GPS For Road Safety — Is The UK That Much More Advanced?

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?