[HN Gopher] Did your car witness a crime?
___________________________________________________________________
Did your car witness a crime?
Author : danso
Score : 267 points
Date : 2024-08-31 16:21 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sfchronicle.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sfchronicle.com)
| m0llusk wrote:
| It's happening. Cameras everywhere all the time. No more
| anonymity in public soon. Hopefully this will improve behavior
| generally, though at possibly great cost.
| righthand wrote:
| People will move out of the cities onto land where they can
| remove/shoot down cameras. The cities and policing are too
| aggressive with their big brother tactics, thinking FUD about
| crime is a good enough reason to take away privacy from people.
| It is actually a minority opinion that the country wants this
| but no one votes in local elections anymore so the minority
| wins.
| Loughla wrote:
| It's illegal, even in rural areas, to shoot down drones.
|
| Also it's not drones that are an issue. It's ring cameras and
| car cameras and CCTV cameras.
| righthand wrote:
| It's different depending on the municipality. Your initial
| statement is not exclusively true of every inch of land in
| the US. Furthermore any illegality is limited to what any
| small police department can actually do about it.
| gruez wrote:
| >It's different depending on the municipality. Your
| initial statement is not exclusively true of every inch
| of land in the US.
|
| Please enlighten me where in the US you could legally
| shoot down someone else's drones.
|
| >Furthermore any illegality is limited to what any small
| police department can actually do about it.
|
| If you're interested in protecting your privacy, why
| would it ever be a good idea to commit a bunch of
| felonies, by illegally discharging firearms to take down
| cameras? Even if you somehow didn't get caught, you're
| painting a big target on your back by committing all
| those crimes and putting everyone in the area on edge.
| Loughla wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it's the FAA that dictates that one. It's
| federally illegal.
|
| And how motivated are they? Well I'm assuming someone
| will complain that you shot down their drone. And most
| police are very interested in firearm crimes.
|
| The FAA is also very interested in people who shoot at
| aircraft of any kind.
| K0balt wrote:
| It's remarkable how many people seem to think that drones
| are fair game.
|
| Also, thank you for a kind and thoughtful comment you
| made to me in the past. It's heartening to be reminded
| that civil decency is alive and well.
|
| I hope you have a memorable and fruitful day.
| righthand wrote:
| It hasn't been proven that drones aren't fair game. So go
| ahead and down vote me for noticing this, but just
| because the FAA says the airspace is for any aircraft
| doesn't mean I can't shoot down your drone on my property
| in rural Nebraska and get away with it.
|
| It will be on the feds to pursue a low level crime not
| worth their time. Until it's proven you can't shoot down
| a spy drone, then you can shoot down a spy drone. How do
| I know it's not some Chinese spy drone? I'm just doing my
| part to protect my country.
|
| Really the "not uh the FAA" stuff is irrelevant.
| K0balt wrote:
| Drones are legally classified as aircraft.
|
| 18 U.S. Code SS 32 makes it specifically illegal to
| damage or interfere with the operation of aircraft.
|
| The FAA takes this quite seriously, as not taking it
| seriously compromises their position of being able to
| regulate drones per se. Lax enforcement of protection of
| drones as aircraft is a potential legal argument that
| efforts to regulate drone activity outside of the scope
| of interference with manned aircraft are similarly
| deprecated in importance and legitimacy.
| righthand wrote:
| So you agree, I can shoot down a drone over my property
| and make an argument to get away with it and there isn't
| enough legal reason or capital to pursue. There may come
| a day where I would get in trouble but I think right now
| spies are smart enough not to mass surveil with drones.
| klyrs wrote:
| > People will move out of the cities onto land where they can
| remove/shoot down cameras
|
| People interested in method Mad Max LARPing are significantly
| overrepresented on HN.
| righthand wrote:
| Drones, country where owning a gun is right. I see no post
| apocalyptic societal leap needed to get to something like
| this happening.
|
| People interested in fiction as the only match for
| predictions, are significantly overrepresented on HN.
| Please reference at me that "life will find a way".
| klyrs wrote:
| Where you're certainly correct that "people" will move
| out to the country because of this, it's your insinuation
| that their number will be noteworthy that I find suspect.
|
| And, as it turns out, high prevalence of gun ownership
| and radically inappropriate use of guns is not unique to
| either the city nor the country.
| righthand wrote:
| Yes my prediction remains to be seen if there is a
| dramatic effect. People can still leave nyc, the city can
| still grow in population and get terrible for
| surveillance free life. And people can still leave to
| avoid that. It doesn't have to be a substantial event.
|
| It's like ad blockers, a lot of people don't use them
| doesn't mean there aren't a significant portion of the
| population that doesn't like ads.
|
| And who cares if my circumstances are unique to the US or
| not. The article is about the US. So in the realm of
| reaction to increased surveillance, I'm referring to the
| US. But if we want to be pendantic, Mad Max doesn't even
| occur in the US, so it's not even a relevant comparison I
| would be making if I were making that comparison.
| klyrs wrote:
| Mad Max explores the possible consequences of your "I can
| shoot anything my bullets feel like hitting" brand of
| libertarianism. You can't invalidate an analogy by taking
| it quite so literally.
|
| Is my analogy a stretch? Yes, if you keep your bullets
| within your property line. But fantasizing about moving
| to the country where you can shoot whatever thing you
| don't like at this moment is an entire trope that is
| broadly painted with the Mad Max brush
|
| But your property line is irrelevant. You can't shoot
| down a high elevation surveillance drone. Drones with
| moderate elevation, at the property line, can take very
| high resolution pictures from a wealth of vantage points.
| Keep the bullets within your property line, and you've
| lost.
| righthand wrote:
| It's not a fantasy, because a lot of people who move to
| the city, are from the country. People don't care about
| every inch of life being surveillance free. They care
| about their square being a bastion for themselves.
| gruez wrote:
| >>>People will move out of the cities onto land where
| they can remove/shoot down cameras.
|
| >Drones, country where owning a gun is right.
|
| Shooting down someone else's drones/cameras however,
| isn't.
| righthand wrote:
| It was on my property. Spying isn't legal because you can
| fly a drone over my fence. My places have a right to
| defend yourself. How do I know it's not an attack?
| gruez wrote:
| I'm not sure how you got the impression that the
| discussion was about cameras/drones on your property. The
| OP talked about "Cameras everywhere all the time. No more
| anonymity in public soon". It's clear that we're talking
| about other people's cameras in public spaces, not
| voyeurs trying to look in your bedroom.
| righthand wrote:
| How did I get that impression in my own reply chain where
| I made a point about it? Idk what you're suggesting.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Do you own the airspace above your property?
| righthand wrote:
| Who cares prove that it wasn't on the ground when I
| destroyed it. My story will be: I saw it fall to the
| ground. When I walked up it looked like a bunch of
| spinning blades. I thought someone was attacking me so I
| destroyed the device.
| klyrs wrote:
| > I thought someone was attacking me so I destroyed the
| device.
|
| Funny thing about that government property you
| destroyed... it was broadcasting the evidence it
| collected.
| righthand wrote:
| The police department won't have sophisticated government
| drones for at least another 20 years, that is if
| expensive drones prove to be worth the effort and cost to
| allow civilian level law enforcement to have one.
|
| The point of this conversation isn't to trump how you can
| get around my lie. The point is that I can lie to get out
| of any spurious law enforcement pursuits, and that is
| freedom. A drone isn't impossible to take down covertly.
| I don't have to answer every technical use case to make a
| point.
|
| If a member of a small community goes against the federal
| government that believes government overreach is
| happening, they can get the community to protect them.
| klyrs wrote:
| > The point is that I can lie to get out of any spurious
| law enforcement pursuits, and that is freedom.
|
| You know that police are known for their brutality in
| both rural and urban environs, right? My dad lied to the
| cops when he lived out in the boonies and he got the shit
| kicked out of him and was thrown in jail on bullshit
| charges. He was released the next day, but his rib
| wouldn't heal for weeks.
| righthand wrote:
| And that applies everywhere in every case? All of this
| anecdotal evidence has nothing to do with people's
| romanticization of the idea that you can isolate yourself
| pretty well in the remote US.
| Eumenes wrote:
| Acktually, the FAA owns the air and sky buddy!
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Have you ever been in a heavy gun owning rural area? The
| first tell is just about every traffic sign on the major
| roads is swiss cheesed. People aren't concerned about the
| letter of the law.
| Eumenes wrote:
| "Hackers" who love censorship, surveillance, content
| moderation, etc, are also overrepresented here (tech in
| general, really)
| kibwen wrote:
| _> People will move out of the cities onto land where they
| can remove /shoot down cameras._
|
| No, this doesn't help in the slightest unless you're moving
| to an isolated compound with no contact with the outside
| world. As soon as you get in your car to drive to the grocery
| store, you'll be subject to all the same surveillance. And if
| you're going to try to organize in your community to tear
| down and outlaw all the cameras between your house and the
| grocery store, you'll have an easier time of organizing in
| denser areas (not necessarily cities, but at least small
| towns).
| righthand wrote:
| A lot of small towns never installed the surveillance
| beyond a few old ladies. There are plenty of small towns
| with tiny populations that would love for people to move in
| and have no intention of ruining their neighbors lives.
|
| Of course the idea isn't perfect but the visual imagery
| people imagine suggests otherwise. People are enjoying
| their youth dumping data to be resold not because they
| can't do anything about it but because there has been no
| consequences yet. That changes when your data is a direct
| pipe to law enforcement.
|
| The entire thing is a illogical reaction, surveillance and
| moving away.
| chacha102 wrote:
| This makes me _not_ want to get a Tesla, just to avoid the
| inconvenience of getting my car towed because of what it _might_
| have inside of it. And the opposite, doing what Ring is doing and
| simply streaming it to the police directly, might be easier but I
| still believe a major privacy concern.
|
| Sure, it could be helpful. But at what cost?
| gruez wrote:
| >This makes me _not_ want to get a Tesla, just to avoid the
| inconvenience of getting my car towed because of what it
| _might_ have inside of it.
|
| From the article:
|
| >Therriault said he and other officers now frequently seek
| video from bystander Teslas, and usually get the owners'
| consent to download it without having to serve a warrant.
| Still, he said, tows are sometimes necessary, if police can't
| locate a Tesla owner and need the video "to pursue all leads."
|
| They're not towing cars at first opportunity.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| The fact that they're doing it _at all_ is completely
| unacceptable.
| umeshunni wrote:
| Sadly the politics of the Bay Area has led to a crime wave
| and most people feel differently.
| gruez wrote:
| Search warrants have existed forever, and allowed police to
| compel production of certain evidence. This includes
| breaking into residences or offices. I don't see how towing
| a car is any different. Unless you think search warrants
| themselves are "completely unacceptable", I don't see how
| towing teslas should be singled out.
