OT. All new cars to be fitted with trackers?

[harryagain]

It is the Daily Mail mind.

[Adrian]

...and here's the same story from the BBC - in 2012...

But, blimey, talk about a mountain from a molehill!

It's no more or less than the various services that've been in the US for a decade or more...

GM's OnStar was probably the first and is probably the best known :-

[Broadback]

Think a bout it, if it happens, what does it matter to you if "they" know where you have been? It seems that in the long run it would be cheaper as, for example, speed cameras can be abolished, but no one would be able to exceed the speed limit without being clocked!

[Brian Gaff]

Yes but why is this a problem with so many tvs having cameras and microphones these days. I'm sure some nice person will be able to disable this in two shakes of a pa nthers tail. Brian

[tim.....]

Actually it's significantly different

tim

[tim.....]

It doesn't work like this

It just relays your current position if (it thinks) you've had an accident

it doesn't record position on a minute by minute basis.

Though I still don't know what communication links it uses to send that message (and who pays for the "contract")

tim

[tim.....]

TVs have microphones and cameras? Why?

But why would you want to?

tim

[tim.....]

Except it's not.

It's the industry ideal to have the completely "connected car" and equipment suppliers and motor manufacturers are working towards it becoming reality pretty dammed soon.

(Apart from, slightly, more reasonable uses) they want to use it to help them in their quest for driverless cars. They seem to have this nutty idea that they can use intra-net communications with surrounding cars to work out where they all are to avoid the need for all the complicated video recognition stuff that they are experimenting with at the moment. Except that the marine industry has already been there and it is strictly forbidden to create aids that pilot a vessel based upon receiving electronic communications from surrounding vessels to determine where they are, because there is a 100% certainly that not all of the surrounding vessels can tell you - and it ain't gonna be any different with roads!

tim

[Davey]

That Wikipedia link appears to answer some of those questions.

[John Rumm]

Never underestimate the power of feature creep ;-)

Once someone has the capability to collect ubiquitous tracking data there are countless ways that it can be data mined and monetised...

E.g. flog it to insurers on the premiss of combating fraud, but also allowing variable rate charging (more miles, aggressive driving, high risk locations / roads). Flog it to government for road pricing.

The saving grace is that there may be less appetite for (traffic) law enforcement - since although it would be relatively easy to issue automatic fines based on speed etc, the potential for error is large, and you would very quickly erode any goodwill from the public, which while we still (notionally at least) have policing by consent is a requirement for the system to work.

[Adrian]

Strange how nobody's worried about their mobile phone in this context...

[tim.....]

That's an American service that provides some features of benefit to the user

Thus the user pays a month sub

I can't see too many European drivers paying 15 pounds per month to a mobile operator just for the once-in-a-blue-moon that their car calls "home" in an emergency

tim

[tim.....]

As I know what is actually being developed, the boxes aren't capable of this creep

The boxes aren't so capable. They won't have enough memory

tim

[JimK]

If it has enough memory to send location data once, surely it can send it an infinite number of times?? If told to....

Jim K

[chris French]

In message , tim..... writes

Well some recent ones do.

It's for Skyping and voice and gesture control

>

[tony sayer]

In article , JimK scribeth thus

Seems it may be free for Aircraft;?>...

[tim.....]

Well yes

but then the calculation of how fast you are going down the A27 would have to be calculated centrally, for 10 million cars on the road all at the same time (though obviously not all on the A27).

Does that look like a useful way of enforcing traffic rules to you?

tim

[JimK]

Who said it has to be instant?

Straight maths is shurely what compewters are good at?

Jim K

[Simon Cee]

Nasty EU. Monitoring dressed up as H&S. No guarantees that these devices will not constantly monitor your driving, just a vague 'not constantly sending details'.

31 in a 30 and have a crash? Computer says 'guillty'.

[John Rumm]

Those ones, perhaps not... however I have developed kit in the past that had the capability (fortunately the prat Prescott lost interest in it ;-)

Depends on how often you offload the data presumably...