By Andy McCue, 9 February 2004 15:10
NEWS Satellite navigation data from private and commercial vehicles is to be used by the government to improve congestion monitoring and planning.
The Department for Transport (DfT) has signed a deal worth £3.25m over three years with traffic-information company ITIS for satellite data from GPS systems in 50,000 vehicles.
Current data, along with records going back to 2001, will be made immediately available and the DfT will provide it free of charge to the Highways Agency, Transport Direct and local authorities.
The government claims the data will dramatically improve congestion monitoring, especially in urban areas where it will be used to identify congestion hot spots and as the basis for planning and managing the flow of traffic on the England's roads.
The thought of the government having access to private vehicle-monitoring information is likely to raise privacy concerns but the DfT said the scheme complies with the Data Protection Act.
"The data is anonymised," a DfT spokesman told silicon.com. "No information made available from ITIS will make it possible to identity the vehicle or the person."
He said the information sold on by ITIS only comes from those who initially indicated they were happy to have the data made available to third parties.
Data-protection watchdog the Information Commission also confirmed that anonymity is key to complying with the law.
"If there is no way of tracking back that information to an individual, then it is not an issue," an IC spokesman said.
Comments
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1. Wilson
Scotland and Wales will not benefit from this data then, if the author's comments about "..managing the flow of traffic on England's roads." is correct.
Or is this again and example of another geographically challenged journalists confusing England and Britain?
[Ed. As stated, this is an England-only scheme. For now.]
2. Darrall Pullen
Once again the Government should us how well they can waste our tax payers money. How can data from 50,000 vehicles improve congestion. 50K is not going to be a representation of anything like the state of our roads. Tell you what pay me 3.24 million(discount for cash) over the next 5 years and I will tell you where the hotspots are. In fact I can tell you now and I bet its the same in 3 years time, M6, M1, M25, M4, M# .......Surely a subscription to trafficmaster would prove more beneficial?
3. Adrian Montagu
I can save the Government millions and tell them where the traffic hotspots are. They are ALL OVER BRITAIN! We need money spending on roads not spy systems. We have the most congested roads in the world yet we ignore the need for improvements and expansion. All the major civilisations in the world had good communications. We are hampering any future growth by clogging our arteries of connectivity. Stop spending money on wasteful products.
Here are some lost cost solutions in the meantime.
1. Force regular road transport to use the railways as it is done in Germany.
2. Start restricting trucks from overtaking on slow inclines - the trucks take several miles to pass each other and cause backups for even greater distances.
3. Put up some signs that tell drivers to pull over to the inside lane instead of sitting in the middle and outside lanes.
4. Transfer road tax to fuel. The people who use the roads most pay the most. Its the fairest way of paying for the use of the roads. Trucks will then pay the real cost of the damage that they do to the roads.
Introduce driving tests for those who have been convicted of dangerous or carless driving as a mandatory sentence.
4. Steve Watkins
I personally do not believe for one second that the Government will only use this information to indentify 'congestion hot spots'. The real reason is to be able to track who is going where, or more precisely which car is going where. The object of doing this is twofold: (1) so as to spy on people more effectively and (2) so as to introduce a new road pricing tax.
This new money will be used to (a) finance inflated pensions and salaries for existing civil service jobsworths and bloated politicians, and (b) to finance yet more research as to how to enslave the people of this coountry. One thing this proposal will NOT do and that is to enable ordinary motorists to identify and avoid congestion points. That is NOT the object of this scheme. It is already possible to display congestion information to road users but all that one ever sees (and ALWAYS after passing a critical junction) is the vague phrase "congestion between junctions x and y", and how often is THAT information accurate?
5. Simon Lord
Left hand - Right hand? Does the Government know that from 2008 it is planning to track [by satellite and GPS or GSM and GPS]all heavy commercial vehicles so that they pay tax on a mileage basis?
6. Ian Sargent
As the fiiiting of GPS is not found equally amongst all types of vehicles and all types of road user the sample being tracked is going to be unrepresentative of overall traffic flow.
Consequently the data being provided will only show where certain types of road users go - which is not a good starting point for identifying congestion.
7. Mark Thurman
If you dont believe the govenment on life and death issues such as WMD and the '45 mins' debacle why should anyone believe them about this. Once a system is in place that can track cars from A-B and match this to a time, then you need never pass a speed camera in order to be convicted of speeding. Big Brother will always be watching.