| snozolli wrote:
| _I don 't see how towing a car is any different_
|
| Before modern FISA courts, we generally had faith that a
| search warrant was _warranted_ , based upon other
| investigation. From what the article said, this sounds
| more like a "fishing expedition".
| gruez wrote:
| They did investigate. A guy was stabbed nearby, and the
| car was suspected to be recording. On a more practical
| level, the car was recording a public area (ie. the road)
| anyways, so it's not like that much privacy was lost by
| granting access to the video.
| snozolli wrote:
| _and the car was suspected to be recording_
|
| That's the fishing expedition part. Again, from what the
| article said, there was no particular reason to believe
| it was in Sentry mode.
|
| I don't know why you're bringing up privacy.
| cabbageicefruit wrote:
| Towing cars at all without a very crucial reason should
| be illegal in general.
|
| Taking someone's transportation that they assume they
| have access to, without their knowledge, and without them
| being able to find out until the very second they need
| that transportation is dangerous. Emergencies happen.
|
| If you're taking someone's car you better have a damn
| good reason. And "you accidentally parked in the wrong
| parking spot doesn't clear that hurdle. That's what
| tickets are for. "Really wanting to see the recordings
| from your car camera" doesn't clear that hurdle either.
| Aloisius wrote:
| > And "you accidentally parked in the wrong parking spot
| doesn't clear that hurdle. That's what tickets are for.
|
| Private lot owners can't issue legally-enforceable
| tickets. Their only real option is to tow.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Because you have to then recover the car which is hard to
| do when your car was effectively stolen
| monkeywork wrote:
| I think the difference is historically the average person
| wasn't doing a lot of surveillance where as an office
| place did.
|
| Many people do not want their cameras in the doors,
| property, cars, etc being used by the police for cases
| that do not directly impact them.... they do not want to
| be involved, same as many "witnesses" will simply say
| they didn't see or know anything and be uncooperative.
|
| As cameras start becoming more and more built into every
| day items many people suddenly can find themselves thrust
| into situations they want nothing to do with, so sure
| search warrants have existed forever but the chance of it
| impacting the average non-involved party were pretty
| slim, that chance is growing and people dislike it.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| There is a huge gap between a search warrant (in which
| you are generally the suspect of the investigation) and
| "this guy's car might have evidence, let's tow it". The
| proper analogue to a search warrant here is the police
| getting a warrant to get the data off Tesla's servers,
| not towing the car away.
| gruez wrote:
| >There is a huge gap between a search warrant (in which
| you are generally the suspect of the investigation) and
| "this guy's car might have evidence, let's tow it".
|
| The cops had a warrant. Moreover, search warrants are
| granted if there's probable cause. Whether someone is a
| suspect is irrelevant.
|
| >The proper analogue to a search warrant here is the
| police getting a warrant to get the data off Tesla's
| servers, not towing the car away.
|
| Is it even on tesla's servers? According to the article
| it's stored on a USB drive in the car.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yeah, but if you punish me for being a witness, I'll try
| real damned hard to look the other way.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Yeah, so many people just seem to be unable to put
| themselves in the situation. It is astonishing.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Very much this. Towing by the police should only be
| something done when the car is in violation of something. I
| did not see anything about the expense of retrieving the
| car. You took the person's car so there is definite expense
| of getting there. Did you force the person to miss a
| flight, a meeting, a date? WTF do these people think they
| are so above and beyond rational thought is ridiculous.
| gruez wrote:
| >Very much this. Towing by the police should only be
| something done when the car is in violation of something.
|
| If the police has a search warrant for your home and
| you're not there, they can break in, even if you're not
| "in violation of something". I don't see how this is any
| different.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I don't have to make arrangements to go get my home when
| it is searched. Also, if you're searching my house, more
| than likely, I'm directly involved in something. They
| don't break into my house to get my Ring footage, which
| is much more equivalent in your attempt equating these
| disparate concepts. You've now made an innocent civilian
| incur ridiculous fees to get their car out of impound
| when there was no reason to impound it to begin with.
|
| You could just as easily boot the car and wait for the
| owner to return. It's not like this was a long term
| parking spot. There are just so many options other than
| tow this innocent car.
| gruez wrote:
| >I don't have to make arrangements to go get my home when
| it is searched
|
| They could however, break your door (if you're not there
| to let them in), and AFAIK they're not responsible for
| getting it fixed.
|
| >Also, if you're searching my house, more than likely,
| I'm directly involved in something.
|
| That's irrelevant. The standard for a search warrant is
| "probable cause" regardless.
|
| >They don't break into my house to get my Ring footage,
| which is much more equivalent in your attempt equating
| these disparate concepts.
|
| ...because the ring footage isn't in your house, it's in
| the cloud. Moreover, if you have an on-premise system and
| you're on vacation or something, it's plausible that they
| get a search warrant and break in, especially if they
| think time is of the essence (eg. your system has limited
| retention and the footage is going to be wiped).
|
| >You could just as easily boot the car and wait for the
| owner to return.
|
| If you read the article the police claims that it's only
| used if they can't locate the owner. It's unclear what
| that exactly means, but it's not like they're towing
| every tesla near the crime scene.
| dylan604 wrote:
| "If you read the article" is such a lame comment. In
| other comments in this thread, I've literally quoted the
| article. How in the world could I have pulled a quote
| without reading the article.
|
| It's clear you and I have polar opposite sentiments
| regarding this. So I'll leave it here as you are quite
| tiresome
| gruez wrote:
| >"If you read the article" is such a lame comment. In
| other comments in this thread, I've literally quoted the
| article. How in the world could I have pulled a quote
| without reading the article.
|
| Unlike some commenters I don't check a commenter's entire
| comment history before making comments. In fact, I don't
| even keep good track of what everyone said in a
| particular thread, so forgive me if I didn't do enough
| due diligence before making a vague implication that you
| didn't read the article. That said, you need to chill
| out. If you can't handle a vague implication that you
| didn't read the article, maybe online forum commenting
| isn't for you.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > I don't have to make arrangements to go get my home
| when it is searched
|
| Yeah but you no longer have a front door or window when
| you get there (the person spoke of them breaking in if
| you're not home), so you have to make other types of
| arrangements
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Well its quite different as they don't put your home on a
| trailer and haul it away across town without telling you.
| conception wrote:
| So they say in the interview. Irregardless, if I own a car
| and it is legal for the police to take it so they can hold
| onto it until they have a warrant of I give in? No thanks.
| gruez wrote:
| >Irregardless, if I own a car and it is legal for the
| police to take it so they can hold onto it until they have
| a warrant of I give in?
|
| The article says they got the warrant before towing it.
| tamimio wrote:
| My car isn't a Tesla, and the dashcam has a "parking mode" that
| records everything while parked. So, do that, don't get a
| Tesla, and never get towed to access the camera.
| gruez wrote:
| If the police sees the dashcam and suspects that there's
| footage on there, they can apply for a search warrant and
| seize that footage as well. It's unclear why they needed to
| tow the tesla in the first place. The article says that the
| footage is on a USB drive, so presumably they could just pull
| it out and make a copy. If they're towing it because they
| couldn't locate the owner and want to open the car non-
| destructively, then your suggestion of not driving a dashcam
| and using a tesla probably isn't going to save you either.
| teslacams wrote:
| Search warrant for what ? Is footage of something illegal
| illegal too ?
| teslacams wrote:
| .. or do they have a right to see everything else that
| could be recorded on that cam just like that ?
| darth_avocado wrote:
| I used to keep my Sentry mode on all the time. Then my car got
| broken into twice. The police didn't bother to follow up despite
| having a video footage of what happened. Now I never turn it on.
| And now police wants to tow vehicles for the footage.
| gruez wrote:
| The article mentions that they tried towing a car because they
| were investigating someone who got shot and stabbed. While it'd
| be nice if police could investigate every type of crime, I
| don't see the contradiction between "police didn't follow up
| about your car being broken into despite footage" and "police
| towed a car to get footage about someone getting shot and
| stabbed"
| darth_avocado wrote:
| > While it'd be nice if police could investigate every type
| of crime
|
| That's literally their job, which they get paid for. But
| anyway, my comment was more referring to the fact that if
| they had done their job, I'd be more open to keeping my
| Sentry mode on.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > > While it'd be nice if police could investigate every
| type of crime
|
| > That's literally their job, which they get paid for.
|
| It's literally not.
|
| Their job is to do a variety of things, including
| investigation, according to the priorities of the higher,
| within the financial constraints they are given and
| according to the priorities of the authority placed over
| them (which in many cases is the top leadership of the
| police department themselves, because lots of times they
| are given a broad degree of structural independence from
| the local government they are associated with.)
|
| What you say may be what you'd like their job to be, but it
| is not _literally_ what their job is.
| nox101 wrote:
| I agree with you that the police have limited resources.
|
| At the same time, the better they do their job the less
| of it there will be to do as word spreads that you won't
| get away with it.
|
| It could be arguably be much more efficient to take in
| user video, voluntarily offered, and prosecute all easily
| provable crimes and violations.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > At the same time, the better they do their job the less
| of it there will be to do
|
| Institutionally, the police have very little interest in
| there being less perception of a need for police, that
| would result in them getting less resource, less
| deference, and more oversight and accountability.
| nox101 wrote:
| that doesn't seem to have worked out for them.
| pjc50 wrote:
| What this conversation is getting at is the police being
| (percieved to be) selective about what they do and don't
| care about is gradually corrosive to co-operation.
| Terr_ wrote:
| This is a lengthy quote, but it's relevant and from one
| of my favorite authors:
|
| > Ah... _Keep the peace._ That was the thing. People
| often failed to understand what that meant. You 'd go to
| some life-threatening disturbance like a couple of
| neighbours scrapping in the street over who owned the
| hedge between their properties, and they'd both be
| bursting with aggrieved self-righteousness, both yelling,
| their wives would either be having a private scrap on the
| side or would have adjourned to a kitchen for a shared
| pot of tea and a chat, and they all expected you to sort
| it out. And they could never understand that it wasn't
| your job.
|
| > Sorting it out was a job for a good surveyor and a
| couple of lawyers, maybe. Your job was to quell the
| impulse to bang their stupid fat heads together, to
| ignore the affronted speeches of dodgy self-
| justification, to get them to stop shouting and to get
| them off the street. Once that had been achieved, your
| job was over. You weren't some walking god, dispensing
| finely tuned natural justice. Your job was simply to
| bring back peace.
|
| > Of course, if your few strict words didn't work and Mr
| Smith subsequently clambered over the disputed hedge and
| stabbed Mr Jones to death with a pair of gardening
| shears, then you had a different job, sorting out the
| notorious Hedge Argument Murder. But at least it was one
| you were trained to do. People expected all kinds of
| things from coppers, but there was one thing that sooner
| or later they all wanted: make this not be happening.
