School System Joins the Smart club

All buses equipped with tracking devicesSatellite system eases concerns of parents
By Lois K. Solomon Education Writer
Posted July 31 2005

A new satellite system will help answer a question frequently asked by parents: Why isn't my child home yet?All 600 of the Palm Beach County School District's everyday buses were equipped this summer with global positioning systems that can track where a bus is at any moment and pinpoint where it stopped earlier in the day. Only 200 buses carried the computers last year....
In Palm Beach County, some bus drivers have been grumbling, too, driver Ethleen B. Page said. But Page, whose bus had GPS last year, said the system makes her feel more secure. "What if I got in an accident or something happened and I couldn't talk," she said. "They're paying me. I have nothing to hide."..

Full article here:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/education/sfl-pbts05busingjul31,0,5874469.story?coll=sfla-news-education

Well, here's some good news for the day. Again, one of the minorities of school districts led by folks who have decided to give the tax payer value for the money and government benefits they receive.

How much did it cost? About $500K according to the article. A lot of money? yes, but, used properly they can easily recover that money in as little as a year ... all the while enhancing their primary duty of protecting the students in their care.

Dave, how will they save money you might ask? Good question. Here's several proven ways:

Driver hours. No more wondering, falsified, or just plain errored time sheets. No more manual transcribing and consequent arithmetical and penmanship errors. Dozens of man hours per week saved there, alone.

Route compliance: They will know that the drivers are running their routes in the most efficient way ... many school districts face the problem that drivers often decide to do things 'their' way and the divergence from plans cost money.

Speeding: The speed and location will be monitored. This saves real-world dollars as well as enhancing safety. The only comparable method in today's world is to send out supervisors to do spot checks or to ride along. Wasted gas, wasted supervisory man hours and no where near 100% coverage.

Idle Reduction: This is an oft-overlooked "biggie". Drivers without adequate supervision sometimes start their busses at the bus yard and go back for that last cup of coffee. Idling at schools is not only wasteful but is now against federal regulations. A district of this size, if unlucky, could get assessed Federal penalties equal to a large fraction of the cost of the whole system in a year. In addition, the idling regs a schools we put in place for a very good reason ... idling bus exhaust drawn into schools ventilating systems is a primary cancer causing pollutant. Makes no sense at all to try to keep children off cigarettes and then gas them in their seats.

As a sideline, it appears that parents will be able to access the system on their own to check on student's homeward progress. An often overlooked cost recovery method is to assess those parents who want to use the system a nominal charge .. totally optional, pay and use or don't pay and don't use.

There are many more ways to save with GPS and I applaud Palm Beach County for taking initiative and being wise stewards of the funds they are entrusted with.

DISCLAIMER: As regular readers know, I sell and consult on this technology for a living. I have no connection with this effort by Palm beach, in fact it appears they are using one of my competitor's products, but that by no means diminishes their efforts. I'm happy to discuss this and other forward-thinking efforts any time.

Lifetime GPS Tracking

Tracking sex offenders forever

SOME STATES REQUIRE LIFETIME GPS MONITORING AFTER PRISON TERMS END

By David A. LiebASSOCIATED PRESS
Technology that helps the military align targets and motorists find their way is being tapped to track some sex offenders forever....

read the rest of the article here:

http://tinyurl.com/d6a32

Pretty interesting stuff .. this article is in at least 115 newspapers this morning. Some interesting issues and conundrums here for sure.

As a provider of this kind of technology my first thought is, Wow, yes, bring it on! The actual equipment to track offenders is relatively cheap today and given the huge increase in volume that this kind of law would force it would get even cheaper. And I could still get rich *smile*

As a parent and a supporter of laws for the protection of children I applaud the idea because we certainly aren't doing the kind of job we should be to prevent recidivism in this area. All too sadly, when a sex crime occurs, the police dig out the list of the "usual Suspects" -- past offenders, and the perpetrator almost always pops up.

However, the good side has some very challenging downsides.

First and foremost, even someone who was convicted of a dastardly crime might have the right to some degree of privacy after he or she has served their sentence ... or at least an argument can be made for that right under our constitution. Remember, for every disgusting child rapist there are thousands of 'sex offenders' whose primary crime was giving in to their basic nature without checking some girl's birth certificate .. or a middle age teacher (in today's world, male or female), acting out a mid-life fantasy with an all too willing student. A crime? yes, certainly under today's laws, but is it a crime that requires a life sentence? And, if so, why didn't the court impose a life sentence to begin with? I'm posing questions here, I certainly don't have the answers.

