RF Safe-Stop Shuts Down Car Engines With Radio Pulse 549
An anonymous reader writes with news of a device built by a company in the U.K. which uses pulses of electromagnetic energy to disrupt the electronic systems of modern cars, causing them to shut down and cut the engine. Here's a description of how it works:
"At one end of a disused runway, E2V assembled a varied collection of second-hand cars and motorbikes in order to test the prototype against a range of vehicles. In demonstrations seen by the BBC a car drove towards the device at about 15mph (24km/h). As the vehicle entered the range of the RF Safe-stop, its dashboard warning lights and dials behaved erratically, the engine stopped and the car rolled gently to a halt. Digital audio and video recording devices in the vehicle were also affected.''It's a small radar transmitter,' said Andy Wood, product manager for the machine. 'The RF [radio frequency] is pulsed from the unit just as it would be in radar, it couples into the wiring in the car and that disrupts and confuses the electronics in the car causing the engine to stall.'"
Just wait until... (Score:3, Interesting)
those high-powered NSA satellites can do this from orbit. No, this is NOT meant to be a troll post. I wonder if a country could actually orbit a satellite with enough power and a spot beam to stop cars in an entire city... in the name of anti-terrorism, of course.
Oh great, what could possibly go wrong? (Score:5, Interesting)
So there are some potentially cool applications of this - stopping a criminal in a car chase with police, for example - but it has massive potential for crime as well. Stopping cars at night, in secluded areas, to steal them and/or assault the passengers? Or causing mayhem by stopping cars on freeways, not all of which will slow at the same speed, leading to massive pile-ups.
Re:Just wait until... (Score:5, Interesting)
You realize that the only reliable way to generate an EMP is with a nuclear weapon right?
You watch too many movies.
A person can back-load an old portable generator into a transformer and create an EMP that will theoretically immobilize all electronics within a 3-block radius.
For more directed attacks, you can find plans for HERF (High Energy, Radio Frequency) guns all over the internet, and build one out of a microwave oven.
Re:Just wait until... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Just wait until... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure the "disruption, not damage" thing is going to be very reassuring to the guy with a pacemaker.
More generally, it's going to be very hard to calibrate field strength for this kind of thing to shut down car electronics without damaging any electronics: it works by turning wires into antennas and inducing enough voltage to confuse the device on one end of that wire. Due to the range of normal operating voltages in different devices -- or even different circuits within one device -- one voltage level might be too low to confuse some devices but high enough to damage others.
Re:Pros vs Cons (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:short story (Score:5, Interesting)
Active jamming to cancel out the incoming waves is not likely due to the high frequency they probably use.
BTW, do they test this thing on Dick Cheney to see if it shuts down pacemakers?
Re:Won't work. (Score:5, Interesting)
The car is already a pretty good Faraday Cage, being mostly metal.
The fact that this took so long to arrive in a viable product (it it is in fact viable) suggest how difficult the task of shutting down a car is. Presumably it is getting easier, because cars are no so much more dependent on computers.
The problem I see is that unless this device can be triggered precisely upon arrival of the target vehicle, you would end up clogging a freeway with 40 stalled vehicles just as your getaway car arrives. So you dump your desperate criminal in a bunch of helpless and confused hostages. If you could aim it, and and make it safe enough to carry on a helicopter you might have a useful product.
As described it sounds simply like another over-reaction tool for police.