|
| -- _Night Watch_ by Terry Pratchett
| cryptoegorophy wrote:
| It saved me $2000 bill by recording a hit an runner
| letmeinhere wrote:
| Can you elaborate why? As in, you got hit by an insured
| driver and so your insurance was able to bill them, whereas
| you didn't have collision coverage of your own?
| akira2501 wrote:
| > whereas you didn't have collision coverage of your own?
|
| That's the majority of people who don't have a lien on
| their title. Liability insurance covers what you do, it
| doesn't cover what someone does to you. So having evidence
| of who caused the accident is important when everyone just
| has liability coverage.
|
| In California, though, I really do recommend you have the
| "Uninsured and Underinsured Counterparty" option on your
| insurance. It's usually far cheaper than the alternatives
| and it just covers you with no effort on your part.
| telcal wrote:
| It saved me a lot more. I was parked on my street and a
| garbage truck sideswiped the front driver side corner. The
| truck driver said it wasn't his fault and the car was parked
| too far from the curb but the videos showed what really
| happened.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| I don't turn it on simply because it drains an absurd amount of
| battery. I don't even understand why it does so. Is it old
| tech? My Blink cameras have 2 AA Lithium batteries that take
| motion-activated video all day on a busy side-walk for at least
| a couple of months. Yet one shopping trip drains like 2%
| battery in Sentry mode, wtf? That's a lot.
| MarkMarine wrote:
| I've wondered this myself, how could 50 miles of moving
| 5000lbs at 60mph be equal to sitting running a camera for a
| day or two.
|
| When I had a model 3 it also had an absurd amount of drain
| over night, 4-5% battery when it was just sitting there
| (without overheat A/C)
|
| Leaving for vacation before I had a home charger was always
| fraught.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| You're comparing a motherboard with dual CPUs at 12+ cores
| each, a GPU, and 16GB of RAM -- to perhaps an ESP32. Very
| different design goals.
| CryptoBanker wrote:
| No one said they had to hook the cameras up to a gaming PC.
| That's an engineering choice
| parl_match wrote:
| > Very different design goals.
|
| From the perspective of a sentry mode: very similar design
| goals.
| MutableLambda wrote:
| Sentry consumes around 200W on Intel Atom and camera based
| detection enabled. I'd say it's a total overkill. It even
| heats up the display pretty good when it's relatively
| chilly outside.
|
| Source: MYP 22 Intel based
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| Wow, yeah, that's a _lot_ of power. And didn 't they
| already drop it by 40% earlier this year?
| sweetjuly wrote:
| Even so, you shouldn't be waking all 24 cores, the GPU,
| etc. just to record video. Let the cameras DMA into their
| buffers and wake up a single core when the buffers hit a
| high water line. The core only needs to be awake long
| enough to queue up the writes to storage and then it can go
| back to sleep.
| thebruce87m wrote:
| The blink camera has a PIR sensor that wakes it up so it
| starts recording video. It doesn't record video the whole
| time and running the PIR is not energy intensive.
|
| The Tesla has to run the cameras _and_ run computer vision
| algorithms to determine if something is happening.
| wl wrote:
| The Tesla also has a gigantic battery that's at least 50
| kWh. 2% of that is 1 kWh. Still seems like way too much.
| akira2501 wrote:
| I was watching a youtube video about the "Kia Boys." A group of
| young men who made a lifestyle out of stealing Kia vehicles
| with flawed anti theft systems installed.
|
| What interested me is that they make a habit of connecting
| their personal phone to the entertainment systems of vehicles
| they steal. They then use the large list of connected devices
| in their phone to brag about their stature as criminals.
|
| Which is hilarious because it's not only evidence that connects
| them to a rash of vehicle thefts, but it also means every
| stolen vehicle retains evidence of who _precisely_ stole that
| vehicle.
|
| The police don't seem to have a clue. The criminals surely
| don't.
| mixtureoftakes wrote:
| all while some people spend their entire lives obsessing
| about privacy without even doing anything illegal...
| m463 wrote:
| wrong angle - most people aren't trying to cover their
| crime sprres, they know losing privacy is more likely to
| make you a victim. Could be robbery, but it could also be
| high hotel prices.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Is it legal to film anywhere? In Sweden filming in public
| places with fixed equipment (a car counts apparently) is
| illegal. But on the other hand any evidence is admitted in
| court, even material obtained while breaking a law. So there
| has been a few cases where police have caught the person
| vandalizing the car and also needed to consider whether to fine
| the owner.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| In the US, it is legal to film anywhere public (out on the
| street, in a government building, etc). You can even film
| inside of private establishments (restaurants, stores) until
| you have been asked to stop.
|
| This is part of the protection of free speech and press. You
| cannot use the footage gathered for commercial purposes
| without permission of people you filmed. Journalism for pay,
| and art for pay are not considered commercial purposes.
| sneak wrote:
| *asked to stop by the owner. you are within your rights to
| film or photograph other restaurant patrons even if those
| being filmed don't like it. it is up to the owner of the
| property.
| alkonaut wrote:
| It is in Sweden too. And everywhere I know of in democratic
| countries. But here it applies so long as I'm there doing
| the filming myself.
|
| The law here isn't about filming but regulation of
| surveillance, and is only about installing equipment that
| films public spaces without permit. For example: a ring
| doorbell can film my driveway and porch but not the street.
|
| The thing about the Tesla is that it counts the same as
| mounting a camera on a house filming a public street
| corner, and not as a person filming the same street corner
| with their smartphone.
|
| I don't see the connection to freedom of speech since the
| act of recording anything is unrelated to if and how you
| can _use_ that recording (which would be when it becomes
| speech).
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| The us doesn't differentiate between creating media with
| a handheld camera or creating media by permanently
| mounting an unattended 360 surveillance cam in the middle
| of a busy street. It is all seen as protected speech. You
| don't have to see or agree with the connection, that
| distinction is for the US courts, and they have
| interpreted it VERY broadly.
|
| The other difference is that in the states, you largely
| don't have a right to privacy in public or anywhere
| visible from public.
| rbalicki wrote:
| 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?
| freejazz wrote:
| >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."
| gruez wrote:
| 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.
| freejazz wrote:
| 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.
| gruez wrote:
| > 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.
| freejazz wrote:
| 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.
| gruez wrote:
| >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.
| freejazz wrote:
| >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?
| jrflowers wrote:
| 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.
| gruez wrote:
| 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.
| sodality2 wrote:
| 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.
| freejazz wrote:
| It's not because they will get caught, it's because of the
| repercussions that would happen _if they did_.
| wil421 wrote:
| There are far less hit and runs than speeders or road
| ragers.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| May not even have insurance, it's a coin toss
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| 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."
| freejazz wrote:
| Surely you don't live in a city.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| 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.
| freejazz wrote:
| 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.
| rbalicki wrote:
| 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.
| 0xcafefood wrote:
| 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.
| oxide wrote:
| 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.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| 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.
| renewiltord wrote:
| 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.
| croes wrote:
| So they still drive like maniacs but without insurance.
| croes wrote:
| 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.
| gruez wrote:
| 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.
| monkeywork wrote:
| 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.
| tamimio wrote:
| 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.
| nox101 wrote:
| reporting is not the same as policing. Telling the police
| about a crime is the norm. Then the police police based on
| the report.
| monkeywork wrote:
| 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.
| nox101 wrote:
| 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
| monkeywork wrote:
| 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.
| rbalicki wrote:
| 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?)
| Sebb767 wrote:
| 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.
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| 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".
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Most criminals will just cover their face to avoid CCTV.
| lurking_swe wrote:
| 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.
| lurking_swe wrote:
| 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.
| monkeywork wrote:
| 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?
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| They should expect to be filmed in public more than
| people not carrying weapons. This already happens.
| monkeywork wrote:
| 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?
| croes wrote:
| 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.
| NegativeK wrote:
| 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.
| lurking_swe wrote:
| 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...
| lr4444lr wrote:
| 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.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Do insurers really know about citations?
| tylerrobinson wrote:
| Are you kidding? Absolutely. For moving violations you can
| look forward to the ticket itself plus increased insurance
| premiums.
| monkeywork wrote:
| 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.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| This is my understanding as well but with net technology
| perhaps they are checking more often now.
| sib wrote:
| 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!)
| atonse wrote:
| 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.
| grepfru_it wrote:
| 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
| pixl97 wrote:
| The level of crazy driving to citations is rather low.
| mullingitover wrote:
| > 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.
| sowbug wrote:
| Contracting out patrolling to private citizens would be a
| brilliant way to get around that pesky Bill of Rights.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| 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.
| monkeywork wrote:
| You've heard all the horror stories of HOA's ... yeah
| lets add those people into other area's of peoples lives.
| Terr_ wrote:
| 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.
| sowbug wrote:
| 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.)
| blahedo wrote:
| > _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).
| Terr_ wrote:
| > 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
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Here is a short film proposing just that. [1]
|
| [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJYaXy5mmA8
| [video][15 mins]
| ryandrake wrote:
| > 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.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| In my area, this is one their most intense efforts - fines
| are very profitable to the municipality.
| rcpt wrote:
| California?
| rbalicki wrote:
| Also NYC, also Miami. I never got this impression in the
| Bay Area when I lived there (10 years ago)
| y-curious wrote:
| 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.
| monkeywork wrote:
| 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.
| bsder wrote:
| > 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.
| andylynch wrote:
| 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.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Is there a risk such video could be fabricated to frame
| someone for a crime they didn't commit, or even that never
| happened?
| johnisgood wrote:
| With deepfake AI? Absolutely. You do not even need AI, you
| just need to time it just right (or crop the video).
| zer00eyz wrote:
| 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...
| rbalicki wrote:
| This seems to indicate that it shares data on the car itself,
| not on other drivers :/
| steelframe wrote:
| My car doesn't spy on me. I've pulled the Data Communications
| Module fuse.
| 23B1 wrote:
| 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.
| xattt wrote:
| ALPR units are used the license plate recognition already.
| tamimio wrote:
| 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.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| 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.
| tamimio wrote:
| 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.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| And likewise, you might get points deducted for wasting
| the reviewers time with a frivolous submission.
| nosianu wrote:
| 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.
| iwishiknewlisp wrote:
| 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.
| ryandrake wrote:
| 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.
| whaleofatw2022 wrote:
| 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.
| iwishiknewlisp wrote:
| > 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.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > 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.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| 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.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > 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.
| iwishiknewlisp wrote:
| 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.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| 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".
| yuliyp wrote:
| 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.
| iwishiknewlisp wrote:
| 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.
| yuliyp wrote:
| Garnishment can be too slow to deal with the victim's
| liabilities, and even still has no guarantee of ever
| repaying the loss.
| iwishiknewlisp wrote:
| 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.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| The whole concept of calling people NPC's is weird as
| fuck.
|
| You aren't a superior being, Derek.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| 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...
