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Comment by rbalicki | Hacker News Reader

Genuine question: What is stopping some small percent of drivers from installing cameras and using ML to identify cars driving dangerously (e.g. speeding, running reds, changing multiple lanes at once, etc.), and when their license plate is identifiable, finding and informing their insurance company?

If even a small subset of users did this, and insurers did something with this information, it would substantially disincentivize driving like a complete maniac.

Are insurers unable to use this information? Are they afraid of the backlash from being the first to accept this information? Is there some legal reason this isn't doable?

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Setting aside the obvious dystopian next steps, I think the main problem with automated traffic law enforcement is that our laws are quite bad in the sense that they rely on enforcement being loose and somewhat subjective to even work at all. The speeds on various roads, the timing of traffic lights, the places one can park and for how long, etc, are not carefully planned or thought out enough to actually work if everyone were to strictly adhere to them. It all works because lots of people can briefly park in illegal places, choose reasonable times to speed, or reasonable moments to use the shoulder to go around obstructions, etc.

Obviously you capture some craziness on the margin that you want to capture, but also on the margin is the fudging that makes the whole thing work at all.

I’m struggling to understand your point, or to imagine many examples which support it.

I agree that brief minor parking infringements may occasionally make people’s lives more efficient; but I can’t think of any examples where traffic lights and speed limits need to be routinely disregarded?

From what I remember of my CA driver’s license test (had to re-take the written test when I moved to CA), there is no actual speed limit in CA. The speed limit is “whatever conditions deem safe”.

Maybe OP meant something like that?

As someone who got their first drivers license in California, I can say with certainty that there are in fact speed limits.

You might want to review the handbook again. What you’re referring to is the basic speed law, which never trumps the absolute speed limits posted (or the special restrictions like the 15 mph railroad track law). Think of it as a clamped function: the speed limit is min(posted limit, safe speed under current conditions).

No, that's not true (CA driver here too). The "whatever conditions deem safe" bit is something that can reduce the legal speed below the posted speed limit. It can never raise it above the posted limit.

Even with no posted speed limit, there is an implicit limit in CA (differs based on the type of road and surrounding locale), and "conditions" can again only reduce that.

It's sometimes safer to speed up 5mph over the limit to get through a yellow light, than to slam your brakes with someone behind you. It's frequently safer to speed to match people speeding around you then to match the stated speed limit (usually on freeways).

These are both problems caused by poor driving (other peoples' in this case). Maybe with a traffic law panopticon everyone would drive better and these would disappear

This is actually a problem with speed limits that don't match the road or alternatively, roads that aren't designed to incentivize people driving the intended speed.

In theory, the speed limit should be set to the 80th or 85th percentile speed of traffic, and the road should be engineered so that the 80th percentile speed is appropriate to the surroundings.

https://www.mikeontraffic.com/85th-percentile-speed-explaine...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_calming

I'm extremely skeptical of this idea of "speed limits which don't match the road" unless people are arguing them down. Because the whole point is that people reliably overestimate their driving ability, and thus overestimate the safe rate of travel on a road.

The road I live on displays this all the time, and that's just an advisory road: the speed limit going down the winding slope near my house is about 50 kmh...that is probably the absolute maximum you can navigate those turns at in perfect conditions, and in reality it's considerably slower - and there are steep embankments either side, so if you lose control your car is at the mercy as to whether or not a tree will stop it plunging over the edge.

Anyway, there's been a fair number of damaged cars and one near miss from said creek plunge in the 2 years I've lived here.

You live on an extreme road where road engineering can't do much due to the given environment and possibly low budget if the road is not that important. Though anything that slows vehicles before entering this stretch of road, or a much less harmful obstacle to heighten their awareness could improve the situation.

Roads where planners have a literal blank sheet is where roads need to be designed better to slow down drivers to the desired speed limit. Sometimes it's as simple as adding traffic islands for pedestrians, narrowing the road or planing trees next to the road.

"advisory" was ambiguous - I meant say, the lower speed limit is advisory - as in "45kmh an hour when wet".

I live in the middle of Sydney. This is an urban road. It is directly off a major highway in a suburban residential area.

It is a regular residential suburban street. No amount of "clever planning" will undo the natural topography of the region. It is a paved, well maintained road and that's the problem - people's judgement of what "feels right" depends on numerous factors they can't see and which don't matter.

They're in the middle of a recently resurfaced, asphalt road with a footpath down the side and what looks like trees and bush on side, and a cliff cut on the other. But it's relatively steep, winds a fair bit due to the climb, but also looks isolated when you're at the bottom because it runs through a state park area.

From street level you cannot tell how slippery it might be when wet (which people just plain suck at), how wet "wet" actually has to be (i.e. partially wet roads are more dangerous then when it's a hard downpour because the surface becomes slick), and unless you paid close attention to the area you can't know that there's no real protection along the side of the road (which shouldn't even be a factor: no one should be driving in a way where they depend on crash severity safety measures).

Observably, people's judgement of "feels right" sucks because as noted: there's been a fair few crashes basically caused by people taking corners too fast (which is to say, maybe they were speeding but that again is the point - they think they can safely go faster, and no, they actually can't and aren't good at judging that) - one of which was a car which very luckily ploughed into a very sturdy tree stump and didn't send it's occupants down the drop into the gulley.

You don't ever need to slam on your brakes or speed up for yellow lights, that's the entire point of the yellow light existing instead of just going straight to red.

Not if they're poorly timed.

What does this mean?

If you observe a yellow and can safely stop, then stop. If you can't safely stop, then don't stop.

Literally from today...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/08/31/how-lo...

Some yellows aren't too well timed, especially if on a downhill slope.

Again back to control of your vehicle. I would expect a first time driver to make your complaint. A driver for multiple years should be able to adapt their speed for their surroundings

If you’re speeding up for yellow lights, you are a terrible driver and you should seek out some better skills and practices.

I dunno. I’d rather speed up to make it through than slam on my brakes and have someone rear end me. That’s how I drive and I’ve never been in an accident in around 30 years of driving.

Speed cameras aren't installed at intersections though.

You are railing against an example which doesn't exist.

That is quite literally not true. Many states have speed cameras at intersections.

It's not just about efficiency, it's also about quality of life. There is a reason that a cop has permission to use his judgement when deciding to write a ticket or not. Because life is better when we don't live under the oppression of draconian rule keepers all the time. Rules are meant to protect people, and as such are often specified in terms of the lowest common denominator, with the understanding that the system doesn't enforce them when they can be reasonably ignored, using good judgement.

Life will be shittier for everyone if an army of self-empowered rule-loving busybodies get to expand their current powers beyond the realm of the HOA.

Frankly I'd rather just get a ticket when I speed by a traffic camera than rely on the discretion of a random police officer who might just be looking for a pretense to search my vehicle or hassle me in some other way.

Jaywalking, to my ear, is a similarly universal & easy example for this not being universally desirable.

It's probably not universally necessary to jaywalk. However, I am against this on the grounds of logistics. I understand and accept the need to have a license and display an identifier while operating a vehicle, but I think this would be an extreme requirement for people walking around (and possibly unconstitutional in the US?) And without this identifier, how will the system know where to send the citation?

All things being equal though this doesn't even sound inherently bad. If every jaywalking infraction was cited we might democratically re-decide how much we want that law to be on the books.

And indeed, California no longer has strong jaywalking laws on the books. A cop can only cite you for jaywalking if you're crossing dangerously. Crossing on a red light, do-not-walk sign, or at a place where there isn't a crosswalk is no longer automatically considered jaywalking.

Where I lived in Europe (as an American), jaywalking wasn’t illegal. They didn’t even really consider it weird. After all, you’re just walking.

In fact, if you were in the street and a car hit you, the car driver had to prove that it was unavoidable to miss you, otherwise the driver was at fault.

It was also illegal to intentionally block traffic as a pedestrian unless you were at a crosswalk. But there was no law that made it illegal to cross the street anywhere.

Seems like the best of all worlds. And it’s easy to fully enforce the whole “blocking traffic is illegal” part.

As of the beginning of 2023, jaywalking is no longer a thing in California. The only time a cop can cite you is if you're doing something dangerous. If it's safe for you to cross on a red light, or in the middle of a road not near an intersection, that's legally fine now.

Of course, the loophole is large enough to drive a truck through: if a cop wants to, they can decide you're walking "dangerously" as a pretense to hassle you. And most of the time it'll be the cop's word against yours as to whether or not you were being safe or not, and the courts will always side with the cops absent other evidence.

I always thought jaywalking laws were just stupid. The way I looked at it was always: my parents taught me when I was a kid to look both ways, and only cross if it's safe. To me, that suggests that I should always be allowed to cross if I determine it's safe, regardless of other considerations.

(The history of such laws are quite interesting and -- spoiler alert -- surprise, surprise, they were driven by automakers.)

As someone who walks around San Jose quite a lot, on many roads it is safer to cross in the middle of the block than at the intersections. You only have one or two directions to check, and incoming cars have better visibility than at an intersection. And you don't have the failure mode of the car not stopping for the red light.

Where?

You clearly haven’t received a letter in the mail for $250 because a camera saw you barely not fully stop for a red light right turn at 3am with zero traffic

A human in the loop needs to be the first line of defense, if an officer isn’t willing to be in the field to issue the ticket and show up in court to defend it then there shouldn’t be a ticket in the first place, full stop

Were you in that much of a hurry to not be able to wait 30 seconds for the traffic light?

