Monday, November 5, 2007

Get out of a speeding ticket with GPS!

This article in CNN.com this morning caught my eye because I, like this teenager in the article was caught for speeding a lot!
Did you know that out of 20 tickets issued, 19 go unopposed because motorist do not want to get in a one on one argument with a Police officer. That is your word against the officers word and the majority of the time motorist lose because an officer of the law could never be wrong?!
Well guess what? GPS (ground positioning system) is a trend that is challenging the old radar gun.
The argument by defenders of radar (police) and the defenders of the GPS (motorist) have one main theme, accuracy!
The article does not operationalize accuracy, it really operationalizes in-accuracy. Radar needs to be properly calibrated daily and can have outside factors that can throw off radar by another speeding car or in some cases by the sheer design of the car that effect the receiver of the radar. GPS is separated by all these factors because it has no human interference, but can have some lag time due to satellite reception and speed of intervals of data collected. It can't prove if you were speeding or not between intervals of data collection, therefore, not a full proof system.
The interesting thing about the article is that it is giving motorist a voice to challenge the radar argument. It also shows an amazing tracking system, if your teenager is out at a "friends house" and your GPS tracker catches them on Church St. in Burlington VT, then you can make 2 assumptions, either the car was stolen or Jr. is going to get in a heap of trouble when he gets home! So for my kids when they become of age, the independent variable will be "good driver" and the dependent variable will be "installed GPS". Sounds like something written by Orwell?

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