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > 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.
| mangosteenjuice wrote:
| 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.
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| Honestly using it for actual serious violent crimes is way
| better than speeding
| DriverDaily wrote:
| > 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.
| jrflowers wrote:
| > 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?
| porphyra wrote:
| 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.
| rbalicki wrote:
| I would! But I have a job and side projects that take up my
| time.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| 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.
| morkalork wrote:
| 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.
| lalaithion wrote:
| 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.
| morkalork wrote:
| But that's the catch, using ML to scan a plate doesn't
| confirm who was driving.
| baby_souffle wrote:
| 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.
| whaleofatw2022 wrote:
| Idk about your state, but many have a 'swizzle' vertical
| or two that I'm pretty sure is to assist readers and
| detect fakes...
| hermannj314 wrote:
| 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.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The driver doesn't matter when it comes to insurance.
| It's the owner of the car who holds the policy.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| It doesn't matter, right? It's the vehicle that is
| insured
| kragen wrote:
| 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
| rayiner wrote:
| We should do this for HOV violators.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The same thing that allows drivers to run red light cameras and
| cover their face with their hand
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| 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.
| mig39 wrote:
| Technically, dashcams are illegal in some European countries.
| whaleofatw2022 wrote:
| Ford AFAIK actually has a patent of some sort for this [0]
|
| [0] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a61793292/ford-cop-cars-
| sp...
| sschueller wrote:
| 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.
| moate wrote:
| 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.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Very very good, and I want more societies which give a bigger
| middle finger to the karens of their world.
| joshu wrote:
| https://www.getnexar.com/
| monkeywork wrote:
| 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?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| 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.
| pmichaud wrote:
| 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.
| mft_ wrote:
| 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?
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| 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?
| aduffy wrote:
| As someone who got their first drivers license in
| California, I can say with certainty that there are in
| fact speed limits.
| acdha wrote:
| 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).
| kelnos wrote:
| 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.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| 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).
| askvictor wrote:
| 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
| mauvehaus wrote:
| 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
| XorNot wrote:
| 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.
| TomK32 wrote:
| 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.
| XorNot wrote:
| "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.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| 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.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Not if they're poorly timed.
| NiloCK wrote:
| 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.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Literally from today...
|
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/08/31/how
| -lo...
| Reviving1514 wrote:
| Some yellows aren't too well timed, especially if on a
| downhill slope.
| grepfru_it wrote:
| 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
| singleshot_ wrote:
| If you're speeding up for yellow lights, you are a
| terrible driver and you should seek out some better
| skills and practices.
| XorNot wrote:
| Speed cameras aren't installed at intersections though.
|
| You are railing against an example which doesn't exist.
| jsjohnst wrote:
| That is quite literally not true. Many states have speed
| cameras at intersections.
| ta8645 wrote:
| 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.
| c22 wrote:
| 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.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Jaywalking, to my ear, is a similarly universal & easy
| example for this not being universally desirable.
| c22 wrote:
| 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.
| kelnos wrote:
| 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.
| BytesAndGears wrote:
| 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.
| kelnos wrote:
| 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.)
| lanstin wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Where?
| repeekad wrote:
| 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
| askvictor wrote:
| Were you in that much of a hurry to not be able to wait
| 30 seconds for the traffic light?
| repeekad wrote:
| 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?
| froggit wrote:
| > 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.
| try_the_bass wrote:
| 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?
| tway_GdBRwW wrote:
| 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.
| try_the_bass wrote:
| "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?
| deergomoo wrote:
| 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?
| kelnos wrote:
| > _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!
| estebank wrote:
| > 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.
| kelnos wrote:
| 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".
| johnisgood wrote:
| Or sometimes it is the death sentence.
|
| I agree with you, FWIW.
| acdha wrote:
| 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.
| johnisgood wrote:
| https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/road-deaths-us-eu/
|
| Seems to be more of an issue in the US.
| acdha wrote:
| 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.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Unfortunately the state of public transportation is awful
| in the US, for sure.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| America has tried to do this, famously, with the "3
| strikes and you're out" laws of the past century.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| At 3am? Bed presumably.
| lolinder wrote:
| 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.
| c22 wrote:
| 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.
| lolinder wrote:
| 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.)
| c22 wrote:
| 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.)
| stopsandgoes wrote:
| Have you ever been rear-ended, stopping twice like that?
|
| I have.
| lolinder wrote:
| 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.
| c22 wrote:
| 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.
| lolinder wrote:
| 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.
| c22 wrote:
| 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.
| kelnos wrote:
| 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.
| c22 wrote:
| 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.
| monkeywork wrote:
| 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.
| grepfru_it wrote:
| 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.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _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.
| gog wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| There is old Woody Allen joke: The only advantage of LA
| over NYC is right turn on red light is allowed.
| monkeywork wrote:
| 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.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _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.
| concordDance wrote:
| 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.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| 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.
| LoganDark wrote:
| 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.
| TomK32 wrote:
| 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.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| 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.
| kelnos wrote:
| 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.
| TomK32 wrote:
| 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.
| Corrado wrote:
| 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?
| kelnos wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| A lot of departments have policies about not interrupting
| thr normal flow of traffic.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| When I was a kid, the argument for lower speeds on
| expressways was fuel efficiency.
| sokoloff wrote:
| _Properly set_ speed limits would not need to be routinely
| disregarded. We don't have those right now (IMO).
| rbalicki wrote:
| 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.
| clankyclanker wrote:
| 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.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| 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.
| concordDance wrote:
| > 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.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Wait, where are NYC taxis allowed to pickup people?
| backtoyoujim wrote:
| "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.
| soerxpso wrote:
| 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.
| TomK32 wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Often when they are meticulously designed it is for revenue
| generation and not safety.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Insurance isn't the same as law enforcement, not even close.
| jdietrich wrote:
| 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...
| kelnos wrote:
| Oof, conditioning people to tattle on their neighbors. That's
| never gone horribly wrong... /s
| paradox460 wrote:
| 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.
| kenjackson wrote:
| 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.
| _moof wrote:
| 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.
| Swizec wrote:
| 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.
| alexvitkov wrote:
| "The Snitch-mobile"
| hnburnsy wrote:
| > 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.
| rbalicki wrote:
| Do you have more info about this?
| hnburnsy wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/technology/general-
| motors...
|
| This is the reporting bad drivers to insurance companies
| part, not the cameras part.
| eddd-ddde wrote:
| 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.
| rbalicki wrote:
| The touch screen in a Tesla could easily surface such
| information about the cars around them. That's great
| steelframe wrote:
| > 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?
| johnisgood wrote:
| You should watch Black Mirror.
| pdar4123 wrote:
| Seems like a great idea. The police should do this... bring
| back red light cameras and automated speed traps.
| duped wrote:
| Red light cameras have perverse incentives that have led to
| municipal corruption and made intersections more dangerous.
| jclulow wrote:
| Can you perhaps expand on the incentives and the mechanism
| of increased danger?
| lolinder wrote:
| 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).
| duped wrote:
| 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.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| 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.
| hightrix wrote:
| Sure, only if they take a look at every speed limit in
| America and readjust them to be realistic for modern cars.
| rbalicki wrote:
| 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.)
| kelnos wrote:
| > _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.
| m463 wrote:
| 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)
| Aurornis wrote:
| 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.
| 39896880 wrote:
| 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
| froggit wrote:
| 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.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > 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.
| lolinder wrote:
| 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.
| unshavedyak wrote:
| > 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.
| lolinder wrote:
| 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.
| try_the_bass wrote:
| 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.
| lolinder wrote:
| 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.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| 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.
| globular-toast wrote:
| 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.
| lolinder wrote:
| So you're okay with police having access to facial
| recognition cameras on every public street in order to
| better track down violent criminals?
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > to make a buck
|
| And to make roads safer.
| lolinder wrote:
| 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?
| hindsightbias wrote:
| What makes you think the drivers who drive that way have
| insurance?
| magnetowasright wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Maybe insurers will pay bounty for it. Mostly, you want to get
| rid of dangerous drivers, not just charge them more!
| globular-toast wrote:
| 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.
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| 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?
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| Freedom requires both Liberty and Privacy. An all-seeing state
| will destroy Liberal society.
|
| Reform requires reform of both the government and industry.
| Industry will happily gather the data and the state will then buy
| it from industry as a means to circumvent the 4th amendment.
|
| https://reason.com/2024/08/20/how-the-feds-buy-their-way-aro...
| Aloisius wrote:
| What does that have to do with this article?
|
| The police are getting warrants for the video.
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| They aren't getting warrants to tow the vehicles. They have
| no right to seize private property, especially the private
| property of someone not even involved with the crime in
| question. And what if the Tesla owner, as is their right or
| at least should be, refuses to release the video footage? How
| long do the police keep the illegally seized vehicle while
| the owner sorts out the seizure before the courts and at what
| personal cost? And what is prevents the police from obtaining
| the video through extrajudicial means? Does Tesla itself have
| access to the video? Can they sell/give it to the police? Are
| there legal safeguards against this or is it an open market
| as the linked Reason article shows? All of the above applies
| to any aftermarket camera security system as well. Also, if
| the police get access to the car data by some means, can they
| use any of the data to file separate charges against an
| uncooperative owner as retribution if they desire? There are
| many questions along these lines when dealing with an
| intrusive police state.
| davidt84 wrote:
| > They aren't getting warrants to tow the vehicles.
|
| Um, FTA:
|
| > "Based on this information," Godchaux wrote, "I
| respectfully request that a warrant is authorized to seize
| this vehicle from the La Quinta Inn parking lot so this
| vehicle's surveillance footage may be searched via an
| additional search warrant at a secure location."
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| I misspoke. They should no right to tow the private
| property of uninvolved individuals, warrant or no
| warrant. It is police overreach.
| moate wrote:
| Freedom does not require Liberty because Freedom does not
| require the state. Liberties are granted, not natural,
| Freedoms. Freedom sounds great and people love to hype it, but
| doesn't exist in a meaningful way in most advanced societies.
|
| If we're going to use proper nouns, we need to use them
| properly.
