FACT OR FICTION

As you said the technology has existed for many a long year. In the past a physical connection had to be made to download all that info. Nowadays that can be done remotely.
Taken a bit further they could do away with police traffic patrol cars and speed cameras. Your position is known by GPS, your speed is being monitored by some computer, it determines that for that road you are exceeding the speed limit and automatically notifies you and transfers the fine straight from your account to "consolidated revenue".
Part of your licencing fee is held in an online account that Big Brother has access to.
Refuse to stop for random breath testing and licence, no problems, no high speed chase, a signal is sent to your car and the vehicle is speed limited and after a time the engine is shut off.

Scary huh?

Cheers
Pop

They have been doing this with outboard motors as well.
A mate of mine had his dealer mate boat mechanic suggest to him to change his propeller size after it had been in for a service because they could see in the collected data that the motor was not reaching its optimum revs during use.

Likewise they can tell if the motor has been abused should you have a warranty claim

Err guys, this is happening now and probably within the very vehicles you drive. Many of the ECU in modern vehiclescontain a data logger as standard which can be interrogated to provide a lot more info than that provided by just the vehicle sensors. Speed of the vehicle is one of these parameters although I don’t know over what period the data is kept before being overwritten.

Welcome to the modern world.

Cheers

Big Brother arrived many years ago and it's only going to get worse.
Already, 1000's of cameras track you weekly. Cameras in service stations, cameras in restaurants, pubs, and most shops, cameras on the roads, on intersections, on bridges, and street cameras as well.
Google cameras catch you having a leak in the bush, or your wife sunbathing nude in your backyard.
Google employ cameras in aircraft as well as satellite and the obvious car cameras.
Drones with cameras can be bought by people on the dole with nothing better to do than spy on people.

In todays electronic world, the amount of spying that can be done on us is amazing. They have cameras so small you can miss them even when you're looking for them. The police and authorities regularly listen in to mobile phone conversations. Your emails are read by organisations you don't even know exist.
The ability to remotely control a lot of electronic items has been with us for at least 20 yrs.
The bottom line is, if you're doing nothing wrong, you haven't got a lot to fear.

The worrying part comes if someone in a position of power with the ability to track and check up on you, attempts to use that info to "get one over you".
It's becoming an increasing problem, where even police are being charged with unauthorised access to police computers, to find out information about people, where they're not entitled to access it.

15yrs ago the MTU engines on the vessels I was working on (in Aust) were monitored remotely via satellite comms by MTU Germany. They would also monitor and "adjust" where necessary - usually when back in port with the local MTU people but at times when we were at sea. Trucking coys have been doing this for longer esp Cummins, Detroit and CAT. If you have a GPS fitted it is able to be downloaded to enable the memory to be accessed so as position, route, speed, duration and time (and other stuff) can be examined. This can work to your favour if you consider you were not doing what the radar/laser claims you were - just need to have an authorised person do the download....and then go through the resultant court proceedings. Could also be used the other way and "prove" you doing other than what you claim. As for stolen tracking....some Euro and USA vehicles have that (and have had it for a number of years) and the vehicles can be disabled remotely. Then there is the ability of some smart phones to always be in touch with their "home" even when you have turned them off. Some "talk" to each other when in proximity - has been used by LEAs to establish whereabouts and contacts of people. Do we need to worry - maybe should have started that 20yrs ago......bit late now. rgds

In y ford ranger handbook it does say information is captured and may be downloaded in the event of an accident.

Honky

In the 1950's we had the Kienzle tachograph that used cards and a movable pointer.
They were a neat piece of engineering that effectively spied on you.

The Kienzle tachograph was so accurate, the card information could be used as evidence in some European courts, such as German courts, when heavy truck crashes involving serious injury or fatalities were being investigated.

The Kienzle tachograph is still around, today it's just gone electronic - but it still records all details of truck operation.

The technology exists and is being used on at least one Energy Project.
I work for a major contractor on the $29.6 Billion Wheatstone Project in the Pilbara. Every vehicle on site has compulsory IVMS...which is real time is an In Vehicle Monitoring System which is also permanently stored in a vehicle log on site.
It works off satellite technology and Geofencing thru a South African Company.
You cannot speed, not stop at a stop sign, accelerate to quickly, brake suddenly, forget to wear your seat belt etc etc with out it being monitored and flagged. It also sets off an in vehicle alarm.
The scary thing is if you take a vehicle off site and drive 300km to Karratha etc it is still being monitored as all the road speed signs, stops etc have been entered in the Geofence parameters. So speed on the way to Karratha or in Karratha and you'll get a window seat!
There is talk that in future this type of system will be made mandatory by Insurance Companies or by State/Federal Govts.
It makes overtaking road trains etc on the open Highway almost impossible as you will exceed the system parameters and get pinged.