That’s not the point, a surveillance state where the panopticon autonomously gives $250 tickets is the issue

Rules aren’t meant to be cold hard algorithms to blindly punish people with; we wouldn’t automate a judge with an algorithm why is it somehow different to automate a police officer with one?

> Rules aren’t meant to be cold hard algorithms to blindly punish people with; we wouldn’t automate a judge with an algorithm why is it somehow different to automate a police officer with one?

The role of enforcing certain laws can be easily fulfilled with simple algorithms as the logic required is on early grade school level. In this case it's something like: if "stoplight is red" and "car doesn't stop", then "driver gets ticket." That's all the algorithm has to do, super easy to automate. Automation allows for enforcement where it would otherwise not be cost effective, like when it's 3am and no one else is around.

The judiciary, however, has to interpret all kinds of crazy edge cases that people come up with to try and get out of tickets for rolling stops or whatever legal case, for all laws, because every now and then someone has a valid case. That's a bit harder to do with a couple lines of code and some low cost hardware.

Why is that not the point?

You violated a law and received a penalty. You're not disputing that you violated said law, but are instead trying to justify it with "barely didn't stop" and "it's 3am and there is no traffic".

Isn't the point that you got punished for doing something you would have gotten away with had no one been watching?

because maybe the point is "The basic premise of democracy is that the citizens/ordinary people are trusted as the ultimate source of the law, and the law is to serve them, not them to serve the law."

Nice twist to the premise at the end, but no, the point is that the person got punished for using sound and reasonable judgement in a situation where the regulation (not law) was ill thought out.

"Sound and reasonable judgement" to save a couple seconds?

That still just seems like rationalization of bad behavior.

You're right that the basic premise of democracy is that citizens can be trusted as the source of the law, but it seems to me that this particular citizen can't actually be trusted? I mean, they're demonstrating a lack of integrity, are they not?

You're talking about someone who, from their description, slowed down to something like 0.1mph instead of absolute zero. At 3am, in an empty road. How is that bad behaviour, lack of integrity, and a sign someone can't be trusted?

Integrity is commonly defined as "doing the right thing, even if no one is watching", is it not?

I highly doubt this person would have rolled through the light if a cop were sitting at the intersection watching them, and they knew they were being observed.

To several other posters' points, the specific regulation in question exists for safety reasons. Those safety reasons don't go away just because you don't think they apply in the moment. I'm sure every person who has hit (or been hit by) another person when rolling through a right turn like that thought their judgement in the moment was reasonable, too. I'm also sure not every one of those would have been prevented by coming to a complete stop and looking at the turn, but certainly some of them would have, which is a net positive for everyone. This comes at a cost of a handful of seconds, which seems like the most trivial of inconveniences, and wholly worth paying every time.

> That still just seems like rationalization of bad behavior.

I think the issue is that you're taking as fact that "in order to be safe, you must come to a full stop at a red light before turning right", and that not doing so is, indisputably, "bad behavior". I dispute that. I think in many situations it is just as safe to nearly-but-not-completely come to a full stop before continuing, and it's entirely fine behavior.

The law has some difficulty encoding that. (Not that it's impossible, but it's difficult, and enforcement perhaps gets weirder if you try.)

Let's take a related example: jaywalking. In many places, you can get a ticket for crossing the street somewhere where there isn't a crosswalk, or crossing against a red light or a don't-walk sign. I was taught as a child how to look both ways and only cross when and where it's safe to do so. I don't need a sign or stripes on the road to tell me that (though I do appreciate those things as hints and suggestions). Hell, in some places (Manhattan comes to mind), if you don't jaywalk, everyone around you will look at you funny and get annoyed with you.

California, recognizing this, finally eliminated most jaywalking laws a year and half ago[0]. You can only get cited here if you've failed to do what your parents told you, and you're crossing when it's not safe to do so.

Stopping fully at a red light before turning right is, IMO, similar enough. For many (most?) intersections, you're only going to be a teeny tiny fraction of a percent safer coming to a full stop. So why bother?

[0] Let's also remember that jaywalking laws exist only because car manufacturers wanted them. Walking in the street!? How absurd! Streets are only for our beautifully-produced cars! Not you grubby plebeian pedestrians. Away with you!

> I think in many situations it is just as safe to nearly-but-not-completely come to a full stop before continuing, and it's entirely fine behavior.

I'm sure the multiple people that would have hit me if I hadn't jumped out of the way because they were looking the ither way to see if cars where coming thought the same.

> Let's take a related example: jaywalking.

When walking one is not impaired in one's vision of the surroundings, and you're not operating heavy machinery. The worst you can do is get yourself killed. With a car, the most likely scenario is to kill someone else.

I don't actually disagree with some level of automated enforcement, but I do disagree with your phrasing/justification of it.

I just don't believe violating the law is always wrong, always bad, or always unsafe. While I would agree that most people are bad at risk assessment, and most people are not good drivers, the law should be flexible enough to deal with cases where breaking it is absolutely fine to do.

As a perhaps weird and imperfect analogy, killing another person is illegal... except when it isn't. The law recognizes that sometimes, even if in rare cases, killing another person is justified. This is why we have different words: "homicide" is sometimes not "murder" or even "manslaughter"; sometimes it's "self-defense".

Or sometimes it is the death sentence.

I agree with you, FWIW.

I wholly agree that violating some laws is entirely justified.

However, I don't think any violation is justified by what more or less amounts to laziness and the desire to save an inconsequential amount of time.

It’s hardly a surveillance state to say operators of heavy machinery should do so safely: there are many, many dead pedestrians and bicyclists who were hit by someone who _thought_ the road was empty, and American traffic laws are so lenient that it’s disturbing that people think they’re overbearing.

It’s estimated that we are effectively subsidizing drivers by close to a trillion dollars annually by not requiring adequate insurance to cover the full cost to victims. Just pay your ticket and drive better before you make a mistake you’ll never recover from.

https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/road-deaths-us-eu/

Seems to be more of an issue in the US.

Definitely: bigger vehicles, higher speeds, and because the alternatives to driving have been starved of funding or removed the entire system is loathe to punish bad drivers because taking away someone’s license largely removes their ability to function.

Unfortunately the state of public transportation is awful in the US, for sure.

America has tried to do this, famously, with the "3 strikes and you're out" laws of the past century.

At 3am? Bed presumably.

We're talking about a rolling right turn on red, not crossing the whole intersection on red. The turn is allowed but the camera took issue with how much of a stop came first.

I don't know very many drivers who wouldn't recognize that camera behavior at 3:00 in the morning as unreasonable.

Why not just come to a full stop? It's presumably dark out at 3am so you may have missed a pedestrian or a vehicle with no headlights. It only takes an extra second or two to stop and look around.

At the majority of signal-controlled intersections with city limits there's plenty of visibility even (or dare I say especially) at 3am and the scanning can happen as you approach.

(Also, the kind of rolling stop I'm talking about isn't a 5mph roll, it's a near-stop that feels like a stop to the driver but technically doesn't actually bring the tires to stationary. Odds are even you have done this kind of stop pretty regularly without realizing it, and even a cop wouldn't even notice it as incorrect unless they were actively looking for someone to ticket.)

Odds are I haven't since I'm always careful to stop twice when turning right on red. (Once before the crosswalk, and again at the far side of the crosswalk to check for cross traffic before executing the turn.)

Have you ever been rear-ended, stopping twice like that?

I have.

Never while turning right on red. I was rear ended once by a fellow who was looking at his phone and did not notice me and the line of stopped cars waiting at a red light. But sometimes what can you do?

The second stop is legally irrelevant—if your first stop is insufficient you've run the red as far as the camera is concerned.

The second stop may actually be illegal in its own right depending on the state.

It's what I was taught to do in driver's ed. I know of no state where turning right on a red light is compulsory so I don't see how coming to a complete stop at any point could possibly be considered illegal.

You're in the intersection at that point and blocking the crosswalk, so you're no longer behind the red light, you're in front of it. In every state I've lived in you can absolutely get pulled over for stopping in the road where there is no need and no signal.

The first stop is for the crosswalk. (I might do this even when the light is green if there is a pedestrian in the crosswalk since never hitting a pedestrian is a rule of mine.) If I see a pedestrian in or approaching the crosswalk I wait here until they are completely cleared. Then I slowly roll forward for the second stop. This is the stop I use to check for approaching motor traffic. I have better visibility now because there's no longer a lifted F150 blocking my view to the left. Assuming I do notice an approaching vehicle I'm supposed to what? Drive into it? I would love to be in court accused of failing to run a red light into active cross traffic.

Anyway, you can drive however you want. I've been driving like this for over 30 years all across the United States and I have never been pulled over, cited, rear ended, or even, as far as I can recall, honked at while pulling this particular maneuver so I think some of the risks you are imagining may be overblown.

I don't really find anything wrong with your approach (I do the double-stop sometimes too, if conditions warrant it). But coming to a complete stop (once or twice), for many intersections, for many road conditions, for many times of day, is not going to meaningfully increase anyone's level of safety (yours, another driver's, a cyclist's, a pedestrian's...) vs. a momentary pretty-much-but-not-really-stopped stop.

To use your phrasing, the risk of anything bad happening after a not-quite stop may be overblown.

Sure, I'll agree that there may be times when the "extra" caution is unwarranted by the situation at the intersection. But by doing this every time I ingrain it as an automatic habit which greatly reduces my ongoing risk of failing to use extra caution at some point where it is warranted!

