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Intelligent Transport Systems - the worst threat we have ever faced.
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Intelligent Transport Systems - the Worst Threat we Have Ever Faced
by
Neil F. Liversidge, MAG National Chairman
· The Threat - that your bike's speed and acceleration will
be removed from you and controlled by a remote computer.
· MAG's Response - a multi-level multi-national campaign based on the Mulhouse Declaration.
· Your Job - to educate vehicle users - not only
bikers - as to the threat posed by External Vehicle Speed Control (EVSC), to collect signatures on MAG's petition and to lobby MPs against the worst threat bikers have ever faced.
In the last few years you may have heard talk in MAG about 'telematics' or 'external vehicle speed control' (EVSC). These all come under the broad heading of Intelligent Transport Systems -
ITS for short. Telematics is another name for it but I'll stick to IUTS to avoid confusion. ITS can mean all sorts of things. The metal detecting loop under the road surface by the entry barrier of my firm's
car park is an intelligent transport system. It tells the computer-controlled barrier to open - when it's working properly. The traffic light systems in most major cities are intelligent to a degree, designed to
ease the flow in or out in the morning and evening rush hours. ITS has implications for everyone.
ITS and MAG
ITS has implications for motorcyclists, some perhaps good, some definitely bad. I sat
for hours in a seminar earlier this year trying to bend my brain around the concept and get a handle on who was telling the truth. On the one side was the nice smiley Swede telling us that it was all four our own
good and no way would we be asked to put up with anything we did not want. On the other was a cynical Brit professor from UCLA telling us to watch out or else.
It would be barmy therefore for MAG just to say
'we are anti - ITS'. The supporters of ITS would just point to all the beneficial types of ITS that make driving slightly less than unbearable on our crowded roads. Our arguments would be discredited as
unintelligent and the Trojan horse of 'friendly ITS' would be wheeled in when we were wide open.
EVSC
The real threat posed by ITS to us as bikers is that of External Vehicle Speed Control - EVSC
for short. EVSC involves fitting vehicles with receivers able to pick up signals from transmitters like a TV, radio or mobile phone. If some controller sitting in his office decides that vehicles on a given stretch
of road should be travelling no more than a certain speed - 50 mph say - then the appropriate signal is transmitted. If the vehicle on the receiving end - your bike for example - is exceeding that limit then the
signal will cause the receiver to act one or more of the vehicle's systems - ignition, fuel and / or brakes - to slow it down by the required amount.
Now from one viewpoint this sounds great. Housing estates
could be fitted with beacons kicking out signals at 10 mph to protect kids and deter joy riders. Emergency vehicles would not have EVSC fitted and so would in theory have a better chance of catching crim's in
getaway cars, assuming of course that the crim's in question had not somehow disabled their own receivers. Turning down the maximum speed on bad night to sort out the nutters who do ninety in freezing fog might
prevent motorway pileups.
All of this is possible and because it is possible, and in principle worthy, you can be sure that the usual crowd of professional bleeding hearts will all make it their
mission in life to have EVSC implemented at the earliest possible opportunity.
Will It Work?
The first reaction of most people is 'it won't work'. An ordinary not-very-technical person (which means
most of us, and certainly me!) tends to think that the more complicated systems are, and the more demands that are placed on them, the more likely they are to break down or never work properly in the first place.
Personally I can never quite grasp how all these microwaves and signals can be flying around from mobile phones, GPS satellites, car alarms and the rest without bumping into each other and producing chaos. And there
may be a certain truth in that. When the NC met at the MCI HQ in Coventry we learned not to use our car alarm / immobilisers in the car park. They were difficult to activate in that location and, once activated,
even more difficult to deactivate. The culprit apparently was the massive array of telecommunication aerials on top of the tower block opposite blasting microwaves across central Coventry.
Oliver Carsten - Bangemann Risen from the Grave
The problem we have is that it IS working. Professor Oliver Carsten of Leeds University has already got a working version on test. An adapted vehicle has been
making test runs along a beacon-lined stretch of road in West Yorkshire - the A58 I understand - for some time now.
The biker's next reaction is "okay, it works for cars, but you can't apply it to a
bike. It might turn off the gas when I'm going round a corner and destabilise the bike." And so it might, were it not for gyroscopic principles.
Gyroscopes are nothing new. The Germans used them in the
V1 and V2 long-range weapons during WW2 to deliver large quantities of high explosive on target in London, Brussels and other cities. Gyroscopes applied to EVSC may deliver a similar bombshell to bikers. Our
wonderful government has just given Carsten the money he needs to investigate their application.
The Threat
Evaluating the threat and predicting its form is always difficult. One runs the risk of
being accused of scaremongering. I have at home a copy of Bike magazine from 1976 in which a MAG spokesman predicted leg protectors, airbags and power limits. He was roundly denounced by Bike whose editor of the day
reckoned this was codswallop, his grounds being that the BMF said so. I'll just have to take that chance. This is how, in my estimation, they are likely to come at us:
1. The more militant road safety activists will stir up local residents' associations to demand
EVSC on estates suffering problems with baseball-cappers driving hot hatchbacks.
