Unfortunately it's for real [LWN.net]

Toll tags in Texas (OT)

Posted Jun 10, 2008 1:22 UTC (Tue) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link]

I don't know anyone personally who received a speeding citation from clocking time between toll stations, but I do know that it's been a real privacy threat for the ten (or so) years now that toll tags have been used. I'm thinking of the Sam Houston Tollway (encircling Houston) in particular. Ironically, the speed limit is 70 MPH (113 km/h) and many drive 80 as if it were no big deal. (Again, I do not condone or endorse excessively fast or reckless driving.)

In central Texas, the new toll roads popping up plan to eliminate manned toll booths (as I mentioned earlier), and even if one doesn't have a toll tag, he/she can still drive through the toll station, get the vehicle's license plate photographed, and have a toll bill mailed to him/her (plus a "service charge" of like $5.00 USD for a $1.25 or so toll). I'm speculating on the particulars, but it's not unreasonable a scenario given how much the toll authorities want to make their toll roads as lucrative as possible.

Back to Bruce's thoughts on privacy (or lack thereof), I do concede that vehicle, license plate, and driver data are essentially public data, but now there's all sorts of extra info, hard records, stored in a plethora of public databases, regarding my driving habits, where I was at a certain date/time, etc.

George Orwell was indeed a visionary and a prophet.

Toll tags in Texas (OT)

Posted Jun 10, 2008 2:20 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

> Again, I do not condone or endorse excessively fast or reckless driving

80 or 100 or even a 150mph is not going to be reckless driving if the circumstances say it's
safe. In other circumstances driving 35 or 40 can kill you dead in a heartbeat.

It's not a attack on your comment or anything like that. It's just sad that people will
happily substitute good judgement for some blanket rules setup by some authority. As if the
people in government have some sort of special level of genius that regular people lack.
(hint: they are just as stupid and have as much trouble managing their f-cked up lives as
everybody else on this planet. They have zero access to any sort of enlightenment that the
rest of us fools lack.)

If you give people authority they _will_ use it and they _will_ abuse it. Nobody is that
perfect that they will avoid this. For money, or morals. 

Fortunately the authority a government have is mostly due to us submitting to their games. So
if you don't want to give them authority, don't submit and you can avoid a good portion of it.
Not all of it, of course. It's mostly a delaying action, because most people (being people)
are fundamentally lazy and will happily trade real liberty for the illusion of security,
stability, and safety. Over time you'll lose wiggle room as governments grab more power due to
this, but what can you do?

Toll tags in Texas (OT)

Posted Jun 10, 2008 11:52 UTC (Tue) by ekj (subscriber, #1524) [Link]

We do have -general- laws in society, despite the fact that individual circumstances are
always different.

You need to be (16|18|whatever) to be allowed to drive a car -- despite the fact that some
15-year-olds could and would do it perfectly safely, and some 20-year-olds cant or won't.

There's an age-of-consent, despite the fact that people are different, some have a perfectly
normal sexual relationship at 14 and suffer no damages from it, others aren't able to take
responsibility for themselves at 20.

I don't think it's a good cure to remove all speed-limits. On the very best roads it could be
reasonable though. Germany has no speed-limits on their best roads, and accidents aren't
infact any higher than comparable roads in other countries.

Toll tags in Texas (OT)

Posted Jun 12, 2008 5:57 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]

> We do have -general- laws in society, despite the fact that individual circumstances are
always different.

Yes, and the willingness of people to hide behind what the statute book says, rather than
actually do their own thinking about whether it's just or not, has caused more evil in the
world than any intentional act.

There's a reason for preferring one's politicians cynical. People who have come to terms with
their cynicism tend to at least minimise the harm they cause; no such self-inhibition guides
the pure of motive, sometimes with appalling consequences.

Toll tags in Texas (OT)

Posted Jun 13, 2008 17:58 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

the willingness of people to hide behind what the statute book says, rather than actually do their own thinking about whether it's just or not, has caused more evil in the world than any intentional act.

