Would your driving habits change if tickets could be generated automatically via GPS?

If that were installed, I would want a GPS enabled speed governor.

Yes.

And a couple of current real-world items.

1)
You can buy insurance that comes with a tracking device. Driving carefully earns you a lower rate.

2)
We have lots of red light cameras in my city. I got caught twice. The ticket included a link to online video of the infraction. I stopped running red lights.

And not just me – a red light used to mean “four more cars!” Now most drivers behave better.

It would not affect me at all. I always stay within the speed limit. I allow plenty of time to get to wherever I’m going, so I don’t need to hurry. I let the other guy go first. I find that I’m much more relaxed this way, and my stress level and blood pressure stay low.

If they put that in cars I’ll be riding a bike.

How could one enforce that it was used by everyone??
And if it was than I would want what @zenvelo I too would want the vehicle speed governed.

I don’t speed so I have no bad driving habits to change.

No

Ugh. This sounds just dreadful. I once got a ticket going to fast through an area I almost never speed but the car next to me kept riding right next to me. My choice was slow way down or speed up, and I sped up. If a cop had been following me I doubt I would have been ticketed, but since it was a speed trap I got unlucky.
My husband once got a ticket in a similar situation. He almost never breaks the speed limit when we pull our trailer. He is very aware the vehicle is less agile when pulling so much. He once got a ticket slowing down for a construction zone. He was slowing down, but not quite fast enough, he didn’t want to brake, he was just slowing by releasing the gas, and a speed trap got him. He had been driving the speed limit the whole trip, and is obedient to slow speed warnings on ramps, etc. He has to be or I freak out LOL.

Screw that. Those cameras at red lights cause more accidents than they prevent. Fact. Although, from what I understand there are fewer deadly accidents.

Growing up I was told the horizontal lines on the highways were marks for the helicopters to ticket you for speeding. I don’t know if that is true.

To answer the Q directly, probably yes some of my driving would change, but not significantly. I drive close to the speed limit anyway. I think I would be a worse driver being paranoid about my speed constantly.

The Sixth Amendment means that it’d be hard to get this in the US except on a voluntary basis as some insurance companies do. In fact, at least one rental car company who did the GPS speed limit enforcement on it’s cars ran afoul of consumer protection laws, and I could probably find more such cases int eh ACLU and/or EFF archives if I looked.

Of course, speed limits have a dramatic effect on revenue generation, sometimes by making speed enforcement so onerous that the courts step in to protect society from the police and their sub-contractors. Yes, in many places, speed cameras are run not by the police, but by a third party private contractor who gets a cut from every citation.

As one who believes that not impeding the flow of traffic takes precedence over the speed limit as forcing motorists to evade you creates more of a hazard than everyone speeding in an orderly flow (Yes, @jonsblond and @2davidc8 are more likely to cause an accident than I am!), I think that it’d be pretty stupid anyways. The link between speed and safety is not what people think anyways, though I doubt anyone who thinks otherwise would care no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary.

So I would still drive mostly the same; the only difference is whether or not I carry enough EW gear to get busted by the FCC.

@jerv (Yes, @jonsblond and @2davidc8 are more likely to cause an accident than I am!),

Not where I live. We don’t even have a stop light in our little town. Once outside of town we only have two-lane country roads. I will drive 5 miles over the speed limit because that is allowed by the local police and county (and that is the flow of traffic around here). You need to remember that everyone’s experiences and customs are not the same as yours. If I were to live in a city where everyone drives fast I would drive with the flow of traffic and what is allowed by local police, but I would not drive any faster than that. Just as I do where I live. I drive safely. The people who drive faster than the flow of traffic where I live are the ones who take risks and cause accidents.

The Sixth Amendment means that it’d be hard to get this in the US

If that were true, we would have no ticketing cameras.

The civil fines from a red light or speeding camera are different from the ticket a cop can give you.

“You need to remember that everyone’s experiences and customs are not the same as yours.”

Precisely so, and I think you would do well to remember that yourself.

Basically, my entire life has been fast highways, slow back roads and side streets, and (during the 30+ years I was in New England) a near-total disregard for weather conditions. I’ve been in a mix of environments, ranging from “in the boonies” where my commute involved a mile of mud bogging to the heart of major urban sprawls and everything in between, yet all of them have been (or are) pretty much the same. You just can’t get on the major highways safely if you’re only doing 5-over unless the weather is bad… and if you’re in VT, not even then. (Unlike flatlanders, most people from VT and NH are so used to snow, ice, and fog that we barely register it’s presence unless it’s bad enough to mobilize the National Guard, like that one in Dec 2008.)

Would I be correct in assuming that your experience is different from how it is in any of the four corners of the US? Can you see how I might have the opinion that you’d probably cause issues the highways in any area where I have ever lived in light of the fact that rural Illinois is not like any of the many places where I’ve lived? More importantly, can you respect the fact that my experiences (and thus, any opinions based on them) are not only different from your’s, but as near as I can tell almost completely opposite in many ways?

All I did was point out that that’s not how it’s been anywhere I’ve lived. I didn’t say that you were wrong, merely different in a way that would cause issues in places where things are done differently from your little town in a totally different part of the country from any of the four corners that I have at some point called “home”.