2. EVSC will be touted as an alternative to road humps, which are fairly universally hated.
3. Action groups comprising the bereaved relatives of road accident victims will demand
EVSC.
4. Stretches of road with high accident rates will be early candidates, which probably means
most of our favourite biking roads.
5. Coroners, with the licence to spout the kind of BS that seems to be a perk of the job, will
pronounce that little Johnny so-and-so and his four friends crammed into that old XR3i
might not have died had EVSC been around to stop him taking that blind bend at 70 into
the back of a combine harvester.
6. Insurance companies will introduce incentives to use. 'Have your old vehicle fitted with an
EVSC transponder and get a discount…'
7. The motorcycle industry will soft-pedal on this and not campaign at all vigorously - if at all
- against EVSC, on the grounds that anything supposedly making bikes 'safer' reduces
parental / spousal opposition and thus helps them sell more bikes.
8. Compulsion will fall on learner category bikes, passenger vehicles (e.g. buses) and HGVs
first.
9. Some lanes on motorways - perhaps even whole motorways - will be limited to 'controlled'
vehicles only, i.e. only those fitted with EVSC will be allowed to use them.
10. Legislation requiring the fitting of EVSC equipment to vehicles 'just in case' (at the
purchaser's cost) will precede an actual decision to implement and will also precede the
necessary public investment in infrastructure (masts, control centres etc.) This way,
when most vehicles have the capacity to be externally controlled, it will be much more
difficult for legislators to ignore the shrill screeching voices of the types referred to above.
This is how, bit by bit, we will be cooked. You don't think so? Whatever their merits,
which is a separate argument, imagine that today there were no CCTV cameras watching us in our daily lives. Then imagine that a government minister popped up on TV tonight and told us that from midnight the police,
army and private contractors would be deploying teams of technicians en masse to 'camera-up' the whole country. The reaction would be furious to say the least. That is why governments do not do such things suddenly
or announce such controversial intentions openly. No government could get away with imposing EVSC on everyone everywhere at once. They know that. So instead they will do it bit by bit, very likely as I have outlined
above if past performance is any guide.
Meeting the Threat
I have to be honest with you and say that this is going to be very difficult. It will need careful handling, a great deal of work by your NC at national level and by all MAG activists at
local level. Neither can we look for a short campaign and a quick victory. This will go on for years.
It will also need to be worked on EU wide through FEMA and worldwide through other associated
organisations such as the AMA in the US. This is the reality of the 'global market' that we are always hearing about. There are factors at work driving decisions that most ordinary people never even guess at.
Measures such as this have big implications for big business. It's a lot cheaper for a manufacturer to make one model of car or bike to sell in every market and no manufacturer wants to be sued, especially in the US.
The US angle is actually pretty crucial in all of this in my estimation. As EVSC is shown to be capable of working then pretty soon the US will be coerced into implementation by compensation lawyers and
their 'victim' clients. I can see it now. A truck takes a bend too fast on a mountain road in Colorado and crashes through the rail onto the resort below taking out a few billion dollars' worth of luminaries and
glitterati. The truck driver's insurance cannot cope with paying out for so many brain surgeons, lawyers, congressmen and their interns (or even wives) so instead the victims' lawyers sue the State of Colorado for
not operating EVSC. The State (read 'taxpayer') pays up and shortly afterwards everyone else in Colorado finds that they can only get insured if their car or bike is kitted out for EVSC. How long do you think it
will take our own no-win no-fee lawyers to get in on the same trip? Try about a billionth of a second.
Just as we cannot confine this campaign within one country, neither can we confine it within the
motorcycling community. When we are talking about EVSC the words 'car drivers' translate as 'potential allies'. Potentially very useful allies in fact considering how many there are of them. To stand a chance of
winning this we have to mobilise all users of private vehicles, however many wheels they have. For this reason, and because we cannot risk hanging our campaign solely on technical objections such as the 'it won't
work' variety, our argument must have a philosophical base. This was what was in my mind two years ago when I drafted the Mulhouse Declaration.
The Mulhouse Declaration
The Mulhouse declaration
takes its name from the venue (Mulhouse in France) of the Second International Motorcyclists' Public Policy Conference in autumn 1999. All the major world motorcyclists' organisations were present with substantial
delegations also from the industry and FIM. The conference discussed the subject of ITS and it was pretty obvious to me that we had a golden opportunity to put down a marker as to where we stood. The result was the
Mulhouse Declaration that;
We the undersigned utterly oppose the compulsory fitment to privately owned vehicles of any device designed to arbitrarily remove control from the driver to remote operation.
We note with extreme concern the tendency of governments to impose ever more intrusive and restrictive regulations upon the citizen.
We caution governments to remember that they are permitted to
govern only by the consent of the people and that such consent when given through an election does not grant unlimited licence to interfere in the daily life of the citizen.
