[What a bizarre result. I always thought the purpose of having a government was to protect our rights by keeping our person and property safe from miscreants. Now it turns out that government officials make us labor half the year just to pay their salaries (Ontario's tax freedom day is close to July 1) and use the money expropriated from us to invent new ways to prevent us from making use of our property (in this case, our cars) as we see fit. Delightful! --Declan] -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Accelerating out of danger impossible/illegal? Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 00:04:19 -0800 From: Stephen Cobb, CISSP <scobb@private> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> References: <438BAD28.2050803@private> Declan According to the Globe & Mail, "Transport Canada is road-testing cutting-edge devices that use global positioning satellite technology and a digital speed-limit map to know when a driver is speeding, and to try to make them stop. When a driver hits a certain percentage above the posted speed limit, the device kicks in and makes it difficult to press the accelerator." http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20051128/SMARTCARS28/TPTechnology/ The first thought that came to mind when I read this was the way that pressing the accelerator saved my butt a few weeks ago when a driver ran a stop light and nearly t-boned me. I chose to put the pedal to the metal to avoid disaster because the road ahead was clear and I braking less likely to keep me from being hit. Now imagine the government preventing me from doing that, or rushing my wife to the hospital in an emergency, or out-running rising flood waters, and so on and so forth. Hopefully legitimate uses of the accelerator will be compiled to convince brain-dead safety-niks that this idea is just plain dumb. Stephen _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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