wireless

Do it right and maybe Scarface can get rid of his TRACKER EH ?

With ANPR, he will not need it any more ;-)

Have a look at this, if you've got time:

_http://www.acpo.police.uk/asp/policies/Data/anpr_strat_2005-08_march05_12x04x05.doc

(copy & paste link)

I was going to pick out the good bits, but there are too many.

And people, remember, ‘Think crime, think car, think ANPR’

Never had this in the car but had it happen several times with my motorbike but only when trying to unalarm it not when it's running.

A lot of service stations have telephone masts and because bikes have little in the way of bodywork they are often effected this way.

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The masts are often shared by many different services so it can be difficult to pinpoint the culprit. The worst are UHF transmissions from police/taxis/ham radio etc.

Some alarms are very badly designed. The better, modern, ones have a filter to keep out unwanted signals. If you have problems, it is worth trying to disarm by operating the fob close to the alarm antenna.

This doesn't explain the effect described in the original post, though.

My microwave sets off my car alarm! I aint joking you!

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Quite believable - the movement sensor operates at 2.45GHz, the frequency used by microwave ovens. I wonder if dealers get problems with interaction between the cars on their lots.

My hard disk drives make the dog bark !! :D  - No Seriously !

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So is this - hard drives make a lot of ultrasonic noise

Half the battle with motorways is the prevention of flow breakdown.  Once fb occurs the motorway takes hours to recover due to the hysterisis of the effect.

The 2004 report states:

"There has been a 9% reduction in the amount of time the flow on the anticlockwise

carriageway is broken down, and a 3% reduction in the number of flow breakdowns

occurring."

That doesn't seem like much to me. What does it mean in real terms?

My original post was to express surprise at how small the improvements were when ATM was introduced. I also wonder why reports like this are not picked apart by the media (or did I miss it?).

Take the M6 for example, when ramp metering was working correctly on there, it meant that the morning peak recovered to normal flow before the evening peak.... without the ramp metering on, the flow broke during the morning peak and never recovered untill well after the evening peak.... 

The odd times I have seen the M6, it seems much worse than the M25 - maybe it is a vision of the M25 in a few years. When traffic on the M25 reaches the same level as the M6, perhaps the effect of its ATM will be much greater.

Controlled Motorways and Ramp Metering will become a norm with a year or so... ;) we'll all whinge about the fact we can't go faster than 60mph, but our journey times will get more reliable, which cant be a bad thing after all... unless you want to risk your journey taking 3 hours or 6 hours "depending on traffic" to get to the same location! :)

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I'm strongly in favour of well implemented measures and much prefer a reliable journey time. However, the random nature of some motorway restrictions reduces the overall credibility significantly.

None of this will matter soon. Once the ANPR system is rolled out nationwide, we will be much safer in every respect and the traffic will flow freely. Most people, except those outside the law, will lose their licences through a few lapses in compliance. (I know, if you are not paying attention, you a not driving with due care..)

Rant over.

I don't use the M42 but was curious and found this description of the system:

http://www.highways.gov.uk/roads/projects/.../consult/01.htm

Being a sad git, I went on to find out about HADECS and found this document regarding the M25 scheme:

http://www.highways.gov.uk/news/press_rele...mary_report.pdf

Until I read the above, I thought that the effect of the ATM (active traffic management) on the M25 was very positive, except when speeds were incorrectly set. I have experienced journeys where the traffic flowed freely in the 40 MPH zone but was stop-start when I left it. However, it seems that the real benefits are quite small and, in some cases, there is no benefit. Even if you don't wade through the whole document, take a look at the summary, Table 2A. Here's one extract:

"There has been no increase in the peak 1-hour throughput. However, the total throughputs during the 5-hour peak periods on the M25 Junctions 15-16 have increased by approximately 1.5%. There will be a benefit if this greater demand can be accommodated without a drop in performance."

There are safety benefits in the reduced severity of accidents but most other effects are much smaller than I imagined. Maybe I was a victim of spin? The report does support Rillo's comment

This just sounds like the usual cobblers local government trot out to justify their existence.....

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Rollout of UK's '24x7 vehicle movement database'

This is a couple of days old but I haven't seen it posted here.

"A "24x7 national vehicle movement database" that logs everything on the UK's roads and retains the data for at least two years is now being built, according to an Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) strategy document leaked to the Sunday Times."

from:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/15/ve...ement_database/

Some good comments here:

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/...tid=158&tid=219

Time to get some spare number plates? (well, that's what the "real" crims will do)

Regards

I voted Err1 for my wife's 03 IS200S. It does it on both original CDs and CDRs. Cleaning did not work - so it will be a warranty claim.

I couldn't vote again for the bad FM performance of my 05 S radio. It is has poor sensitivity and the RDS seems reluctant to change to better services (probably because it can not "hear" many). Radio 4, between jcts 4-12 M25, suffers from lots of drop outs and needs to be manually re-tuned. It even seems poor nearer to the Wrotham transmitter. I did have it checked out by a dealer. The tech agreed that is was not wonderful but also said something like: "None of them are very good. We can change it if you like, but you may get a worse one. Some can't even find any stations here when we try to set them up".

Is it the antenna or the tuner itself? If I get time, I may try to work that one out.

G