From TheNewspaper:
Three years ago, the insurance industry set up ten covert speed cameras across Northern Virginia to photograph and access the personal information of 65,000 drivers. A motorist rights group is crying foul. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) gathered all of this data to make a political point.
“The association between higher speed limits and faster vehicle speeds is well-established, but not as much is known about how horsepower affects travel speeds,” wrote in a May 24 report.
The report was made possible by the 2014 decision of Virginia Department of Motor Vehicle Commissioner Richard D. Holcomb to release vehicle identification number (VIN), age and sex information from the records of 65,000 vehicle owners. IIHS compared this personal information against the facial photograph captured by the industry’s speed cameras to conclude that vehicles “packing more horsepower” drive faster than the posted speed limit.
[…]
“Why precisely the insurance industry advocates felt the need to capture facial images of drivers and compare that to personal data in DMV records is a mystery,” NMA president Gary Biller told TheNewspaper. “Identifying drivers isn’t germane to the horsepower versus speed question.”
Indeed. And they could have let me know so that I could comb my hair before blowing off their speed limits in my little sports car.
Read more on TheNewspaper.com.
h/t, Joe Cadillic