French Use Space Tech To Find Parking Spots

itwbennett writes "Using technology developed by French space agency CNES (Centre Nationale d'Etudes Spatiales) to explore the planet Venus, drivers in the city of Toulouse are discovering something much more down-to-earth: vacant parking spots. The system is based on 3,000 sensors buried just under the pavement that detect changes in the electromagnetic environment around them and communicate the results via coaxial cable to a server, which makes the information available in real time to drivers' smartphones."

Re:Can they try using it to find razors?

[Dhalka226]

You made a joke about the French being cowards and their women having too much hair! Hahahahahaha! That is both clever and original sir, i salute you! The only thing I can't understand is why you posted anonymously and denied yourself credit for such hilarity!

Re:Can they try using it to find razors?

[feepness]

If he wanted credit, he'd post with his username and call Americans fat and stupid. Modded +5 in no time.

Re:Yeah, Right!

[clone53421]

Yeah, this is just an excuse for the government to have another electronic “eye” watching you all the frigging time.

The goal isn’t to eliminate wrongdoers, the goal is to monetize them more efficiently. If wrongdoers were eliminated, they wouldn’t make any money off parking tickets. It’s just the same argument as the red-light cameras, which my city has had for a while and is currently considering moving them to new intersections because hardly anyone runs the cameras any more. Mission accomplished – wait, these aren’t making any more money... problem? Only if your goal was to make money.

Of course if they move them, I’m sure the previously-monitored intersections will pretty quickly return to exactly as they were before the cameras were installed. If the goal is to cut down on T-bone accidents caused by red-light runners at intersections that are identified as particularly bad for this sort of thing, the cameras need to stay at those intersections, yeah? Moving the cameras to less-bad intersections simply to generate more revenue could actually result in people getting killed. Priorities? You bet.