Is having it pointed out that you are not the same as me so offensive to you that you light up my inbox? If so, then I am more confused as I would think that you would consider being distanced from me like that, having it pointed out that we are almost nothing alike, would be something you would appreciate.

@jaytkay I never said it was impossible, only that it would face some non-trivial legal hurdles. The cameras are banned in enough states (and countries) and restricted in enough other locations that I stand by my words. And a fair number of those tickets get overturned anyways.

@SQUEEKY2 How could one enforce that it was used by everyone??
If you are stopped by an actual cop or highway patrolman or one of those random sobriety stops and did not have one, it would be a super Buck Rodgers fine.

@Hypocrisy_Central Given that I doubt the average patrol officer has enough electronics knowledge to qualify as an expert, I think it’s valid to question how they could tell you didn’t have one.

Then again, I might just be a little more devious and creative than some people.

@jerv I think it’s valid to question how they could tell you didn’t have one.
Like not having auto insurance, or a driver’s license, etc. they will not know you did not have one until it manifested itself once the driver was involved in a traffic stop, such as if the cop stopped the driver for speeding or at a sobriety checkpoint.

@Hypocrisy_Central Not quite that simple. See, a license or proof of insurance is something that is easily accessible, and totally visible. How obvious is OnStar though? Not very obvious at all, though even that is far more obvious than a tracking unit would be. Most electronics are pretty small and they are often hidden. Have you ever seen the ECU in your car? Do you even know where it is? (Hint – some cars have them in different places while older cars don’t have one at all.)

Assuming it’s actually accessible, how would you verify it’s functional? Now, how would someone with little/no knowledge of technology do it? And what is to stop someone from spoofing it? A few seconds on the radio can verify a license or insurance policy, but it’s not so easy to determine whether a hidden device is working properly. You could try making it obvious, but that’d cause other issues… and make it easier to tamper with in ways that make it appear functional when it isn’t.

@jerv Most electronics are pretty small and they are often hidden. Have you ever seen the ECU in your car? Do you even know where it is? (Hint – some cars have them in different places while older cars don’t have one at all.) Most electronics are pretty small and they are often hidden. Have you ever seen the ECU in your car? Do you even know where it is? (Hint – some cars have them in different places while older cars don’t have one at all.)
One doesn’t have to know where the ECU, or ECM is for it to work. And with most modern vehicles there is a port you can plug a hand held analyzer or error code reader into to check what works, and what doesn’t. Since it is the GPS working with what satellite system that will catch you, seeing it doesn’t matter. Now, if you are pulled over and you have no visible GPS, it would be on you to prove you had a working on, if it is in the dash, it would simply be to activate it and it should show where you are, thus satisfying that it works. If it is internal and has no screen just a voice telling you where you are, I would suspect they would anticipate that and have some analyzer that can be plugged into the Onstar or similar device or into the vehicle’s system to check if it works, (those smart boys from MIT I am sure would figure the details).

Now, how would someone with little/no knowledge of technology do it?
Like tasers, I am sure they would not be let loose without knowing how it works or what to do. If anything, they just have to be smart enough to work the reader those smart boys from MIT come up with to detect if the unit works or not.

A few seconds on the radio can verify a license or insurance policy, but it’s not so easy to determine whether a hidden device is working properly.
Again, that will be up to what testing apparatus those smart guys from MIT will develop to check functionality and that it was not tampered with.

There are a few good points there, no doubt

1) That would mean cars older than 1996 would be fucked. Either government would replace them at substantial cost, raising taxes to the point of revolution, or cops would be taking cars.. and getting in shootouts. In fact, there would be a nice black market in cars like mine.

2) Cops abuse tasers often enough that that’s not helping your case. And those MIT guys will be matching wits with people just as brilliant.

3) And what the MIT guys wearing black hats do to spoof the detectors.

In all three cases, you seem to assume that there aren’t some big brains on the other side.

^ 1) That would mean cars older than 1996 would be fucked.
They would be required to have an aftermarket GPS similar to one you can buy today, it will just have the technology in it that can tell if you were over the limit then forward the information to the highway patrol, or whoever will issue the tickets.

And those MIT guys will be matching wits with people just as brilliant.
As you say, lots of people do not eve n k now if their vehicle has an ECM or even where it is at, much less the spark plugs, of knock sensor, those as smart as those guys at MIT will be very, very small, not enough to thwart the program.

In all three cases, you seem to assume that there aren’t some big brains on the other side.
It won’t be perfect; some people will get over and cheat, maybe for quite a while. Like those people who steal, cable, more than not always get caught sooner or later. Those who do get caught, when they spend a few years paying off that Buck Rodgers fine, others will think hard before they risk getting caught cheating.

1) They cannot require a damn thing! They can try…

2) True, but there enough people who know people like me that it could be fun. And if someone of such a mindset decided to commercialize their illicit skills….
FYI, “blue boxes” were popular among people who didn’t actually know how they worked; they weren’t just for phone phereaks.

3) More likely things will go the way they did in late-18th-century France or 1989 Romania. Things are already tense, so when you take what many people consider both a right and a necessity and attempt to infringe on it, it rarely ends well. It may end in failed legislature, or it may end in violence, but it won’t end in widespread compliance.

Well, it looks like Ford is already doing it in the UK – Source

Of course, the laws there are a bit different. Also, they have something that the US lacks; effective mass transit.