Cruising through this morning’s autoblogoshpere, I clicked on an Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association (AAIA) report on telematics. In case you didn’t know, telematics is “the science of measuring, sending, receiving and storing information via telecommunication devices. In automotive terms—it is the ability to establish two-way connection with a moving vehicle.” Like, a cell phone? Yes, but better! “Did you ever drive your dad’s car somewhere you weren’t supposed to be, or faster than you were supposed to go? With skypatrol, your dad would have received an e-mail or text message telling him you were traveling outside of your assigned geofence [!] or moving faster than the speed limit . . . With skypatrol, you can use GPS travel histories to analyze your route planning to maximize your effectiveness.” Question: can we make a rule that the “you” in question is always the “you” who owns the vehicle—and no one else? Just askin’.
Question: can we make a rule that the “you” in question is always the “you” who owns the vehicle—and no one else?
It’s as easy as making a rule against selling sex.
Of course you can make the rule! But there’s not a chance in h-ll that this won’t somehow be used for nefarious purposes.
There’s a huge difference between making these things available for consumers and some sort of government program to install and monitor them.
As a parent, if these had been available 10 years ago, at a reasonable price, I would have bought one. No question about it. Big Brother doesn’t need this but Big Daddy (and Mommy) can make good use of it.
@impreza
is h-ll really a rude word ??!!
One of Detroit’s towne car services used this device (or one like it) to track the where abouts of their drivers. Seems it ended up being fruitful when the DPD discovered that one of the drivers had a bad habit of hanging out around high schools trolling for young meat.
is h-ll really a rude word ??!!
Hell no!
I agree with KixStart, this is a great tool for parents to keep an eye on their kids, but the government needs to keep their damn hands off of my ride.
I’m with KixStart. The privacy concerns here are obvious, but they have little to do with commercial availability. Go ahead and give the tools to Mommy and Daddy, and we’ll deal with Big Brother separately.
All Your Base Are Belong To Us!
Somebody is just trying to expand the market for an existing system.
We’ve had this system in our fleet of Over-the-Road trucks for at least a decade.
For a delivery business, it’s a very useful tool.
We don’t really care about route deviations per se – what we care about is scheduled arrival time.
The system flags by exception – no reports unless a truck is approaching a point of being unable to reach its scheduled destination by the scheduled time (without violating any speed limits).
That lets us contact the driver and the delivery point and make alternative plans. If we have the same problem over a period of time we can take corrective action.
It would be possible to flag speeding too but so far we’ve chosen benign neglect on that point. Our drivers don’t collect a lot of tickets, so there’s no advantage in staging a witch hunt.
sutski:
August 5th, 2009 at 11:39 am
@impreza
is h-ll really a rude word ??!!
–
–
Everyone has their standards. You wouldn’t be trying to impose yours on someone else, would you?
I believe this is what the pending OBD-III is supposed to do, as well as give the police the ability to shut off your car during a pursuit.
It has lots of uphill fight against the US Constitution, primarily the Fourth Amendment, I think.
WINDSWORDS —– RIGHT ON,
Bringing in the Big Brother, rather by the government or the individuals (parents) is bad.
Period.
If you need this for your kids, then maybe your parenting skills should be questioned instead. How did the rest of us ever make it this far in mom and dad’s car without them knowing that the party moved to Billy’s house instead? Or that their son is really giving Becky a lift home instead of Bobby? Strange how today’s hypocritical parents had their youthful indescretions, yet feel that their kids are untrustworthy and need 24/7 monitoring.
Today’s kids are conditioned to accept the surveillance state, being that they are subject to random searches at school (and everywhere else), not to mention the fact that their own parents don’t even trust them anymore. If you think the Fourth Amendment is meaningless now, just wait until today’s over-monitored helicopter-parented kids become our future politicians.
If you need this for your kids, then maybe your parenting skills should be questioned instead.
I recall having this same debate on this site some time ago, with some fathers stating it gave them peace of mind. The major issue I see with these is that some will use this device in lieu of responsible parenting, just as cell phones and text messaging have become the way that too many “check in” on their kids.
I’m only 45, but feel like I was raised in the stone age. My family actually sat down to the dinner table every night and discussed what we were doing – and what we wanted to do – with my parents. And yes, I did sneak around a few times, and yes, I got away with it.
The trouble with this technology is that some people think it’s infallible. I have a GPS log that shows that I came awfully close to 800 MPH on my bicycle. Given the fact that I did not have a serious case of windburn and I was able to slow the bike without melting the brakes and blowing the tires, I suspect my real speed was a bit less than that.
Data on these devices is also pretty easy to fake. Give me almost any GPS, and I can fake all kinds of data. Want proof that you ran the “ring” in your aveo in 2 minutes? No problem. I can take care of it.
Providing the GPS data was used anonymously for the interest of city planning, and the telemetry was used in serious criminal cases I don’t have a problem with it.
There is no substitute for real police work and parenting.
That being said, I have a Car Chip Pro in my car. The last car accident I had was no fault of my own, but I ended up being charged for the accident. It took a year, a laywer, some $350 phone bills and a day off work to appear in court to finally clear my name. I now log my driving habits for this scenario to volunteer it whenever my story is in question.
“Bringing in the Big Brother, rather by the government or the individuals (parents) is bad.”
Uh, Mom and Dad are not “Big Brother”. They are parents, and as such it is their job to keep an eye on their children until they are physically and emotionally mature.
While I personally feel that electronic spying on one’s children is a sad state of affairs, I would not stand in the way of another parent who felt the need to do so. It is their right and their obligation.
@don1967
Never said the parents are the BB. I said they’re BRINGING IT IN. Which is bad, and I stand by it.
Big Brother to me is any kind of electronic surveillance. I hate that crap for myself, and I’m going to apply it to my kids?
With the technology available today, you can even hear what they’re saying. Their cell phones are their worst spy, you can know where they’re located and even listen to what they’re talking. Ok maybe the last one is just the government, but the technology is there.
it is their job to keep an eye on their children until they are physically and emotionally mature
Surely… but ummm, with such kind of devices, the temptation to control and doing it is just so easy.
And controlling is actually very different than keeping an eye on them.
This is probably too late a comment to affect anyone who would read this, but the AIAA is the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and has been established for decades. This trade group is the AAIA.