You can tell a good smoky-drinky by how crap you feel the next day. I had to get through a lot of orange squash, five espressos and half a bottle of Whyte and Mackay to get back to feeling human. Oh, I can still drink like I did when I was twenty. I just take a lot longer to recover from it these days.
There is a tape I must finish for a writing job commissioned but next door have one of their boozeathons in progress, so I won't finish tonight. The terrible thumping of acid house shakes everything. No, it's not the Plastic family, they will have been in bed early so they can go to church tomorrow and pretend to be Christian. Then they'll come home and be gits again.
Anyway, I was interested to note that the AA (that's the automobile association, not the boozer's club) are going to insist that any car they insure has the Big Brother gadget installed. The comments suggest that the AA aren't the first. This has been in use for a few years already.
I can see advantages to this. Aside from the 'you drive like a flat-capped octogenarian so here's some money off your insurance' or tracing your car if it's stolen, it could be set up so that AA members just have to press a panic button when they break down and the Fix Van will be on the way. They know where you are, they've been tracking you.
There are too many disadvantages though. That bunch of hackers called 'Anonymous' have broken in to the CIA website. They'll have no trouble with the AA. So your movements could be tracked by anyone interested. Including burglars, for whom it would be really useful to know not only when you're out, but also when you're on the way home.
Then there is the council and government angle. They say that if the software says you're speeding, you'll get a stern Email. With that level of evidence, here, take this fine and the points are added to your iLicence electronically. Too far? Pfft, it's a mere heartbeat further.You don't need a speed camera watching one bit of road when you have a satellite watching them all.
If there could be a guarantee that this technology will be used only for what it says it's intended for, I'd be all for it.
It won't be.
10 comments:
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They say that if the software says you're speeding, you'll get a stern Email. With that level of evidence, here, take this fine and the points are added to your iLicence electronically. "
Well, they can only do that if they can prove YOU were the one driving. Unless they change the law...
It'll be call the Huhne Act!
No, they don't need proof. They already work on the basis that the registered keeper of the vehicle is guilty unless he grasses on somebody else. The same assumption will apply.
The only was to deal with this sort of intrusion is to leave the data logger in your garden connected to a battery when you want to take the car out for a drive.
As long as it sees a few dozen miles a week, nobody will ever know....
"If there could be a guarantee that this technology will be used only for what it says it's intended for, I'd be all for it."
Ha! Dream on! Mission creep is an integral part of government policy these days.
"The only was to deal with this sort of intrusion is to leave the
data logger in your garden connected to a battery when you want to take
the car out for a drive."
I'm sure a cottage industry of young computer hackers would spring up specifically to circumvent any unwanted aspects of the software. The lad who is my PC doctor seems not to be constrained by any security software, and there are many more like him.
I am not sure that is true. A couiple of years ago, I got a speed ticket for the Gwent police. We were on the second severn bridge approach one sunday morning. For the life of me, I honestly could not remember if it was me or Mrs SAOT driving. I even asked them for a head on photo to find out. No evidence was available. No prosecution followed.
Gwent Police?
Why didn't they stop you and drag you out of the car while one of them jumped up and down on your bonnet like an enraged baboon while smashing your windscreen?
Sure as hell it wasn't because they were too busy chasing bad guys; maybe they were all at a Common Purpose training seminar.
"a flat-capped octogenarian"
From personal experience it is biddies and codgers who are the most dangerous fuckers on the road. They all drive Honda Jazzs too. Mental. Steady 50 on the motorway with driving gloves.
Ha! You must have encountered my father on the road! 94 years old, drives a Honda Jazz (used to be a Nissan Micra), and used to say to me "It's really so annoying - every time I'm enjoying a nice drive on a country road, I'm being trailed by dozens of idiots trying to overtake. I can't understand why it always seems to happen..."
Used to drive me nuts to passenger with him. He always slows almost to a halt on slip-roads joining a motorway / dual carriageway...egad!
Yes, definitely a danger on today's roads, but who am I to deny him that freedom of movement? We just have to take care for that generation of drivers, and drive accordingly ourselves when around them.
Of course there is the point that the AA is supposed to be an organisation which helps and supports drivers.
The vast number of speeding offences have not been subject to the regulations which police have to follow chief of which is laacting them at points which have not been accident black spots. They also have to be signs fixed or temporary a set dustance before the speed camera site. Lots more besides.
The AA and the police are pursuing revenue. Nothing more. If you have a claim with an AA policy the first thing they will do is check the satellite evidence for speeding etc. if you have been speeding etc. they won't pay out.
The joys.
Not too up on the UK laws, (and twisted interpretations thereof in search of revenue) but here, with "red light" cameras, even if it is blatantly NOT you driving, the person who the plates on the car are registered to gets the ticket, since they "must have allowed it to happen". I speak from personal experience here. If there is a dollar/pound/euro/spare bit of lint to be torn from your pocket in the name of "safety", they will take it.
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