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| Go live in the remote wilderness in your cabin. The rest of
| this will live within civilized society with our necessary
| liberties, thank you very much.
| moate wrote:
| I advocate for no such thing but you want to have a
| discussion about things, you learn the vocabulary. It's
| hard to talk about political theory when you use the words
| wrong just the same as someone calling the UI for Wordpress
| "the back end" makes it hard to have an engineering
| discussion.
|
| Liberties are fine, but don't act like Freedom exists in
| modern society (or maybe any society) for the exact reason
| your flippant dismissal implies: the needs of other people.
| A poor invocation of Franklin indeed.
| netsec_burn wrote:
| https://archive.is/M81lw
| neilv wrote:
| Who gave Tesla and their drivers the right to set up video
| surveillance cameras in public?
| snozolli wrote:
| Unless they're parking in an area with a reasonable expectation
| of privacy, such as a locker room, it's perfectly legal to
| record in the United States.
| neilv wrote:
| You can argue what exactly is and isn't a reasonable
| expectation of privacy, and someone else can argue
| differently.
|
| For example, the upskirt "street photographers" have long
| argued one way, and eventually they get smacked down,
| legally.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| It's hard to take your argument serious when you choose a
| pretty absurd example. You walk around the street with a
| pair of eyes on your face, but that doesn't mean you can
| just bend over and look up people's clothing.
|
| The law clearly establishes a difference between capturing
| "normal" content in public and invading privacy.
| neilv wrote:
| Do the privacy laws regarding public surveillance speak
| of "content"? Because that sounds like something a
| techbro smug halfwit would say.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| Yes, and in California, where this article is based,
| there are explicit laws against this.
| gruez wrote:
| >You can argue what exactly is and isn't a reasonable
| expectation of privacy, and someone else can argue
| differently.
|
| No. The guy you're replying to isn't giving his opinion on
| whether it should be allowed or not, he's stating how the
| law works right now.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectation_of_privacy_(Unite
| d...
| pbohun wrote:
| We've seen this type of thing happen with Ring, where the police
| want video from people's private cameras. Do police have the
| legal right to access/take people's private property like this? I
| thought the 4th amendment of the constitution protected against
| unreasonable searches and seizures?
| gruez wrote:
| >Do police have the legal right to access/take people's private
| property like this? I thought the 4th amendment of the
| constitution protected against unreasonable searches and
| seizures?
|
| Search warrants specifically exist to give police the "legal
| right to access/take people's private property", and are widely
| accepted to be constitutional.
| brvsft wrote:
| You pretend this is some obvious fact, but obtaining a search
| warrant against a person or property that were uninvolved in
| the crime but may have only been 'witness' to it is not
| obvious or clear to me.
| zerocrates wrote:
| The standard for getting a search warrant is probable
| cause, and that includes just probable cause to believe
| that there is evidence of a crime at the place to be
| searched.
|
| Taking the witness analogy, even an actual person who's a
| mere witness can be compelled to testify with a subpoena.
| johnisgood wrote:
| No wonder people are not so willing to report a crime or
| be witnesses. They are getting punished for it.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| A lot of places, talking to police is a very bad idea
| both because of the police and the other people in the
| neighborhood. You could very easily get shot for doing
| so.
| johnisgood wrote:
| In the US, absolutely. In Europe, not so much,
| thankfully.
| ralferoo wrote:
| This might be setting a new precedent though. I'm making
| assumptions here, but I'd have thought that search warrants
| were historically used at locations where the suspect lived /
| worked / frequented. Even at premises not owned by the
| suspect, the police turning up and requiring all the security
| footage doesn't deprive the premise owner of anything. Towing
| away an innocent law-abiding citizen's car for a matter
| entirely unrelated to them seems like it's massively
| overstepping the line set by any previous precedent.
|
| I can't think of anything else that could be seized by the
| police from an entirely innocent non-suspect which would
| cause a similar level of disruption in their life. What
| happens when the car owner needs to head to work in the
| morning and find their car has been taken. I doubt a call to
| the police is going to quickly reveal that it was the police
| themselves who took it. Even if it does, if they're holding
| it for evidence, they might not get it back very quickly.
| What if the lack of car leads to negative consequences for
| the owner - maybe they miss an important work meeting,
| flight, date, whatever - are the police going to compensate
| them for that? What if the owner is out of the country for a
| month and they only need a week to act on the court order and
| get all the video - does the owner then have to pay impound
| fees? Is it discriminatory that the police assume all Tesla's
| can be seized this way even if they don't happen to be
| recording, but they wouldn't consider doing to same to any
| other make of car even though any car might have a dash-cam
| that records when locked.
| gruez wrote:
| >This might be setting a new precedent though. I'm making
| assumptions here, but I'd have thought that search warrants
| were historically used at locations where the suspect lived
| / worked / frequented.
|
| Search warrants exist to give police access to evidence
| when there's probable cause. Often times this is "at
| locations where the suspect lived / worked / frequented",
| but there's nothing in the jurisprudence that limits it to
| those areas. The standard is "probable cause" in any case.
|
| >Even at premises not owned by the suspect, the police
| turning up and requiring all the security footage doesn't
| deprive the premise owner of anything. Towing away an
| innocent law-abiding citizen's car for a matter entirely
| unrelated to them seems like it's massively overstepping
| the line set by any previous precedent.
|
| They can and do break into premises, even if they're "an
| innocent law-abiding citizen", if the owner isn't there to
| allow them access onto the premises. The article
| specifically mentions that they only tow the car if they
| can't contact the owner, which seems consistent with that.
| ralferoo wrote:
| > They can and do break into premises
|
| That's fair enough to some extent. Not sure about the US,
| but in the UK they are also responsible for re-securing
| the access point when they leave, and I believe you can
| claim compensation for the repair work. Presumably also,
| if there were any thefts while the property was in this
| vulnerable state, the insurance company would sue the
| police to try to reclaim the money paid out to cover the
| loss.
|
| Taking someone's primary mode of transport, perhaps their
| only viable option, is a whole order of magnitude worse
| than breaking into a property to carry out a search
| warrant. For someone who's not even a suspect, or in any
| way connected, it's a massive violation of their rights.
|
| > only tow the car if they can't contact the owner, which
| seems consistent with that
|
| To be honest, it seems unlikely they'd easily be able to
| contact the owner, unless it happens to be parked outside
| their own residence. And the flip side of them not being
| able to contact the owner to ask permission is that the
| owner has absolutely no idea where their car is, and they
| only find out it's missing when they need it most. And
| probably not in an area they'd like to hang around too
| long in, if there's just been a homicide near there.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| If it's my outdoor cameras and it pertains to a crime that
| happened just outside my home, they can have the footage. A
| very practical contribution I can make to my neighborhoods
| safety
| jajko wrote:
| When they will come for evidence, they will not care whether
| its your external camera or baby watcher or whatever they
| will deem necessary.
| tedajax wrote:
| Keep boot licking I guess
| monkeywork wrote:
| So if the camera is in your car you are ok with them towing
| it away to pull the footage if they can't get in touch with
| you right away leaving you without a car?
|
| What if while looking at your footage for a crime outside
| your home (not related to you or your property) they see you
| doing something that could constitute a charge should they be
| able to share you for it as well?
|
| If someone saw you out in front of your house on your phone
| during the time of the crime should the authorities be able
| to seize your phone under the assumption that you were likely
| recording the incident?
| Terr_ wrote:
| > towing it away
|
| I think these hypotheticals are starting to blur different
| concepts and questions, namely the distinction between:
|
| 1. Generic request
|
| 2. Subpeona
|
| 3. Warrant (reasonable)
|
| 4. Warrant (stupid/crazy/evil)
|
| ____
|
| I suspect OP is mainly thinking of (1) and (2), where they
| get a phone call or letter and they say: "Sure! Here's a
| link to the video file."
|
| I would also guess OP might be okay with (3) where an
| officer came to their door and said "I need watch you copy
| time-range X-Y of your front door footage onto this USB
| stick I brought", or even "I need to take your entire SD
| card for a few months" if the footage seems very important.
|
| In contrast, I don't think OP is supporting the idea that
| police can get a warrant to rip the camera out of the wall
| and break down their door and seize all their electronics.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| In general, if there's a record of something which was captured
| in the course of ordinary business which is relevant as
| evidence in a court matter (such as the recording of your Ring
| camera), and parties to proceedings have good reason to believe
| you have this record, then they can generally get a subpoena
| issued to compel you to produce it for the court. This applies
| to both the prosecution and the defense (both criminal and
| civil).
|
| The protection against "unreasonable" search and seizure comes
| in the form of the fact the requesting party has to convince
| the court (usually the registry) that there is reasonable
| grounds before they will issue a subpoena.
|
| As an investigative matter (prior to any charges, court
| listings, and subpoenas), it is possible to get a search
| warrant including for evidence held by 3rd parties who aren't
| suspected of anything. Again, police don't have carte blanche.
| They need to convince a judicial officer of some sort that
| there is reasonable grounds before a warrant will be issued.
|
| There are ways to challenge a warrant/subpoena. Sometimes a
| successful challenge only serves to make the evidence
| inadmissible but doesn't prevent the search in the first place
| (aka "you can beat the ticket but you can't beat the ride).
|
| All that said, some judges / courts tend to practically be a
| rubber stamp for whatever warrant / subpoena the police want.
| Others actually do their job. It ain't perfect, but if you can
| think of a better system, I'd love to hear it.
| raincom wrote:
| Third-party doctrine is a legal way around the 4A: "The third-
| party doctrine is a United States legal doctrine that holds
| that people who voluntarily give information to third parties--
| such as banks, phone companies, internet service providers
| (ISPs), and e-mail servers--have "no reasonable expectation of
| privacy" in that information. A lack of privacy protection
| allows the United States government to obtain information from
| third parties without a legal warrant and without otherwise
| complying with the Fourth Amendment prohibition against search
| and seizure without probable cause and a judicial search
| warrant."[1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| To me, it's a bug not a feature that precedent can just expand
| infinitely as new capabilities in the world grow.
|
| There's a lot of people saying that search warrants have always
| allowed intrusion & seizure. But the fact that all these devices
| (cars, cameras, phones) are now potentially interesting data-rich
| objects to be seized, mined for ever larger total information
| awareness by the state seems like a massive defect & flaw of the
| system to me.
|
| I dont want old laws + new technology to automatically result in
| the state's eye of sauron (palantir) getting to better observe
| us.
| moate wrote:
| The state's first goal is to protect the state's continued
| existence. Anything that can be seen as interfering with that
| can be labeled an enemy and relegated to subhuman/other/destroy
| on contact status. From there, state violence, and from there,
| nazis.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| By far the most critical aspects of the state maintaining
| itself is to have the faith of the people, as a just and
| right entity that doesn't deserve to be smashed, whose blood
| is good for more than renewinf the tree of liberty
|
| This ever expanding invasiveness delegitimizes the state.
| Physical security is a positive, only when the power itself
| is used respectably & virtuously. Pursuing enemies at all
| cost makes you a bad state, that can't be believed in. Some
| balance is required. Some limit to intrusion is necessary,
| and to me, this violates the sovereign rights of the
| citizens, to have so much of our lives repurposeable &
| cooptable by the state with ever increasing scope and haste.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Autonomous vehicles will not be your property.
| kepler1 wrote:
| Here in California (and generally in the US, as well as other
| places where the cost of enforcing laws seems to be growing too
| costly/unpalatable), we seem increasingly interested in
| documenting and retroactively following up the aftermath of
| crimes. Rather than preventing them when / before they're
| happening. I'm surprised the police even care to watch video
| afterwards.
|
| (aside from the serious crime stuff like in the article)
| aftbit wrote:
| Creepy stuff. Maybe we ought not to constantly record everything
| happening around us all the time.
| papichulo4 wrote:
| Seems like if it's technically possible, it will happen, and we
| can't stop technological progress. In fact, you and I are
| probably profiting from that progress. Hard to ask a guy to do
| something that goes against his paycheck. Even if we vote
| politically "correct," whomever that may be, what are you and I
| voting for with our wallets?
| Lammy wrote:
| > Seems like if it's technically possible, it will happen,
| and we can't stop technological progress.
|
| 'The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a
| disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the
| life-expectancy of those of us who live in "advanced"
| countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life
| unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities,
| have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third
| World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted
| severe damage on the natural world. The continued development
| of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly
| subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict
| greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to
| greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it
| may lead to increased physical suffering even in "advanced"
| countries.'
| eastbound wrote:
| I don't know. People have been living without reliable
| access to food and potable water, not even talking about
| sore deformations on their faces, for a thousand years. But
| somehow their lives were fulfilling?
