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Toll tags in Texas (OT)Toll tags in Texas (OT)Posted Jun 10, 2008 1:22 UTC (Tue) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648)In reply to: Unfortunately it's for real by lutchann Parent article: Stallman attacks Oyster's 'unethical' use of Linux (ZDNet)
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.
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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).
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