Area of Impact: Science and the Environment

5. A) two possible ways to detect a vehicle are motion sensors and speed guns

B) two ways in which the active traffic management system could help decrease journey time is the diffusion of traffic, meaning that cars would instead take alternate routes in order to get to their destination, and in decreasing jams, meaning if the drivers are alerted ahead of time of what lanes are closed, there will be no last minute chaos to merge into the non-closed lanes.


C) The images from the digital speed cameras can be used to send penalty notices to speeding drivers automatically by using databases and cameras. The camera would get a picture of the car, with the license plate, and go through the database and send a penalty notice to the information that was found. Since the camera is higher then the car, the person driving would be able to be seen, the license plate, and it would show how fast that the person was going compared to the speed limit.

D) The active traffic management system could be abused by the authorities because they could see the person driving, how fast they were going, and if they have been speeding before. Also, the authorities could keep these people that get tickets a lot in mind and use this to their advantage for the future. Seeing the person driving would be helpful towards the authorities because they would be able to recognize this person when the ticket is being sent. How fast they are going could be used to their advantage because they would easily be able to tell if they were speeding or not and whether or not they need a ticket. The authorities would be able to look back in the databases and see if this person has had previous tickets. All of these possibilities could be bad for the authorities because they could easily take advantage of these possibilities and use the data and information that they got against this person. Since they have all of this persons information on the database this could be potentially abused because all of the information on the person speeding would be able to be seen. I believe that looking through the database and seeing if this person has had other incidents of speeding isn't as bad as looking at the person driving and getting all of their information. Using thee traffic management systems are not sufficient and are invasive unlike when people are regularly pulled over for speeding in front of an actual cop. Using these systems on the highway is very invasive and a great amount of people speed on the highway and they are being caught on camera and not by an actual police which is wrong.