Don't tell anyone in Govt what a gold mine this arrangement would be, if extended to all cars!
There's a stop sign near my house that everyone drives straight through, all day long - with some people doing 20 or 30kmh through it.
They could balance the State Budget just on the income from that one stop sign alone, if they caught every single person disobeying it.

I believe many car hire companies now have a full monitoring system in all their cars.
However they haven't got to the stage of recording and fining you for all recorded driving infringements - yet.
It's currently used to identify people who have incurred red-light or speed camera fines in the hire car, and who do a bunk without paying for them.
It's only a matter of time before it's extended to full-time transgression monitoring.

And the sad part is that the young generation of today will accept this as the norm....

I'll stick to the old GQ no computer no worries.

And to think a few years back everyone jumped up and down when the idea of an identity card was brought up. Nooooooooooooooooooo, we can’t have that, big brother blah blah blah...... Kevin

G'day OB Jack,
You're sort of right.
I'll specifically talk Holden here because...um let's just say I know them VERY well.

Under normal circumstances, there is no data logging taking place....zero, zip, nothing.

In a "service" type environment where a laptop or diagnostic tool is attached (Tech 2), a snap shot can be taken of the vehicle's parameters including engine speed, rpm, air temp, brakes applied or not, barometric pressure, throttle position etc. But you'd know this because the scan tool connects through your ALDL connector located in the driver's foot well area.

Now...and what I think you're probably referring to is a data download from the SDM module (Airbag module) in the event of a crash. This takes highly specialized equipment to decode the data and it can only usually be done by the manufacturer of the module eg: Bosch. Now they don't release the info to anyone other than their own engineering departments to ensure their system functioned OK. They won't even release it to the Manufacturing plant's R&D department.

The SDM will record a snapshop of the data just as the SDM activated the deployment of any Secondary Restraint Systems (SRS). This data will include all or some of the following data. Vehicle speed, yaw, deceleration rate, seat occupancy, seatbelt on/off, deployment of any SRS (Airbags, seatbelt pretentioners etc), at activation of the hazard lights etc. It does not act or work like a "black box" or Truck Data Recorder.

Thems the facts...
Fab.

Outbackjack
Most newish vehicles have some form of computer controls fitted, and most of these can be interrogated with suitable equipment, and this would apply to most vehicles manufactured in the past 15 to 20 years.

I have a 200TTD Toyota and also a Scangauge 11 fitted (approximately $200.00 cost on Ebay or similar), and at the end of each day's driving I can read off such things as max road speed, max engine RPM, max coolant temp, Average fuel consumption for the day or tank, fuel used today or tank, time ignition on etc. but it will NOT tell me as to when any of these events actually took place. I can also go back and get the same information for at least the previous day as well. I can also access the max road speed and engine speed that the vehicle has attained since the computer was last cleared of fault codes, in addition to all the fault codes that have occurred since they were last cleared. I can also use this unit as an accurate gauge measuring such things as coolant temp, transmission temp, current fuel consumption updated every 2 seconds, turbo boost, voltage just to name a few.

About 15 years back I was in the office of a large trucking organisation who were running Detroit Diesel powered trucks where I was shown how a computer in the office could control a truck in their yard. I saw the operator operate the computer and start the engine (heard it start), then increase and decrease the revs, then cause the engine to misfire by instructing the on board computer to shut down individual cylinders (heard that too). I was told that they can also adjust the power output of the engine to more suit the prevailing operating conditions where ever the truck is in Australia. An example was given that if the truck had just entered the Nullabor Plain and the weather indicated that he had a tail wind then the owner could just dial up the horse power that he thought the truck would require, and therefore save some fuel.

I am also aware of at least 1 PCM being removed from a heavy vehicle that was involved in a fatal incident and being sent to the truck manufacturers agent for analysis about 8 years back.

Yes Big Brother is watching, and has been watching for some time now.

Forget where the car has been..........


Got a google phone and use locations services?

Did you know you signed up to Google knowing this?

Everywhere you have been for the last few years - minute by minute.


Apple has a similar website, I forget what it is though.

You blokes seem very paranoid.....

did any one see the News other night in WA if our car is one of the makes regularly stolen the Gov will give you a GPS tracker tiny little thing you put into your car and if your car is stolen the police can use there tracking gear to locate and find the car

not sure if you had to pa a fee