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The information is still not even remotely accurate enough for this to work without ridiculously high levels of false positives. An obvious example would be in

The information is still not even remotely accurate enough for this to work without ridiculously high levels of false positives. An obvious example would be in Germany. The autobahn for example has sections that are unrestricted, but those same sections are 130kmh (or sometimes lower) if it's between certain times or raining or whatever. Half of the time my car interprets that as just being 130. Outside of that; there are countless instances of my car thinking I'm in an 80kmh zone when it's actually 100, 120, whatever. I can override that because I know what the actual speed limit is. Would the car be constantly reporting back that I'm doing a bad? Ultimately I reckon perfect enforcement of this would just stop me bothering. I'll get someone else to drive me around like an Uber and they can take the endless tickets instead.

34679 7y ago
There are a lot of useful data points in modern cars. For instance, the compression rate of your suspension can indicate how aggressively you're cornering. This sort of thing is already being used in opt-in programs by insurers in the US. They interpret as much data as possible in an attempt to calculate for each customer a sort of driver safety rating that is then used to determine insurance rates.
raesene9 7y ago
I guess that depends on country. For example the UK has no public road (that I'm aware of) where a speed of higher than 70mph is allowed, so that would be an easy initial rule. Where there are dynamic speed limits in place, it would be plausible to report back possibles (car location and speed) which could then be checked against a central database which was more accurate. I'm not suggesting that such a system is a good idea, but that I can see car safety campaigners looking on it as the next step in their campaigns...
- gambiting 7y ago
  This already exists and it's a massive fucking joke - it's called "black box insurance unit". My sister had one in her car and during one year we've had to ring up the insurance company multiple times to manually correct her driving score, as she was being penalised for "severe speeding". After asking the company to send us the full tracking data it was completely obvious that the system doesn't have enough accuracy - couple times it tagged her as going 50mph(!!!) over the speed limit, because she was driving 70mph on the motorway going over a small 20mph road.....so the system naively queried the speed limit at coordinates XYZ and concluded that she was going nearly 4x the limit. Good thing her insurance wasn't automatically cancelled over it as I've heard it happen to many people in this country(and then you need to go and fight it with the insurance company, like your time is free or something).
- J-dawg 7y ago
  I retain a small amount of hope that this could lead to more sensible motorway speed limits. Virtually everyone drives over 70mph on motorways. If the law were strictly applied the cumulative offences would result in virtually all drivers of “smart” cars being instantly banned from driving
  - raesene9 7y ago
    Yep, my feeling for the UK is that's one of the reasons they've not started down this line. The level of convictions for speeding on the motorway would jam the courts solid if they tried it and even a small proportion of people contested the offence. You would like to think saner speed limits could be agreed as car brakes and safety have rather improved since the 70mph limit was imposed...
- judge2020 7y ago
  In the US this sort of detection is privatized - by insurance companies lowering your rates if you run their app which beans your location, speed, and motion/fitness data to their servers. At least for Allstate you need 50 drives a month to qualify for the discount, and hard braking or speeds over 80 disqualify a drive from being counted for the discount.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    >Allstate you need 50 drives a month to qualify for the discount, and hard braking or speeds over 80 disqualify a drive from being counted for the discount. The really stupid thing about this is that driving 80+ and the occasional hard braking is just normal traffic condition on some roads at some hours. Penalizing people for needing to use those roads at those times and acting like every other normal human around them when doing so defeats the point of insurance.
  - Jamwinner 7y ago
    A little birdie tells me they always raise your rates. Deny them and thake the small hike.
- esotericn 7y ago
  Perhaps. The thing is that what you really care about is 40 in a 30/20 sort of stuff. Which I suppose could theoretically be done far more easily. If the GPS coordinates are within the ring road of the city and no limit higher than your current speed exists there then you're a baddie and we should bust through your ceiling. Personally, if we're going to use car telemetry I'd be far more in favour of having the system decide whether someone is actually driving dangerously rather than deciding that 55mph on the North Circular at 2am is worth hitting someone's license up over.

34679 7y ago

There are a lot of useful data points in modern cars. For instance, the compression rate of your suspension can indicate how aggressively you're cornering. This sort of thing is already being used in opt-in programs by insurers in the US. They interpret as much data as possible in an attempt to calculate for each customer a sort of driver safety rating that is then used to determine insurance rates.

raesene9 7y ago

I guess that depends on country. For example the UK has no public road (that I'm aware of) where a speed of higher than 70mph is allowed, so that would be an easy initial rule. Where there are dynamic speed limits in place, it would be plausible to report back possibles (car location and speed) which could then be checked against a central database which was more accurate. I'm not suggesting that such a system is a good idea, but that I can see car safety campaigners looking on it as the next step in their campaigns...

gambiting 7y ago
This already exists and it's a massive fucking joke - it's called "black box insurance unit". My sister had one in her car and during one year we've had to ring up the insurance company multiple times to manually correct her driving score, as she was being penalised for "severe speeding". After asking the company to send us the full tracking data it was completely obvious that the system doesn't have enough accuracy - couple times it tagged her as going 50mph(!!!) over the speed limit, because she was driving 70mph on the motorway going over a small 20mph road.....so the system naively queried the speed limit at coordinates XYZ and concluded that she was going nearly 4x the limit. Good thing her insurance wasn't automatically cancelled over it as I've heard it happen to many people in this country(and then you need to go and fight it with the insurance company, like your time is free or something).
J-dawg 7y ago
I retain a small amount of hope that this could lead to more sensible motorway speed limits. Virtually everyone drives over 70mph on motorways. If the law were strictly applied the cumulative offences would result in virtually all drivers of “smart” cars being instantly banned from driving
- raesene9 7y ago
  Yep, my feeling for the UK is that's one of the reasons they've not started down this line. The level of convictions for speeding on the motorway would jam the courts solid if they tried it and even a small proportion of people contested the offence. You would like to think saner speed limits could be agreed as car brakes and safety have rather improved since the 70mph limit was imposed...
judge2020 7y ago
In the US this sort of detection is privatized - by insurance companies lowering your rates if you run their app which beans your location, speed, and motion/fitness data to their servers. At least for Allstate you need 50 drives a month to qualify for the discount, and hard braking or speeds over 80 disqualify a drive from being counted for the discount.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  >Allstate you need 50 drives a month to qualify for the discount, and hard braking or speeds over 80 disqualify a drive from being counted for the discount. The really stupid thing about this is that driving 80+ and the occasional hard braking is just normal traffic condition on some roads at some hours. Penalizing people for needing to use those roads at those times and acting like every other normal human around them when doing so defeats the point of insurance.
- Jamwinner 7y ago
  A little birdie tells me they always raise your rates. Deny them and thake the small hike.
esotericn 7y ago
Perhaps. The thing is that what you really care about is 40 in a 30/20 sort of stuff. Which I suppose could theoretically be done far more easily. If the GPS coordinates are within the ring road of the city and no limit higher than your current speed exists there then you're a baddie and we should bust through your ceiling. Personally, if we're going to use car telemetry I'd be far more in favour of having the system decide whether someone is actually driving dangerously rather than deciding that 55mph on the North Circular at 2am is worth hitting someone's license up over.