Since the failure mode is an auto accident and the cost of the habit is marginal I feel comfortable promoting this behavior. I have definitely seen accidents and many near misses caused by people who failed to come to a complete stop and look around when conditions did warrant it.

Another lesson I learned in driver's ed is that traffic approaching from the left can be traveling at a speed that completely synchronizes with the A-pillar of your moving vehicle, causing it to be completely invisible to you right up until the moment it collides with your front driver's side fender. This is why I stop and move my head around while I look, to make sure I'm not missing anything. I'm just a stupid human after all.

You have a STOPPING line that is on YOUR side of the crosswalk. That is the line you stay behind during a red light, if you stop then cross the line and stop again in the eye of the law it's no different than if you hadn't stopped behind the line at all.

You are correct that it's not compulsory to turn right on a red, however, if you are going to turn right you can't just stop in the middle of the intersection you either stay back or you go.

Depends on your state. In my state we can take driving actions that violate the law as long as we can prove it was safe to do at the time. Your state may not be so lenient.

> Why not just come to a full stop?

Because people don't. That's just a fact of life, and we even have silly names (like "California stop") for the all-too-common behavior of barely or not completely stopping at a stop sign before continuing on.

I'm not excusing this behavior (even though I do it myself), but it's a widespread fact of life. The world is squishy, and I don't think it's reasonable to punish everyone for not coming to a full stop every single time, even if it's 0.01% safer to do so.

It's also kinda hard to define a "full stop". Well, obviously there are some states that are very obviously a car at rest. But if you were to, say, graph my car's speed at an intersection with a stop sign, you might see a curve that flattens out to where the slope is zero. Maybe that zero-slope point is a teeny tiny fraction of a second, though. Did I come to a full stop? Yes! Can a cop actually realize I did come to a full stop? Often not. Ok, so I did stop, but did I give enough time while at a full stop in order to assess that it was safe to continue moving? Do I even need to do that after I've come to a full stop, or can I start that assessment when my speed is 3mph, and know by the time I've fully stopped that it's immediately safe to continue? I think so, yes.

It's just fuzzy. Humans are fuzzy. The law is fuzzy. Safety is not a yes/no binary, it's fuzzy. Many many people don't always come to a full stop. That's just a fact; asking why is probably pointless.

I believe the commenter is in US where you are allowed to make a right turn on a red light but you must stop and make sure it's safe to do so.

There is old Woody Allen joke: The only advantage of LA over NYC is right turn on red light is allowed.

That is a discussion that can be had between the offender and the police officer, also depending what you are driving (ie a motorcycle) often traffic lights may not detect you and you can be sitting there forever.

Put it this way would you feel comfortable having your phone just passively watching you and anytime you break any law that is on the books it calls the cops on you? If you can see that as over reaching you can understand why others don't want automated enforcement done to them.

> That is a discussion that can be had between the offender and the police officer

Once you've been pulled over, a police officer is unlikely to change their course of action based on anything you say to them. Especially in this case, of not coming quite to a full stop at a red light before turning right. The cop knows it was safe to do so. They just want the ticket revenue or to fill up their quota for the month. Or they're just having a bad day and want to harass someone who can't fight back. Or, if I'm being charitable, they're an incessant rule-follower who doesn't understand how reality works.

Regardless of whether he can wait 30 seconds there is no good reason to impose that cost. Its just randomly making someone's life worse for literally no gain. Time is our most precious and finite commodity and should not be wasted.

Or the cases when you are on a motorcycle at 3am and the road sensors don't sense you so at the advise of a police officer, you carefully and safely run the red light. I think we know what's going to happen. I've come to the conclusion that most of the dystopian movies about robots and automation are just [spoilers].

Either way I moved to a very rural and remote location. One of my many hopes is that it will buy enough time for urban and suburban areas to duke it out in courts for a couple decades before I have to deal with the fallout.

I've had to do this with an electric scooter before. Sometimes the road sensors aren't tuned for very small things... probably because most cars aren't that small.

Just to be safe, you could push the bike, at least with bicycles you're a pedestrian as soon as you don't ride but push it.

Pushing a 500 pound motorcycle through an intersection in a time there may be drunk drivers sounds extra risky to me.

I think a solution would be to first implement this AI in a tech-only city. Tech billionaires were planning on building a tech city in California. That seems like a good test-bed to fail fast and fail often. The AI need first be installed around all the billionaires homes and the system must have full transparency. Or the system accidentally leak some interesting stats including to show if anyone was made exempt. The fines won't affect them but if their personal drivers get enough moving violations and lose their license it may affect their vendors or make them late for meetings. If they are confident in AI then they would agree to the concept of shared pain. If that tech city falls through then it should be implemented in San Fransisco for five years.

Hell, I've been pulled over (and given a ticket) in nearly that exact situation you describe (I think it was more like 1am for me). Reasonable human discretion didn't help me that time.

> if an officer isn’t willing to be in the field to issue the ticket and show up in court to defend it then there shouldn’t be a ticket in the first place

I'm torn on this in general. The idealist in me really really really wants to agree with your statement, but the sheer number of cars on the roads means that cops see a teeny tiny fraction of things that happen. Driving-related injuries and deaths are disgustingly high, and I expect most of them are related to speeding, and running red lights and stop signs. That is, stuff cops are supposed to be policing.

No human-powered enforcement mechanism can watch for all of those. Yes, the usual deterrent factor applies: even if you are a butthole who doesn't care about safety, you might follow the rules because of the (relatively small) possibility that there just might be a cop nearby that sees you doing something bad. But clearly it's not really working all that well; car-related injury and death statistics are still (IMO) unacceptably bad.

I feel like this is sort of unique. Like, for other illegal behaviors, you can usually reduce them through other things. Like, have a healthy economy, low unemployment, under-control inflation, and housing that's affordable enough for everyone who wants to live in a place, and you have an environment where it's rare that people feel the need to commit property crimes. But drivers who speed are gonna speed. Drivers who run red lights and stop signs are gonna run red lights and stop signs.

Maybe -- like for many things -- better enforcement isn't the answer. Better road/traffic engineering, stiffer penalties for when people do get caught doing unsafe things... I dunno, maybe that will get us there. Perhaps we'll have some sort of a transit renaissance, and so many fewer people will opt to drive, and that will naturally make things better. Or maybe self-driving will get good enough (and be used pervasively enough, or perhaps even mandated) that riding in a car will become a lot safer, on par with train or even air travel. Who knows.

Regardless, though, I think my personal level of comfort is somewhere in the middle. I certainly don't want dystopian 100% panopicon-style enforcement of every single thing, where everyone is recorded everywhere they go to make sure they aren't breaking the law. But I think a light sprinkling of automated enforcement here and there is probably not harmful privacy/freedom-wise, but can indeed be a societal good. But I don't exactly trust law enforcement to stay within the lines of their mandate when it comes to these sorts of things. And I don't trust elected officials and judges to actually do something when law enforcement gets out of control.

In my city (200k pop) a lot of traffic lights are turned off, or rather blinking orange during the night. The few exceptions keep operating normal for good reasons. We don't have a smart traffic control system in our city so I assume it's the bare minimum and if the light you talk about was red at 3am, then there's a good reason for it.

I was just discussing this with my wife while driving on the local expressway on a clear Saturday afternoon. The speed limit is 55 MPH but everyone was moving at 70 MPH without any issues. The road is wide and straight with limited on/off ramps and the faster speed felt very natural.

This is a common occurrence on this road and everyone seems to abide pretty well. Sure, there is the occasional "idiot" doing stupid things (weaving in out of traffic, speeding up / slowing down, etc.) but for the most part it just works.

The big problem is when a LEO is around. Everyone slows down to 55ish MPH and traffic backs up and people do weird things.

However, I don't know the solution. If we raise the speed limit to 70 MPH does that mean that people will then feel comfortable going 80 or 90 MPH? If we lower the speed limit to 30 MPH will that cause everyone to only go 55 MPH? This piece of road just feels right and natural at 70 MPH; everyone seems to think so, if unconsciously. Will changing the laws "fix" this piece of road?

The problem with speed limits in general is that they're not universally applicable. Darkness, fog, rain, snow, etc. can all change what the actual safe maximum speed is. So even with a posted 55mph speed limit, the maximum safe speed at a particular time might be lower (even considerably lower), and a LEO could cite you for going too fast even if you're driving under the posted limit. (I've been on the interstate in the snow where you'd be likely to get pulled over if you were going much over 25mph, even with a posted 65mph limit.)

Driver skill and reaction time also plays a factor, but of course people are not so great at judging what their own specific safe speed is all the time. And all other things being equal, you're more likely to get into a crash if you're driving faster rather than slower, and the injuries you sustain will be worse at a higher speed.

IIRC speed limits are often set at some percentile (85th?) of what all drivers would (theoretically) "naturally" drive if there was no posted limit. And, on highways, cops will often not pull people over for exceeding the speed limit by a moderate amount. Once, long ago, a cop told me that, absent adverse conditions or other unsafe behavior, he usually will not stop anyone unless they're going more than 10mph over the highway speed limit. And I expect if he were hiding in a speed trap that no one could actually see driving by, and everyone was going 70mph on your 55mph road, he'd probably just sit there and not bother anyone, unless they were doing something else that was unsafe.

