Anachostic

There’s a lot of people that are really paranoid, scared, and angry about “the police state”, government surveillance, and loss of privacy.  I’m sort of in that group, but not really at the level some people are at.  There are other people who just sit back, point their finger and say, “Hey, you asked for it.”  These people are referring to technology like GPS, cookie tracking, integrated Facebook everywhere (that goddamn Like button on every web page that tells FB you’ve been on that page without you doing anything), and more recently, bullshit always-on microphones like on Alexa, Google Home, and Apple Home.

Those are all personal privacy invasions, and they are all opt-in.  You have to buy the devices that snoop on you.  You have to visit the websites that track you.  The other level of privacy invasion is at the societal level.  Things like security cameras, traffic cams, EZ Pass in your car, GPS on your phone.  Things that monitor and track you while you are in public.  At no point did anyone really opt-in to being monitored while in public.

Advocates will argue that these systems provide a great improvement in public safety (albeit reactive and not really proactive).  Detractors will say it’s not worth it to be watched all the time for the rare case something bad happens.  And the finger-pointing starts – If you’re not doing anything wrong, why are you opposed to it.  So, security by this means is naturally controversial.

And with that lead-in and disclaimer that I understand what I’m going to get into, I’m going to propose more surveillance.  And it’s for a very specific police use that would piss off some people.  But you know what?  I don’t fucking care, because you people need to be shut the fuck down.

Have you ever seen a video of a car fleeing the police on a highway, flying through traffic, weaving in and out of the other cars?  Of course you have.  That is what it is like driving to and from work every day for me.  That is every fucking day.  Every day, there are people who drive 15-20+ miles an hour faster than others and cut in and out between 3 and 4 lanes of traffic.  I am sick to fucking death of these people.  This needs to fucking stop.

These assholes cause trouble for everyone else in multiple ways.  The most obvious is that they could wreck into someone and kill themselves (boo hoo) or others.  And when wrecks happen, we all lose.  Traffic comes to a crawl or a standstill.  Do the goddamn math sometime you are in a traffic jam.  Count how many cars you see, measure how much time you are losing on your drive and multiply that by an average wage to see how much money is being lost sitting in traffic that didn’t need to happen at all if people didn’t drive like fuckasses.

There are not enough officers on the road to enforce better driving practices and even when they do enforce them, the fuckasses still ruin it for everyone, because we all have to slow down for emergency vehicles.  An asshole gets pulled over and we all pay for it.  But another issue is that an officer on the side of the road monitoring traffic may not be able to spot a fuckass.  The officers only have a limited view and even if they are running radar, they may or may not catch the driver when they are embedded somewhere in 3-4 lanes of traffic.  So this leads me to my solution.  Aerial surveillance.

Leave some quadcoptors hovering over the highway where they can monitor traffic at a greater level.  You can spot drivers that are weaving through traffic and generally being unsafe.  This is something you can’t do at ground level.  Once a car is spotted behaving erratically or unsafely, a trooper can be dispatched to intercept.  Or it could be handled later.  Record the video and address it in person at their house.

It doesn’t even have to be speeding.  I came up with a formula to calculate a driver’s assholosity based on speed and number of lanes changes per mile.  This targeting could almost be completely automated with machine learning (formerly known as AI).

Does this sound invasive?  I don’t fucking care if you think it is.  This is a problem that affects all highways drivers in both safety and financial aspects.  And while the problem is chronic, it isn’t widespread.  The few are ruining it for the many, and we shouldn’t have to live that way.  There’s a lot of that shit going on right now and I’m pretty well sick of it.