Re: [uk.transport] Speed Camera with OCR

The Oxfordshire police force here in the UK have introduced speed  
cameras.  The way they work is to use radar to check oncoming cars  
speeds, and if its over the limit the camera takes a picture of the  
cars number plate.  I guess a human back at police HQ has to do the  
bit about reading the plate, and then a fixed fine is sent through  
the post.

They admit that there's a lot of dummy speed camera warning signs, as  
they only have 3 to cover the whole of the county.  What they do is  
move the cameras around every now and then.

Most regular motorists know where they are, as they're easy to see -  
big grey boxes in the middle of the road.  


Apparently ( I have no figures ) they've been a great success and  
police are amazed at how much speeding goes on ( I'm not ).

Jon.

They tried robot-photo speeding tickets in Pasadena, California a 
few years ago, but I understand the judge threw out all the 
challenged tickets and they discontinued the practice.  We might
see automatic tickets reincarnated a few years hence when the highway 
starts reading bar codes on our cars.  Then you'll get a ticket
if you arrive at your destination sooner than is deemed
proper!  Bar code forgery might become popular (and necessary
for those of us who don't want government dossiers of every trip
we make).

Nick Szabo				szabo@netcom.com

> They tried robot-photo speeding tickets in Pasadena, California a 
> few years ago, but I understand the judge threw out all the 
> challenged tickets and they discontinued the practice.  We might
> see automatic tickets reincarnated a few years hence when the highway 
> starts reading bar codes on our cars.  Then you'll get a ticket
> if you arrive at your destination sooner than is deemed
> proper!  Bar code forgery might become popular (and necessary
> for those of us who don't want government dossiers of every trip
> we make).
> 
> Nick Szabo				szabo@netcom.com


T R A F F I C  C I T A T I O N

Distance travelled: 14.31 miles. 
Time elapsed: 13.86 minutes. 
Average speed: 61.95 MPH
Speed Limit: 55 MPH
Excess Speed: 6.95 MPH
Penalty: 6.95 x $50 = $347.50

This is your 8th speeding ticket in the past 23.17 months. Your
accumulated excess speed penalty is 81.03 MPH, resulting in an
additional $519 surcharge for abusing the National Health Care Plan
through dangerous driving. Your insurance rates have also been
automatically increased $125 per year for each ticket.

If you wish to contest this, pay the fee, pay a $425 court fee, and
bring your own evidence. We estimate your court date will be 7.23
years from now.

Have a nice day.

Distance travelled: 14.31 miles. 
   Time elapsed: 13.86 minutes. 
   Average speed: 61.95 MPH
   Speed Limit: 55 MPH
   Excess Speed: 6.95 MPH
   Penalty: 6.95 x $50 = $347.50

Hmm, driving the KS turnpike again?  (Its fines are a bit cheaper, though.)

While you're at it, don't forget to mention that beepers have a "ping" option
in them.  If you were a crook on the run, and you were stupid enough to not
have ditched your beeper you can easily be tracked down.

The beeper ping command can be used (supposedly) to track down stolen or lost
beepers.  The Ping itself also disables the beeper from that point on.

Basically, they'd send pings to your beeper throughout the city they expected
you in, then they'd find out which cell you were in.  After that, they can
use a small radar-like gun to actually find your beeper, also by pings.

There's probably a way to disable the transmitter in the beeper, but I
wouldn't want to mess with a device that tiny.

Right now, this is all fine and great, but what would happen when your company
pays for the beeper and decides to track you down and see if you actually did
have your beeper off when you said it was off so you wouldn't be bothered
at home???  I'd say that's a major privacy tresspass right there.

Of course there's always the "button" technology which basically tracks
down employees....

Eh? Conventional pocket pagers are receive only. This is well known. Oh,
they probably do emit tiny amounts of RF from their local oscillators,
but I doubt much could be done with that.

Cell phones, on the other hand, *do* tell the system which cell you
are in, and they can do this even when you're not in a call. It's
called "registration".  The usual purpose is benign: directing pages
(land-to-mobile call requests) only to the cell you're in, instead of
having to "flood" them all over the system. But it *could* be used to
keep track of your location.

I carry both a pager and a cell phone.  Normally I keep the cell phone
turned off to save its batteries. When I get a page, I can turn the
phone on and return the call.  The pager/cellphone combination is very
nice, as I effectively get "caller ID" functionality.  Even better,
*I* get to choose when, how or even if to answer a particular page.
And since pagers are unidirectional (no acks) I can always lie about
not having gotten a page from somebody I don't want to talk to!  :-)

Phil

A1 ray arachelian (library) writes:
>While you're at it, don't forget to mention that beepers have a "ping" option
>in them.  If you were a crook on the run, and you were stupid enough to not

Documentation, please.  Or a reference.  Having opened up more than
one of my pagers, I have yet to find evidence of a transmitter.

> >While you're at it, don't forget to mention that beepers have a "ping" option
> >in them.  If you were a crook on the run, and you were stupid enough to not
> 
> Documentation, please.  Or a reference.  Having opened up more than
> one of my pagers, I have yet to find evidence of a transmitter.

This came from a conversation I had with a friend of mine.  This guy is usually
on the ball when it comes to technology, so I'll ask him for a refrence.  He's
fairly reliable when it comes to discovering weaknesses in systems, and is
particularly knowledgeable in unix and OS/2, so this sort of thing is something
that is of concern to him as well.  He's worked with a lot of comm stuff as
well.

However, it could wind up as a rumor, so let me ask him and find out where
he found out.

Speaking of dummy speed traps, there's a great one on the road to
Aspen, Colorado (don't remember offhand the town name or the route, but
it's east of Aspen on the only road there).

Driving toward Aspen on a two lane road, we suddenly saw the classic
small-town speed trap: a cruiser parked off the other side of the
road, facing us with a radar gun pointed out the window and a cop in
the front seat.

Only as we went by did it become obvious (to me at least) that it was
a fake!  I stopped and went back with my camera to get a closer look.
The car was just an empty shell that had been rescued from the
junkyard, and the dummy in the front seat wasn't exactly up to Disney
AudioAnimatronics standards, if you know what I mean. But seen from a
distance in a moving car, it had the desired effect...

Don't forget low-tech! Of course, for those towns more interested in
collecting money than in getting people to slow down, this particular
approach may not appeal to them.

Phil

> The Oxfordshire police force here in the UK have introduced speed  
> cameras.  The way they work is to use radar to check oncoming cars  
> speeds, and if its over the limit the camera takes a picture of the  
> cars number plate.  I guess a human back at police HQ has to do the  
> bit about reading the plate, and then a fixed fine is sent through  

There's a cure for this.  Get neon license plate lights instead.  This
will work at night at least.  Have you ever seen a car with them pass
you by?  It makes the license plate illuminated, but almost impossible
to see!  (Although, they might resort to IR cameras to take your
picture as well!)