Robot Cop Cars Could Keep Tabs On Drivers
The news that ‘smart city’ and ‘driverless cars’ technologies are being merged in a bid to automate traffic policing is unlikely to cheer the average motorist.
Ford has been granted a patent by the US Government for an autonomous police car.
It could drive itself or be driven by an officer and would communicate with the ‘smart city’ around it.
This is a concept, only existing on paper at present.
However, the proposal is made clear by diagrams that have been published.
One shows the self-driving police car lurking behind bushes waiting for lamppost and traffic light mounted cameras to alert it to a motoring misdemeanour such as shooting the lights or speeding.
It pulls out behind the car in question and the blue lights start to flash.
Another picture shows what happens next.
Wireless communication is established between the police car behind and the law breaker in front and this is used to transmit an electronic ‘ticket or warning.’
In one sense the possibility that policing our streets could be made more effective without increasing manpower is encouraging.
Also, a police chase of a serious and habitual criminal might be made safer and shorter if assisted by a network of monitoring devices and barrage of artificial intelligence.
But for a one-off lapse of judgement by an inexperienced driver, then having a robot car on your tail, then maybe even taking over your own vehicle’s on-board electronics as a potential longer-term goal of this invention, might be a step too far.
If the above sounds just too far-fetched for you to believe, pop ‘Ford autonomous police car’ into Google and read more.
