Jed wrote:
>> That's invasive <.> As I understand it, privacy is currently the biggest knock so far against these kinds of schemes. Technically they are very doable now and for a small fraction of rail costs for a given urban path. "They" will supposedly know when and where you were if the data is personally identifiable, which in the end it must be for billing purposes. Then of course there's fears of hacking, etc. - the usual for life in the (computer) clouds. But these kinds of challenges can be met given serious motivation and effort. Health care, terrorism, transportation, taxes & user fees - tech is taking us down the road to pervasive monitoring whether we like it or not. Libertarian/conservative though I am, yet I think trading some privacy in return for freedom, while intrinsically undesirable, is actually not too bad a trade these days where the benefits are significant. But trading freedom for security is still to be avoided if at all possible. I think some people confuse privacy with general freedom. For instance I couldn't care less about some doofus TSA employee seeing me in a highly detailed body scanner if it means I remain free travel by air while minimizing terror threats. Might bother some celebrities a bit. Let 'em go by boat then. It's not like their pictures aren't on the internet already. - R. From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:jedrothw...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, January 04, 2010 10:54 AM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: RE: [Vo]:Traffic accident deaths in Japan hit 57-year low >From the article Rick Monteverde linked to: "MyRate is designed for safe drivers," comments Richard Hutchinson, Progressive's MyRate general manager. "It's for people who drive fewer miles than average, at low-risk times of day and keep alert for others on the road. They don't make fast lane changes or follow too closely behind other drivers so they don't have to over-react or slam on the brakes." Drivers who choose to sign up for MyRate receive a device that plugs into a port in their car and measures how, how much and when the car is being driven. . . . That's invasive, but I like it! I'd go for it, if it were available in Atlanta, and if it works with a 16-year-old Geo Metro. I'd like to see something like that tied to vehicle tax fees for pay as you drive efficiency. Eventually this could evolve into an aviation-style control system like a TCA for heavily used corridors during peak use for a more fair distribution of taxes and fees, an incentive to reduce congestion, reduce accidents, and perhaps the ability to fine tune traffic flow on the fly. Good ideas, all. In Japan they are pushing vigorously for more automated driving, with things like radar and accident warning systems, and intelligent computers that warn when pedestrians or other cars may be crossing ahead. This is often featured on the nightly news. I do not think they have any near-term plans for fully automated highways, but R&D in that direction is proceeding in both the U.S. and Japan. On one hand, it looks to me as if these gadgets they intend to install soon will cost a fortune. On the other hand, they had 736,160 accidents and 908,874 people injured in Japan -- as noted in the second article I cited. That must have cost billions of dollars. Reducing that by even a modest percent would save a lot of money and anguish. It is like the cost of emergency R&D for the H1N1 vaccine. Imagine how many millions of hours of misery and lost work-hours that prevented! The dollar cost of automobile accidents in the U.S. is roughly $230 billion in hospital bills alone. The cost in human lives is ~40,000 per year, or roughly as much as much as the Korean war, repeated every year, for the last 50 years. Throwing $100 billion per year at the problem to reduce this toll would be well worth it. U.S. automobile fatality rates (fatalities per passenger mile) have declined, but I do not think they have fallen as much as in Japan. Per 100 million vehicle miles, rates fell from 1.73 to 1.28 between 1994 and 2008 (14 years). See: http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year The absolute number of people killed per year has fallen from a peak at around 50,000 in 1979 to 40,000 today. Compared to population and total driving this is a 36% decline. That is impressive, but not as impressive as the 70% decline in Japan since their peak in 1970. Their population has not increased significantly since 1980, so this 70% decline is also per capita and probably pretty close to the decline per passenger mile. To some extent, with modern automobiles, we trade off death in accidents for both injuries and for the destruction of the vehicle. That is to say, we have fewer deaths but more people are gravely injured, with multiple fractures of the legs and so on. Air bags save their lives but they end up in the hospital for long periods. Also, automobiles absorb the energy from the collision and are destroyed more often, I think. I believe I read that more automobile insurance is now paid to cover hospital bills than vehicle repairs. These are trade offs anyone would be pleased to make! Human life in general is given a much higher premium in modern times than it was 50 or 150 years ago. In 1861, the Pony Express supposedly advertised for riders as follows: "Young, skinny, wiry fellows, not over 18. Must be expert riders. Willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred." This probably a myth, but the fact that people believed it tells you a lot about the times. Of course employment opportunities in 1861 were mainly in the U.S. Army, and did feature risking death often, if not daily. The national attitude toward casualties, and willingness to sustain them, changed completely from the Civil War to WWI, WWII and to present-day wars. Willingness to inflict casualties on the enemy has also declined since 1945. Even in WWII enemy casualties were a laughing matter (literally), at least among civilians, but not today. - Jed
