Thermo said:
its not that new a technology. The east german border guards used to clock you in on the only autobahn to berlin and clock you at the other end. They then worked out your speed and fined you if you were over the limit!
They did do that, but for different reasons
If you took too long they would be suspicious you had stopped along the way.
One survey show that most people think they are a better than average driver. I have only ever met one person who said he was a rubbish driver, worryingly he sounded proud of it! On occasion you might see some oik blasting up the hard shoulder on the motorway, he probably reckons he is a brilliant driver, and no doubt thinks he would be great as a racing driver.
So, police presence definitely is the only feasible way. ISA is a start at a technical solution, but it only kerbs speed and doesn't stop inconsiderate driving. Ever noticed how you see fewer people on the phone, swerving and speeding as you pass a cop-car doing 65 on the inside lane?
However, a mile past the car (if that) they'll be speeding and cutting about again. Similar to a Gatso!
Perhaps, if they spent a billion or two on a load of unmarked police cars and policemen, people would be wary instead of saving up their best driving for the crawl past the jam sandwich?
An approach I was discussing with a friend was, what if you have some kind of system on every car which does the following: if someone cuts you up, does something dangerous or is generally driving like an a**e (on your back bumper, flashing), then you have a button that you press. This takes the last 10-20s of video out of the camera looking at that car, and sends it to the central police office (either immediately or perhaps automatically via the petrol station pump nozzle next time you fill up). The system decides (automatically?) if the other driver really was in error, and assigns so many points depending on what they did (e.g. 10 points for tailgating, 20 points for superclose tailgating and 30 if they flash their lights).
Of course, this would require a lot of labour, but here comes the clever bit to reduce that: only cars that have had a preset number of reports (e.g. 5) would be investigated. Also, persistent abuse of the system (logging cars that really weren't doing anything wrong) would incur penalties. Thus preventing farts who drive at 10 mph and wonder why people are tailgating (of course, inappropriately restricting traffic flow by driving slowly would be an offence!)
It would also work on illegally parked cars. Thus we could kill all parking attendents safe in the knowledge there won't be a problem.
So, driving would become governed partially by social standards, and common sense with etiquette would be paramount. If you drive like a d*ck, you get fined. Brilliant
