Comment by meowkit | Hacker News Reader

Comment by meowkit | Hacker News Reader

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Normative statements.

You should be asking what are the incentives.

> like the more straightforward tech solution is to improve traffic cameras/monitors such that tickets are given out more appropriately

This is not straightforward from a bureaucratic sense. There is no strong incentive (that I can identify - humanitarian ideals do not count) to improve the functionality here to make traffic tickets and their resolutions more sensible.

However, an AI that can resolve traffic tickets and citations might incentive a city to start gathering data more effectively - to win cases and get revenue - and that is a great incentive to improve the general tech.

> Why do we need lawyer of any type to handle something as banal as speeding tickets?

I also want to mention that this is a great point. The fact that my job provides legal insurance, the end result being I can get out of my traffic tickets by hiring a lawyer for free to show up and ask for a dismissal, is pretty dumb.

> Normative statements. You should be asking what are the incentives.

This is itself a normative statement.

I’m of the opinion that incentives aren’t the only thing worth considering — there’s something to be said for enshrining ethics into law (if only because it can adjust incentives).

Another thing worth considering is our mediocre track record of identifying incentives ahead of time.

FWIW I think adding more cameras and monitoring equipment would have a strong incentive since it could still increase the total number of tickets given out.

Either way the government is not purely incentivized to increase funds. Standard fines for traffic violations are changed up or down all the time. Sometimes cities decide their current traffic enforcement is too burdensome and they cut back on tickets. There could be political actors which have incentives to improve it. Whether or not it will ever happen is not clear but I dont think its impossible by any means.

The threat of getting fired for incompetence is a perfectly good incentive.

The people with the power to fire them don't care. So your threat is empty.

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