RF Safe-Stop shuts down car engines with radio pulse

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25197786

by louthy • 13 years ago

24 30 13 years ago

bbc.co.uk

fotbr2• 13 years ago

Yet another reason to buy old cars. Screw "black box" recorders and the current congress-think towards mandated gps tracking.

On the other hand, having worked on a similar setup while at university, these are not particularly difficult to build. Mounting one in the boot of said old car would make for a wonderful time when the rozzers come calling.

wahsd3• 13 years ago

Can we please stick to standard English.

Rozzers = British enforcers of the crown.

FYI, guarantee that police and all other emergency vehicles will not be outfitted with wire mesh enclosures to protect from such shenanigans.

fotbr2• 13 years ago

Article is from the British Broadcasting Company, about a British company testing the product at an airfield in Worcestershire, England. Me throwing "rozzers" in was simply a bit of humour.

As for the last: 1) Defending against such a system is not as simple as adding "mesh enclosures" 2) Defenses are not cheap, and won't be added to "police and all other emergency vehicles" for the simple reason that it's too expensive to do so. 3) Unless you're in an OJ style "chase" where there's nothing behind you except police cars, there's plenty of other vehicles that can be disabled, causing havoc that the police would (also) have to deal with.

Note: I'm not actually advocating using such a device to get away from the police. I do, however, think it is an eventuality, and when it happens, I will find it amusing, in the same way that I find just about any instance of people directly thumbing their noses at authority amusing.

Crito2• 13 years ago

"Can we please stick to standard English." ... "FYI"

Really dude?

lucaspiller• 13 years ago

Engine Control Units have been around since the 80s so you will need something quite vintage... At least you won't have to pay road tax! :D

toomuchtodo• 13 years ago

Go with a Shelby Cobra. They are so choice. If you have the means...

http://www.thesmokingtire.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/She...

wil421• 13 years ago

What happens when someone hacks this during rush hour?

walshemj3• 13 years ago

Indeed a good way do do economic terrorism forget infiltrating power plants with stuxnet or its descendants - just shut down traffic on key roads in major cities.

wahsd3• 13 years ago

You could list thousands of ways that "terrorists" could terrorize in rather cost-effective and simple ways. And yet they don't do any of them.

It is quite evident by the very nature of the lack of effective "terrorist" activities that "terrorism" is just another boogie-man to replace the cold war red scare boogie man that keeps the government spigot on full throttle.

The real "terrorists" are the thieves within that coyly played right into "terrorist" actions and are pilfering and wealth-redistributing from the bottom up, and from future generations to their own larva.

nodata• 13 years ago

Luckily this is called "Safe Stop", or I'd be very concerned about this not working as intended.

bcoates• 13 years ago

The "defending sensitive locations" thing doesn't make any sense -- you can just put in the clutch or shift your carbomb into neutral and let your inertia carry you from anywhere this could be realistically be deployed right into the sensitive location.

This is clearly an expensive replacement for a spike strip, something you can deploy to stop a vehicle from fleeing or travelling a long distance, not a short one.

mikeash• 13 years ago

Depends on what sort of sensitive locations you're talking about. If it's a place where lots of civilians go through, then I could see it being useful. For example, there are (or were?) lots of checkpoints in Iraq and such where civilians were allowed through, but had to stop and be checked first. If a vehicle refused to stop, the soldiers often had little recourse but to open fire. With a system like this, they could first try to disable the vehicle, then start shooting if it doesn't work. The idea is not to use this as a last resort, but rather as a non-lethal way to help weed out false positives, hopefully leading to fewer dead civilians.

Crito2• 13 years ago

In those situations, where "the vehicle is packed with hundreds of pounds of old soviet artillery shells and/or guys with guns" is a possibility, I strongly suspect that giving them this tool would turn the situation from "shoot the vehicle until it stops" into "Use Safe-Stop and shoot the vehicle until it stops".

wahsd3• 13 years ago

Enough cones? lol Don't want to leave an inch gap, the driver may veer out of the designated lane.

jws• 13 years ago

Digital audio and video recording devices in the vehicle were also affected.

What about pacemakers and implanted drug release systems?

mseebach2• 13 years ago

TFA: The firm added that it did not believe the RF Safe-Stop posed any risk to people using a pacemaker.

mark-r• 13 years ago

Meaning: we haven't tested it yet, so of course we've seen no adverse effects.

DanBC• 13 years ago

So, they don't mention what happens to a fast moving car. Especially a fast moving car with electronic brake systems.

For sensitive areas I think people prefer the automatic bollard systems.

mseebach2• 13 years ago

I am pretty sure electronic braking systems have to fall back on mechanical braking to be approved, but of course you'd lose any electronic assistance like ABS which might be dangerous if conditions aren't great.

That said, running over a spike strip isn't anyones idea of a safe way to stop either.

kens• 13 years ago

Do these systems to stop cars by interfering with electronic ignition not already exist? I'm sure I've read about this technology for many years. From a quick search I found a 2010 article: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/01/22/2339204/

Is this one of those technologies where prototypes keep getting demonstrated but never produced?

Edit: an unreliable source from 2004: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.law-enforcement.traffic/...

mcguire• 13 years ago

"Acpo suggested the machine's ability to stop motorbikes 'safely' could prove particularly useful."

Disabling a motorcycles engine at speed is not particularly safe. Engine braking, particularly if the engine is at high RPM's, can be plenty destabilizing.

(He says, having "locked" the rear wheel of a KLR-650 at highway speeds by shifting down a couple of gears and accidentally dumping the clutch. It didn't actually lock the wheel, but that thing certainly wasn't rolling.)

dale386• 13 years ago

What happens if someone points this at a hospital?

Raphmedia• 13 years ago

What happens when you EMP an hospital do you think?

grecy2• 13 years ago

For a while I've been researching and planning an engine swap to an all-mechanical diesel engine from the late 90's.

30-35mpg in a big 4x4, absolutely no electronics and it will burn practically anything. Now I have another reason.

birdman3131• 13 years ago

One of the benefits to running a 1984 300D as my car. Only two wires going to the engine is glow plugs and the starter.

At one point I wanna drop an OM617 turbo engine in a small truck such as a ranger or s10. Gotta get money first.

grecy2• 13 years ago

You should be able to do an OM617 swap for less than $5k. Very attractive if you get a Ranger or S10 with a dead engine.

RF Safe-Stop shuts down car engines with radio pulse

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