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Australia: Electronic Tagging Of Motorcycles Coming? |
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File under News
Author: Mike Werner
Location: Normandy, France
Via: Herald Sun
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Australia, like many other countries, face the problem on how to fine motorcycle riders who are speeding. Traditional fixed radars usually don't work, since they take their expensive photos from the front, and as we all know by now, in most countries motorcycles don't have front license plates.
The Aussies in Queensland  have spent A$420,000 (US$362,000) so far trying to design a front registration plate (note: that's a lot of money to design a front license plate. I presume most of the money went to lunches, dinners and hor hotels), hoping to recover their investment with those enormous huge fines they planned to levy on bikers. But the money is down the drain, since the Queensland Transport Department dropped the license plate in favor of an electronic system. Motorcycle Riders Association president John Karmouche said the failure to develop a front registration plate was no surprise. "We told them six years ago it wasn't going to work" Mr Karmouche said.
 RFID Tag |
Now they are looking placing a mandatory electronic tagging system, a sort of RFIDRadio-frequency identification (RFID) is the use of an object (typically referred to as an RFID tag) applied to or incorporated into a product, animal, or person for the purpose of identification and tracking using radio waves. Some tags can be read from several meters away and beyond the line of sight of the reader.
Most RFID tags contain at least two parts. One is an integrated circuit for storing and processing information, modulating and demodulating a radio-frequency (RF) signal, and other specialized functions. The second is an antenna for receiving and transmitting the signal.
There are generally three types of RFID tags: active RFID tags, which contain a battery and can transmit signals autonomously, passive RFID tags, which have no battery and require an external source to provoke signal transmission and battery assisted passive (BAP) which require an external source to wake up but have significant higher forward link capability providing great read range.
Today, RFID is used in enterprise supply chain management to improve the efficiency of inventory tracking and management. , on the motorcycles. This way when a motorcycle passes a radar, and the speed is over the limit, it can electronically read the license plate.
Granted, it's not a new idea, authorities around the world have been working that idea of a few years, but all of them dropped it after a while, so there's very little doubt that this idea will be dropped in Australia as well. But in the mean time, they'll spend more than the previous 420K to develop the idea.
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