Oh, Goodie..........

[buggerlugs]

http://www.news.com.au/technology/de...-1226884920088
Can't even pick your nose in peace anymore..............

[Outbackjack]

I dont have a problem with it as long as thats as far as it goes. The number of times I have almost turned into jam by some princess putting lippy on using that handy vanity mirror that those thoughtful car makers put there just for her is scary.

But lets see how the cash strapped guv find a way to make it a good little earner...

[FTE-063]

wish i was that kitten in your avatar outbackjack

[Outbackjack]

Originally Posted by AU2GHIA

wish i was that kitten in your avatar outbackjack

Dual purpose nipple warmer....

[Dave R]

Eh, I don't see the issue with this. What's more dangerous, going 20 kays over the speed limit whilst being completely aware of your surroundings, or doing the speed limit and taking your eyes off the road to write a text message? I think we've all been in a situation where someone has almost wiped us out because they had more important things to do than drive.

[EgoFG]

Personally I applaud this
So Much money spent policing speed (rarely if ever a primary CAUSE of an accident)
it is good to see real problems being policed

[Pedro]

Originally Posted by EgoFG

Personally I applaud this
So Much money spent policing speed (rarely if ever a primary CAUSE of an accident)
it is good to see real problems being policed

Right on. The department's own statistics show inattention (not speeding) is the major cause of road crashes.

[Silver Ghia]

Originally Posted by EgoFG

Personally I applaud this
So Much money spent policing speed (rarely if ever a primary CAUSE of an accident)
it is good to see real problems being policed

Yes, but the proper way of policing is having the police in their cars, in traffic, monitoring other drivers. Using cameras provides only a very limited view of the driver, whether he/she is actually being distracted. Unless of course the phone etc. is actually visible.

Its amazing how drivers quickly behave themselves in the very rare event (these days) of a police car being sighted on the road.

[buggerlugs]

http://www.thecourier.com.au/story/2...clist/?cs=2452
Well, if they catch clowns like this, it will be good..........

[GASWAGON]

Originally Posted by buggerlugs

http://www.thecourier.com.au/story/2...clist/?cs=2452
Well, if they catch clowns like this, it will be good..........

For sure.......Mind you the demerit points on a fine like this will be at least 3 if not 4 points?

[Itsme]

I'm all for it! No more trying to B.S. there way out of doing stupid acts while driving.

[Yellow_Festiva]

Camera + Tripod + Zoom Lens = 'New Technology'

[302weapon]

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=1&theater

[aussiblue]

I think those texting etc should also have their mobile immediately seized and crushed one of those can crushers should suffice).

I have been so tempted to rip the phone from some princess meandering all over the freeway texting and smash it on the road ( I know; think calming thoughts). Or they could employ Ivan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBRYBFacl1E he seems to enjoy smashing phones.

[2011G6E]

SImple way to dramatically reduce people texting/using a hand held phone while driving...
Cop pulls you over, asks for your phone. Remove SIM, hand it to you, then place the phone in front of your cars front wheel, then tell you to "go on your way"...

[Nova 8]

I'm totally against using a phone while driving and never do it even prior to actually being illegal and I also don't get how people feel comfortable driving without a seatbelt.

However, I got pulled over for simply looking down and stretching my neck while sitting at the lights by the cop sitting next to me. If it wasn't for leaving my phone at home and being in the process of going and getting it and allowing him to search my car there would have been no way to convince the officer otherwise. How are these cops meant to tell the difference of someone looking down and someone using a phone. Personally I put my phone in the boot now and it has got me out of a couple fines with cops saying I was on my phone, although they generally seem to think this is a smart **** act and give my car a good going over.

Honestly, if someone is texting you it isn't important and can wait, if it is an emergency they will give you a call and a headunit with Bluetooth is way cheaper then the fine even if you pay someone to put it in.

[Ben73]

“We can see them before they can see us. We don’t need to actually see them holding their mobile phone for them to be breaching the road rules."

Ok what does that mean. Does that mean they will fine you for looking away for a split second to turn the AC off or something

[93EB_SXR6]

"Halls of justice painted green, money talking..."

[ford71V8]

"Exploiting Their Supremacy"

[Silver Ghia]

This article in todays Herald Sun is very true. If only the police chiefs and government politicians can listen and understand that motorists are fed up with the way they are treated.

Although I think drivers who are truly distracted by their mobile phones, ipods etc should have the book thrown at them:

Is it right that police can now penalise us for what they think they see?
PATRICK CARLYON HERALD SUN APRIL 19, 2014 8:00PM

SERGEANT Phil Wild was a very naughty boy in March. He said some of Victoria’s speeding penalty policies were dumb. Boy, was he going to get it bad. A “disappointed” road policing command assistant commissioner, Robert Hill, spoke of a dreaded “internal inquiry”.

Yet chief commissioner Ken Lay was too smart for this. In a play worthy of his long ago predecessor Mick Miller, Lay promised that Wild, a 42-year veteran, wouldn’t be punished at all. Lay read the play. Wild’s view — that zapping motorists for going a couple of clicks over the speed limit was absurd — matched the community view. And policing works best with public goodwill.