I guess this is a long winded way to say that there really is no single safe speed that applies to everyone, in every road condition. The law acknowledges this, and police often let you do your thing unless they believe you're actually doing something unsafe. The discretion and judgment calls can be a problem (biases, etc.), but I don't think a society where unavoidably "fuzzy" laws were always prosecuted would be a great society either.

A lot of departments have policies about not interrupting thr normal flow of traffic.

When I was a kid, the argument for lower speeds on expressways was fuel efficiency.

Properly set speed limits would not need to be routinely disregarded. We don’t have those right now (IMO).

I would think that once enforcement becomes automated (and thus applies to those with resources, who currently get away with it), there would be a lot of pressure on the legislature (by those who currently get away with it) to make the rules better. Legislatures can move fast, but only when they're motivated. e.g. if every NYC taxi suddenly got a ticket every time they stopped in the street to pick up a passenger, those laws would be updated very quickly.

That seems optimistic. I would instead expect that those VIPs would be added to a table of folks who don't get tickets, codifying the current semi-formal process.

If we're looking at pas examples, the reverse happens a lot more: rules and environments are made stricter with stronger passive enforcement to get rid of the infractions.

Setting automated speed traps where drivers don't respect the limit, physically forcing lower speeds where traps didn't work or closing whole streets to regular cars to get rid of the problem altogether.

The main issue isn't just the rules, and if the infrastructure has to be adapted as well, it's often cheaper to get rid of traffic than to rethink a system that work better in adversarial situations.

> there would be a lot of pressure on the legislature (by those who currently get away with it) to make the rules better.

Making perfect rules is basically impossible, they'd be millions of pages long to fully capture all the caveats and exceptions. The world is fractals complex and so we rely on intelligent prosecutors and police not bothering to pursue things that are illegal but fine.

It's just not worth it to try and make perfect laws.

Wait, where are NYC taxis allowed to pickup people?

"Better" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. In my town they took down the automated red light ticket machines on many corners because people quit running the lights. So the machines weren't gathering monies in tickets yet they still cost the city to have them.

Better needs to mean something other than gather revenue. And it don't with automated things.

The loose laws you describe are a problem that needs to be solved regardless, because they allow for selective enforcement against specific people or demographics by police departments acting in bad faith. A law that everyone is technically breaking but is generally not enforced can be used to target ethnic groups, or individuals that a particular police officer has a personal vendetta against. It essentially turns the police into judges, because it gives them the guaranteed ability to get a conviction somehow against anyone they want.

I assume a way for any civilian to activate those laws against any other civilian would result in the legal code being cleaned up quite quickly.

It's not laws that are bad, it's the infrastructure. Wide roads that give the driver the feeling that it is safe to drive a 60 mph when the sign says 45.

Often when they are meticulously designed it is for revenue generation and not safety.

Insurance isn't the same as law enforcement, not even close.

Here in the UK, the police actively encourage the public to submit dashcam footage of motoring offences.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-64386371

https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/news/driving-1/2021-02/one-in-f...

Oof, conditioning people to tattle on their neighbors. That's never gone horribly wrong... /s

It's so very HN that we get into fits about Google and Facebook and Apple and so on tracking us to make a buck, but the idea of an insurance company deputizing millions of cameras to perform mass surveillance to make a buck is suddenly okay because drivers that make us angry on the road get hurt by it.

The obvious answer to this proposal is that I believe that I have a right to not be monitored and penalized by autonomous algorithms, and I'm not ready to compromise on that right just because some people drive dangerously. All of the same arguments HN will reliably raise against algorithmic anything apply here, but apparently that all goes out the window when cars become involved.

> but the idea of an insurance company deputizing millions of cameras to perform mass surveillance to make a buck is suddenly okay because drivers that make us angry on the road get hurt by it.

I'd word it more like drivers who put me and others around me in danger should be punished for driving recklessly.

Fair enough. After all, as we all know, the only reason to object to massive surveillance nets is if you're a criminal who has something to hide. Since I keep the law all that tracking and monitoring won't affect me.

I mean, you do have to admit that by objecting to "massive surveillance nets", you're actively helping criminals who have things to hide, even if you don't.

If you think that's worth it, that's up to you, but you do have to admit that your position helps those with antisocial goals. You'll probably argue that "massive surveillance nets are inherently antisocial", but we both know that's not any more true than saying that "absolute freedom of speech is inherently antisocial". Arguably true, but wholly subjective.

It's just an observation: this proposal aimed at penalizing bad drivers gets upvoted and generally supported, but proposals aimed at hunting down child pornographers get attacked as dangerous overreach. "I have nothing to hide" is an invalid argument for E2E encryption backdoors, but it's the correct way to think about a dashcam botnet.

It's just an interesting insight into the collective tech consciousness.

>you do have to admit that by objecting to "massive surveillance nets", you're actively helping criminals who have things to hide

This is such a disengenious gaslighting way of framing critic it would make politicians blush. I hope none of your "positions" could ever be used for anything bad ever or its your fault wether you want or not

Sorry about this, but a law was just passed making posting anything to a public-facing web site without prior government authorization a serious crime with a five-year forced-labor-camp sentence.

> Fair enough. After all, as we all know, the only reason to object to massive surveillance nets is if you're a criminal who has something to hide

Yea, that's the case when i'm submitting a video of a crime being committed. I also submitted video of crimes in my neighborhood being committed (home security cams), is that also an invasion of the criminals privacy?

The difference is it's in public. Google et al wants to get into your private life. Nobody is talking about watching you race cars on a private track.

So you're okay with police having access to facial recognition cameras on every public street in order to better track down violent criminals?

> to make a buck

And to make roads safer.

So it's also okay for police to deploy large-scale facial recognition systems to help enforce the law and catch violent criminals, right? Or is there something special about cars or about insurance companies that makes them the exception?

You are not a car

One of the first things you learn when you get your drivers license is that you don't have the same rights on public roads as you do off the roads, or in private (such as requirements for carrying up-to-date license, breathalyzers, etc).

I doubt it'd tell them any more than they already know. These drivers tend to have been given citations already.

The real money would be in giving civilians whose footage leads to a successful prosecution for moving violations a percentage of the fine. NYC already has something like this for people who catch too-long idling trucks and photograph/video record it.

Do insurers really know about citations?

Are you kidding? Absolutely. For moving violations you can look forward to the ticket itself plus increased insurance premiums.

I'm not an expert and I'm not one to get many tickets however my understanding is that they only look up individuals during renewal time or if you change policy or company.

If you got a speeding ticket on week 10 of the year there is unlikely to be any increase on your insurance on week 35.

Like I said this was my perhaps incorrect understanding of how it works here in Canada.

This is my understanding as well but with net technology perhaps they are checking more often now.

This is not true in my experience in the US (thanks sneakily-placed rapidly-changing speed limit signs enforced against out-of-state plates in Utah!)

I don't know how much detail they have but yes, insurers in the US do know if you've received a ticket for a moving violation (parking violations are irrelevant).

Many of them use solutions like LexisNexis Risk Solutions (which is like a 3rd party API that can return this data). How LNRS gets the data, I'm not sure.

For example, insurers also get data for stolen vehicles since it affects claims. I know this because in a previous (local government) job, I literally sat on calls about building an integration where we sent license plates of stolen cars (officially reported stolen to the police), if we wrote parking tickets for those cars, since we (another local gov agency) spotted the stolen car.

To me, even though I have strong feelings against privacy and surveillance, this felt like a totally pragmatic (and laser focused, it only affect cars that were currently designated stolen) use of the data.

Worked in NYS auto insurance. The government provided us an APi which we could use to pull driver records. While we could pull anyone that we want via the api, we get audited and must show reason for the pulls (such as a newly insured driver or renewal etc).

I assume other states are similar

The level of crazy driving to citations is rather low.

> The real money would be in giving civilians whose footage leads to a successful prosecution for moving violations a percentage of the fine.

I've heard lots of talk of civil war in this country, but this is the first serious plan I've seen for how to start one.

Contracting out patrolling to private citizens would be a brilliant way to get around that pesky Bill of Rights.

This is already done via traffic cameras, which are operated by contracted private outfits. Letting any civilian submit the footage, for a judge to review, would amount to a qui tam action. It's not unprecedented. Would the average citizen want to risk his identity being exposed if the defendant demands an audit of the footage? I couldn't say.

You've heard all the horror stories of HOA's ... yeah lets add those people into other area's of peoples lives.

Can you elaborate on what would be bypassed by "patrolling?"

If the government was really contracting something out, then there's an argument to be made that it's on behalf of the government therefore it's government action and therefore it may be prohibited.

If nothing else, I'm pretty confident that my 3rd-amendment rights to not have soldiers crashing on my couch is safe from whatever my neighbor does with their dashcam.

I think you're drawing the right distinction. It's likely state action if a city or county literally delegated beat-cop duties to citizens with smartphones.

I'm more afraid of the slippery slope. I'm less confident courts find state action if a government is merely encouraging private citizens to supply evidence via a bounty system. Even if it's plain that this citizen-provided evidence is horribly biased, a court might say that the prosecuting entity has the responsibility to sift through the bias, and this responsibility is the difference between the state (the government) and non-state (the citizen who happens to submit only footage of people of a certain race).

But eventually the flow of money effectively deputizes the citizen, replacing beat-cop budgets with crowd-source bounties, and years of abuse pass before the courts acknowledge that it's actually been state action for quite a while.