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Yeah, I don't see many of the people criticizing the
| Industrial Revolution opting into pre-industrial
| existences. I'm pretty minimalist, and I've grown up
| around the Amish and even they prefer to avail themselves
| of technology where they can. I think there's a fair
| amount of romanticizing about a pre-industrial lifestyle.
| This obviously isn't to argue that we should all live
| maximally consumerist lifestyles; I don't think that's
| true either.
| swayvil wrote:
| >sore deformations
|
| Is that what's referred to as a "wen"?
|
| (Onomatopoetic term, that. Think of how you'd talk with a
| golfball in your mouth)
| njtransit wrote:
| Do you really think life was fulfilling before the
| Industrial Revolution? Most men toiled, watched their
| children and wives die, before dying at a young age
| themselves. Where was the fulfillment, exactly? You're only
| able to contemplate that life could possibly _be_
| fulfilling because of the Industrial Revolution.
| yulker wrote:
| Gotta look past the agricultural revolution, not just
| shortly before industrial revolution
| checkyoursudo wrote:
| There was no art, poetry, craftsmanship, skill, talent,
| fame, friendship (or relationships of any kind), flavor,
| joy, celebration, or creativity before the Industrial
| Revolution. Gotcha.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Speak for yourself. My ancestors pre-industrial revolution
| were half starved tenant farmers making a subsistence
| living on too small plots of farmland in colonized Ireland,
| subject to random slaughter when the English changed their
| plans.
|
| Now, our extended family is prosperous in the US, Australia
| and Ireland. We're taller, healthier and mostly in
| professional or skilled trade jobs.
|
| The past is often seen through a sepia tinted idealized
| slant. The past was full of suffering and brutality. Even
| warfare was just as brutal - in ancient times, Caesar
| slaughtered 1-2% of the global population in Gaul. In the
| 17th century, marauding armies picked regions cleaned and
| left thousands to starve.
| deeptechdreamer wrote:
| War, disease, famine were the norm for eras past. For
| those who lived during those times, I reckon their level
| of perceived suffering was no more than ours today.
| Humans are tragically skilled at adapting to new
| standards and shifting the threshold of struggle. People
| today get frustrated over a delayed plane departure
| likely just as much as people in the past were over a
| storm delaying their caravan by a few days.
|
| As much of a proponent of technology as I am, I often
| reflect on whether we are truly bending the arc of
| suffering in a positive direction, or if it has remained
| far more constant than we'd like to believe.
| Iulioh wrote:
| Everyone is unsatisfied with what they have but some
| people are more right than others in the complaints they
| make.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| When the English army or paramilitary militia came to
| burn the ancestors out of house and home to make room for
| settlers, I doubt their level of suffering was
| "adjusted".
|
| If they were lucky, they starved in the woods, hiding
| like animals.
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| >too small plots of farmland
|
| Small plots are _still_ a problem for most people . 'We'
| sort off worked around the small plots problem by having
| the industrial revolution come along and then made jobs
| available for those who had only small plots.
|
| Hypothetically, if every human had an equal part of
| earth, relatively fewer would have been in the pathetic
| state that you mentioned in the per-industrial era, and
| even less so in the post-industrialization era.
| orochimaaru wrote:
| Errr - not true. Pre Industrial Revolution you were either
| a serf or a lord. There were a few in the renaissance times
| who started getting an education and planting the seed of
| the Industrial Revolution. By and large your existence pre
| Industrial Revolution would have been at the mercy of your
| local lord.
|
| Yes, there are negatives to the Industrial Revolution we
| have to overcome. But it's a net positive for everyone.
|
| You're welcome to fantasize being someone's slave. I'm not.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Sounds like a unabomber quote?
| luma wrote:
| It's the introduction to the Unabomber manifesto.
| eric_h wrote:
| Indeed:
|
| https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/natio
| nal...
| FpUser wrote:
| >"we can't stop technological progress"
|
| I do not want to stop tech progress, but I do want to stop
| social regress. Give it another 20-30 years and we will have
| same shit problems with freedoms as China, Russia, insert
| your fav scapegoat here.
| sneak wrote:
| There is no difference to what the USA and UK have done and
| continue to do to Assange and what China and Russia do to
| journalists they don't like.
|
| The idea that the west are the "good guys" hasn't been true
| for a long time, if ever. China is just better at
| technology and large scale coordination than the US, so
| they are way better at building and deploying and operating
| large scale surveillance systems. The US will catch up in a
| few decades.
|
| I believe this is inevitable. There is no meaningful
| opposition to pervasive surveillance in US government and
| there is no useful political action that can be undertaken
| by the public to turn this tide.
| lanstin wrote:
| Assange was killed with polonium or thrown out of a
| window? I think you have made your moral condemnation
| variable of Boolean type, rather than the more realistic
| float.
|
| I think also it is worth distinguishing between corporate
| surveillance, where there are very few limits on what
| they can do with the data, vs government surveillance
| where we can exert some power over the government by
| electing people to pass laws that reflect our desire for
| privacy.
|
| As well, I am surprised HN has not internalized Brin's
| essay "The Transparent Society." Privacy is going to be
| deeply reduced by the ability of all curious 13 year olds
| to launch insect sized drones. The question is how to
| handle - let only the overseers have the data or insist
| on public right to access data. Or something else; like
| laws forcing personal ownership of your data (although
| how things like being in the background of your neighbors
| cameras as you walk down the street should be handled
| there I am not sure.).
|
| I would also point out that freedom and privacy aren't
| identical - one may have freedom via privacy or via less
| intrusive laws. (Ed: deleted incomplete thought).
| Dibby053 wrote:
| If we had to vote everything with our wallets Tesla wouldn't
| exist in the first place. We would have $5,000 trucks made by
| Burmese war prisoners that can reach 200mph on full self
| drive, running on palm oil without a catalytic converter.
| loteck wrote:
| The incidental and systemic benefits of the recordings are
| exciting to people and celebrated with stories. The hazards of
| this constant "pollution" of data -- how it is slowly changing
| our society, our economy, our humanity -- is harder to quantify
| or build opposition to.
|
| It's a bit like climate change. Slow, invisible poison.
| deepsun wrote:
| s/poison/vitamin/ and you'll be happier.
| pjc50 wrote:
| I mean, yes, we'd like to replace poison with vitamins, but
| that requires some serious changes.
| skyyler wrote:
| Double plus good idea, fine chap!
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Law simply needs to internalize encryption. Your cameras are
| your property and only with consent of owner are they
| available to authorities.
|
| Public cameras should only be decrypted for evidence to
| support litigation of crimes, not for police to search for
| violay, because the current gigantic book of laws has an
| implicit assumption of a difficulty to enforce.
|
| If suddenly police could use AI to fully prosecute all
| violations of law then we have all the laws necessary for
| worse than totalitarian existence.
|
| Every mile you drove in a car will be 10 violations of law.
| Laugh loud? Violation disturbance of peace. Stand looking at
| your email too long? Loitering. Cross a park? Dozens of
| environmental violations.
| lupire wrote:
| This is already in the US Constitution. 4th Amendment.
| EasyMark wrote:
| Sure by some interpretations. Unfortunately the current
| SCOTUS doesn't see it that way, they think webcams and
| electronic surveillance should be in the constitution or
| authorities can do anything. If there isn't a law or
| constitutional text to the effect then it doesn't exist
| to them. So we have to approach this from actually
| getting a law passed.
| hiatus wrote:
| TFA is about camera footage obtained via warrant (thus
| following due process). Do you think evidence should not
| be obtainable via warrant?
|
| > Unfortunately the current SCOTUS doesn't see it that
| way, they think webcams and electronic surveillance
| should be in the constitution or authorities can do
| anything.
|
| Citation needed.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > and celebrated with stories.
|
| Are you sure those are organic?
| soerxpso wrote:
| I've definitely heard organic stories from people who got
| favorable insurance/legal outcomes after a traffic accident
| because they were using a dashcam. Generally, if you're not
| doing anything wrong, it is a good idea to record whatever
| you're doing, because it's proof that you're not doing
| anything wrong (police departments use this to great
| effect; they love bodycams in 99% of cases, and simply turn
| them off when they're about to do something that they
| wouldn't want to have a bodycam for). The negatives are
| second-order effects that only come about when everyone is
| doing it.
| EasyMark wrote:
| I'm sure the vast majority of them are. Occam's razor
| version: fear sells. If you can appeal to the clutching
| pearls part of the psyche then you can win over people to
| the idea of constant surveillance as necessary because of
| the current "wave of crime". No matter how much crime is
| down or how many rights have to be taken away for "public
| safety". Most reporters are just trying to put food on the
| table and outside of freedom of the press they couldn't
| care less.
| xyst wrote:
| NSA has been collecting domestic and foreign data for a long
| time now. There's even a dedicated data warehouse/data center
| in Utah (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center)
| hypercube33 wrote:
| Early 2000s there was an unveiling of ARGUS-IS and if we have
| that and commercial companies know when daughters are
| pregnant before they tell their parents then stuff like the
| TV series Person of Interest seems all too plausible at least
| as far as mass surveillance AI exists. I doubt there is a
| Batman squad doing good on that level of technology out there
| hidden from society but there may be a military and CIA like
| op behind it.
|
| There was tech to watch for what things you pick up and put
| back or dwell on in stores with cameras and heat maps and
| loyalty card tracking before 2005. it's not far off to get a
| person some computer thinks should be investigated based on
| patterns and data out there publicly.
| tptacek wrote:
| Why? Bodycams are an unalloyed good, and have deeper privacy
| implications.
| throwup238 wrote:
| With proper checks and balances in a civilian government,
| sure. The problem is when private companies help police
| departments do a runaround constitutional protections. Users
| have no sovereignty over their data (so to speak).
