Be prepared to be monitored while you drive.

PatriotLover

Really Really Experienced
Joined
Mar 16, 2004
Posts
473
Be prepared for the government to know how far you drove, when, where & how fast. I'm surprised more Americans aren't up in arms about this.

WASHINGTON — As America's road planners struggle to find the cash to mend a crumbling highway system, many are beginning to see a solution in a little black box that fits neatly by the dashboard of your car.

The devices, which track every mile a motorist drives and transmit that information to bureaucrats, are at the center of a controversial attempt in Washington and state planning offices to overhaul the outdated system for funding America's major roads.

The usually dull arena of highway planning has suddenly spawned intense debate and colorful alliances. Libertarians have joined environmental groups in lobbying to allow government to use the little boxes to keep track of the miles you drive, and possibly where you drive them — then use the information to draw up a tax bill.

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The tea party is aghast. The American Civil Liberties Union is deeply concerned, too, raising a variety of privacy issues.

And while Congress can't agree on whether to proceed, several states are not waiting. They are exploring how, over the next decade, they can move to a system in which drivers pay per mile of road they roll over. Thousands of motorists have already taken the black boxes, some of which have GPS monitoring, for a test drive.

"This really is a must for our nation. It is not a matter of something we might choose to do," said Hasan Ikhrata, executive director of the Southern California Assn. of Governments, which is planning for the state to start tracking miles driven by every California motorist by 2025. "There is going to be a change in how we pay these taxes. The technology is there to do it."

The push comes as the country's Highway Trust Fund, financed with taxes Americans pay at the gas pump, is broke. Americans don't buy as much gas as they used to. Cars get many more miles to the gallon. The federal tax itself, 18.4 cents per gallon, hasn't gone up in 20 years. Politicians are loath to raise the tax even one penny when gas prices are high.

"The gas tax is just not sustainable," said Lee Munnich, a transportation policy expert at the University of Minnesota. His state recently put tracking devices on 500 cars to test out a pay-by-mile system. "This works out as the most logical alternative over the long term," he said.

Wonks call it a mileage-based user fee. It is no surprise that the idea appeals to urban liberals, as the taxes could be rigged to change driving patterns in ways that could help reduce congestion and greenhouse gases, for example. California planners are looking to the system as they devise strategies to meet the goals laid out in the state's ambitious global warming laws. But Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), chairman of the House Transportation Committee, has said he, too, sees it as the most viable long-term alternative. The free marketeers at the Reason Foundation are also fond of having drivers pay per mile.

"This is not just a tax going into a black hole," said Adrian Moore, vice president of policy at Reason. "People are paying more directly into what they are getting."

The movement is also bolstered by two former U.S. Transportation secretaries, who in a 2011 report urged Congress to move in the pay-per-mile direction.

The U.S. Senate approved a $90-million pilot project last year that would have involved about 10,000 cars. But the House leadership killed the proposal, acting on concerns of rural lawmakers representing constituents whose daily lives often involve logging lots of miles to get to work or into town.

Several states and cities are nonetheless moving ahead on their own. The most eager is Oregon, which is enlisting 5,000 drivers in the country's biggest experiment. Those drivers will soon pay the mileage fees instead of gas taxes to the state. Nevada has already completed a pilot. New York City is looking into one. Illinois is trying it on a limited basis with trucks. And the I-95 Coalition, which includes 17 state transportation departments along the Eastern Seaboard (including Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Florida), is studying how they could go about implementing the change.

The concept is not a universal hit.

In Nevada, where about 50 volunteers' cars were equipped with the devices not long ago, drivers were uneasy about the government being able to monitor their every move.

"Concerns about Big Brother and those sorts of things were a major problem," said Alauddin Khan, who directs strategic and performance management at the Nevada Department of Transportation. "It was not something people wanted."

As the trial got underway, the ACLU of Nevada warned on its website: "It would be fairly easy to turn these devices into full-fledged tracking devices.... There is no need to build an enormous, unwieldy technological infrastructure that will inevitably be expanded to keep records of individuals' everyday comings and goings."

Nevada is among several states now scrambling to find affordable technology that would allow the state to keep track of how many miles a car is being driven, but not exactly where and at what time. If you can do that, Khan said, the public gets more comfortable.

The hunt for that technology has led some state agencies to a small California startup called True Mileage. The firm was not originally in the business of helping states tax drivers. It was seeking to break into an emerging market in auto insurance, in which drivers would pay based on their mileage. But the devices it is testing appeal to highway planners because they don't use GPS and deliver a limited amount of information, uploaded periodically by modem.

"People will be more willing to do this if you do not track their speed and you do not track their location," said Ryan Morrison, chief executive of True Mileage. "There have been some big mistakes in some of these state pilot programs. There are a lot less expensive and less intrusive ways to do this."

In Oregon, planners are experimenting with giving drivers different choices. They can choose a device with or without GPS. Or they can choose not to have a device at all, opting instead to pay a flat fee based on the average number of miles driven by all state residents.

Other places are hoping to sell the concept to a wary public by having the devices do more, not less. In New York City, transportation officials are seeking to develop a taxing device that would also be equipped to pay parking meter fees, provide "pay-as-you-drive" insurance, and create a pool of real-time speed data from other drivers that motorists could use to avoid traffic.

"Motorists would be attracted to participate … because of the value of the benefits it offers to them," says a city planning document.

Some transportation planners, though, wonder if all the talk about paying by the mile is just a giant distraction. At the Metropolitan Transportation Commission in the San Francisco Bay Area, officials say Congress could very simply deal with the bankrupt Highway Trust Fund by raising gas taxes. An extra one-time or annual levy could be imposed on drivers of hybrids and others whose vehicles don't use much gas, so they pay their fair share.