(Interesting reading: Yick Wo v. Hopkins, which established that a fairly written law can still violate constitutional rights if the administration of that law is unjust. The City of San Francisco required permits for laundries, which is fine, but in actuality they never granted permits for people of Chinese descent. The US Supreme Court said nope. I could see similar reasoning applying here.)

> Can you elaborate on what would be bypassed by "patrolling?"

Well, we saw this play out in the last couple years in Texas—they set up their laws so that abortion enforcement was performed by civilians (i.e. not cops, not the government), specifically to throw sand in the gears of any countervailing judicial efforts (i.e. making it impossible to sue anyone to force them to stop it, because it's just a game of whack-a-mole at that point).

> in Texas—they set up their laws so that abortion enforcement was performed by civilians

A law [0] which, IMO, is a flat-out travesty of justice, kind of like if Texas Republicans had passed a law saying: "No private citizen shall be guilty of assault or liable in a civil trial for striking someone who spoke on the Ministry of Truth's totally voluntary prohibited ideas list."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Heartbeat_Act

Here is a short film proposing just that. [1]

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJYaXy5mmA8 [video][15 mins]

> The real money would be in giving civilians whose footage leads to a successful prosecution for moving violations a percentage of the fine.

I don't know where you live, but around me, the police are so disinterested in traffic safety that roads have turned into a Mad Max free-for-all. Red light running, stop sign running, lack of signaling, weaving in and out of lanes, and general belligerence on the road. That and 90% of drivers are playing on their smartphones. Police departments could get infinite money by just opening their eyes and pulling nearly anyone over.

In my area, this is one their most intense efforts - fines are very profitable to the municipality.

California?

Also NYC, also Miami. I never got this impression in the Bay Area when I lived there (10 years ago)

Enforcement of red light running has been de facto nil for the past 4 years until a couple of months ago. The cynic in me guesses that this is due to the election cycle.

That is typically a case of police trying to negotiate funding, it will go in a cycle once a contract gets renegotiated they will go on a blitz to show how effective the funding was and then over time let it start to slide again.

> The real money would be in giving civilians whose footage leads to a successful prosecution for moving violations a percentage of the fine.

This is 200% in the wrong direction.

We should be removing the incentive for the justice system to benefit from collected money at all let alone expanding it.

"Incentivized" justice is gigantic moral hazard. The system will invent "crimes" in order to keep the money flowing.

It won’t work as you expect. Most of these drivers don’t have insurance. Second, you might make things worse, as now you have other Karen-like drivers who will eventually start threatening other people to report them, and that will escalate a situation from flipping a bird to a more dangerous situation. I sometimes watch dashcam rage videos on YouTube, and these drivers won’t care or even become more aggressive once told there’s a dashcam. This is not to mention the questionable results of ML that could report false positives.

It's not clear to me how you can claim most of these drivers don't have insurance.

Also. Nothing is stopping Karen's from reporting things right now. So what if they do? If you've done nothing wrong then the reviewer would just trash it. And probably put Karen's reports in the "immediately discard" pile in the future if she sends in frivolous claims all the time.

I watched dashcam videos, and most times after accidents, it turned out that there is no insurance or, worse, wrong insurance information is given, only to be found later that it’s fake. Obviously, this is not real statistics, but something I observed.

> nothing is stopping Karens from reporting things

True, but when you provide a platform for that, you incentivize the behavior. As mentioned below, you might start getting “points” in the app for these reports, just like how you report gas prices and get points that might win you free gas.

And likewise, you might get points deducted for wasting the reviewers time with a frivolous submission.

The far more risky and dangerous - ostensibly for the original caller too - phenomenon of swatting exists despite all that. I would not be so sure about the quality of society's controls and feedback mechanisms.

Around 10-30% of drivers in the United States don't have car insurance depending on the state.

It really depends on the state on how strict they are with car insurance. My state is very lax and they don't even really check at the DMV. The fine for not having car insurance is also only ~300 bucks and a 90 day license suspension and it only goes up slightly until like the 4-5 time you get caught. It just honestly doesn't make sense to have car insurance with the cost/risk that low. People who pay $50-100 bucks a month for car insurance are morons btw. You can insure yourself for like $30k, and you don't have $30k lying around paying $100 bucks a month is a terrible financial decision.

Insurance in general is a whole racket. Its literally only works due to the fact people on average pay more than they receive. "Oh but what if a bad thing happens" way to live your life, disregarding economics and averages.

Take out a personal loan or save the money you would spend on insurance evry year in a liquid asset (not cash that's almost as bad as insurance). Buying insurance is for npcs.

Only insurance that makes sense to have is insurance that is government subsidized, but that isn't because its better its because you are forced to pay part of its cost with your taxes. Enjoy getting screwed sideways by big government, who literally paya middle man to help ensure their citizens get healthcare instead of directly to the actual healthcare facilities. Insurance offers no service, its a worse scam than banks and credit cards combined.

It's shocking how many people are uninsured or underinsured. Plus, insurance minimums are absolutely ridiculous. Florida's minimum is $10K property damage, $10K personal injury, and they don't even require bodily injury liability. Total insanity. You crash into a Porsche full of doctors with that kind of coverage, and you're going bankrupt.

Most states have a minimum of around $25K for bodily injury liability. You can't even step foot into a hospital without paying $20K, so WTF is the minimum supposed to pay for exactly?

I guess a lot of drivers have so little to their name that they are judgment-proof and just don't care if they get sued for $2M.

My state (MI) has an unlimited PIP option (used to be mandatory) but it's also no fault.

It also has lots of subtle penalties for not having insurance that bite people in the butt.

> You can't even step foot into a hospital without paying $20K

I had a surgery and was in the hospital for a week. The out of pocket cost without insurance was lile 20-30 thousand if I remember correctly. And that is without coupons discount you usually get from cash payment. I used insurance, so I don't know what the discount wiuld be, but usually its like at least 10-20%.

I don't know what hospitals you got to, but 20K for a hospital visit is something I have never heard of.

> You can insure yourself for like $30k, and you don't have $30k lying around paying $100 bucks a month is a terrible financial decision.

Certainly not here (Washington), you must have at least $60,000 AND it MUST be deposited with the DOL or State, unavailable to you, and you will not earn interest on it.

How do you propose people get to and from work to come up with $30-60K in savings that they can afford just to have sitting on account with the state?

> Take out a personal loan or save the money you would spend on insurance evry year

You're generally paying around 9-12% on this personal loan. Say it's over 5 years (that's assuming you can afford the $1,300/month payment), you're paying $21,000 in interest.

> Buying insurance is for npcs.

So your solution to NOT pay $50-100 a month for insurance is to pay a lender $1,300/mo for 5 years (assuming the amounts haven't increased then)? I don't think you've actually thought this through.

It literally would take you FIFTY YEARS to break even on this plan.

And in the meantime, you're only "insured" for the minimums, and if you're in a car accident at fault can easily be sued for more.

If I'm reading RCW 46.29.560 correctly, you do get the interest, and I think you can shop around to hopefully get a decent rate on a CD to deposit?

That said, if you expect 10% returns on equities and 5% interest on a CD, you still need to be paying around $3k/year for insurance for that to be a good deal on expectation. It could make sense if interest rates are really high, or I suppose if you use a loan to buy a CD, you'd just be paying the spread. Seems like a lot of work and extra liability to maybe save a few hundred dollars when presumably anyone doing this would consider that a rounding error.

> Insurance in general is a whole racket. Its literally only works due to the fact people on average pay more than they receive. "Oh but what if a bad thing happens" way to live your life, disregarding economics and averages.

That's literally the _entire_ point of insurance. You pay a little more than the average you're expected to actually need so that, in the event of a catastrophic event, your not on the hook for an amount that would destroy you financially. The fact that any sane person would think that you should expect to collect, on average, more from insurance than you pay into it... is baffling to me. Just plain math would show that's impossible.

I am saying insurance as a concept is stupid and anyone who has insurance is dumb except in few rare cases caused by government tipping the scales of the market.

The only thing baffling here us your reading comprehension bud.

You missed my entire point. You think I think that? Well, if I was on another website I would say something about you as a person about the type of human being who can't even understand what they are reading but then replies with an ignorant comment.

> I am saying insurance as a concept is stupid and anyone who has insurance is dumb except in few rare cases

I disagree with this completely. I have a car. I drive safely. It is unlikely that I will get in an accident and hurt someone. But I pay for insurance because it's _possible_ it will happen anyways. If something goes wrong, I could either

- Have the insurance I pay for cover the expense of handling it, or

- Have everything I own taken from me to cover the expense of handling it

The cost of insurance is above the the cost of (<covering the expense of a catastrophic event> * <likelihood of me having such an outcome>), but still very much below the cost of (<covering the expense of a catastrophic event>). As such, it is my belief that it makes sense for me to pay for that insurance.

I find it confusing that anyone would believe otherwise. Unless perhaps you're saying that the government should cover all such catastrophic outcomes, which doesn't seem realistic to me.

> Well, if I was on another website I would say something about you as a person

So, you'll insult me and pretend like you didn't? What are you, 6 years old? Clearly you found it insulting that I could not comprehend your view on the subject (which was not my intent), but seriously?

I didn't read this except the last part. But don't be hostile and insulting if you don't want a responze back. In real life if someone ever talked to me the way you do, it wouldn't be words and it wouldn't a fight.

People who insult out of nowhere grew up in the softest environment where you could get away with that. You lived a privileged charmin lifestyle where you could say whatever you wanted and not have any consequences. I wish just for a second i could see you in person.

