Stephen Control, Minister for the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Eekonomy, today outlined a new filtering proposal - this time for cars on Australian roads.
"Recently, you may have heard me comparing the proposed Australian network filtering laws to road laws. Well now our best experts are confident that we can apply the same network filtering technology to the road traffic network." he said. Mr Control was referring to a statement he made earlier on ABC radio where he countered the argument that the filter was trivial to get around for Internet savvy people, their friends, people who can communicate verbally or read, and even certain species of primate: "Are speeding laws 100 percent complied with? No. So should we drop the laws? No."
Mr Control said the idea that we could equip all Australian cars with speed monitoring and control devices, and effectively filter the traffic, came to him immediately after the ABC interview. "Yes, we can ... we can filter the roads." he said. The DBCDE said that intensive multi-million dollar trials with a radio-controlled model car during the course of the day have shown that this technique will be "100% accurate" for preventing traffic accidents.
The proposal did draw some criticism from several recreational driving advocacy groups, and some libertarians in ambulance and police services. "I find it laughable that anyone would dispute something that is going to prevent lives being lost on the road. One has to question their motives and whether such people would prefer to see mothers with unborn babies repeatedly run over by high-powered vehicles on our roads," said Mr Control.
Mr Control's plan is to phase in the road filtering technology for all new cars by 2015 and retrofit it for all cars by 2020. Information about driver speed and other factors will be relayed to government servers and excessive speed increases, and other unwanted driving behaviour, may be vetoed before permission is passed back to the car to perform the action. Any driving behaviour that falls into the RC (Refused Carriage) category will be prevented. Mr Control clarified that "The RC category includes all driver behaviour that is banned by the filter, and is determined by a classification board hand-picked by the government."
The RC category will be broken down into several sub-categories, some of which include:
- RC/TF - Refused Carriage - Too Fast
- RC/TS - Refused Carriage - Too Slow
- RC/XB - Refused Carriage - Excessive Braking
- RC/VS - Refused Carriage - Violent Swerving
- RC/WT - Refused Carriage - Weaving Traffic
- RC/TIASD - Refused Carriage - Turning Into Affluent Suburb Denied
Some religious lobby groups have proposed that the scheme be extended for the betterment of society, and could include such measures as instantly and permanently disabling a car engine in the event of blasphemous speech or a rude gesture by an occupant. "We are not discussing such measures at this point," Mr Control said.