"There is no need for radical surgery when all you need to do is take an aspirin," said Randy Rentschler, the commission's director of legislation and public affairs. "If we do this, hundreds of millions of drivers will be concerned about their privacy and a host of other things."
 
what?
you don't have a smart phone?

it's smart in all kinds of ways....

how do you think they track you to get you your calls/msgs?

every ping on your cel is a radar blip
on a screen somewhere
were you...
or your movements
important enough
to track...

why embed something in your car
when you, yourself, choose to embed it in your pocket?

be prepared, you say...?

i just signed on for two more years with att
and all they wanted was a small fraction of the rigged retail cost
of this new neato shiny spinning morphine drip...
 
The computer in new cars already records that info for insurance companies.:D
 
The computer in new cars already records that info for insurance companies.:D
the computer in new cars only records so much
then overwrites the "flight data"
quite quickly...

the data collected is general:
avg speed
braking time
not gps data points - per se...

the info can be used to give some insight into accidents
for example
or...
fuel consumption
or...
system errors...

more comprehensive data must be collected by
add-on units.

some prospective insurers attach these devices to prospects cars
to determine how they should be rated...

current onboard computers are not as impressive as all that!
 
I had one installed by choice.
Covers my ass for accidents and my premium has been reduced by almost half, because my insurance company has monitored my driving and I came up clean.
Of course, I haven't put any in the classics. Only in my daily drive.
 
In Russia many vehicles are fitted with continuously recording video cameras as a requirement of the vehicle insurance.

Their footage provides a monthly update on YouTube.

In the UK many roadside speed cameras are now fitted with ANPR capability. That registers your number plate and indicates to the remote operator if your car is not taxed, not insured or its annual roadworthiness test has expired. If the Police have logged a 'marker' on the car such as 'suspected of involvement of drug dealing', every time that car passes an ANPR camera its location is noted.

If you drive into the Congestion Charging Zone in Central London you are required to pay the fee. If you don't, the information generated by their ANPR cameras will fine the registered keeper of the vehicle. EVERY car entering the Central London zone is recorded when it enters and when it leaves.

The same technology will be used at the Dartford Crossing to avoid having to stop at toll booths. You will have to pay the charge either in a shop or online, or by direct debit. Just passing the camera will debit your bank account.

If you don't want to be monitored when you drive, don't visit the UK or Europe.
 
Big Brother is coming

like every other so called "good Idea" it starts out with "No, we just want to monitor your driving and miles driven". In the end they use it to monitor you, I worked for a company that did that, I used to get calls on my cell if I exceeded the speed limit by more than 3 mph and it would come within 5 mins. And all the drivers said that would happen and were told "naaaa, it's just for insurance, in case you're involved in an accident. YEAH RIGHT :rolleyes:
Watch to see, if it passes, They'll make it mandatory for everyone except the elite.
 
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More police state.

LMFAO....Rocks....Glass house....

Mr.I'm in the party of multi billion dollar private prison industry that depends on the state actually locking hundreds of thousands of US citizens away. Thanks St.Ronnie. I'll give it to you though, at least the republicans made us No.1 at SOMETHING.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/67/US_incarceration_timeline-clean-fixed-timescale.svg/350px-US_incarceration_timeline-clean-fixed-timescale.svg.png

You don't have any fucking room to talk about a police state. Esp about progressive taxation to support our infrastructure, that YOU BENEFIT FROM no less....I don't even see how the fuck you came up with "Police state" from that shit? But miss the part where republicans want to put people in prison for growing their own fruits and veggies b/c it's cutting into Monsanto quarterly profits. Hypocrite much? :confused: Or is that just more of your highly touted Republican Free Market!!!YEAA FREEDOM!!! :rolleyes:

http://i478.photobucket.com/albums/rr141/Inexistenta/owned.jpg
 
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This is clearly something they plan to do in order to fight terrorism and child pornography and keep the homeland safe. How could anybody possibly object? :rolleyes:
 
What Would Jesus Do?

Tally up every stop sign you roll through. What else would you expect Jesus to do?
 
IGGY for Foliage Fink's Alt, who like his regular persona, likes to show us what his brain looks like frying on drugs.

Oh well that just destroyed the argument...good job tucking tail and fixing your fail with a fucking igggy button. :rolleyes:

And you wonder why the younger generation is forced to cover your ass.
 
Not if you ever have to plug that OBD II computer into a state inspection machine it's not. ;) Gotta go pre 91/92 to get a truly "off the grid" car.
OBDII was in all cars beginning in '96. A few had it in '94 and '95. Here's a list of those:
http://www.obdii.com/connector.html#dates

It's certainly possible for this to be strictly a mileage recording tool. On the other hand I'll be surprised if it's implemented in an equitable way which would also be based on vehicle weight and number of axles.
A 3/4 ton truck should pay more than 1500lb sedan.
I also wonder how they are going to apply it to trailers, which are the greater weight/damage to roads, vs just the tractor.

I fully expect the systems to be used for more monitoring than just mileage.

If all they want is mileage, a much cheaper way would just be collecting it at yearly vehicle registration time, with spot checks randomly, with huge fines if you're caught lying about your mileage.
 
It's always weird to me how many places I wasn't already being monitored. I genuinely assume that if I'm out in the world, say, in my car, I'm being watched. That's why you go behind places or to the top of cliffs to fuck in cars and not just out in the open. Where you're being watched.
 
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