Roughstuff

Wait Randya...a gps system in your butt would be a GREAT idea. Every time ya took a dump you'd pay a tax for waste disposal; every flush you could pay a tax for water useage, and every time ya fart ya pay a tax for greenhouse gas release.



Smiley added for the clueless who can't tell a jest....<sigh>


roughstuff

HoustonB

Are you incapable of staying on-topic?

HoustonB

How ironic. If your waste water goes into a city sewer, which is probably the case for more than 90% of the people posting here on BikeForums then you are almost certainly paying tax for each flush.

Also, can you please explain how your post is germane to this thread?

I-Like-To-Bike

Perhaps you can explain how this thread or any other sock-it-to-the-evil-cager thread is germane to bicycling advocacy or bicycling safety.

Alpha52

Jeez. lighten up a little. You obviously don't like a little "tongue-in-cheek" humor.

Let me get this straight....your comfortable with the state and Federal government being able to know all of your movements and keep records of those movements with a GPS device in order to tax you? For the record, I think it is nuts, and I am opposed to it. Look at the last 100 years of world history, and then convince me that being tracked and controlled by any form of government is a good idea.

Unlike you, I do respect your right to an opposing opinion!

Wise-ass...probably true. Ignorant...no.

invisiblehand

Isn't that a big percentage difference?

I am not involved in commerical trucking nor a business that relies on trucks, so I am just speculating, but for anything travelling a lot of miles it would seem that a 25% difference would be pretty meaningful.

Diesels produce more horsepower?

Alpha52

Topic...being tracked by the government with a GPS!

HoustonB

From the first paragraph of the original post:
If cyclists are taxed for the wear and tear caused to infrastructure then I believe it will remove the moronic argument from "evil-cagers" (your words) that we are getting a free ride. Thus reinforcing the legitimacy of cyclists on the road as opposed to the sidewalk where a substantial number of motorists seem to believe we belong.

Do you also need me to spoon feed you the link between having a place on the road that is generally accepted as legitimate and advocacy?

And of course, if it is generally accepted that we belong on the road, then motorists have no choice but to accept their true responsibility for the safety of all other road users including cyclists.

Alpha52

Typical of the far left....you don't agree with my liberal views, so you are a deluded, ignorant, simple-minded, wrongheaded Libertarian.

Sorry, just a right leaning Constitutionalists who is tired of being taxed to death and having my Constitutional rights taken away one-by-one. I subscribe to the old American freedom of speech ethic where everyone can express his or her opinion without fear of reprisal, insult or getting ripped a new one.

Once more for the record, I will always be 100% opposed to any government official tracking me and taxing me with ANY technology!

You dare me? Too funny. Who needs P & S? This forum is fun enough for me.

zeytoun

Freedom of speech means that people are free to insult you afterward for what you say. Duh.

HoustonB

Perhaps you have either not looked at the proposition (links in my second post on this thread), or you do not believe that it is possible to have a benign GPS device in a car.

Lets see if I can explain it in a way that you might understand. Early satellites were low powered and receiving dishes on the ground needed to be quite big, not quite the Aracibo Dish but still big, you still see these old dishes occasionally. With more powerful satellites and improved technology for the receivers, the receiving dishes could be smaller. With GPS devices the receiver is built into the device. In order for the GPS device to communicate back to the satellite it would need a dish that would not be good for the aerodynamics of the car and also a way for the dish to actively stay pointed exactly at the satellite. And oh wait, the GPS satellites were never built to handle the real-time reporting of positions of 200 odd million motor vehicles.

Of course you might argue that the in-car GPS device could send information back to the man using the cell phone networks, that's all well and good, if all the vendors hand over a substantial amount of bandwidth and all roads have cellular coverage.

So your fears actually have no basis in reality, unless of course you bought a cell phone with a built in GPS.

The benefit of a GPS based system over an odometer based system, is that the GPS can differentiate between in-state and out-of-state mileage, on road and off road, private road and public highway, and also time of day. Different roads at different times of day can be charged at different rates. Charges associated with use of toll roads and toll bridges, could be paid at the next visit to a gas station. Information about congestion due to accidents, road works, rush hour, flooding, mud slides, etc. could be fed to motorists to prevent unnecessary delays.