That’s what makes last week’s announcement about traffic police and telescopic lenses so puzzling. These video cameras can film drivers from the next suburb. They can apparently detect drivers picking their noses and squeezing their pimples. Oh, and they tell the colour of your undies and when you are illegally texting on your phone, even if you’re doing so beneath the level of the dashboard.

Well, actually they can’t do those last two. “The Rangers” — we prefer the Voyeurs — are not

x-ray cameras, which are at least a few years off, presumably when speed camera traps will use invisibility cloaks instead of bushes for cover.

With the Voyeur, the police have the discretion to determine that the scrutinised driver is so distracted that they are not properly in control of the vehicle. We can already hear the imperious voiceover for the ad campaign: “We can only guess what you are doing below the waist. And we will. When you drive, it makes you go blind…”

There’s more, naturally. Being distracted, according to police, might also mean applying make-up, or eating in a dangerous manner, although bopping to music and making eye contact with car passengers have not been nominated as possible offences — not yet, anyway. Stand by for an eat-driving campaign.

Perhaps a creep effect explains how the police have garnered such discretionary powers. No one queries breathalysers and blitzes on speedsters and seatbelt use. Speed cameras reversed the legal onus of proof on to the defendant. Most of us accept this, in the wider interest of safety, if sometimes begrudgingly.

For decades, the most traumatic TV viewing has been TAC commercials. A deft touch has been needed to switch the channel before Mark, the drugged bloke with the goofy smile, steps out of the driver’s seat and in front of a passing car. Community “support” for the explicitness of these ads has always been assumed. There has been little scope for an Alfred Hitchcock approach. The film director depicted a lot of terror but not much blood, and he was pretty good at spreading his message. Onscreen violence is harmful, it seems, except when it’s helpful.

Yet education is not enough, apparently. Telling drivers not to use mobile phones will never do, police seem to say, nor will penalising them when they are plainly seen to be doing the wrong thing. Hey, look at our new toys, with which we can study you from 700m, but only for your own good.

It doesn’t seem to matter that Victoria boasts so many petty controls in a country tangled in nonsense regulations. The secrecy and militaristic jargon that envelops traffic policing? Go interstate and overseas and you’ll find it’s an unusually Victorian preoccupation.

Our traffic police regularly speak of the next blitz as though we, the driving public, are all naïfs in our brmm brmms, liable to go dodgem car rogue without the uniformed prefects to monitor us. It stands that we must be patronised, and that we all must be treated as morons.

The police always seek to exploit a nexus between saving lives and each new initiative, even when one does not appear to exist. Sgt Wild, for example, queried research that suggested lives would be saved by driving one or two kilometres slower. He sounded far more convincing than the opposing view.

Some road laws are to safety what synchronised swimming is to sport. It is illegal to hold your phone while in a stationary car, even if the phone is turned off. It is not known how many lives have been saved by this specific clause — let’s be bold here, and suggest zero. But we might speculate that plenty of revenue, given the tenor of grievances expressed by talkback callers last week, and at $433 a pop, has been raised by rigid interpretations.

The Voyeurs add a new layer of detection. As Hill told the Herald Sun: “We don’t actually need to see them (drivers) holding their mobile phone for them to breaching the road rules.”

You may be sitting at lights, head bowed. You could be pondering the price of the designer clothes you’ve just bought. Or wondering how to tell your boss you still can’t use the not-so-new computer system.

Eagle-eyed Constable Pete Paparazzi, perched on a grassy knoll in the distance, mistakes this reverie for the composition of a sneaky text. He makes a guess. It doesn’t matter that he’s wrong. You’ve got to prove he is. Good luck with that.

Police may argue that they will not use the Voyeurs in such ways. The point is that under the law they could. It’s difficult to see how such initiatives will enhance safety or foster goodwill.

For years, penalties have supposed to be about idiot driving. Our roads are safer than ever and we must thank police efforts for this. Yet is the necessary price that the police can intrude upon some of our most private moments, and penalise us for what they think they see, as though we are errant children?

Perhaps the Voyeurs will detect more than the odd dummy spit.

[russellw]

While I am happy that focus is being placed on the use of mobile phones while driving, I am not altogether convinced that this particular method of detection is much better technologically than the ones currently in use which, despite their well documented flaws, are accepted as prima-facie and irrefutable evidence of wrong doing.

Unfortunately we have allowed our legal rights to be undermined by the farce of speed cameras (particularly mobile ones) where the courts accept they are absolute proof and the only defence is the (largely impossible) task of proving that they were incorrectly calibrated or operated. Let's ignore the fact that radar is (at best) inaccurate in terms of pinpointing a particular target or even selecting a target that is in the camera range or the fact that the beam broadens like a cone the further away from the sender it is or that it has a preference for larger / faster moving targets because the legislation is written to wipe out these scientific facts as irrelevant.

I doubt that this will be any better given the involvement of a judgement call as to what represents inattention in the micro second the image is taken.