To paint a clearer picture for you since you love to twist whatever I say, certain people from privileged groups have mastered the art of aggression from a thin vaneer of social acceptability. I deny this aggression. If you show me aggression, I don't care what socially acceptable way you show it. This isn't football, in real life its not a game. Your life is a game, never experienced anything real. Suburban fraud.

I wanted to add a side note that I don't believe that all insurance types make sense in every situation. For example, I was presented with the option of buying pet insurance recently. I make enough that, for any given problem my pet might have, I can cover the expense. As such, there is no "catastrophic outcome" that would cause me serious financial harm. That, combined with the fact that the code of pet insurance is slightly higher than the expected cost for everything my pet needs, means it doesn't make sense for me to buy pet insurance. As such, I chose not to.

Admittedly, having it since we got her would have wound up saving us money overall, since she's had two CCL surgeries (at ~6-7k a piece). But the decision we made was based on expected cost and averages; so the choice me made was (effectively) a bet that didn't turn out to be the right one. But it generally _would_ be the right one given the facts we had at the time we originally got her.

Right.. except the whole "argument" falls apart if we consider liability insurance. You can't force other people to have an extra $30k "just in case".

The point of mandated auto insurance is that a lot of people don't have an extra 30k, but we want even those without that extra 30k to be able to drive without those they might get into an accident with having their car damaged through no fault of their own and no way to get back the money from the person who caused it.

Makes no sense. Just have a better court system that makes people who cause damages to other's car have to pay a certain amount to that person per month. Like car insurance but there isn't a middle man and you only pay when you get in an accident.

Garnishment can be too slow to deal with the victim's liabilities, and even still has no guarantee of ever repaying the loss.

No, just make them pay out 30k in installments if they arw liable for something.

Or take them to court. The average person will lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in their lifetime from required insurance for all type of dumb things.

We need the government to force everyone to pay an organization that does nothing but hold money in case of accidents and then release it back. We need this because people are too cowardly and fearful, so they accept financial sodomy in exchange for a very small piece of mind.

If we are going to force insuramce on people, why not just go all the way and start forcing people to not eat junky food. It costs the us citizen way more to pay for the obese and unhealthy than anywhere close to the average american will pay for an accident without insuramce. Might as well start restricting all freedoms. Take my money take my freedom, here let me bend over. That is all of you. Paying 30-50% i taxes to the government accepting that they can force you to buy a service i.e. health insurance, car insurance.

Weak people vote for more government control, because thwy are cowardly rats. They desire being controlled, read anti-oedipus and you'll understand that your little brain enslaves itself in a false prison. The mind of weak disgusting borderline subspecies humans have formed a societal prison, where freedom doesn't exist. And the strong non mentally ill are forced to accept this prison or will be insulted saying "they don't common sense" or "aren't practical".

Enough talk, the fact that a lesser human like you actually gets to determine how I live my life is disgusting. The wardens of the prison are everyday "people" who should be culled like cattle. I don't dislike the system, because its an illusion. The system is just a bunch of lesser humans who have drank the koolaid, you don't drink it and they will call you crazy. Reminds me of how Uncle Ted fought against the prison after escaping from the mind control of mass psychosis, so we locked him up. I wish with all my heart God exists, so when all you die you are judged and you have your face smashed into reality and truth at a million miles per second. The few sane are forced to fit in the sea of the mental midgets, who exist not ambivalent to slavery, but as its enablers.

> The few sane are forced to fit in the sea of the mental midgets, > fact that a lesser human like you

What makes you think anyone wants to see your deranged diatribes?

You might feel better overall if you kept some thoughts like this to yourself (based on what you're saying seeking professional help might be a good idea as well).

The whole concept of calling people NPC’s is weird as fuck.

You aren’t a superior being, Derek.

The idea that we are all on “equal” footing in this world is even more asinine. Some folks are indeed the “main characters” and others are background filler. This is the only explanation for the “reality distortion fields” that larger than life personalities possess, well, outside of some SCP object style explanations…

> If you've done nothing wrong then the reviewer would just trash it.

Or, more likely, they'll just see it as a report and raise your rates, because you've been reported by someone. Because they can; all they need is a reason.

Plus, I don't like the idea that someone I don't like could editorially create a video of it looking like I was driving irresponsibly, and then my rates go up. Then they do it again and again.

Example: When I leave in the morning, I take my daughter to the bus stop. I then wait for her bus to get there, she gets on, and I wait to turn left onto the road. The bus driver waves me on, to take my left before they let the other traffic go, so I don't have to wait for 20+ cars. I turn left and off I go. I expect it wouldn't be hard to edit a video of that to make it look like I pulled up to a bus picking up children and then drove through the bus stop signal illegally.

If we're talking about the Bay Area, anecdotally my experience is the percentage of uninsured drivers seems MUCH higher than other California metros.

I have used footage from my Tesla to get evidence and plate # that I could hand over to my insurance company and the police three times. 2 out of 3 were uninsured. This was during the past two years.

Honestly using it for actual serious violent crimes is way better than speeding

> Karen-like drivers who will eventually start threatening other people to report them,

That's an argument for automating the system, taking the biased human actor out of the process.

This is an idea that only sounds good when you imagine it being applied to the drivers you dislike.

When people started getting higher insurance rates because a vigilante dashcam operator caught them driving 68 in a 65 three different times or because they only slowed to 1MPH instead of 0MPH at a 4-way stop, then it wouldn't seem like such a good idea any more.

Next step, we all wear body cams and they identify people with inappropriate behavior.

For every mistake you get a point and with enough point a punishment.

Sounds familiar.

I mean, that already kinda happens today? Everyone carries a camera in their pocket, and public freakouts are recorded and posted on the internet, leading to social consequences for the person in question.

Which I also think has been a net negative to the Western world.

Billy the dumbass in Gary Indiana does something stupid there he should be held to account by people from there, not posted online and receiving massive attention from the rest of the planet as people get off to their outrage porn online.

Yeah, I am personally against that as well. Enforcing laws is a police job, not the average citizen's, because they “supposedly” undergo certain training to do that. If everyone started acting like a police officer or reporting insignificant things, it would get chaotic, and it incentivizes people being hostile against each other. The only exception, in my opinion, is someone reporting something that’s substantially bad, like a homicide.

reporting is not the same as policing. Telling the police about a crime is the norm. Then the police police based on the report.

when you start offering monetary rewards for non-serious crime reporting you end up where the number of reports will outrun the resources of the reviewers and eventually have someone be required to "protest" the report and claim they are innocent putting a burden on them rather than the burden being on the authorities to prove you've done something wrong first.

Look at things like DMCA reporting on youtube and how it can be abused.

What's this non serious crime you speak of? It certainly not theft and traffic violations. theft ruins people's lives. traffic violations get people killed. Since 2010, the number of people dying in car accidents has gone up 50% per capita

Theft / traffic violations / jaywalking / curfew breaking / or public intoxication type crimes can be handled by police directly - having an incentive program to have people go around recording and reporting this sort of crime if not the sort of world I want to live in.

Yes I want those type of crimes punished and enforcement, no I do not want the masses to be working in an "all seeing eye" capacity for that to take place.

If you can't understand that the nuance there then I won't have much to discuss with you.

I'm honestly surprised that businesses in shady areas don't have ubiquitous cameras around their properties and signs that "just do your crime one block away, that's all I ask". (Presumably that invites vandalism and there are consequently practical issues, but has no one pulled this off?)

With cars, you have a license plate that will usually lead you to the owner. Identifying some random person, possibly with a hood, on noisy camera night vision is a lot harder; when you don't have a reasonably small pool of suspects, it's basically impossible.

Even if it would be possible to identify people with a combination of cell phone area warrants and/or by following all cameras around, this level of effort would be far too high (and too invasive) for small crimes like theft and vandalism.

It's often a small pool of "suspects" though. Like "same group/person it was the last 3 times".

I think most camera operators make peace with the idea that randos / one offs probably can't be identified. What really aggravates people is repeated behaviour. Many people who install cameras particularly want to know "am I being targeted" vs "this is a random thing".

Most criminals will just cover their face to avoid CCTV.

you conveniently left out the fact that anyone driving a car or truck is driving a dangerous vehicle that can trivially kill or maim others. Driving is supposed to be a privilege, not a right. That comes with responsibility.

How you think this is the same as “being naughty while walking outside” is hilarious to me.

however i see your point. i believe this is really a failure of police in our modern society. police don’t take driving incidents seriously! it’s their job after all.

so if someone is carrying a baseball bat, a knife, or any other sort of weapon that can trivially kill or maim others they should be wearing the body cam?

They should expect to be filmed in public more than people not carrying weapons. This already happens.

Would you have that same viewpoint if the goal of the person with the camera was to setup outside of addiction centers, abortion clinics, strip clubs, casinos, etc and publically identify people anyone coming or going? I mean they are public so should they "expect" to be filmed or should there be some sense of privacy?

You keep misreading things. First, you thought that people said that people who are committing crimes should wear body cams. Now you think I said that everybody in public should expect to be filmed. Neither of those things are true.

Mobility is a right, that includes driving.

And walking comes with responsibilities too, a ruthless walker also endangers others, it's just harder to kill somebody by bumping into them, until you bump them in front of a car or train or down the stairs.

I'm having trouble understanding the tone of your comment.