It is not the infringement of your liberties that you perceive it to be.

dougmc

Doesn't have to be very much bandwidth. Cell phone networks are digital nowadays, and so it's quite efficient to transfer digital data. A whole day's worth of car driving data (where, how fast for every few seconds) could be stored in a few megabytes, which could be uploaded using the bandwidth of a minute or two cell phone call. And they might need a lot less data than that. And of course the GPS would be able to store days worth of data and upload it all at once if you were out of range of a cell phone network. Sure, on a per car basis it's not much, but for all cars it becomes significant -- true. But it's still only a small fraction of what the cell phone networks already do, and the benefits are substantial. That won't be what stops it.
Well, even cell phones without any GPS can be located relatively accurately by the cell phone company. They just look and see which towers you're hitting and what the signal strength is. I don't know how accurate this is, but within a quarter mile seems likely.
The devil is in the details. Once the government has a database of where you were within 10 feet for the last few years up until a few minutes ago, they're going to want to look at it. The laws may say they can't look at it without a warrant, but 1) getting a warrant probably isn't difficult and 2) past experience has shown that they'll even skip that step with impunity. The cell phone company probably already has this data on you (if you have a cell phone and it's turned on) but with less precision, so it's probably not that different than now. And it could be much worse -- perhaps they could turn your car off remotely if you haven't paid your GPS bill? Or if you have a warrant out for your arrest? Onstar has already been used to secretly listen to conversations inside a car by the government.

Of course, the Constitution/Bill of Rights doesn't explicitly say `right to privacy' or `right to not have the government know where you are at all times', so if you define liberties carefully enough then yes, it won't infringe upon them.

randya

your credibility grows with every post you make here

Dchiefransom

GPS for motor vehicles, GPS for cyclists, GPS for pedestrians. Equality for everyone.

wahoonc

Actually diesels produce more torque not as much horsepower. In city stop and go driving gas and diesel are fairly evenly matched in the mileage department, once they get on the highway the diesel wins hands down for mileage and longevity.

Aaron

randya

I really don't see what the problem is, if you don't want the gov't to track your movements by GPS, don't drive a car, it's really that simple.

I-Like-To-Bike

Yeah sure, and if you don't want your phone tapped, don't use it. Don't wan't your mail read by snoopers? don't use the mail system. Don't want "investigators" checking into your personal private behavior because such conduct might offend somebody's moral code? Straighten up and stop doing those nasty things!

No problem, eh?

invisiblehand

Hey ... thanks for bearing with me and answering the questions.

late

The GPS idea has issues.

There is only one approach that will work.

Carbon Tax.

everything else has fail written all over it.

Alpha52

How ironic that you finally understand.

Alpha52

Randya, I can only guess, but you must be very young, because your comments appear to show that you have no idea what it's like to work incredibly long hours to struggle to feed a family, make ends meet, and still manage to give back to ones church family and community.

Some of us find a car to be an incredibly valuable tool to allow us to make a living.

randya

me a river

if you're not doing anything illegal, just driving to day care and work and the store and so on, you and the feds should care less where you drive, all they want to do is make sure you pay for your fair share of the roads you use, and that should be based on your mileage, the weight of your vehicle, the time of day you are driving and perhaps the type of tires you use. it's a pretty simple concept, really, unless of course you're really just trying to get something for nothing.

CB HI

I would love to see randya's reaction when they decide to put the same GPS device on randya's bicycle. After all, if it is not based on gas usage, then all vehicles should have GPS units and taxed on mileage.

Randya's statement here and starting this thread
https://www.bikeforums.net/advocacy-safety/500150-maryland-state-police-target-bike-advocacy-group-terrorists.html
seem to be at odds.

EatMyA**

I like the discussion on what is the best way for government to take our money

Lets start one on what should be the best way for government to punish us for not giving them our money

Go more government, more laws, more police, yes!

randya

hey, f*ck roads, who needs 'em?