GPS Tracking ROI

Parolee Convicted of Murdering Actress

By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS and COLIN MOYNIHAN

Published: October 12, 2006

A 20-year-old parolee was convicted today of murdering Nicole duFresne, a young actress who moved to New York from Minnesota, by shooting her point-blank in the chest on a darkened Lower East Side street after she stood up to him during a mugging, shouting, “What are you going to do, shoot us?”

The jury convicted Rudy Fleming, who was on parole for pointing a semi-automatic gun at a truancy officer, of all nine counts against him, including intentional murder, robbery and criminal possession of a weapon…. Full Story Here

OK, yep, you guessed it … Dave’s pissed again.  How long will we have to keep living with this kind of nonsense when the technology to stop it dead is not only readily at hand, but will actually save us money.

Here’s a 20 year old freak who is on parole for threatening a parole officer with a gun.  So at three o’clock in the morning he’s roaming the sidewalks accosting people on their way home from clubs.  He points his gun at a girl apparently suffering from an overload of testosterone, she mouth’s off, he pulls the trigger.  Blam!

Her life is wasted, her family’s life scarred forever.  And you know even though this guy was a little punk his life is over too … and his family hurts no less than any other to lose their child for life as a felon.

A couple days ago I wrote about an incident up in British Columbia where the police tried to excuse the fact they had let a rapist back out on the street unsupervised to rape again with the lame statement that even with a GPS we wouldn’t be able to know, necessarily that he was committing a crime.

Well here’s a thought you Einstein’s of the criminal justice system … a GPS wouldn’t have told a supervising officer that this freak was going to pull a trigger … but it damn sure would have told you that he was out prowling the streets at 0300 while you were safe at home dreaming the dreams of the just.  A couple hundred bucks.  Not only would lives have been saved, what do you think the costs to the city for the criminal investigation, the trial, any liability the city may wind up for in this tragic affair … boggles the mind.

Can’t anyone in the parole side of the justice system do the most simple ROI math?  GPS tracking of parolees does NOT cost, it would PAY

London tests satellite tracking

TfL could use satellite technology for more flexible road-use charge

Dave Friedlos, Computing 05 Oct 2006

Transport for London (TfL) has completed a London-wide test of satellite tracking technology with a view to establishing more flexible congestion charge pricing.

Computing has learned that TfL tested a number of devices, including custom-built in-vehicle units and PDAs, to track cars accurately through London streets.

The trials were staged to gather route data and overcome common problems such as loss of signal when a vehicle enters a tunnel, or passes through a dense block of tall buildings… Full Article Here:

Lately I seem to be running heavily to British subject matter, but I can’t help it, I only report the news as it happens. I wrote about Transport for London earlier. TfL will be installing GPS tracking on buses, reporting back both to dispatch centers and public information kiosks to improve transport efficiency and increase ridership (as in profit and more profit).

As you ca see from the quoted article there also a lot going on regarding Pay As You Drive (PAYD) toll, taxation and cutting down city traffic by offering incentives for off-peak traffic use. It all sounds great to me, except for one thing.

The dreaded urban canyon effect. When a GPS receiver can view a large part of the sky … on the order of half the sky or more, it will work great. There are virtually always 12 satellites in view from anywhere on earth and a receiver needs on four satellites to get a decent “fix”. However, when you are down between tall buildings in a big city … the so-called “urban canyon”, GPS can come up with wildly inaccurate readings or just shut down altogether until more ’sky’ becomes visible.

This is well known, long known and, in my view, is a black eye on the face of many GPS manufacturers. They just ignore the problem instead of bringing out receivers that could cure the problem.

The best solution is a dual-mode GPS chip that takes positron from the sky when available and runs in a self-contained inertial mode when not enough satellites are in view. Inertial navigation is a much older science than GPS. It involves sensing the movement and direction of a vehicle and then calculating the vehicle’s position from where it was last know, Many years ago this was an expensive, mechanically complex undertaking. Today there are inertial navigator self-contained chips that are roughly the size of pure GPS internal chips. There is an added cost but most of that cost would go away rapidly if manufacturers just realized they were in the navigation business and not the GPS business. GPS receivers today are a fifth the cost that they were 2 years ago and the price continues in free fall. Add on inertial capability would fall just as rapidly if anyone decided to live up to their responsibilities.

I don’t often cover much in the way of general business tools here, but a new business resource web site opened today that I consider to be a good value:

http://www.work.com/fleet-management-for-small-bus…

The site is loaded with free resources that seem to have a lot of value for small businesses … and they found and recommended the GPS Tracking Blog, so how can they go wrong?  *smile*  The site just opened for public business and I am finding that there’s a wealth of information there, recommended.

Yesterday I wrote quite a bit about the methods Great Britain uses to attempt to control their highway death toll. I’m sure some readers just thought I was another “bleeding heart liberal” who wanted to blanket the country with excessive government controls, in particular, speed cameras. Well, you may recall I asked you to think about how we could make a huge difference in our road slaughter of innocents _without_ speed cameras. So, Dave, you’re saying you’re:

• Concerned about road accidents
• Convinced that controlling speed will help
• Willing to accept some sort of advance government control to save lives
• And yet you are against speed cameras?

