Cameras to catch carpool lane cheaters
It seems that the Brits are, unsurprisingly trying to save money in their quest to ticket carpool lane cheaters. Actually having police do enough monitoring to act as a real deterrent is pretty costly, so they decided to let a camera do the work. In pursuit of that goal, Laser Optical Engineering has developed an infrared camera that exploits a small range of the infrared spectrum that is absorbed by human skin but reflected by all the non-organic parts of a car. This camera will be combined with an image recognition software to help eliminate the identification of other body parts as a second occupant, as well as shore up shoddy performance in lower light conditions (read: anything but bright sunlight; which is reputed to in short supply in England, isn't it?). We see a problem here, since windshields absorb infrared light, a "highly sophisticated – and vastly expensive" camera would do the trick. And here we thought they were trying to save money.
