Posted on 02/25/2008 2:39:51 PM PST by kiriath_jearim
Motorists will be targeted by a new generation of road cameras which work out how many people are in a car by measuring the amount of bodily fluid it contains.
The latest snooping device on the nation's roads aims to penalise lone drivers who abuse car-sharing lanes, and is part of a Government effort to combat congestion at busy times.
The cameras work by sending an infrared beam through the windscreen of vehicles which detects the unique make-up of blood and water content in human skin.
The system's inventors believe it will catch out motorists who try to fool existing CCTV road cameras by placing mannequins in passenger seats or fixing photographs to windscreens.
It will at first be used to police car-sharing lanes in Leeds, but councils across the country have already expressed an interest in using them.
Professor John Tyrer, who headed the Loughborough University team which created the device, said it would reduce congestion.
"It allows you to automatically count people," he said.
"That pools through to the congestion charging, so they can charge differently or reduce the rates dramatically if you've got more people in the cars."
But motoring organisations claim the cameras are a further intrusion on private lives and say car-sharing lanes – which are already in operation in Birmingham and Leeds and are being built on the M1 in Hertfordshire – do not work.
AA president Edmund King said: "Most of us work flexible hours. We don't go to work or come home from work at the same time.
"Car-sharing lanes are incredibly difficult to enforce and, if not many people use them, they're actually a waste of road capacity."
Roads Minister Rosie Winterton said last night she encouraged "innovative solutions" to the problems created by congestion.
so then you have to have a manequin with warm water circulating or some other easy simulation to fool the infrared.
It is amazing how many of these crackpot inventions get air time.
Blowing really serious money on trivial issues.
Now you'll have to prop up dear departed Aunt Eleanor in the passenger seat!
All that matters is the government will be able to use them as a money-churn.
The schoolmarms are in cahoots with the coppers. A deadly combination.
next, they will say that they have a "Brain Wave" detector and there will be many that will believe, thus not driving in the car pool lane.
Oh heck no need for this the Border Patrol already has a machine that can count the number of heartbeats in a vehicle that they use at their checkpoints to detect hidden illegals /sarc
Impossible to install on the border of course.
Or erect a fence.
Too technologically advanced.
Meanwhile back in your neighborhood, BIG BROTHER can watch your frickin’ heart beat so you don’t abuse pavement.
ok is this like the British TV tax detector?
Actually, all this is is an infrared camera. They’ve affixed a fancy description to it, but that’s all it is. Old, proven (if a bit expensive) tech.
How's this for innovation: build some more &*#$^& roads!
“Little people” are going to sue when they get stopped for not having enough body fluids in the car.
Morbidly obese people will get away with one to a car.
Heh.
So, does it account for small children? Seems to me they are wasting tax payer dollars on something relatively small. Stick a Statie out there, let him count heads, then give the drivers a fine that will smart.
>> Now you’ll have to prop up dear departed Aunt Eleanor in the passenger seat!
Well, you’ll need a body, but the problem is, they get kinda gross after a day in the sweatshop parking lot, trapped in the car with the windows rolled up.
So...it’ll be just like the zombie movies! You’ll need to obtain a fresh body by dawn, every day!
Oh, that’s the UK for ya. I just KNEW there was a good reason why my forefather left there in the 1600s. Watch them closely - if the libs get their way we’ll have a real nanny state just like our Brit cousins.
Utter Barbra Streisand.
They are virtually useless in Houston.
I'm think a device that, on detecting radar, turns on the vehicle's windshield washers, kind of in the mode of an Aluminum chaffe confusing device.....
See how it deals with that..
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