What I do have some answers for is the second big question ... who is going to track these individuals and who is going to pay? The knee-jerk decisions by state governments to impose these regulations is at least a very double-edged sword. The police and probation authorities are typically pretty well loaded with work today and very seldom 'fat' in the budget department. The real sentences imposed here may be upon law enforcement and tax payers.

Let's say state 'X' passes a law that says all sex offenders must be tracked. Let's further postulate that the sate has 1000 individuals in the tracking "inventory", and that the money to equip those thousand ner-do-wells with bracelets or some kind of tracking "box" is available. No problem, line them up, clip on the device, and Bob's your uncle, right?

Well the logistics of rounding up a thousand people are non-trivial, but again, by magic, the state agency responsible gets it done.

Now, how often do you want these individuals reported upon? Daily? Well, maybe that's not quite frequently enough .. the perpetrator can do a lot of damage in 24 hours and then be back in his house like a good little boy or girl easily before the next report. OK, better go to hourly, that'll fox the bastards, won't it? Hmm, an hour? what rape or perversion takes an hour? The guy still has time to visit the school yard, do his dirty thing and then be home before his actions are know. OK, minute by minute, that's the ticket, that'll do it, there, Dave, that's your answer.

Got it boss. Now, consider this: To report minute by minute on an object of interest ... person or vehicle ... we're talking a minimum of $20 a month at the most current cell phone data rates. In practicality, more like $30 or $40 bucks. I'm sure most states have a spare $360,000 floating around in the state budget for telecom costs ... doesn't your state? (and remember I'm talking the cell phone network here, perhaps a good choice in some states, but suppose we do that here in Colorado .. do you know how many places have _no_ cell data coverage at all in the western states? Massive holes in coverage. OK then, can't these devices report back via satellite? Sure, however the cost of the units per "trackee" just doubled or tripled and the cost for the bandwidth just went up by a factor of perhaps three ... we're up to maybe a million five to track our dastardly doers.

Lastly, to keep a much longer story a bit shorter), let's say we solve those costs and the data is flowing. The data is flowing where? What state or county agency has an on-line control room set up to monitor individuals roving about the state or even all 50 sates? Hmm, gotta build a sex offender monitor control center .. think Martin Marietta wants to bid on that? Based on my real-world experience a center to monitor even a few hundred offenders is going to cost several hundred thousand dollars ... floor space, consoles, servers and communications control computers, on and on.

By magic you have that monitor station in place, now tell me who is going to man it? one of my projects for the USAF monitors about 400 vehicles on a 24 hour basis. The monitor folks do nothing but keep the system alive and respond to calls for assistance from the vehicles. They don't monitor specific acts performed, they don't know where school yards and municipal swimming pools and other likely offender trolling grounds are ... and it takes 3 or 4 people per shift, 3 shifts a day, 365 days a year. For a thousand sex offenders? Oh let's say 5 or 6 per shift, I'm sure we can slave drive these folks harder than the military does their troops, right?

Patient readers, that is an enterprise that'll cost something like another million or so in salary and benefits .. minimum.

Is GPS tracking of offenders a good thing? Could be, I don't really know, but I think if you look at what the government world refers to as the "Logistics tail" you can surely see it's not a decision to take lightly.

Are all the brains in Canada?

Liaison CAN/US Courier Deploys RFID Infrastructure across Fleet
By Editorial Staff Freight forwarder taps Ship2Save for radio frequency identification-enabled solution to boost productivity, provide value-add for customers Montreal — July 29, 2005 — International freight forwarder Liaison Can/Us Courier has deployed a radio frequency identification (RFID)-enabled infrastructure across its fleet of trucks in an initiative that will allow the company to provide RFID-powered transportation services throughout North America... read full article here:
http://www.sdcexec.com/article_arch.asp?article_id=7456

Originally, US companies like UPS and FedEX had the lead in gangbuster ideas such as this. Every package is bar coded and drivers and warehouse personnel (when they do their job properly) track shipments by scanning them.

However, given the technology advances these outfits have been sitting on their laurels for at least a couple years too many.

I sell GPS tracking technology for a living, over the years I have consulted extensively in that area, bought millions of dollars of equipment for clients and evaluated thousands of pieces of hardware and systems.

US commercial carriers are by and large just in the hand-wringing, 'we can't afford it' mode. It's very hard to show, even with hard performance data, that investments in modern technology can pay off quickly.

Using RFID rather than the more labor intensive hand bar code scanning can save dollars and increase throughput .. both leading directly to improved bottom lines. Wal*Mart created a huge burble in the logistics airflow more than a year ago when they demanded RFID coding from suppliers. The carriers, who in many cases earn part of their profit by hauling for Wal*Mart have steadfastly ignored this cold-plated opportunity.