Really? I'm not sure it even counts as "evil" if it wasn't the result of a person's intentional act.

And I don't know what problem you're thinking of because the phrase "hide behind the statute" normally applies to a person who applies his own judgement, then finds a statute that backs up that judgement, and applies it. He hides behind the statute when he refuses to acquiesce to someone else's conflicting judgement, defend his judgement, etc.

In speed limit terms, a cop sees a car go whizzing by at a speed he believes is antisocial, and also exceeds the posted limit. He tickets the driver and the driver argues that in this particular case there's nothing unsafe about that speed. Rather than debate him, the cop just points to the sign.

Toll tags in Texas (OT)

Posted Jun 14, 2008 13:18 UTC (Sat) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]

Does the phrase "I was only following orders" clarify my position at all?

Toll tags in Texas (OT)

Posted Jun 14, 2008 17:07 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

Does the phrase "I was only following orders" clarify my position at all?

Yes, it does.

And we're all familiar with the arguments in favor of other people following orders. In the case of highway speed control, I'm much more comfortable having cops and judges following specific blanket orders from my legislator than using their own judgement.

Toll tags in Texas (OT)

Posted Jun 12, 2008 6:29 UTC (Thu) by dvdeug (subscriber, #10998) [Link]

Of course 150 mph is going to be fine ... until you round a curve and run into a car you
didn't see in time. The engineers who built this stretch of road carefully measured it out and
calculated it so that you would have enough time to see the cars ahead when going the
speed-limit. Of course, going on gut feeling instead of careful measurement, you chose to
second-guess them.

An excellent example of this was Air Florida Flight 90. The pilots' opinion of deicing the jet
was "Well, it satisfies the Feds", so they skipped it, rather than delay the flight. Because
they knew better than the blanket government rules, their trip from Washington D.C. to Tampa
ended in the Potomac River with 78 dead.

Toll tags in Texas (OT)

Posted Jun 12, 2008 6:44 UTC (Thu) by jbailey (subscriber, #16890) [Link]

A friend of mine explained to me that the posted speed limits on Germany's Autobahn are
guidelines, but that if you're going faster than that and get into an accident you face triple
damages.

I have no idea if it's true, but it seems like a nice way of handling it.

Toll tags in Texas (OT)

Posted Jun 21, 2008 15:46 UTC (Sat) by TRauMa (guest, #16483) [Link]

No, speed limits are speed limits. There is a concept of a recommended max speed of 130km/h on
every highway in the absence of a hard speed limit, though, and if you are having an accident
at higher speed it becomes *your* responsibility in civil court to prove that the accident
would have happened if you had stuck to the recommended speed. On top of that civil courts can
raise damages if your speed just was beyond reason, either in relative terms (fog, rain, etc.)
or absolute (300km/h being considered reckless).

Unfortunately it's for real

Posted Jun 12, 2008 18:16 UTC (Thu) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link]

I have been on several turnpikes where such a policy was posted, including the Florida
Turnpike, south from Yeehaw Junction (no, I am not making that name up) south to West Palm
Beach.  Whether they *do* it is another matter.

Unfortunately it's for real

Posted Jun 10, 2008 2:09 UTC (Tue) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link]

First, it wouldn't be a policeman ticketing the driver--instead the ~~driver~~ primary vehicle registrant is mailed a citation.

Second, even applying Cauchy's mean value theorem, it would be conceivable that a law enforcement officer could prove one was speeding: (1) the distance between two toll stations can be demonstrated to a judge and jury beyond a reasonable doubt, (2) the toll booth records Bruce mentions above could convince said judge and jury that a $YEAR $COLOR $MAKE $BODY_TYPE with tag number $LICENSE_PLATE (i.e., 2003 Blue Ford sedan with license plate "ABC-123") passed toll booth #1 at $TIME1 on $DATE and toll booth #2 at $TIME2 on (same) $DATE (with video camera footage to boot), and then (3) mathematically demonstrate that this vehicle's average speed was $DISTANCE divided by ($TIME2 - $TIME1), some value substantially greater than $SPEED_LIMIT, and thus the driver would be cited for driving at excessive speed.

