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And I though that crazy idea was for our Euro friends only  :(


http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-roads-black-boxes-20131027,0,6090226.story#axzz2iwNczDu0

The devices would track every mile you drive —possibly including your location — and the government would use the data to draw up a tax bill.

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to bureaucrats, are at the center of a controversial attempt in Washington and state planning offices to overhaul the outdated system for funding America's major roads.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.

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."

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No wonder Elon Musk's concept of the Hyperloop, although open source and cheaper than anything else being built right now, is not going to fly. Government needs its taxes!

http://youtu.be/I8sOxSa3j3g

That's the "user pays" approach, widely used in bridges and highways, but how they want to enforce in this particular case it raises many privacy concerns, and everyone should be against this, and I hope other countries don't follow.

There are many other ways for taxing drivers, I pay a tax every year for owning a car and there are taxes on gasoline, no need for a black box in my car...

Is this going include taxi cab and car rental businesses? How about people in rural communities who need their car all the time? So if you are loaded you can take your private plane and that is fine. I wish I had a private plane like Al Gore. But if you are barely doing OK and you only have your Ford 150 for everything from business for the farm to carry the groom to the wedding, somehow you need to pay more the more you use it?

Um that's dumb, why not just tax gasoline like almost every other country? surely the more gasoline you purchase,
the more miles you have driven.

One more reason I'm sticking with my 1980s classic. I wrote every line of code, and designed every board with a cpu in it, and it's completely drivable without them, albeit with reduced performance.

Yap, there may be a hidden agenda here...

... And this hidden agenda is in plain sight:

http://www.nacdl.org/reports/thirdpartyrecords/

In February, 2012 NACDL’s Board of Directors adopted a white paper report on Law Enforcement Access to Third Party Records. Federal laws protecting individual privacy rights in electronic communications have not been meaningfully updated in over 25 years, even though many of today’s technologies were not even conceived of when Congress considered the legislation and when the Supreme Court created the “Third Party Doctrine.” Because of society’s reliance on third party carriers, such as Internet service providers, cellular phone service providers, and “cloud” computing services, to communicate, work and socialize, privacy laws need to be updated to keep pace with today’s evolving technologies. This white paper discusses the current status of the law, including federal laws such as the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and Supreme Court precedent, including United States v. Jones, and concludes with recommendations for reform, such as a recommendation that law enforcement officers should be required to obtain a warrant based on probable cause before they can access the content of electronic communications or geolocation information.

There has been a federal gasoline tax for decades, seems like it is $ 0.21 per gallon.  So there is enough money generated by that to maintain the roads and bridges - but remember, the revenue all goes into the general fund, then Congress spends it.

One argument is that smaller and fuel efficient cars use less gas and thus revenue is down, but this isn't true. 

More likely it's that they want data on everywhere everyone goes.  That'd be a goldmine by some peoples' twisted values.

Heh...such an intrusion into our privacy could one day become the first step toward privatization of the roads.

Here's a thought.  Since bitcoin enables semi-anonymous transactions, micropayments for road usage are in fact possible without tracing the car or driver and without any government database.

All drivers need bitcoin.

A driver would set out on a section of road, placing a square bar code on his dash.  The system camera reads it and has authority to charge small amounts.  Then as he passes checkpoints the system docks the public key by incremental amounts, say 0.50 USD in bitcoin.  At the end of his drive, he's been billed say 3.50 in a half dozen transactions.

The way to sell this to the government agency would be to emphasize that their profit would be higher and their costs lower.

For discussion purposes let's say no license plate scanning is done except if the square bar code is not there or is not readable or does not have money.  In these cases the plate is scanned so a bill can be sent in the mail.

Isn't this what conspiracy theorists were saying was gonna happen ten years ago?

Either way I'm totally against anything that involves the government tracking stuff a person does. This is really, really draconian.

I had one of these when I first started driving l0l.

My insurance was cheaper, I only did it to get a no claims for a year then get normal insurance.

I always got warnings for doing more miles than I said I was going to do lol.

That's when it's time to get a bike.

You mean just like one of those authorized citi bikes?
Don't forget to use your Citibank card and save!

http://etravelproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/photo-5.jpg

If you drive a car, I'll tax the street,
If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat.
If you get too cold I'll tax the heat,
If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet.

Taxman!

No but really, next they'll try to put that box in my shoes and charge me for the privilege.

"Sidewalks don't fix themselves! Shoe makers need a bail out!"

Na, something like this:>

http://images.motorcycle-usa.com/PhotoGallerys/IMG_0070.jpg

More like this (http://www.larryvsharry.com/english/index.html) if you want to transport something:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/f/ff/Kurierfahrer_Harry1.jpg

That's already happening up to some height by having corporations "invest" in infrastructure like tunnels, highways in exchange they are allowed to ask for a fee before one can make use of them.

The funny thing which seem to always sell people on privacy invading devices / services etc;

- brings safety
- brings comfort
- brings profit

Until policies, management, governments (etc) change and use it for something else if it wasn't done already in the first place.

not such a  bad idea

Wow they aren't even being subtle anymore.