If it's not satire, driving as a right can be restricted (or even denied if you fail the driver's test) far more easily than walking. Because it's far more dangerous.

It’s actually not a right. The proof is you need to pass a drivers test to get a drivers license. It’s not given to you at birth. I’d argue the tests are too easy in the US, but that’s a separate discussion.

I do not need a license to walk outside.

perhaps you’re thinking of “freedom of movement”? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_under_Unit...

The proliferation of dash cams and the (...paltry) threat of having footage of bad behaviour put on the internet, or more importantly, having proof of what happened in an incident/accident to be able to pass onto insurance or police (where there's consequences from determining fault, theoretically) hasn't magically stopped people driving like homicidal maniacs, has it?

There's a million reasons why a dystopic snitch on your neighbours program isn't practical, as others have highlighted. I love the idea that insurance companies would be afraid of backlash lol. There's also easier options like I imagine asking car manufacturers to hand over data collected on driver behaviour would be. Don't US insurers already collect data like that from willing customers? Why not get that data from all customers regardless of consent? We've seen time and time again that most car manufacturers will throw all the data they can at whichever corporation asks for it. Even lower tech than that, speed and red light cameras have existed for a long time and they work on vehicles regardless of how many touchscreen tablets have been glued into it. Stupid(er) comment time: even lower tech again, the potential threat of gun violence in road rage incidents doesn't seem to disincentivise driving like a homicidal maniac, judging by how much worse US dash cam captured accidents seem to be compared to those from Europe or Australia. Maybe that's more to do with how many giant yank tanks there are on US roads and how much more effective they are at obliterating other road users and the sense of safety that comes with driving such huge things?

Jokes aside, road safety is a complex problem and insurance companies have other ways to protect their interests with significantly less effort.

Responses here seem to not take into account:

- elasticity of laws. If all of a sudden every well-to-do law-abiding doctor, engineer and lawyer gets a fine on their daily commute for speeding 5 mph over the limit, there's going to instantly be a lot of pressure to change the speed limit to something reasonable.

- the amount of absolutely insane, dangerous behavior on the highways (people weaving in and out at 100 mph, etc.). It may be tough for an insurance company to act on a tip that someone changed lanes without using their blinkers, it certainly won't be tough if there's video evidence of them going 100 mph.

- the fact that insurance companies (presumably) do not need to know the identity of the driver to raise rates. If your car is regularly being driven by your brother at 100mph, it's still your insurance that's going to pay if he gets in an accident.

- while the police sound like they've given up on enforcing any traffic laws, it's in the insurance company's financial interest not to insure dangerous drivers. (And while that's sad, maybe private sousveillance is better than anarchy. People can have differing opinions.)

> If your car is regularly being driven by your brother at 100mph, it's still your insurance that's going to pay if he gets in an accident.

Not if your brother isn't listed as an insured party on your insurance. The insurance company will tell you to pound sand in that case. And if your brother is on your insurance, and you're paying for it and giving him a free ride, that's on you.

> And while that's sad, maybe private sousveillance is better than anarchy. People can have differing opinions.

::raises hand:: We shouldn't accept either. Private surveillance is not the solution to anarchically poor enforcement.

It would probably have "disproportionate impact."

It's really the job of police forces to act on maniac drivers. And they stopped doing so in 2020 for the same reason.

I lived in east Oakland for awhile, I'm pretty sure that driving stolen cars and torching them afterward don't give a fuck about auto insurance rates. The people who are driving like that on the 580 or @ 90th & Bancroft probably are uninsured as is.

Do you really think everyone is just insured because it's the law? If so, you're fairly naive. Try leaving the bubble you live in now and then. Oakland cops stopping responding to anything less than murder at lot sooner than 2020 lmao.

Disproportionate impact is already acceptable with insurance, because they know for example that the average young woman drives safer than the average young man. And charges them as such.

Given the potential for abuse, the insurance company probably can't really do much aside from writing a letter to the driver saying someone observed them driving dangerously.

Probably the letter should be more specific, include pictures, and it should not be entirely anonymous. You should be able to find out if someone is trying to make trouble for you.

It might not even be legally possible anyway. Insurance companies have a lot of regulation.

> it would substantially disincentivize driving like a complete maniac.

You are presuming that the manics are otherwise legally entitled to drive and have valid insurance. It should be no surprise to learn that they, very largely, do not.

They already don't care about your incentive system.

Great question.

There is nothing stopping them.

Which is why a privacy amendment must be passed and enforced with ruthless abandon if we don't want to pave the way for – and eventually become – an Orwellian panopticon in the service of authoritarians.

Where I live, speeding and red light cameras can only issue fines to the plate holder and don't affect the demerit points of the driver because they don't have evidence of who was driving the vehicle. I imagine it would go the same way with insurance. Unless a cop pulls the person over and gets their ID, tough luck.

The comment you’re responding to is postulating enforcement via higher insurance costs. If insurance gets ~20 reports of someone running a red light, maybe they’ll double the cost to insure that person.

But that's the catch, using ML to scan a plate doesn't confirm who was driving.

Nor does it actually confirm that the plate _matches_ the car.

Otherwise i'd spend some time 3d printing something that looks a LOT like my neighbors license plate and wait until 1 AM and just blow the same red light over and over and over.

Idk about your state, but many have a 'swizzle' vertical or two that I'm pretty sure is to assist readers and detect fakes...

For insurance underwriting, would it need to? "People whose household receive X anonymous tips" is a cohort that either does or does not have more insurable risk, and if it does correlate then you can make an attempt to adjust premiums accordingly.

The driver doesn’t matter when it comes to insurance. It’s the owner of the car who holds the policy.

It doesn't matter, right? It's the vehicle that is insured

>If even a small subset of users did this, and insurers did something with this information, it would substantially disincentivize driving like a complete maniac.

People who drive like complete maniacs aren't doing so rationally. It's called "road rage" not "road reason."

Disagree. While "maniacs" could include road rage behavior (eg. brakechecking someone), it also arguably encompasses other risky behavior that's not obviously associated with "road rage", like speeding or aggressive weaving/lane changes.

Road rage is but one example. No one brake checking someone else is doing it rationally. If someone was being rational, they would drive reasonably. They would forgive and forget, and they wouldn't do dangerous things. If drivers were worried about their rates going up, they would not do the very activities that put them in that risk in the first place.

> If drivers were worried about their rates going up, they would not do the very activities that put them in that risk in the first place.

Not if they're underestimating the risk. For instance, if they think speed limits are instituted by clueless bureaucrats, or they think they're better than the average driver and therefore can drive more aggressively.

Interesting how none of the risks you cite are an increase into their insurance premiums. In fact, what you point to are completely irrational thoughts that have nothing to do with the risks presented by undertaking those activities. It doesn't matter if speeds are set low or irrationally, the fee for a ticket is the same as is the insurance premium increase. Same with being better than another driver, it doesn't matter if you are or aren't better than another driver when they crash into you. Your premiums will increase the same. I appreciate you making my point for me.

>In fact, what you point to are completely irrational thoughts that have nothing to do with the risks presented by undertaking those activities. It doesn't matter if speeds are set low or irrationally, the fee for a ticket is the same as is the insurance premium increase.

I can't tell whether you wanted an opportunity to rant about unjust speed limits in your area, or are trying to get in a smug "well ackushally \u{1F913}" response. While it's true that speed limits can be arbitrary and driving above it doesn't magically make you a dangerous driver, it's pretty obvious when people say "driving like a complete maniac", that's not the sort of behavior they're referring to. Thinking "speeding" and "driving like a complete maniac" means driving 1 mile over the speed limit in an artificially low speed limit zone is about the least charitable way of interpreting that statement.

>Same with being better than another driver, it doesn't matter if you are or aren't better than another driver when they crash into you.

Again, I can't tell whether you're trying to be snarky. Being a better driver (however it's defined) might not fix your car when it gets into a crash, but I don't think anyone doubts that a professional driver is going to be able to avoid more accidents than the 90 year old granny that only drives every sunday to go to church, when put in the same situations.

>I appreciate you making my point for me.

Whatever you say, champ.

>Thinking "speeding" and "driving like a complete maniac" means driving 1 mile over the speed limit in an artificially low speed limit zone is about the least charitable way of interpreting that statement.

I have no idea how you came up with the hypothetical of the speed limits, and then went further to assume I'm making the argument that driving 1MPH over the limit was a good example. That's a ridiculous approach to this conversation.

>Again, I can't tell whether you're trying to be snarky. Being a better driver (however it's defined) might not fix your car when it gets into a crash, but I don't think anyone doubts that a professional driver is going to be able to avoid more accidents than the 90 year old granny that only drives every sunday to go to church, when put in the same situations.

But your example wasn't a professional driver, it was just someone who thinks they are a better driver. You were talking about people who were underestimating risks... how would that apply to a professional driver?

This is a good point. People that drive recklessly and risk personal injury, death, and imprisonment simply do so because they lack a proper disincentive. They would think twice when they envision themselves having to cut a a larger check to State Farm while lying in spinal traction.

When it comes to punishment, "swift and certain" trumps "harsh but sporadic". Having cars snitch on everyone else implements the former, "lying in spinal traction" implements the latter.

I disagree - people do it because they are angry, and _also_ because they're unlikely to get caught. Far less people commit hit&runs, because there's a much higher chance of getting caught.

It's not because they will get caught, it's because of the repercussions that would happen if they did.

There are far less hit and runs than speeders or road ragers.

