids have a G1 handset. That's a significant hurdle in itself, as it's hard to imagine that, as with so many other things, kids won't find it too hard to circumvent. Also, the application can't tell when a kid is actually driving a car, or simply riding in one, or riding on a bus or train, or in another situation where they're moving faster than 10 mph, but not driving a car, and perfectly able to safely text. It really appears that this software isn't much of a solution, but rather window dressing that makes parents think they're doing something to protect their kids. But isn't installing some easily defeated application on your teenager's phone to put your mind at ease simpler than trying to teach them responsibility?

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Traffic Camera Companies Looking To Give Gov't More Ways To Spy On You As You Drive

from the you-have-no-privacy-anywhere dept

There's been plenty of backlash against red light cameras (which often increase the number of accidents) and speed cameras (which seem to have problems with accuracy). However, that's not stopping the manufacturers of those cameras from trying to get governments to buy even more of them for other purposes. A few folks have sent in a story from TheNewspaper (a site that actively fights against the spread of traffic-related cameras), noting that the two big firms in the space are pitching the cameras to governments for surveillance purposes, to keep records and data on motorists. They talk about using it to recognize license plates on stolen cars, but you can imagine it's only a matter of time until it also puts together a nice database on where you traveled when. It's yet another step towards proving the saying that you no longer have any privacy anywhere. At least not from the government. Maybe next up, they'll look to just put cameras directly in your cars, like some taxis have these days. That way they can track what you're saying as well.

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Forget Driving While Texting, Now There's Train Conducting While Texting...

from the im-nt-pying-attntn dept

As you probably heard, Friday afternoon there was a tragic train crash in California, killing a bunch of people. There were some rumors going around over the weekend, and now the press is picking up on a report that the engineer of the Metrolink train that missed a signal leading to the crash may have been text-messaging with someone moments before the accident. It's the type of story that the press loves, though there's not that much evidence other than the claims of the kid on the other end of the text messages. Just as politicians are now pushing through "driving-while-texting" bans, you have to imagine that this will also help push along those initiatives. But, once again, the same issue comes through. The problem isn't text messaging: it's people in control over big, powerful machines (cars or trains) not paying attention the way they're supposed to be paying attention.

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Turns Out Drivers Not So Interested In Big Brother Style Car Insurance

from the please-don't-spy-on-me dept

Four years ago, we wrote about the concept of "Big Brother-style car insurance," where drivers would agree to have special black boxes attached to their cars which would transmit all sorts of info to the insurance company about their driving habits, including how much, when and how fast they drove. Those drivers who drove safer (or at safer "times") were offered better rates. We were actually quite surprised in 2005 to hear the company behind the most intrusive of these programs, Norwich Union in the UK, claim that the early tests were going so well that it was expanding the program. Three years later, we now learn that the "going so well" part may have only been on the insurers' side, rather than the customers' side. In a post talking about why such surveillance insurance plans are a bad, bad idea, the EFF also points out that Norwich Union has just ditched its offering, noting that... well... almost no one signed up. Turns out that people aren't so keen to sign up for Big Brother Brand car insurance after all. The "going well" part was actually all just wishful thinking, as the company says that it thought people would sign up only to discover that they didn't.

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Freaking People Out With Fake Speed Bumps Doesn't Seem Smart

from the disaster-in-waiting dept

While it might seem like a cool idea at first, the idea of using fake speed bumps presented as an optical illusion painted on the pavement just seems dangerous. Sure, it may get drivers to slow down, but tricking drivers into thinking there's something in the road when there isn't just seems like the sort of thing that ends badly. Besides, in various areas where speed bumps are useful, wouldn't this just mean that drivers who knew they were fake would ignore them? That is, in fact, what tests of the painted on speed bumps found -- the impact was rather brief. Besides were real-life actual speed bumps really that big a problem? Sure they cost more, but it seems like they're going to be a lot more effective.

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Driving Distractions Are, Indeed, Distracting

from the who-knew? dept

This shouldn't come as much of a surprise (if at all), but as Slashdot points out, there are many driving distractions out there, and all can be potentially dangerous. The study found that it's not just mobile phones, but eating or changing the radio station or even talking to others in the car. Basically, what the study found was that when there's cognitive overload from too many tasks performed simultaneously, activities that are more core may squeeze out less developed processes. Thus, speaking and listening (which are learned at a young age) are likely to squeeze out more recently learned processes, such as driving.

While this isn't at all surprising, what does it mean for the various attempts to legislate against driver distractions? Despite some attempts to ban distractions one by one, it's never going to be possible to ban all driver distractions. You can't make it illegal to talk to someone else in your car or even to change the radio station while driving (though, who knows...). The real issue shouldn't be to focus on banning each and every driver distraction, but in educating drivers to the dangers they face with those distractions, making it clear that they need to be extra careful while engaged in any such activity, and that it's best not to do any such thing in heavy or highly variable traffic. Yes, there will always be some folks who ignore this and assume they can drive just fine with these distractions -- but those people would do the same thing even if the distractions were banned.