That worked well in the past.  But the future vehicle is not powered by gasoline.  Do electric car tires wear down the road any slower?

i think not, you ? why do you guess that

Those people are no longer Libertarians.

That's what I think, they're just trying to make it sound like spying on you is a good thing and for your safety as they always do.

Yes, actually, in the sense that all cars wear down the road significantly slower than trucks, to the point where gas taxes subsidize the trucking industry.

http://thatmansscope.blogspot.com/2009/10/trucks-and-fourth-power-rule.html

Yes, I know there is a gasoline tax, I'm saying if it's not enough, why not just tax gasoline more, instead of installing some stupid blackbox recorder in every car. US gas price is among the cheapest in the world.

That's easy, electric cars use batteries, these have a limited life. Just tax new batteries.

https://sslimgs.xkcd.com/comics/substitutions.png

Aint nobody putting no black box in my cat.

http://www.infowars.com/dhs-funds-installation-of-white-boxes-that-can-track-population-of-entire-city/

The video is not from Alex Jones (for those allergic to him)

Strange new off-white boxes popping up in downtown Seattle use wi-fi networks that can record the last 1,000 locations of a person using their cellphone’s MAC address, but the Department of Homeland Security – which funded the network to the tune of $2.7 million dollars – has refused to address the nightmare privacy implications of a system that could lead to the permanent tracking of an entire city’s population.

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This information fits the pattern of what the final use of the black boxes in cars by the Government may be.

http://rare.us/story/jeffrey-will-government-be-able-to-remotely-control-your-car/

It will be brought to you by the same people now bringing you Obamacare. In May, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published its ”Preliminary Statement of Policy Concerning Automated Vehicles.” It pointed to a “continuum” of automobile development that “runs from vehicles with no active control systems all the way to full automation and self-driving.”

“Such a design anticipates that the driver will provide destination or navigation input, but is not expected to be available for control at any time during the trip,” said this federal policy statement. “By design, safe operation rests solely on the automated vehicle system.”

To be sure, in a free society, individuals could use automated vehicles to many good ends.

A presentation that a group of Swedish analysts gave at a conference in South Korea in May, which is now posted on the NHTSA website, summarizes the upside potential.

“From an individual perspective the main benefit from autonomous driving would be to recapture the true freedom behind the wheel, the freedom that cars defined a century ago,” said this presentation. “At that time freedom was defined by the possibility to go wherever you wanted with your own car. Today true freedom is defined in further dimensions, such as being able to travel and spending time as desired.”

“An autonomous driving vehicle could open up possibilities for other activities such as leisure, work and social interaction,” said the presentation.

But, if the driver does not control the vehicle, who does?

Last year, under then-Secretary Ray LaHood, the Department of Transportation started a program in Michigan to pilot test ”vehicle-to-vehicle” communications systems — or V2V. This is the next step on the “continuum” toward automated cars.

The department’s plan for a V2V research project describes the sort of information vehicles equipped with V2V technology would be able to transmit.

“V2V communication for safety refers to the exchange of data over a wireless network that provides critical information that allows each vehicle to perform calculations and issue driver advisories, driver warnings, or take pre-emptive actions to avoid and mitigate crashes,” said the DOT plan.

“Data that may be exchanged,” said the plan, “includes each vehicle’s latitude, longitude, time, heading angle, speed, lateral acceleration, longitudinal acceleration, yaw rate, throttle position, brake status, steering angle, headlight status, turn signal status, vehicle width, vehicle mass, bumper height and the number of occupants in the vehicle.”

NHTSA already sees that V2V’s ability to track and gather information from cars — and the eventual ability to automate cars — could have applications beyond simply deterring accidents.

“In addition to the potential safety impact of V2V and automation, the agency is also aware that these technologies have significant added potential to contribute to intelligent management of roadway traffic and reduce the burden of highway traffic on the environment,” NHTSA Administrator David Strickland said in a speech in New York in April.

How would the government carry out the “intelligent management of roadway traffic” or “reduce the burden of highway traffic on the environment” if the national transportation infrastructure allowed it to track or even prevent the movement of vehicles?

This would be an enormous privacy intrusion. You can be sure that any data collected would be analyzed by intelligence agencies.

or maybe google analyzes that informations so it can give specialy adds to targeted customers  haha :)

 

I imagine they would tax the **** out of regular folk and make the mega corps and their driver less cars immune to the tax.
http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/03/after-258m-google-ventures-and-tpg-investment-uber-hires-finance-business-and-growth-execs/


Suddenly all the folks saying they will never get in a driverless car will see their tax bill and start abandoning their cars..

Instead they will be calling for a ride but instead of calling a cab you will be picked up almost immediately by one of Googles Ubers driverless cars roaming your current area in hopes of picking up a passenger so it can shove ads down your throat all the way to where-ever your going.


 


 

This looks like something written by Orwell.

Conspiracy theories.

Only a blind man cant see what things like this are really for.

Dont want no shackles...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSqz-iXH5Po&t=1m37s




Sing it Jimmy!!

