NODE 9e1902c4Re: Drive the SF Central Freeway, have your license plate photo'ed.
Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>Sat, 10 Aug 1996 06:21:17 +0800
At 10:45 PM 8/8/96 -0700, Lucky wrote:
>At 21:55 8/8/96, i am not a number! wrote:
>>CBS radio news this morning: 80,000 commuters traveling the central
>>f'way in SF will have information mailed to them regarding the quake retrofit
>>How? Their license plates have been photographed.
>You *are* making this up, right? Please say you did.
It's possible today, and probably affordable. If not, it will be in 1-2 years,
as Moore's law cranks down processing costs and video technology improves.
For this application, they don't have to photograph every car, or read every
plate successfully, or do it in real time. The objective is to get lots of
drivers to take other routes or mass transit so they don't have to dump all
the traffic onto surface streets right around the construction.
Besides, this is nice friendly San Francisco. Imagine New York City doing it:
Yo! Mr. E. Koch, 1234 E. 89th St. -
We saw you takin' the West Side Highway last week.
You better stop that as of next Friday.
We know where you live.
You got a problem wit' that?
Rudy.
# Thanks; Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> Defuse Authority!
NODE 2a3db86cRe: Drive the SF Central Freeway, have your license plate photo'ed.
Roger Williams <roger@coelacanth.com>Sat, 10 Aug 1996 11:00:55 +0800
>>>>> Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com> writes:
> At 10:45 PM 8/8/96 -0700, Lucky wrote:
>> You *are* making this up, right? Please say you did.
> It's possible today, and probably affordable.
It's been reasonably affordable for several years.
Video number plate reading is routinely used around here for gathering
statistics on the points of origin of commuter traffic, for highway
planning purposes. (The numbers are looked up in the Registry
database to find where each commuter is likely to have come from.)
--
Roger Williams finger me for my PGP public key
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