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'Autonomous' Driving Could Turn The Old-Fashioned Kind Into A Hobby

from the driving-progress dept

My esteemed co-blogger Adam Thierer points out that General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner is touting a future of "autonomous driving." Adam is against the concept, worrying that future generations will be deprived of the excitement of controlling your own vehicle. Luckily, I don't think Adam needs to worry. Even after autonomous driving becomes sophisticated enough to be deployed on real roads, it will still take decades for people to transition to all-autonomous vehicles. Moreover, the market is likely to continue catering to old coots like Adam who want to continue driving their cars the old fashioned way, so there will be human drivers on the road for the foreseeable future. That, in turn, means that autonomously-driving cars will have to know how to share the road with human beings for the foreseeable future. It will be many decades before we could even start seriously discussing banning non-autonomous cars from the roads. More to the point, history suggests that when technology makes a day-to-day activity obsolete, it doesn't disappear. Rather, it become a hobby. A half-century after the introduction of the automatic transmission, there are still plenty of people who prefer to drive a stick. People haven't needed to hunt or fish for food for decades, yet hunting and fishing are now popular hobbies. The same is true of traditional housework activities like weaving, knitting, and quilting. It no longer makes economic sense to do these things in the home, but people do them anyway because they enjoy it. By the same token, if autonomous driving someday makes traditional driving obsolete, that won't make it go away. It will simply mean that it will become a recreational activity rather than an unavoidable part of daily life. When he's 60, Adam will still be able to zoom around in his sports car on the weekends, but on his morning commute he might have the option to ignore the Northern Virginia traffic jam and focus on writing his latest Luddite screed for the Technology Liberation Front.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Australia To Test Cars That Won't Let You Speed

from the slow-down,-dave dept

About a year and a half ago, we wrote about plans by transportation authorities in London to test a system that would force drivers to slow down if they were going over the speed limit. We haven't heard much about the tests since then, but it appears that similar tests will soon get underway in Australia (found via TLF). The system involves a GPS-based device that would track where you are against a database of speed limits to determine if you were going over the limit. The system can be programmed to react in three ways. At the lowest level, it would beep at you if you're speeding. A step up from there is where it would automatically cut the gas to slow you down, though there would be a manual override if the driver needed it. Then, there's a third level, where there would be no manual override. It's unclear how widespread the use of this device would be, but apparently there are some discussions about requiring it on all cars -- or (more likely) just for repeat speeding offenders. As we noted when the London tests began, this is attacking the symptom (speeding) rather than the actual disease (bad driving).

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Blame The Mobile Phone For Your Slow Commute?

from the how-about-a-mobile-phone-lane? dept

Yet another study has come out on people driving while talking on their mobile phones, and I doubt many people will quibble with the results of this one. The study found that people who talk on their mobile phones while driving tend to drive slower, helping to back up traffic. Considering how often the "slow driver" you see is on a mobile phone, this certainly sounds accurate. Of course, while this will push more folks to call for additional bans on driving while yakking, an equally effective (and just as realistic) solution might be to just add a "mobile phone lane" on highways, where people are expected to be talking on their phones, and therefore driving slower. Those folks can just go at their own pace, while everyone else knows to avoid that lane and go at a more appropriate speed. No, this isn't exactly practical, but neither is banning every driver distraction known to man.

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Company Betting On GPS-Based Driving Tax

from the we-know-where-you've-been-driving dept

Back in 2003, the state of Oregon considered a driving tax, which would involve putting GPS devices on cars so the government could see how far you drove, and then tax you for it. The idea being that those who drive more should pay a larger portion of taxes to support the roads they drive on. Of course, for many, many people, the idea of the government keeping tabs on where you drive and how far you go seems rather Big Brotherish -- and those people note that you can accomplish pretty much the same thing (making heavy drivers pay more taxes) simply by taxing gasoline. Soon afterwards, the head of California's DMV suggested that a similar taxing and tracking plan made sense. Over in the UK, they've looked at similar proposals as well. It certainly seems a bit early to bet on such a concept as the next big thing, but that apparently hasn't stopped one company from building a device for exactly this purpose and showing it off at a recent conference. The company is smart in positioning it less as a device for tracking drivers and more as a way of "creating toll roads out of every road." The News.com article then goes on to rail against the very idea of toll roads -- but perhaps that's because they're quite rare here in northern California. In other parts of the country, they're a lot more common. Rather than worrying about the toll road aspect, it seems like the idea of government agencies having immediate access to information about where you drove at what time is a lot more troublesome.

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