8. Zahid Tanvir
And we are suposed to be living in a democracy - again it shows how the dictatorship works in the UK - where will this lead ? I remember the affirmative parking in High Wycombe for the town centre only - Now it has become big business and they are like hawks who live on the outskirts as well as the centres- Dont be fooled by these tactics
9. Nick Garner
I whole heartedly agree with Steve Watkins ... this is simply another instrument for the authorities to use & abuse in the same way as CCTV. The latter was "sold" to the public for the sole purpose of monitoring & combating street crime. This has not happened in Croydon as far as I'm aware. Far from it, recent statistics published in the Evening Standard indicate crime in the borough has actually increased - as I suggest have revenues from all manor of CCTV monitored motoring "offences".
Do not believe for a second this data will be used for the public good.
10. Paul
This would make fascinating reading for the public although having worked in this area myself I suspect we shal be given the "appropriate" statistics rather than the actual details. Imagine what would happen if the public could see how effective the policy of replacing roundabouts with traffic lights actually was, instead of hearing bleats about the weight (or more likely "wait") of traffic.
11. Hugh McLaren
If the government intends to use this to spy on us, then why are they only monitoring 50,000 vehicles out of the estimated 20 million-odd on the road? Just think, for every one car you can track there's another 399 you have no idea about. Not much use for mass surveillance: imagine if the CCTV cameras on your office car park only worked one day a year. You wouldn't bother.
In any case, the data that is being collected is from vehicles that have logging equipment fitted. The owners of these vehicles will know that they have dataloggers installed. Legally, the drivers of these vehicles should be made aware that their journeys are logged - failure to do so could expose the owner to legal action under the Human Rights Act.
"Satellite tracking" is perhaps a misnomer, as it implies that the satellites are remotely watching you: better to think of it in terms of 'automated position logging'. It just happens that the position is derived based on the relative distance between you and several satellites whizzing overhead. That's it. None of this 'government spy satellite' rubbish.
I agree that the accuracy and validity of this data is probably questionable due to the small sample size and non-random selection. However, the only other options would seem to be to either (a) conduct more intrusive surveillance, (b) guess or (c) do nothing. If you were told that the road at the end of your garden was to be upgraded to a 3 lane motorway based on nothing more than informed guesswork, you'd be pretty peeved. Likewise, if you were told that your town wouldn't get a bypass because there was no evidence available to show it was needed, you might find this a tad annoying.
As for this being a waste of money, I think £3.5m for 3 years of data (that's about £1.2m pa.) is an absolute bargain. That's pocket change to a large department like the DFT.
12. Robert Young
Ha Ha Ha.
There is a nice passage in "1984! about the consequences of the "two-way telecreeen", a device which allowed everything within range of the screen to be seens and heard back at the ranch, as it were.
Send your mobiles to Uncle Tony and say you don't want them, thanks.
Rob.Y
13. anonymous
Humm! The anti-terrorest act overides the data protection act? so even if you tick the box you can be scanned.
14. anonymous
An RFID solution.
If the government was serious about tracking vehicles on the road then the use of RFID tags would be the way to go.
Number Plate with solar pannel - RFID enabled
Road Tax disk - RFID enabled.
MOT certificate - RFID enabled.
Driving Licence - RFID enabled. replaced after 5 years.
Insurance Certificate - RFID enabled.
Scanners along the road pick up the RFID tags, analysise them for conformity, instant notice for none conformity.
Scanners at the entrance to Motorways, dual carriage ways, your town or district with digital cameras to capture the offenders.
Police cars with mobile scanners and traffic wardens with GPS enabled scanners to nobble us for parking tickets.
Visiting cars from abroad must collect a RFID tag at the point of entry so that they can pay speeding fines and parking tickets before exiting the country.
The government has a long way to go before 'Big Brother' realy kicks in, but the technology is there, just a question of when.
15. Ruth M
There appears to be quite a large amount of opposition to the proposed scanning. Well, the cure is in our own hands - vote this government out ASAP.
16. Henry Horbs
Vehicle tracking of company vehicles improves company productivity and increases driver security. There are only three gprs systems in the UK the best of which is called Navman. Since installing this system on my fleet my costs have fall by 35% and surprisingly to me, my drivers think the system is wonderful!
It is going to come to all soon.