Safe Speed Forums

Let’s go through the exceptions and see if we can boil it down a bit.



A car only has an MOT once per year. The technical solution is to allow some refills without an MOT up to an agreed limit, of say three times. After this, it is suspicious and needs investigating by the nearest patrol car. NO FUEL!



The cops couldn’t care less about cars on trailers, so neither should the system flag them. Unless you want it too? But why would you want that? Perhaps a chav could have a spare car to tow his un-taxed one to the gas station to get fuel! To get petrol, you either have to a) have all the legal stuff right or b) declare that you are not using the car on the road. ANPR will fish out anybody who offends after this.



I’ve got no problem with that. I use petrol mower myself. Of course, chav’s may fill cans with fuel from cans for another purpose, so it just makes life that little bit more humiliating and difficult for them, which is a fine thing on it’s own! That’s the point, isn’t it?



With the new system, it is the driver who needs to be able to show he is insured for that car to get fuel. If he can’t show that, NO FUEL.



The cops couldn’t care less about cars on trailers, so neither should the system flag them. Unless you want it too? But why would you want that? To get petrol, you either have to a) have all the legal stuff right or b) declare that you are not using the car on the road. ANPR will fish out anybody who offends after this.



The cops couldn’t care less about who pays for the fuel, so neither should the system flag them. The only thing the system, needs is proof that the driver is insured to drive that car.

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The roads are public!

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I see that the b'erk's starving and you're all feeding it again

That's all right, my mistake. I'm sorry everybody couldn't be as well-mannered. By the way, real-time technology is emerging that combines back-office administration with operational information systems. Do you see a place for that as well, or is it better to separate those functions?

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This is good because it's helping me to define what I believe in and what I don't. I have no problems giving examples, but actually setting the limits is harder.

I do know that I believe that human behaviour tends to be too subtle and variable for 'policing by robots' - yet I'm fairly tolerant of a bit of software that might remind me to pay a bill.

Once you move into the physical world (bills are in a virtual financial world, right?) I can't see any appropriate or wise interventions. ANPR sounds like a great idea, but effects of efforts to circumvent it will prove to be worse than the original problem (mark my words).

I can see roles for monitoring and control via information systems to assist traffic flow.

Ultimately, I think one of the defining differences is that no machine can JUDGE human behaviour to be acceptable or otherwise.

What were you thinking of when you wrote: "real-time technology is emerging that combines back-office administration with operational information systems"? Road pricing? Road pricing is an insane money pit. I can't think of another example that fits the pattern that I might find wise.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I mean a subset of all the current rational and consistent information it is possible to collect on a car/owner/driver/license/mot/insurance/tax situation, available in real time to 'authorities'. That is the minimum. I also mean a subset of all the current information it is possible to collect on routes a vehicle has taken, when they were taken, stops it has made, the people and things it carried, the speed it travelled at, the condition it was in. That is more contentious, isn't it? The first subset is on the event horizon, in my opinion. Some of the second subset is also partly here. Look, I don't know if this stuff is desirable either. I'm only here because somebody smashed into me a year ago and I got “irrationally exuberant” about it. But I can see that this is the direction things are going. As Bob Dylan said - you don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows.

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Another application of monitoring and control via information systems is the detection and removal of clones cars. Typically, these cannot be detected easily by policemen working alone, because they only see one at a time, and if the driver is behaving well, he doesn’t stand out.

An ANPR system with a centralised DB, on the other hand, can detect if two cars with the same plate are on the road at the same time anywhere in the country. If the system sees a car with plate X in Manchester at 9:05, and another in Bradford with the same plate at 9:10, it is safe to assume that one of them is cloned.

But what should be done once a clone event has been detected? The original car owner should be known to DVLA, who can order immediate removal from the system and replacement of the original plate. If he is not known, the plate is just removed from the system and no replacement is made.

All the clones then have 'dead' plates, which can easily be detected by ANPR, and the offender can be sent down once the cops have chased him down. This is the only systematic way to remove the problem that I know.

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Of course, having a way to detect and remove illicit vehilces is only the start. Once reliable car/driver ID is available, information on routes a vehicle has taken, when they were taken, stops it has made, the people and things it carried, the speed it travelled at, the condition it was in etc. will make ALL crime more difficult. Fly tipping (my pet hate) wil become much easier to stop!

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I'm not sure whether recent legislation has changed things, but one of the dodges the cloners would use was to clone a vehicle where the owner would not have cause to contact DVLA for some time (e.g. long remaining tax), and apply for a V5 with a change of address. The stolen car would then be rung and sold to some unsuspecting victim, who would then register themselves as the rightful owner. So, DVLA would send a "notice of cloning" to the owner of the clone, who then requests the plate be recinded and a replacement registration issued. In that case, it would be the legitimate car that would carry the "dead" plates (and presumably would have invalid registration).

Much better would probably be to recall the vehicle for examination to determine whether it is "entitled" to the registration mark. If it is not, the police should make efforts to identify the true owner of the rung vehicle (which they already do) and to trace back the owner of the legitimate car so as to reuinite, in DVLA's database, the registration mark to the vehicle that should carry it. If the checked vehicle was legitimate, the registered keeper could then apply for a new registration mark.

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Will

This can be solved using normal 'secure' protocol, i.e. every request to change address is responded to by the DVLA by sending a letter to the owner at the original address. The letter would be worded such that, if the owner still lives at the old address (and has made no address change request), a complaint is necessary. If the owner has really moved on, he would not receive it, but no complaint is necessary anyway. That alone would sort out a large proportion of the fraud you describe and it is often standard practise in many network and banking operations.



There are trade-offs here, but that is the type of systematic thinking that we need, willcove. I think the DVLA is in dire need of some thoughtful and critical external analysis of it's processes. The point is that a thoroughly systematic approach might rid us of most of the boneheads on the roads, if we are prepared to pay for it.

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Thanks for the lesson in punctuation....looks like you need one too.



Next time, focus on the message content, not whether its punctuation is correct. That attitude is indicative of the current scammers who would rather concentrate on minor things rather than major things.

(note all superfluous punctuation deliberately left out)

Have a nice day!

Youre (!) welcome

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The real problem is a massive problem. More traffic police needed out on the roads to catch offenders and get the word spread so that regular offenders are worried about being stopped. Less paperwork for the police and less Home Office targets and Key Performance Indicators that the civil servants are so obsessed with. Then to get the cases to court there is the Criminal Protection Service to deal with. Then the do-gooders in the legal system. Oh and by-the-way if society is really serious about all this we will need more places available in prison for the serious offenders. Somehow I don't think this will happen from our politicians who are so good with words and presentation and so bad with actually doing anything.

Hmm. Another dumbass statement. Sitting at a desk looking at a readout of cloned ID's doesn't tell you which is the real vehicle and which is the clone (by definition!!). The cheap solution is to knock both out the system, so the innocent cloned vehicle owner suffers the same punishment as the evil cloner - brilliant. When cloning becomes an epidemic the public outcry will follow.....

The technology fails when someone has to actually go out and identify which is the real vehicle, especially if there is no concrete proof either way, or do we need to tag the tags with some unique identifier too....?

The only practical solution is to replace every tag with more secure tags (with the expense that ensues, providing you have the resources in the first place or have factored in that potential swap out to your operational costs), until the next time....

The incentive to clone becomes greater, and the ability to get away with it becomes easier the more reliant on technology to do the detection work the authorities become.