All the lines of equipment I sell and service come from Canada. Intelligent, cost effective ideas like the headline above come from Canada. US executives, by and large, sort of laugh up their sleeves at Canada. Perhaps they ought to open their eyes and take a realistic look at the rest of North America. They may be laughing out of the wrong side of their mouths.

Teen Tracking - A Good Thing?

There have been a number of companies who have "nibbled around the edges" of providing service to parents wanting to supervise their teens. The primary focus on this potentially big business has been from cell phone providers. They, of course, see this as a way to pack on some options, but tracking via cell phone has some very obvious disadvantages. Actually so many disadvantages that I ought to post a whole separate blog entry on it. However, the number one reason tracking the cell phone is not ideal for teen monitoring is that you aren't tracking the teen's car, you're tracking the phone .. which can be turned off, left with a friend or otherwise doctored to make the whole exercise useless.

If you want to exercise your authority as apparent (and it's no secret that I think you should) and you want to provide the maximum in safety and security, I think you need to track their vehicle.

Here's one well-established commercial tracking provider who got smart and is offering a useful service:
-----------------------
Discrete Wireless Announces Official GPS Teen Tracking Distributor Network

Wednesday July 27, 2:51 pm ET
Keep Teen Drivers Safer, Lower Insurance Costs, Send Driving Directions, Reduce Vehicle Theft
ATLANTA, July 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Atlanta-based Discrete Wireless, Inc. a leading provider of GPS Vehicle Tracking Systems, today announced their official Teen Tracking Dealer Network, a new program for coordinating Discrete Wireless distributors who specialize in providing, installing, and training of GPS Vehicle Tracking solutions for parents of teen drivers......

Read the whole article here:
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050727/clw526.html?.v=3

Dangerous driving is the number one cause of teen deaths, and all the airbags and other so-called safety paraphernalia in the world can't protect against the drunken teen showing off at 100 plus miles per hour driven by his out of control testosterone.

A live device, semi-permanently mounted in the vehicle itself, which lets parents know when parameters they have set are exceeded is a factor that can greatly reduce teen risk and reduce parent's stress levels.

It's interesting to note that after their initial (quite natural) sense of rebellion and outrage that many teens are now happy to have the device .. after all, thew typical teen acts without forethought sometimes and under peer pressure other times, and having a parent watching over their shoulder helps fight those destructive impulses.

Disclaimer: i sell GPS tracking for a living, but this is no hidden sales pitch .. I don't even market the Marcus product mentioned in this article. But I do care about kids, and I do well remember what ab *sshole I was as an unsupervised teen driver .. so learn more about this life-saving technology and visit my competitors, visit my web site, read a book, whatever it takes but _DO_ somehting.

Your kids are in danger and even if they act out when you try to impose disipline, they need it ... and you have a moral responsibility to do what you can to keep them alive.

Memphis police surprised by initial lack of help by OnStar

.... MEMPHIS, Tenn. Memphis police thought they'd have an easier time locating the vehicle of a man killed in a carjacking because the S-U-V had OnStar.But the process of finding Frederick Houston's 2000 Chevrolet Tahoe and his murderer became problematic because of the 35-year-old man's death Friday night.... Read the whole story here: http://www.volunteertv.com/Global/story.asp?S=3552633

One of the singularly most useless implementations of potentially helpful GPS technology in today's market is the most well known, OnStar and: http://www.onstar.com/us_english/jsp/index.jsp

These guys represent themselves as a great boon to mankind, cradling the users in an extra safety net, ad nauseum. Let's call a spade a spade.

First of all, OnStar operates only to promote profit to OnStar. What? Don't all companies need to make a profit? Well, of course, but for $700 (or more) purchase costs plus monthly fees of at least $17, owners might expect to be treated as if they actually owned the system they bought. The list of services OnStar won't perform for the owner is long, and, as this current example shows, they frequently won't help the police very expeditiously. Not only did OnStar's response in this case (in this writer's opinion of course, gotta have the legal disclaimers in place when dealing with an 800 pound gorilla) delay a murder investigation, OnStar has a long history of providing erroneous information to police (tracking the wrong car) and flatly refusing to provide information ... a prime example being their refusal to track vehicles in Mexico a prime destination for stolen vehicles across the southern US.

Dave's tip for the Day: If you think it might be useful to track your vehicle if it is stolen, or to track the murderers of a loved one, contact me or any other legitimate independent dealer of commercial GPS systems. There are much better implementations of technology out there and companies that will better represent the customer.

US taxpayers pay for the infrastructure (GPS) that supports this technology, don't give away your control to companies who try to deny service of what should be an important public asset.