We further caution all governments
that to impose unduly on popular freedom is to imperil the respect in which government and the rule of law is held.
The declaration went through unanimously and was supported again at the third
International Motorcyclists' Public Policy Conference in Ohio earlier this year - the one at which I was bending my brain around what the professors were telling us.
When I wrote the declaration I set out to
firmly secure the political middle ground. By emphasising our respect for the law I sought to fix our position in the bosom of the all-powerful middle classes, the Daily Express and Mail readers. By emphasising a
respect for the law I also by definition excluded the anti-government paranoiacs and conspiracy theorists that can make valid causes look daft. Mulhouse could not be plainer. What it says is "We value the rule
of law and we want the law to be respected, so don't bring the law into disrepute by making the kind of laws that the vast majority of citizens find unacceptable." I think that this is a sentiment we can sell
to most reasonable people. To win at Chess you need to control the middle eight squares. Politics is the same. We must appropriate the centre ground. That is firmly where Mulhouse puts us. Mulhouse is the foundation
on which we must build our campaign.
Action Required
We need every MAG activist to undertake a number of tasks. One thing we have got going for us is that there are no deadlines on these yet. Activists can work at a steady rate on this
campaign without needing to drop everything else. The main aims are:
1. To educate as many people as possible as to the threat EVSC poses. Even simply
talking to people helps. Most car drivers and bikers have no idea that EVSC is even a
remote possibility. If you know intelligent, articulate and motivated people who are a)
likely to be supportive and b) not shy of contacting their MP, then you need to start
tapping them up now. Explain the issues and ask them to help. It doesn't matter if they've
never ridden a bike in their lives. We can only win this with large-scale support. That
means car drivers. If they want to talk to somebody at NC level then put them in touch
with MAG Central. I don't mind taking the time to explain the issues to them and I am
sure that goes for my NC colleagues.
2. Get signatures on MAG's petition. The petition forms include an outline explanation of the
issue along with the Mulhouse Declaration. Send the forms into MAG Central as they are
completed. We want millions of signatures.
3. Go see your MP. Our aim must be to convince every MP that nobody will vote for them if
they support EVSC. Nothing concentrates an MP's mind like the prospect of
unemployment. We have to make EVSC implementation politically untouchable before
our opponents make espousal of the 'virtues' of EVSC and a promise to implement it a
sine qua non of election to public office. Looked at coldly the number of drivers on the
roads will always outnumber the combined mass of the professional bleeding hearts
(elected and unelected), the militant environmentalists (read 'private vehicle haters', social
control freaks and other assorted nuts. That is the one big thing we have got going for us
if we make it work for us. Motivation is what it is all about.
As I said
above, this is going to be a tough one. There is however a kind of precedent - a successful precedent - for this type of campaign. Back when Ken Clarke was Chancellor he announced in one of his budgets that in
future all registered vehicles would have to be taxed all year round whether on the road or not. MCN and the BMF missed it as usual but I picked it up from the budget transcript in the FT.
MAG went onto the
offensive big time. We got the classic car clubs in on it and we woke the people up. Ken Clarke had postulated that there was widespread evasion by bikes so we ran VED-day to prove that evasion was only at a
fraction of the claimed level. The result was that Ken Clarke not only dropped his plan to tax us more on our shed-bound projects but that he also did precisely what we asked and brought the 'classic' exemption for
bikes into line with that of cars, making it a 25-year old rolling limit. That concession that held until 1998 when it was re-fixed at vehicles built before 1973. It was a big win for MAG!
So the simple message is "Don't be despondent!"
We can win this one like any other if enough of us get stuck in hard enough and long enough. Winning means convincing enough politicians that they will never get elected if it even looks like they might so much as touch EVSC with a barge pole.
Go to it folks. If we don't win this we might as well all take the bus.
Neil
Neil F. Liversidge
National Chairman
PETITION
The British Government is funding research into remote controlled devices that will take the control of private vehicles - cars and motorcycles - away from their drivers. Signals beamed from
roadside beacons similar to mobile phone masts will govern how fast your vehicle is allowed to travel. We believe that this is 'Big Brother' taking one step too many. We also believe that public money should not be
wasted on such systems that can only reduce personal freedom. If you agree with us, please become a signatory to the declaration below.
DECLARATION
We the undersigned utterly oppose the compulsory fitment to privately owned vehicles of any device designed to arbitrarily remove control from the driver to remote operation.
We
note with extreme concern the tendency of governments to impose ever more intrusive and restrictive regulations upon the citizen.
We caution governments to remember that they are permitted to govern only by
the consent of the people and that such consent when given through an election does not grant unlimited licence to interfere in the daily life of the citizen.
We further caution all governments that to impose
unduly on popular freedom is to imperil the respect in which government and the rule of law is held.
Petition in a Word Document
When full please send to MAG, PO Box 750, Rugby, CV21 3ZR. Tel 0870 4448 448 www.mag-uk.org
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