Communication is a key ingredient for success: in business, in personal relationships, and even in sports—as we saw in last night’s Super Bowl. Soon, it will also become an essential factor in automotive safety due to a technology known as vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications.

V2V allows cars to “talk” to one another—exchanging basic safety-relevant data, such as speed, direction, and relative position—10 times per second. When cars share this information at such a fast rate, they can "see" all of the vehicles around them, sense the possibility of a crash, and warn drivers to avoid the crash.

Today, I was proud to announce another big step in V2V: After years of research and unprecedented coordination between industry and across government, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is announcing its decision to begin taking the next steps toward implementing V2V technology in all new cars and trucks.

V2V communications can provide the vehicle and driver with 360-degree situational awareness to address additional crash situations, like when a driver needs to decide if it's safe to pass on a two-lane road (potential head-on collision) or make a left turn across the path of oncoming traffic. It can also alert a driver when a vehicle approaching at an intersection appears to be on a collision course.

Our latest research estimates that V2V has the potential to help drivers avoid or mitigate 70 to 80 percent of vehicle crashes involving unimpaired drivers, and that could help prevent many thousands of deaths and injuries on our roads every year.

The research we’ve conducted at DOT and NHTSA demonstrates V2V’s viability and value.

As one example, in 2012, the DOT launched a real-world field test based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that included nearly 3,000 cars, trucks, and buses outfitted with V2V communications technology.

Test vehicles were able to send and receive anonymous safety data messages between one another. Many of these vehicles were also able to translate the data into a warning to the driver in case of an impending crash.

NHTSA used all of the information available to us from more than a decade of research, including the valuable data from the model deployment, when we decided that now was the time to begin to take action that will eventually make these safety technologies available to the hundreds of millions of drivers across the country.

For almost five decades, DOT and NHTSA have worked hard to prevent deaths and injuries on America’s roads:

We’ve urged Americans to drive safely and partnered with state and local law enforcement to discourage dangerous behaviors, such as driving drunk, driving distracted, or driving or riding without a seat belt;
We’ve helped Americans make informed choices about their vehicles with our 5-Star Safety Ratings that tell consumers which cars perform best in the unfortunate event of a crash;
We’ve ensured that vehicles with safety defects were recalled so that consumers would be protected; and
We’ve helped accelerate the adoption of vehicle features, such as air bags and electronic stability control, that are proven to save lives.
All of these efforts have made a tremendous difference and will always be a part of NHTSA’s safety mission.

Since 1970, highway fatalities have declined by 36 percent and have fallen by 22 percent just in the last decade. But, with more than 30,000 fatalities on America’s roadways each year, we must continue to look to new and innovative ways to save lives.

V2V technology represents one such innovation. The opportunity to move forward with the lifesaving potential of V2V technology makes this a very special moment in automotive safety.

 
David Friedman is Acting Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

http://www.dot.gov/fastlane/v2v-cars-communicating-prevent-crashes-deaths-injuries


http://www.dot.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/pictures/V2V-1.jpg



http://www.dot.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/pictures/V2V-2.jpg

Yep, seen this and I will do everything in my power to disrupt and destroy this technology.

Well.. Get a bunch of hammers then...



California company builds 5-foot android robocops to control crime-ridden areas



The local neighborhood watch may be beefing up its robotic arsenal if a new technology startup gets its way anytime soon.

In a bid to make local communities safer and give local law enforcement agencies more tools to fight crime, California-based Knightscope recently unveiled a line of K5 robots that it believes will “predict and prevent crime with an innovative combination of hardware, software and social engagement.”

The new K5 units have a look that resembles R2-D2 from “Star Wars,” but their casual design masks a highly advanced robot that its creators hope will drastically cut down on crime. Weighing in at 300 pounds, the five-foot K5 can patrol a neighborhood and uses a built-in laser to form a 3D map of the surrounding area in 270-degree sweeps. Four built-in cameras, meanwhile, are capable of scanning up to 1,500 license plates a minute.

“Data collected through these sensors is processed through our predictive analytics engine, combined with existing business, government and crowdsourced social data sets, and subsequently assigned an alert level that determines when the community and the authorities should be notified of a concern,” the company’s website states.

According to Fox News, Knightscope already has multiple clients lined up to test beta versions of the K5 in 2014. Rather than sell the robots outright, the company will charge $1,000 a month for daily eight-hour shifts. Inspired to take action after 20 children were killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, Knightscope CEO William Li is convinced that innovation in law enforcement is necessary to effectively make use of officers’ time and manpower.

"Our aim is to cut the crime rate by 50% in a geo-fenced area, which would increase housing values and safety while lowering insurance costs,” he told USA Today. “If we can do that, I think every mayor will be calling us."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83-bpqogngg

http://rt.com/usa/california-company-android-robocops-knightscope-645/

http://rt.com/files/news/22/17/d0/00/1.jpg


http://rt.com/files/news/22/17/d0/00/2.jpg

Gas is $10 a gallon in Germany, and there are still million of cars on the roads. This is perfectly sustainable.