Imagine you're caught speeding and a police car signals for you to stop. You sit quietly in your car, until there's a knock at the window. It's a green man with three heads and some yellow dribble coming from one of his noses.
Oh, I know I'm exaggerating a little. I blame that on the world's excitement that we might now know what the iPhone 4G will look like. Well, there's also the delightful fact that new speed cameras, ones that connect to satellites in outer space, are being tested on the roads of the United Kingdom.
According to the BBC, the peeps at PIPS Technology, heretofore known as developing fine license plate recognition systems, have turned more than a head or two toward creating a new system that will couple their existing amusements with an ability to track your average speed over long distances.
The new SpeedSpike system connects to GPS satellites that clearly have nothing better to do than help your local council discover whether you have just slipped down a motorway at an average of 74 mph rather than the stipulated 70. And I say "motorway" because PIPS is testing its imaginative system in the U.K.
As I understand it, some funster at PIPS worked out that if you could photograph someone's license plate at points A and B, you could work out how quickly they got from A to B and therefore what their average speed might, indeed, have been.
So motorists on two lucky stretches of road--one in Southwark, South London (nice cathedral, otherwise dreary), the other on the A374 in Cornwall, at the very bottom left of England (perhaps someone at PIPS has a country house down there)--are to be the first to enjoy that feeling of being watched from a completely new angle.… Read more