It's amusing that the police decision makers wonder what is wrong with their public image when they have allowed themselves to be the puppets of various Government revenue raising schemes and I said a long time ago that once the cameras started to have an impact on the average law abiding citizen then the backlash would start and it has.

Without naming names, a certain high profile citizen berated me at some length just after the introduction of the ridiculous 2/3 km/h tolerances in Victoria, loudly proclaiming it a "good thing" to rid our roads of the "hoons and other anti social elements" who endangered others by their recklessness.

Having been caught twice since then during his daily (and no doubt sedate) commute, I recently reminded him of this and asked if he now classed himself as one of those anti social elements to be met with a tirade against the police and Government that is indicative of public opinion today. It may shortly be more socially acceptable to be a banker than it is to be a traffic cop if it isn't already.

Cheers
Russ

[Itsme]

Originally Posted by russellw

While I am happy that focus is being placed on the use of mobile phones while driving, I am not altogether convinced that this particular method of detection is much better technologically than the ones currently in use which, despite their well documented flaws, are accepted as prima-facie and irrefutable evidence of wrong doing.

I disagree on this but you can correct me if I'm wrong but I thought these new high tech cameras are actually manned by police personal which means they will be making decisions at the time of event if some one committed an offense not an automated process where they could trawl through photos at a later date, this surely fits in with actually having a police presence on the roads instead of some fixed automated camera for revenue.

[russellw]

Originally Posted by trublu

I disagree on this but you can correct me if I'm wrong but I thought these new high tech cameras are actually manned by police personal which means they will be making decisions at the time of event if some one committed an offense not an automated process where they could trawl through photos at a later date, this surely fits in with actually having a police presence on the roads instead of some fixed automated camera for revenue.

They will be manned (at least initially) but probably by the same external mob who man the current movable cameras so it doesn't enhance the police presence per se although it will be another roadside device for people to warn each other about along with its cousins the speed camera and the number plate camera.

This is based on the current senior police view that manning such roadside devices is an inefficient use of police resources. (Translated into real English that means they know they are unpopular and wish to disassociate themselves from the exercise as much as possible).

Cheers
Russ

[Lotte]

Originally Posted by trublu

I disagree on this but you can correct me if I'm wrong but I thought these new high tech cameras are actually manned by police personal which means they will be making decisions at the time of event if some one committed an offense not an automated process where they could trawl through photos at a later date, this surely fits in with actually having a police presence on the roads instead of some fixed automated camera for revenue.

They are making decisions at the time of the event yes. What scares me however is they can say you were distracted even if they can't see anything distracting you. So you lean over to turn the AC/heater off/down/up/into a tomato, they decide "AHA! Trying to hide their mobile!" Boom, 4 demerit points and a $400 odd fine for doing something that is neither illegal nor dangerous.
Sure, if the limit was people they could see doing dangerous things like texting or donning the days makeup, but this goes beyond the "guilty till proven innocent" this state has these days, and is now "guilty because I said so, and you can't prove squat."

[Itsme]

Originally Posted by Lotte

They are making decisions at the time of the event yes. What scares me however is they can say you were distracted even if they can't see anything distracting you. So you lean over to turn the AC/heater off/down/up/into a tomato, they decide "AHA! Trying to hide their mobile!" Boom, 4 demerit points and a $400 odd fine for doing something that is neither illegal nor dangerous.
Sure, if the limit was people they could see doing dangerous things like texting or donning the days makeup, but this goes beyond the "guilty till proven innocent" this state has these days, and is now "guilty because I said so, and you can't prove squat."

The photo would have to prove the offense of what you are doing not guessing otherwise would be beaten in a court of law, in other words the photo is the proof of what you actually did.

[Lotte]

Originally Posted by trublu

The photo would have to prove the offense of what you are doing not guessing otherwise would be beaten in a court of law, in other words the photo is the proof of what you actually did.

Read the article? They legitimately say "we have to guess on what some people are really doing, and we'll make that decision".
Sure it can be contested, but with the state's current system of guilty till proven innocent, this could turn into a nightmare. For VicPol, and for drivers.

And face it. All the officer manning the camera has to say is "I saw them using their phone/other distracting device/eating chips dangerously; and by the time the shot was taken, it was no longer in view".

It needs to be better utilised in it's inception. Great idea. However, they're admitting they're gonna **** it up.

[Blem]

I heard them say that they would also target people eating.
I often eat a sandwich while I drive to work.
I do it carefully & stay aware of traffic situations around me.
Fair enough if they wish to stop folk from eating casseroles & the like but getting pinged for eating a vegemite sanga is ridiculous.
& yes I have seen people eating breakfast cereal with a spoon & bowl, others reading a novel on the steering wheel & on the lap.
Target these fools pls.

[Road Games]

LULZ or they wish to make as much money as possible without spending any

[GTMOND]

I would love to say so it's alright for me to talk on the UHF but not on a mobile and see what the response is. But texting is a whole different kettle of fish thats in a league of its own.

[93EB_SXR6]

Does anyone know if they will fine drivers for smoking a cigarette while driving?