Yep, that just about sums things up. Now why am I anti-speed camera?

• They are old, expensive technology
• They have been proven to have accuracy problems
• They are brute force, they often photograph or record every car that passes

• This is a real opportunity for government over-control, just in case I have any privacy rights folks reading

So what’s my solution? Cummon, whose blog are you reading? GPS tracking, of course. Take a close look at what the RoadPilot line of products offers and let’s see if we couldn’t make things “fit” the cameral-less, high privacy model a little better.

Here’s a simple, but effective low-end device that spends most of it’s time comparing the driver’s location with that of known speed camera location and effectively but un obtrusively lets the driver know if she or he is close to a camera and alarms if the present speed is greater than the speed camera setting.

Now what if instead of tracking camera locations, the unit just alarms when the speed of the car exceeds the speed limit? If driver’s decide to take the chance of speeding they’ll know they are speeding. It requires more GIS-type info but there are some easy ways to set this up and there are some commercial ways to finance the effort. this unit costs about $375 US dollars including taxes and a decent commercial markup to make it profitable.

Now a “voluntary” unit alone will reduce a lot of speeding and save a number of lives. There are a number of commercial incentives from discounts via insurance companies to sponsors paying to allow the unit to announce locations of roadside business for a fee. But, we can do better.

Here’s what you might call a higher level option of essentially the same box. It costs a little more but its opportunity for safety and profit to both the suppliers, the government and the individual driver is much, much greater.

Just take a look at the features and give each one a little thought:

It’s touch screen operating means it’s easy to display the following six functions:

Camera warning - bar graph counts you up as you approach the accident black spot. Screen shows cameras relative to current position and speed limit in the vicinity of the speed trap or accident black spot.

Speed display - range arrow indicates distance to nearest speed camera or accident black spot. Vehicle speed is available either numerically or in analogue format - you choose. Odometer and trip counter - both re-settable.

Mileage Managerâ„¢ - at the start of a journey simply select between business, commute or private mileage. A summary is stored and the detail can be easily downloaded to your PC.

Track - automatically stores a track of your recent journey. Useful if you get lost and need to retrace your track.

Rescue MEâ„¢ - advise rescue authorities of your exact position by referring to the current longitude and latitude position to rapidly aid assistance. Other useful GPS data is provided.

Signal status - enables you to see the number of satellite acquired and relative signal strength to access optimum accuracy of your RoadPilot Pro.

MileageManagerâ„¢

MileageManagerâ„¢ really comes into it’s own once you connect your RoadPilot Pro to a PC. The advanced software supplied with every RoadPilot Pro enables you to process and filter the mileage information recorded while driving and the resultant data can be output to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

Company vehicles

Install Microsoft MapPoint on your PC and MileageManagerâ„¢ will insert the address and postcode of your journey start and end points. This is invaluable for drivers of company vehicles or anyone who needs to keep a detailed record of their business mileage.

Mapping applications

Journey data can be exported from your RoadPilot Pro MileageManagerâ„¢ for use with Microsoft MapPoint and AutoRoute. MileageManagerâ„¢ also integrates with the Mapquest website www.mapquest.co.uk - select a journey destination point and it automatically opens a browser and plots the point on a fully scalable map of the area

New LaserPilotâ„¢

LaserPilotâ„¢ has integral front and rear sensors so that it can detect laser emissions from in front and behind the vehicle. It comes supplied with the RoadPilot Pro and is easy to fit (suction pad to windscreen) and feeds directly into the Pro.

This little box costs less than $650 USD and provides a wonderful assortment of features. Like most companies who sell such products I feel that RoadPilot misses the boat by only considering the business uses. Any business with vehicles (which means a huge, huge percentage) can easily save $100 to $200 per month with such a device. That means the Return On Investment (ROI) is in the three to six month range. I can (and have) proven this dozens of times with similar but inferior products.

But before you click on to the next page stop and think a bit … _everyone_ will gain a ROI with this device even if you just drive a private car for what is theoretically private use.

There is hardly a person on the road who doesn’t drive miles per year for medical reasons (do you know that transporting your child to school may qualify you to money from Medicare? regardless of your income or needs). Do you drive places for Scouting, church or other charities? Does your vehicle insurance center around an estimate of monthly mileage? Thought so.

So, I’m laying out a sample as to how these devices can save their cost and more even before we get to the nitty-gritty of actually controlling speed 9to the extent deemed necessary) and before factoring in how much state and federal governments could save by using a proactive tool rather that the reactive model of speed cameras, radar traps and extremely expensive 24 x 7 highway patrol cruising.

More to come.

