BashLogic
looking at he pic of the system.. i cant help it.. i must say it out loud.. it looks so primitive!
and dont get me wrong with this, but you would expect an officer to be at least dual lingual or trilingual, hence, should be able to work with an english or french user interface. imagine on the excess price tag cost of the system just to have the user interface be in arabic while on the other hand you are paying for the traffic police staff to communicate beyond just arabic! the controversy.. the headache.. argh...
Raficoo
I agree to mapping the radars, since there are a lot more rules broken on the highway than just speed, and what I see the police believe is that since now they have these new speed radars, they can simply relax and not lift a finger. What about the people disobeying the law by not wearing their seat belts?, or the ones overtaking like crazy below the 100Km/h mark? What about the drivers who have not maintained their vehicles for several years thus decreasing their car's safety and performance mark, thus increasing the chances of an accident regardless of the speed. What about the people who ALWAYS stop across the white line at Red lights? what about the ones who drive into street ends just to get there faster? what about the ones who make a U-turn at a red light when there's clearly a "No U-turns" sign and the police is right there starring for nothing? What about the people that drive at night with very dim-unchecked lights? What about the people who like taking double Lanes? what about intoxicated/ drug-consuming people that take to the roads? who will stop them on the highway? no, not the cops, "The Cameras!". Yes, they can relax while the cameras produce a big juicy profit for them to relax even more.
As you can see, the discussion is too wide and includes politics, which I believe we should avoid here :/
Please, can we keep the subject without opinion and turning it to the "who's right, who's wrong" debate :(
Let's just do this as an educational project :)
xterm
arithma wroteIf we didn't break the rules or bend them, someone else will. If we do, we're hardening the system so that it evolves to become better. No bad can come from this.
Everyone in Lebanon breaks or bends the rules. As geeks shouldn't we harden the system by figuring out flaws or gaps where the system fails, rather than map every single radar and have it available for anyone who registers here for free?
xterm
P.S: an alternative project is building the radar detector itself, that's more educational.
BashLogic
i thing this thread has gone of track, the intention of this track was to find those who are interested and willing to pitch in on setting up something. for once we have an intersting topic that stimulates members to collaborate and develop something just for funs sake. others have taken the initiative to philosophize on the subject.
i am not saying that you shouldnt or anything of the sort, on the contrary, please do contribute your thoughts, but lets be a bit constructive in this thread as to sticking to the subject, hence collaborate on development, not questioning and criticizing, one way to look at this, is where people and devide themselves into groups and each proposes a "whole solution" by the end of the week as to what such a solution should include and how it would be implemented (tools, technology, etc). even better if you could add an estimate of how many man/work/hours it would take to have your version of the solution implemented.
as for those who what to contribute by debating on the subject, please spinoff another thread and let this stick to the subject.
common, lets see something fruitfull come out of this, not necessarily as a full implementation, but as a same contribution and geeky effort as has been going on with the "programming and math challenge" threads that have been running for a while now.
it has been at least fun for me to read your code implementation and interpretation of possible solutions to these brain buzzers... some of the stuff makes me feel real stupid which contrary to normal reaction, i do not hide my tail and run away, on the contrary, i would wiggle it with eagerness to see more of the constructive work, the stuff that yields fruitfulness... ( gosh.. now look who is being philosophical :P )
/me takes out his baseball bat and scans arround for that someone who wants me to take a swing at!!!
Georges
@raficoo:
You're Absolutely right my friend. But unfortunately, things won't work this way here in Lebanon. If you want to achieve all this, you have to start step by step.
The first step was these new speed radars. And hopefully, later on, more rules will be set.
As for the technologies that are currently used, it seems from the pictures you mentioned earlier that they're pretty old and obsolete. But if they do the job, why not using them in the early stages until more money is available to purchase newer/better equipments.
Also, regarding radar detectors, I've seen plenty of them in the States too. And they're extremely efficient. And i'm 100% sure that in the next few weeks, such devices will be widely available here in Lebanon. (if they're not already available on the shelfs of the stores)
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Back to the main point of mapping those speed radars, i have a question:
How many users will be really using such a map?. Personally, i won't. If it will be an online based map, very few number of people will access it.
Furthermore, the idea of using Google maps to submit discovered radars is great (refer to what bashlogic suggested). But how to verify the correctness of the submitted radar locations ?
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EDIT:
If this project sees the light, i'll contribute by building an iPhone/iPad application with Google Maps support...
@BashLogic: Happy now :P
samer
George, users would be able to vote up or down. The more upvotes (and less downvotes) the more confidence the node has.
For people that are against this. The point of the radar is to get you to slow down, using this tool you would still slow down so the desired effect is achieved. Lebanon is so small that you will end up knowing where the radars are anyway, so why not have a memory aid?
Georges
samer wroteGeorge, users would be able to vote up or down. The more upvotes (and less downvotes) the more confidence the node has.
This could be implemented, it's a bit more difficult. :P
samer
The question is, should we go with something like
Trapster, which already has mobile apps and a web implementation or do something on our own (that we could perhaps couple with OpenStreetMaps)?
kareem_nasser
We Lebanese are "smart" in an evil way so we will use Trapster for disobeying the law. Otherwise it is a great idea if we want to use it so that we avoid paying the fine or getting caught.
Padre
i would go for our own system ... this way we can really model it the way we want and tweak it.
I'll see if my old wireless mapping hardware is still function and see if i can tweak it to work for radars. but honestly im too busy tailoring a Hawaiian shirt for my troll :P
Bassem
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edgelord101
Is it true? Did they install radars in the city now?
Bassem
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jsaade
The locations are all already available :)
Bassem
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vegetaleb
They should change the stup*d speed limits signs on some roads where you pass from 80 to 40 in about 20 meters!!!
50 is too slow for many roads in Beirut,it should be 60 instead,some roads like ''tole3t Alexandre'' in Achrafieh is limited to 20!!
Geez who is this ugly fat guy who decided of those speeds???
Also in the new European laws the police is obliged to put indications that fixed radars are in the area, so the whole ''coucou I got ya'' thing is not welcomed anymore in civilised countries
mesa177
I'm totally against mapping the radars, but I'm in on building the radar detector as an educational project
I also checked the mobile anti-speeding devices, and yes I don't think they're up to date... But that's not a downer, instead we can develop our own anti-speeding device that not only pictures the front or back of the car with the license plate within view but also analyzes it (automated license plate detection and segmentation). Yeah, I know, it only takes a few seconds to look to the picture and recognize the license plate's number, but what if we developed a system that not only automatically recognizes the license plate but automatically issues a citation too (don't give me the usual routine "let the cops do their job" and "stop pamepring them", it's a project that we can do together). I actually did the automated license plate detection and segmentation, in Matlab but it would be very interesting to see if someone can turn the code into another language, and the algorithm adopted (taken from an IEEE paper with adding slant correction) has some limitations. It would be great if we can collaborate and improve the algorithm as well.
And then we'll test if the radar detector works against our developed anti-speeding detecting system.
saeidw
mesa177 wroteI'm totally against mapping the radars, but I'm in on building the radar detector as an educational project
...
And then we'll test if the radar detector works against our developed anti-speeding detecting system.
That may just be the most awesome post I've ever read!
What paper did you use to develop the software? I'm interested in the algorithm.
Bassem
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