May not even have insurance, it's a coin toss

In most cases, it's a devil's brew of "Speed limits that are set too low" and "Drivers that aren't taught how to use lanes properly."

Surely you don't live in a city.

As long as we're trading non sequiturs: when you think about why you don't want your phone to behave this way, you'll understand why I don't want my car to.

It's not a non sequitur, it's the only context in which your comment could ever make sense. Even then, most likely is objectively wrong.

My superficial understanding of research on deterring criminal behavior (so, I may be bullshitting) is that it's more effective to make the likelihood of getting caught high than making the punishment severe.

So this might be an effective (and cheap, compared to fiery auto crashes and arrests) way to discourage that behavior.

And if someone does not respond to the initial incentive, their insurance rates would continue to climb, so at some point in time they either end up uninsured (in which case, this sousveillance really ought to just inform the cops, but anyway, the opinion in this thread is that cops are useless, so YMMV) or fix their behavior.

In Switzerland it would be the law preventing that.

Running ML on public footage of people who did not consent is a huge no-no.

Dashcams are already a problem and technically illegal although tolerated. The footage can't generally be used on court.

Swiss privacy law is absolutely insane to me both for the protection it provides (good) but also for the protection it provides(bad). I guess all tools are weapons in the right hands.

Very very good, and I want more societies which give a bigger middle finger to the karens of their world.

Why would they need to do this when the car makers give them all the data they want already?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driv...

This seems to indicate that it shares data on the car itself, not on other drivers :/

My car doesn't spy on me. I've pulled the Data Communications Module fuse.

> What is stopping some small percent of drivers from installing cameras and using ML to identify cars driving dangerously (e.g. speeding, running reds, changing multiple lanes at once, etc.), and when their license plate is identifiable, finding and informing their insurance company?

What has stopped you from doing that personally?

Nobody has developed that yet and OP might not have the skills to do so, but if an easy-to-install github repo were available then the lowered barrier to entry might make it possible. Theoretically, Teslas already know how fast every car around them is going and how they are driving, as evidenced by the 3D "FSD visualization", but I am guessing that piping this information out to rat out the reckless drivers is going to be super hard.

I would! But I have a job and side projects that take up my time.

I've done it. When i saw a driver run a red light (intentionally, they slowed down, and then gunned it through) and almost killed 3 people legally crossing the street.

It took a while though. Maybe 10 minutes in total to pull the dashcam clip and upload it to YouTube.

Insurers may not be the best recipients given most of those things are criminal matters.

In my country, most police forces accept dashcam evidence from other road users, and will prosecute on it. It’s seen be the police as a great road safety tool.

Is there a risk such video could be fabricated to frame someone for a crime they didn't commit, or even that never happened?

With deepfake AI? Absolutely. You do not even need AI, you just need to time it just right (or crop the video).

Informing the insurance company… how? Everything done by a large corp like an insurer has a specific workflow. There is no form to upload a video of someone behaving badly. Emailing some rando at Geico with an mp4 is going to be met with total indifference because the corporate drone answering whatever emails aren’t autoreplied or spamcanned will have no process by which to respond

There's no way insurance companies haven't already done the cost-benefit analysis for implementing a way to take videos from randos and turning it into actionable rate hikes. If it were favorable to their bottom lines there'd already be a link to "submit evidence" on every insurer's home page.

People already police others, there is no need for a complete psycho society where everyone is a potential snitch. Plus, a few minutes of speeding and shouting helps to calm people. Now imagine that people cannot even use their expensive car for speeding... where will people vent their aggression?

> Genuine question: What is stopping some small percent of drivers from installing cameras and using ML to identify cars driving dangerously (e.g. speeding, running reds, changing multiple lanes at once, etc.), and when their license plate is identifiable, finding and informing their insurance company?

GM is already doing this, look it up.

Do you have more info about this?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/technology/general-motors...

This is the reporting bad drivers to insurance companies part, not the cameras part.

As much as I think I'd love to be able to write traffic tickets during my commutes, I don't think anyone wants to live in a world where everyone is a cop.

I think you'll find too that a lot of people think laws are for other people. My speeding is totally justified.

As someone who speeds on highways (but not in cities/towns), I wish more people sped. The left lane is for crime, get out of the way.

Ford AFAIK actually has a patent of some sort for this [0]

[0] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a61793292/ford-cop-cars-sp...

We should do this for HOV violators.

They might have been in the past and it's not a bad idea for a data aggregator company to enable crowdsourcing to make the data palatable to insurers but AI video is advanced enough to obscure the plates and change the car model slightly.

In Europe, this would most likely be considered a violation of various privacy rules (specifics depend on country, but could include criminal penalties for the person doing this).

In the US, I could totally see that happening.

Technically, dashcams are illegal in some European countries.

I have 100% thought about a drivers rating system where users rate other drivers.

Even better, not only notify insurance companies, but notify other drivers that the idiot in front of them is dangerous so they can react.

The touch screen in a Tesla could easily surface such information about the cars around them. That's great

> not only notify insurance companies

I can immediately think of half a dozen ways this would be abused.

The clique of brats in their daddies' Teslas at Sammamish High School bully the unpopular kid.

Black guy who drives through predominately white neighborhoods in the deep south.

Prius with a Harris/Walz bumper sticker in eastern Idaho.

Need I go on?

You should watch Black Mirror.

It's an ROA, like an HOA, but for everywhere.

I wonder if folks could wear an emitter mask to prevent identification of their face? (like a hockey mask but covered in bright IR LEDs to confuse cameras)

So they still drive like maniacs but without insurance.

Maybe insurers will pay bounty for it. Mostly, you want to get rid of dangerous drivers, not just charge them more!

https://www.getnexar.com/

Just tossing a product link into the discussion without any context isn't overly useful - why are you recommending (or are you) and why should I be clicking on that?

They were built to do the things in the comment that I replied to.

Seems like a great idea. The police should do this… bring back red light cameras and automated speed traps.

Red light cameras have perverse incentives that have led to municipal corruption and made intersections more dangerous.

Can you perhaps expand on the incentives and the mechanism of increased danger?

The goal of a red light camera is ostensibly to make an intersection safer, but the fact that the city gets money when people get tickets incentivizes them to actually keep the intersection difficult to navigate correctly. They lose money if they adjust timings to be more appropriate for the situation or if they make the lights more visible or if they replace the light with a roundabout.

It also penalizes driving behaviors that are objectively not very dangerous far more harshly than a human police officer would—a lot of the profit from a red light camera comes from rolling right turns on red, which is very often a perfectly safe behavior that actually helps traffic move more smoothly (for example, when you technically have a red but there's a left turn crossing in the opposite direction providing complete cover for your move).

Sure, when the cameras start turning into a source of revenue then the city has an incentive to adjust the timing of the lights to maximize revenue and not minimize harm. This has happened (notably, the city of Chicago reduced the time of yellows and it led to more tickets and more accidents).

The other thing to remember is that governments don't operate red light cameras. They hire contracting businesses to install and operate them, and normally instead of paying a fixed rental/maintenance rate for the cameras those companies typically get paid a fraction of the fines. That means the designer/operator of the camera doesn't have much incentive to make the camera accurate or maximize safety, but to maximize how many cars it can issue tickets to (whether or not they're actually breaking the law or not).

When you take that to the extreme, the red light camera companies will even lobby local politicians to install more of them, and advertise them not as a tool for safety but for revenue. In some cases they've straight up bribed mayors and city officials with kickbacks from the ticket revenue.

All told, red light cameras are pretty shitty at making roads safer. What we really need are narrower roads with fewer lanes and smaller cars, but that's systemic. If we want to make specific intersections safer you can park a traffic enforcement officer at the intersection which will do more than any camera will.

San Diego dropped most of their red light cameras in 2013, this article from the mayor talks about the perception issues: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2013/02/01/san-diego-dr...

From what I recall, the real reason was that Lockheed owned and operated the cameras, took a cut of revenue, and was found to be changing the settings to issue more tickets.

Sure, only if they take a look at every speed limit in America and readjust them to be realistic for modern cars.

The same thing that allows drivers to run red light cameras and cover their face with their hand

What makes you think the drivers who drive that way have insurance?

That was my first thought upon reading the headline. Did your car witness a crime? Yes, literally hundreds every time it hits the road. Most drivers break the law every single journey. Many do it egregiously.

ALPR units are used the license plate recognition already.

you could report anyone you disliked, as long as you could find out what their car looked like, even if they weren't speeding or running reds etc. convincingly editing the traffic light color in a video doesn't even require artificial neural networks. trump voters in progressive communities, for example, or progressive voters in right-wing communities

"The Snitch-mobile"

Back when I used to cross the San Mateo bridge frequently, I'd see the same group of drivers routinely driving dangerously and breaking multiple laws. I had dashcam footage. I once called up CHP and asked if they wanted it. They politely told me where to shove it

The police don't want to enforce the laws that are written. They don't even pull over drivers without license plates.

Problem is there is no punishment to the criminals. Why risk your life/job just to have the criminal released hours later.

I was a big believer of police reform, but realized the whole system was broken and police are just a symptom. And most actors are actually behaving somewhat rationally.

The sad part is criminals are finally realizing this. I have a cousin who hangs with a “crowd” and it’s amazing how prolific and bold some are. And how many people know about the crimes and no one really says anything. And apparently police know about a lot of it too, but apparently a case that prosecutors will take is an exceptionally high bar.

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