Here is a most interesting report … and a great business opportunity, should there be anyone out there who can hear the knocking in the US:

GPS-based camera detectors are in the clear
6 October 2006

Under new proposed laws, which are having their third reading in Parliament on Monday 9 October, speeding motorists will incur fines and penalty points that more closely reflect the severity of their offence – the greater the speed over the limit, the bigger the penalty.
The good news for motorists is that the Road Safety Act 2005 also officially endorses the use of GPS-based speed camera locators such as those pioneered by RoadPilot. The clarification in the law is expected to boost demand for the latest generation of GPS-enabled units, including the new RoadPilot microGo, the world’s smallest camera locator with an LCD information screen.
According to the new Road Safety Act, GPS-based systems will remain fully legal, as they “…compliment the Government’s policy to ensure that camera sites are visible and conspicuous to drivers, and so help deter excessive and inappropriate speeds on the roads.”
“The number of speed cameras on UK roads is set to rise further still in 2006, and this change to the law will mean motorists can now incur severe penalties for excess speed,” comments James Flynn OBE, CEO of RoadPilot. “Our products are designed to aid road safety and protect the user’s licence by making them more aware of their speed, by reminding them of prevailing speed limits and by giving advanced warning of potential changes to the traffic flow at speed camera locations. The data is refreshed frequently and even includes temporary speed restrictions, for example at roadworks.” … Full Report Here:

Here in the US we currently seem to be spending a lot of time worrying about the wrong things when it comes to road safety and deaths. In spite of continuous safety improvements in our vehicles, significantly better roads and much better emergency and advanced medical care we still kill nearly 45,000 people per year on the road. To put that into perspective, recall that that is nearly as many US folks as were killed in all the sad and despicable years of Vietnam. It’s roughly 16 times the number of people killed in the 9/11 attack. yet it goes on and on and on and no one seems to care. Imagine an average of 1.3 9/11 attacks every single month. Bust went to “war with the world” over 2500+ deaths and a majority of Americans feel we did the right thing … yet 16 times that many casualties (inappropriately biased toward our young folks, by the way) go on and no one even shrugs their shoulders.

In Great Britain they have taken the root cause of the majority of traffic deaths much more seriously … speed cameras that monitor vehicles by the thousands and read the license plates, issuing speeding tickets to those who won’t play by the rules. Do we want to do that in the US? Obviously we don’t, choosing to just watch while about 135 die every single day. In the 30 or so minutes I’ve spent researching and writing this post between 4 and 5 people have died. depending upon how fast you chose to read it, likely at least one person will have died in just that short time. I don’t propose to have the answers, but I do know that I feel just as bad for each of those folks who have had their lives snuffed out in a car wreck as I do for those who perished in the Twin Towers.

The GPS connection is obvious, In the British case the government has decided that allowing private enterprise innovators like RoadPilot to continue to operate will help reduce deaths. The speed cameras don’t exist to give people tickets, they exist to attempt to control speed and the tickets are a consequence that helps them do the job.

Next post I’ll bring up something even more intelligent and with much more life-saving potential … think about this … what if there were no speed cameras at all?

Yesterday I waxed euphoric about Google Maps and Google earth. Today I have come across another great “mash up” of Google map information, aircraft charts, aviation weather forecasts and Google Ads.

www.runwayfinder.com

You’ve got to love this. You can plan flights from airport to airport, check weather conditions, see the aeronautical charts, overhead imagery (or both), TSA restricted areas and when the flight is all planned you can make one click on the destination airport and search out restaurants, motels, renal car agencies … and they’ll be plotted on the map as well. Great tool, great example of mapping, GPS and advertising and I wish I had thought of it first

Zoomed in on home station:

I don’t want to go on record as a hopeless Google fan, there are some Google services I feel are intrusive or not done very well, such as the clunky and resource hungry Google Desk Top, and although I’m a GMail user I really can’t stand the ugly interface, but WoW there are some Google services that are simply outstanding.

Google Maps and Google Earth kind of boggle the mind, they are just so good.  And the part that makes them great is that Google makes the interface open (and free for many uses) so the inventiveness and intelligence of the whole world can dream up ideas, make a few links and create useful applications.

Here’s one that I think is just gangbusters: http://www.goflying.org/index.htm   Go Flying takes data files from GPS units and plots them on Google Maps and/or Google Earth with amazing ease and clarity.  As the name suggests the service is mainly attuned to the aviation community.  One of the greatest values I see is for student pilots and instructors.  One can easily plot cross-country trips and see exactly how well the pilot followed the planned course, held altitudes and even prove s/he did or didn’t enter prohibited areas.  Although today’s eye candy is not zoomed in anywhere near the maximum resolution possible, the tool can even be used to analyze specific maneuvers performed, limited only by the rate the GPS (professional airborne navigation unit or $89 person navigator, they’ll all work) logs in data points.  Having experience in the flight training school world in the past I can see from one look at this service that I wouldn’t again rent out aircraft without a GPS aboard … it’s a fantastic tool to make sure people are operating the aircraft safely and legally.  Great stuff.

 

here’s a pilot’s record of a short flight (I like it a lot since I used to live in Banbury, just to the east of the flight path):

And here’s the same flight plotted in three dimensional format on Google earth: