Sylvus wrote:I'm not sure if the article said how quickly they were planning on enacting it, but wouldn't the first step of getting GPS units in all cars be to require new cars to be manufactured with them?
While raising the gas tax works for now, what happens as more and more cars use less and less (or no) gas? We're not talking about a tax break for being environmentally friendly or anything like that, we're talking about creating and repairing roads that all cars - even a car that uses no gasoline - should be responsible for. Eventually we have to move to a system that doesn't get the money from gasoline, since eventually we have to move away from gasoline.
Are all cars with OnStar currently manufactured with GPS in them? If you're concerned about Big Brother, don't most (all?) cell phones already have GPS installed in them? Couldn't this be a good thing for a number of reasons such as emergency response, tracking how much use certain highways get so that money is routed appropriately for expansion/repair/etc., tracking traffic patterns, etc?
I don't see a huge negative, provided most of the data is reported anonymously or the appropriate data usage policies are put in place.
My concern would be - how long before this information falls into the hands of car insurance companies? The insurance companies have already pleaded their case to the government and been allowed to use credit score to determine how much you pay for car insurance, which is criminal insanity btw, I just don't think they would have to do too much convincing to let the government access this type of technology.
Progressive is already trying to get people to install chips in their cars computer, offering a discount, and saying that your rate will never go up because of info collected from it (ROFL).
My problem with the gas tax or anything else is this: In Minnesota, a lot of the money from the powerball and other state lotteries is supposed to go to the roads, this is in addition to the other tax money that is also supposed to go to the roads.
It is very evident that the money that should be going to the roads is not, at least not all of it. Road work here is out of date immediately because of the unusually long time it takes for the work to get done. Because of the cold winters you say? Wrong. It's because the state only pays for portions of the work at a time, so the workers take their time doing it, because they know the state is going to fuck around on approving the next chunk of funds, and there is always downtime.
Not to mention their idea of roadwork here isn't to deal with the massive traffic issues cause of a mostly 20+ year old infrastructure, but just to put that gooey tar shit in all the massive cracks and potholes.
When the government starts spending the money they already are getting on the roads on them, and adopts a much more efficient way of funding the projects - then I would be fine with something like this. Until then, absolutely not.
It's like the wildlife bill that passed this election in MN. Tons of money from the lottery and taxes is supposed to go to the state parks & wild life. This money is obviously being mismanaged, but people vote to give them more money anyhow.. I just don't get it.
). Even the states that allowed, or even asked for, increases for bad drivers capped that at 10% in most cases. What this device does best is get people to actually THINK about their driving behaviors. There are some things that drivers take notice of only because of the fact that their speed, braking time, and accelleration are being tracked along with miles driven and the time of day. Those are the only things tracked, even though the tin-foil brigade will tell you otherwise. 