| tptacek wrote:
| To which Constitutional protections are you referring?
| lupire wrote:
| The 4th Amendment
| tptacek wrote:
| What does the 4th Amendment have to say about this? The
| guiding philosophy at the time 4A was framed is "the
| public is entitled to every man's evidence".
| msrenee wrote:
| They're towing cars. You think they bring them back 30
| minutes later and leave a friendly note? Unreasonable
| search and seizure. I'd say the seizure of property worth
| tens of thousands of dollars as evidence for a crime the
| owner was not involved in is pretty unreasonable.
| thfuran wrote:
| Probably the fourth amendment.
| samstave wrote:
| Can I FOIA Yopur CarCam?
|
| I Should be able to FOIA-LiveStream #OfficerBadge_Num
|
| For #1  Rights? Maybe #2
|
| #If Warrant granted, then enable FOIA-Cam_Footage = 1
| jmspring wrote:
| This is a hardone for me. In the family we have - 2016 Tacoma,
| 2015 Rav4, 2016 Mini, 2019 Sprinter RV. None have driver
| assist, backup cameras only, etc. I've been thinking about
| dashcams, but only ones where I know what will be published
| where (IE, not the cloud), so I have a personal record for
| instance if the kid has an issue in the Mini.
|
| No plans to upgrade or get new vehicles unless a dire need. For
| instance if Sprinter or Tacoma die, drive the not-dead one.
| (Sprinter is technially an RV, but used for business).
| jstummbillig wrote:
| Is there any tangible reason that would actually weight enough
| to justify not _actively wanting_ to provide basically free
| resources in help of uncovering (and in effect: preventing) a
| violent crime?
|
| Because, if not, this is about as "creepy" as those nerdy guys
| sitting in their bedrooms and basements, tinkering with their
| silly computers all day, meaning: Non-conformist and something
| you might just not be ready to think about straight.
| krona wrote:
| Perhaps because being at the scene of a crime makes you a
| potential suspect, and in an age of boundless incompetence,
| I'd rather not take that chance.
| bartonfink wrote:
| Police incompetence and overreach.
| 14 wrote:
| yes there is a valid reason to be opposed to this. Yes
| everyone one wants to stop violent crimes and murders and
| that is not a bad thing. But as history has shown time and
| time again if the people in power decide to become a tyrant
| and start to abuse the technology then we have a problem.
| Imagine if this was around 60 years ago. You go into a bar.
| Some cars have driven past the bar right as you entered a few
| weeks past. Now police realize this is actually a secret gay
| bar. They take all cars whose gps shows they passed the bar
| and take their footage. You are seen on camera entering a gay
| bar and now you are on a list and they start to harass you
| and question you. Seems like an unlikely situation that is
| far fetched but I like to remind people it was only in 1965
| that the last person was arrested in Canada for
| homosexuality. He was even declared a dangerous sex offender.
| So no we don't want cameras recording every second of our
| lives. Things that may be legal today might not be tomorrow
| so we should have privacy from constant surveillance.
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/everett-klippert-
| lgbt-a...
| lanstin wrote:
| Our freedom comes from sources other than technological
| privacy. It comes from our ability to be in charge of the
| law and to make the normal fun we want to be legal, legal.
|
| I would be mich more concerned with regulatory capture by
| the spying corporations or laws passed by a minority
| seeking to impose a religious based set of laws than car
| cameras.
|
| As you point out, you can be arrested for being gay without
| all those cameras, but the possibility of making laws to
| protect the right to be gay is also doable.
|
| And if you don't think any sort of consumer right to own
| your data law will be lobbied against by Google and Meta
| lobbiests, well I think you are wrong.
| mullingitover wrote:
| A large group of people will look at these stories of technology
| being used to get the worst people off the street and say "This
| is creepy stuff," and a lot of that same group will listen to
| politicians telling them "the solution to gun violence is for
| everyone to have guns" and nod thoughtfully in agreement.
| userbinator wrote:
| Guns can't be used for surveillance.
| perching_aix wrote:
| mount a camera on them
| mullingitover wrote:
| A person who believes they'll be caught and face consequences
| for committing crimes is strongly affected by knowing there
| is heavy surveillance of their criminal activities. They're
| less likely to be deterred just knowing that a lot of other
| people will randomly have guns, in fact that makes them more
| likely to _also_ have a gun and to shoot first (e.g.: that
| actor who was gunned down confronting someone who was
| stealing a catalytic converter).
| moate wrote:
| Sure? But some people also don't care about either and others
| people think too much focus is on preventing effects (crime)
| and not on addressing cause (material conditions) and plenty of
| pro-fascists quote 1984 to support policy that would have made
| Orwell want to shoot them in the head.
|
| People be crazy.
| xyst wrote:
| Surveillance tech masquerading as "self driving vehicles". Those
| Waymo vehicles are prime for this.
| thunder-blue-3 wrote:
| Will they though? Crime enforcement in the bay area is a joke -
| from alameda county into SF. I'm so happy to have moved out and
| into a state with actual community engagement and accountability.
| loteck wrote:
| Where'd you move to?
| thunder-blue-3 wrote:
| Connecticut - I've never felt safer walking around at 3 am
| and I've made more friends in the last 2 months (without
| trying) than I probably have in the last 6 years of living in
| the bay area.
| libria wrote:
| Good to hear! Are the comparable areas of similar
| population density? I'm wondering what incremental steps
| (non-partisan hopefully) can be brought to the Bay Area to
| slowly move it towards a similar environment.
| hereme888 wrote:
| The stories I hear from family living in the area... basically
| unless you're actively being assaulted, cops just don't show
| up. Unheard of in "normal" parts of the country.
|
| My brother once had his vehicle stolen, he traced it, found it,
| and because the police wasn't motivated to show up, he acted
| over the phone as if he were about to get into a life/death
| confrontation with the thief. Then they sent someone.
| thunder-blue-3 wrote:
| My ex's father was held up near his home with a knife - OPD
| never came after the initial call was filed.
| reillys wrote:
| If I or somebody else was the victim of a crime I would 100%
| support using every available source of information to solve that
| crime. I think we need adequate controls sure, but mostly we need
| to increase trust in government and police forces so we know we
| can trust the relevant people with our data.
|
| There is epic fear in the US about the government. That is the
| actual problem. Now the US gov is a shady piece of shit, so a lot
| of that is well founded, but that is the root of the problem.
| Solve that problem and actually trust the people who are supposed
| to be responsible and in charge to do the right thing and this
| data problem stops becoming as much of an issue. And no, building
| some kind of philosophical zero trust system is not going to
| solve anything, it is a prison you'll end up living in.
|
| Encourage transparency in Police forces and Government with
| strong legislation and strong support for whistleblowers and
| punishment of infractions and you have yourself a system that
| people can begin to trust.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| It's not just the police. How could such a corrupt police exist
| without corrupt superiors higher up in the government? Fear of
| governments is justified, they're the most powerful entity in
| our world. They can get away with murder.
|
| The US is not Iceland, a simple fix that would just make people
| trust the police is impossible. Also as an aside, the police
| isn't your only problem. Tesla, Google & co are paving the way
| normalizing these mobile surveillance units. We'll have
| millions of them driving around everywhere with HD cameras,
| microphones, in some cases even LiDAR and radar. Recording
| constantly. Of course there's a bit of an issue if you are not
| a fan of mass surveillance. Even if corporations are the only
| ones in charge of that data. I know for example that the Tesla
| video feed can be accessed online, because owners can remotely
| view it with their app. And if they can do this, so can others
| in theory. All you need is a bug or Tesla servers getting
| hacked.
| reillys wrote:
| Well actually that brings up an interesting piece about how
| the US is structured. I think the reason your police can be
| more corrupt is because of the federated nature of policing.
|
| Cops are usually only answerable to the mayor of the city
| (and sometimes the electorate) rather than higher ups in the
| government. So there is a lack of authority and control
| there. If they were answerable to politicians and politicians
| were actually responsible for their actions you could take
| very firm political actions against those politicians - but
| in the states nobody in the Cabinet or Government is
| responsible for law enforcement.
|
| And I understand why this federated system was originally put
| in place, but this isn't the 1700s. In communication terms
| the US might as well be Iceland - you can communicate from
| one end of the land mass to the other instantly, so we don't
| need to have localized and federated decision making.
| mvc wrote:
| So funny to watch the US competing with China to be the most
| authoritarian state.
| akimbostrawman wrote:
| the driving panopticon is being used to spy. shocking
| rd wrote:
| https://archive.is/zzMAr
| pdar4123 wrote:
| I have perhaps unpopular additional suggestion. If you break any
| traffic laws your tesla should automatically report u to the
| police. Shouldn't a car w AI capabilities be committed to
| responsible, ethical, safe, law abiding behavior ? I'm tired of
| bay area Teslas not signaling, cutting me off, and near killing
| me while I'm walking or on my bike.
| spacephysics wrote:
| Nah that gets to a police state mighty fast.
|
| It works if the people in power align with your values, but the
| moment it doesn't it becomes a problem
| simon_acca wrote:
| They have this on airliners now
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_operations_quality_as...
| rcpt wrote:
| So we're finally getting speed cameras?
| harmmonica wrote:
| As a somewhat regular user of Waymo, these types of conversations
| seem like they're going to be more and more in the (sorry!)
| rearview mirror because we won't own the car nor the cameras that
| are recording the world as we "drive" around.
|
| That's not to say that we should give up fighting for some level
| of privacy even when we don't own the cars, but seems more likely
| that legislation would be passed that forces the vehicle
| owners/operators (Alphabet in the Waymo case) to blur peoples'
| faces. Then of course the state (police/gov/etc.) will clamor for
| a backdoor key that will unlock the blurred faces/bodies if a
| crime is suspected to have occurred. Speaking of, I wonder if
| Waymo already does blur people when they capture them through
| Waymo rides? I can't seem to find mention of it online.
|
| This commentary assumes self-driving cars are here to stay and
| become the de facto way we drive instead of driving ourselves.
| Still not sure how their adoption plays out over time because, at
| least in the US, people will fight against mandates to use self-
| driving cars because it compromises their freedom (note that the
| freedom crowd (no judgment) will be saying that, at first,
| because they will consider it their right to drive themselves,
| but once the privacy implications are clear there will be full-on
| (figurative?) wars fought over self-driving). Guessing a
| politician, in Texas or another red state, will sooner than later
| enshrine the right-to-drive-oneself into the state constitution.
| threecheese wrote:
| I am hoping for an urban camouflage fashion revolution as a
| response to more pervasive monitoring:
| https://www.axios.com/2019/09/07/fooling-facial-recognition-...
|
| Public access to object recognition models may be important.
| chefandy wrote:
| I'd like to see that too, but time and time again we've seen
| that:
|
| a) laypeople aren't usually moved by privacy violations more
| abstract than someone physically watching you do something.
|
| b) most people aren't willing to don practical accessories
| that noticably change the perception of your face unless it
| emphasizes qualities considered sexy.
|
| c) safety gear generally isn't considered sexy
|
| I think that this stuff would be perceived like wearing a
| physical bike helmet for your data privacy with all the
| cachet of Google Glass.
| lisper wrote:
| > most people aren't willing to don practical accessories
| that noticably change the perception of your face unless it
| emphasizes qualities considered sexy.
|
| Ironic related story in the news:
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2024/08/29/passport-
| ph...