Granted, I am not a lawyer, but if I understand correctly, U.S. courts of law need human witnesses to verify that the primary registrant of the vehicle was indeed driving the car. (Correct me if I'm wrong, please!) I suppose that a viable defense might be, "well, your honor, I was not driving my car at that time on that date..."

I don't mean to argue with you; perhaps the police officer would NOT want to go to that trouble. It's just that it's conceivable, that's all. It's still interesting to consider how much we're being watched and don't even realize it.

Unfortunately it's for real

Posted Jun 10, 2008 15:09 UTC (Tue) by hannada (subscriber, #4633) [Link]

In Colorado we've "solved" the problem of proving that any particular person is driving a
given car.  Automatically generated citations are now issued against the automobile instead of
against the driver (much as has always been the case with parking tickets).  The offense is
that the car was moving too quickly through traffic, not that a particular person was guilty
of driving too fast.  The main consequence is that, in Colorado, you won't get points against
your driver's license for these types of offenses, but the fine is still levied (against the
registered owner of the vehicle).

Unfortunately it's for real

Posted Jun 10, 2008 17:48 UTC (Tue) by oak (guest, #2786) [Link]

Of course they also have to prove that the clocks at both toll stations 
are in sync...

Toll booth clocks

Posted Jun 12, 2008 6:25 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

I believe keeping the clocks in sync is the worst practical problem. Radar detectors have to be certified by an authority that they are in working order. Certifying that toll booth clocks are accurate to a certain extent (in the order of tens of seconds) could be quite expensive. Regular use of e.g. NTP would synchronize the clock, but it would not certify it.

Toll booth clocks

Posted Jun 12, 2008 19:20 UTC (Thu) by aegl (subscriber, #37581) [Link]

My son got a ticket from a traffic cop with a radar gun. Two days later he got a letter in the mail saying that the ticket had been canceled because the radar gun used had failed its end-of-day accuracy check.

I think that it would be relatively simple to certify that the clocks are synced in a way that would satisfy a court. Just have a cop visit each machine at the beginning and end of each day, check each toll booth clock against a reference clock and then sign-off that the clocks showed the same time. If someone fights the ticket on the grounds that the clocks were not accurate, then the cop gets hauled into court to testify that (s)he personally witnessed that the clocks were working correctly on the date of the alleged offense.

Toll booth clocks

Posted Jun 12, 2008 20:29 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

A bit too labor-intensive, and subject to manipulation. An automatic mechanism would be more efficient... like an NTP log showing how automatic synchronizations did not drift more than a few milliseconds apart. But you probably don't want the defense to make you bring an expert witness every time someone fights a ticket -- hence some kind of certification process would be a good idea.

Too much effort, maybe. This mechanism would only catch a percentage of speedy drivers anyway: those who only speed occasionally would come out clean. Radars (and their instant speed measurement) seem to be more immediate and practical, even if their inner workings are wonderfully complex.

Unfortunately it's for real

Posted Jun 10, 2008 3:36 UTC (Tue) by AJWM (guest, #15888) [Link]

> But I'm not sure the policeman who ticketed you can prove it in front of the judge :-)

He just uses Rolle's theorem.

Believe it or not, way back in college calculus class (mid-1970s, which dates me), we actually
had a movie in class about this -- a state trooper ticketing a guy for speeding between toll
stations because of the too-high average speed, and then the cop goes on to explain Rolle's
theorum.

Hokey, yeah, but I still remember it.  (That and the one in biology class where a
football-field full of students act out DNA transcription.  Weird.)

Unfortunately it's for real

Posted Jun 10, 2008 6:25 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

I pity the poor sods who had to be helicase. Didn't they get dizzy?