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Also d) it's easier to update face recognition ML to see
| through the latest in camouflage fashion than to design,
| manufacture and sell new clothes after each update to the
| ML model. Especially that they need to keep fooling
| previous versions of the model too.
| zeven7 wrote:
| Surely object recognition models will catch up to whatever
| attempts to thwart it (especially if it becomes popular). As
| long as a person is recognizable to another person, a
| computer should also be able to recognize them.
|
| Trying to camouflage seems like a losing battle.
| adrianN wrote:
| Computers are a lot better at recognizing people than
| people. Simple things like your gait are enough.
| 1997cui wrote:
| Just FYI, it is illegal to mask your face in New York
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna168590
| yaomtc wrote:
| No, that's Nassau County, New York. Not the entirety of New
| York. Says it right there in the article you linked.
| There's also a lawsuit challenging it, also linked at the
| end of the article.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/federal-lawsuit-
| challen...
| johnisgood wrote:
| So it is illegal to wear a hijab / niqab?
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| To be clear, a baseball hides more of your face than a
| hijab. (Niqab is a different story.)
| j4_james wrote:
| Answered in the article:
|
| > However, it has exemptions for health and religious
| reasons.
| johnisgood wrote:
| I did not see that. I double checked just now and there
| are still zero results for "religious", not sure why.
| kelnos wrote:
| I think it's safe to assume that 0.0000001% of the population
| will bother with that.
| singularity2001 wrote:
| Muslim women know. how is this controlling Gilde called in
| Dune again?
| chris-orgmenta wrote:
| Does gait recognition (and body tics / unique movement style)
| not make this moot?
|
| My sense is that facial recognition is a stop-gap and soon to
| be superseded, because the tech is there for more holistic
| 'reads' of a person - And that those subtle things that we
| humans can't see are actually plain as day and as clear as a
| fingerprint.
|
| If we cover our face, then the data collected on gait etc.
| will be more than enough. If we adopt a different gait, then
| the data on other foibles and styles will then give us away.
| Etc. (we can't hope to disguise all of these at once)
| cdirkx wrote:
| A couple of years ago there were news articles that the
| pentagon has a "lasers that can identify people in a crowd
| from 200m away based on their heart rate signatures".
|
| No idea if that's true or overblown, but it doesnt seem
| unlikely that such technology becomes possible in the
| future.
| johnisgood wrote:
| From where did they obtain your or my "heart signature"?
| What about gait, etc.?
| akira2501 wrote:
| > these types of conversations seem like they're going to be
| more and more in the (sorry!) rearview mirror because we won't
| own the car nor the cameras that are recording the world as we
| "drive" around.
|
| Perhaps in the urban setting but the majority of this country
| is not contained within cities. Even then are you planning on
| banning motorcycles and RVs?
|
| > because they will consider it their right to drive themselves
|
| Until a law is passed otherwise they are absolutely correct.
|
| > the right-to-drive-oneself into the state constitution.
|
| I doubt it. The real fight is likely to be whether we continue
| using mixed vehicle and pedestrian infrastructure or if we
| force pedestrians off the roadway entirely. Then we'll have a
| "right to walk" constitutional crisis.
| PeterisP wrote:
| > Perhaps in the urban setting but the majority of this
| country is not contained within cities.
|
| 83% of USA population live in urban areas, and that
| proportion is still steadily growing. The same trends apply
| everywhere else in the world as well.
| sseagull wrote:
| According to the 2020 US Census, about 80% live in an urban
| area. However, the definition is not exactly what people
| think of when you say "urban".
|
| In 2020, the census lists 2,611 urban areas, including
| areas with a few thousand people.
|
| https://www.census.gov/programs-
| surveys/geography/guidance/g...
|
| Shouldn't be too hard to break this down with a more
| colloquial definition (say, areas over 500k or 750k
| people). I'm just not at a real computer :)
| Tool_of_Society wrote:
| Calumet park is a village right next to Chicago with
| under 7000 people. Northfield village has under 6000
| people and it's located within about 15 miles of Chicago.
| It wasn't until I was about 18 that I realized what I
| thought was Chicago were actually small towns/villages.
| There's a whole slew of small villages next to or "in"
| larger cities.
| tptacek wrote:
| Yes; the ordinary thing to compare is MSAs, which take
| this into account; Calumet Park (and Blue Island and Oak
| Lawn) are all part of the Chicago MSA.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > 83% of USA population live in urban areas
|
| If you combine dense urban areas with suburbs. It's about
| 33% in dense areas and 55% in suburban areas. Which
| actually doesn't improve the driving situation.
|
| > and that proportion is still steadily growing
|
| Which is why I specifically mentioned motorcycles. In areas
| of the world with even greater urban density than the USA
| there are a lot of these on the road.
|
| > The same trends apply everywhere else in the world as
| well.
|
| These trends are influenced by economic policy and
| socioeconomic mobility of the population, which are not
| similar everywhere, so expectations do need to be tailored
| to them.
|
| Editing to add, I actually think we'll see a new class of
| Drivers License, one that allows you to operate semi
| autonomous vehicles, and one that allows you to operate
| fully manual vehicles with a higher level of continuous
| written and on the road testing required to hold it. Which
| is a reasonable and non discriminatory solution to the
| problem.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| > It's about 33% in dense areas and 55% in suburban
| areas. Which actually doesn't improve the driving
| situation.
|
| Are the suburbs not one of the easier places for
| autonomous vehicles? I'd think the lower traffic, larger
| roads, and reliance on cars to get around (due to low
| density and lack of transit) would make them the ideal
| place for self-driving cars to succeed.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| I don't agree. The problem is suburbs have a lower cost-
| per-mile for trips than urban areas.
|
| It's way more common to take a taxi in the city than the
| 'burbs. Behavior for car ownership and expectations
| around waiting on rides is different. Self driving taxis
| are an easy transition in cities. In the suburbs, you
| need to sell people on expensive vehicles that cost a lot
| per trip (whether owned or hailed).
| lazide wrote:
| Ultimately I think it's the same city/rural (really dense
| vs less dense) divide between a lot of things.
|
| In a suburban area, it could take 15 minutes for a taxi
| to get to you. In a rural area, 30 minutes to an hour.
| Inconvenient, especially since you could hop in the car
| you already have because of this situation, and probably
| already be where you want to go by the time they arrive.
|
| In an urban area (especially a super dense city like
| Manhattan, Tokyo, Mumbai, etc.), you probably spend more
| time figuring out if you need a taxi than actually
| getting one (literally seconds in most cases), and god
| help you if you're trying to park. It will not go well.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > suburbs have a lower cost-per-mile for trips than urban
| areas.
|
| Can you explain why?
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Two ways to get these numbers. Consider the total miles
| driven, divided by cost of the car. Or consider the cost
| of a taxi if you don't own a car.
|
| I believe uber says their average cost per mile is
| roughly $1. So maybe $2 in urban areas. Waymo is $3 they
| said.
|
| I saw some statistic that said a new car costs $800 a
| month now. Since we're talking about selling new manual
| vs self driving cars, we can ignore people buying used
| cars or particularly cheap cars.
|
| If you own a car in a city, you might drive to get
| groceries once a week and you may drive to a furniture
| store once every few years, and you take a couple trips
| to the airport every year. Cost city dwellers walk or
| take transit. Cities are dense, so the grocery store may
| be 2mi a way, so roughly 200mi a year, and then maybe
| 200mi a year for everything else. That's 400mi a year (or
| 8mi/wk) with a car that statistically costs $800/mo in
| America - or 200/wk, so it actually costs $25/mi.
|
| In the suburbs, you may drive 20mi round trip to the
| grocery store. Then 20mi a day round trip to commute,
| then 5mi a trip to a restaurant... it adds up to a lot
| more miles total. I googled it and the average American
| drives 1200mi/mo. That's $1.5/mi assuming the same
| average $800/mo cost of a new car.
|
| That means it's cheaper for an urban dweller to take uber
| or Waymo instead of buying a new car. It's almost but not
| quite cheaper for a suburbanite to take an uber but
| definitely not a Waymo.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > Editing to add, I actually think we'll see a new class
| of Drivers License, one that allows you to operate semi
| autonomous vehicles, and one that allows you to operate
| fully manual vehicles with a higher level of continuous
| written and on the road testing required to hold it.
| Which is a reasonable and non discriminatory solution to
| the problem.
|
| I hard disagree. I think it'll follow a path more like
| gun ownership (not trying to wade into that here though).
| In rural and low density areas, people believe guns
| provide safety, while in dense urban areas, people
| believe guns add risk. In low density areas, people will
| need to drive themselves (I doubt as many people would
| buy self driving cars vs use as a taxi, roads will be
| less well mapped, etc ), while urban areas with increased
| risk of driving accidents will want to restrict access of
| roads from humans.
|
| This urban/rural divide doesn't make for good licensure
| policy. People who depend on driving themselves are less
| "sophisticated" - they won't want to spend _more_ time
| getting a license, because they live farther away,
| they're less likely to take drivers classes, etc. We
| already see states with smaller urban population have
| easier driver's license standards and age requirements.
| Pride in vehicle ownership and car culture is already
| geographic simply because urban residents are less likely
| to own a car. So rural-leaning elected officials will
| want to keep human-driving easy to access.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > This urban/rural divide doesn't make for good licensure
| policy.
|
| Have you spent any time living in rural areas?
|
| > People who depend on driving themselves are less
| "sophisticated" - they won't want to spend more time
| getting a license, because they live farther away,
| they're less likely to take drivers classes, etc
|
| You do realize a lot of these people have class A license
| already because there are a lot of those jobs out there
| and farmers often get one to move their own product? You
| couldn't be _more_ wrong.
|
| > We already see states with smaller urban population
| have easier driver's license standards
|
| They also have wildly different politics. It turns out
| density has more than one impact. The largest one is
| suicide rates. Lowest in New York highest in Alaska. You
| can accidentally measure population density in all kinds
| of ways.
|
| > So rural-leaning elected officials will want to keep
| human-driving easy to access.
|
| It's going to come down to who controls access to the
| freeways. I'm actually on the rural peoples side, but the
| interstates as a whole are a little bit out of their
| typical zone of influence. Given that rural life is
| already very different, much more so than some people can
| even imagine, I would expect to be the most likely point
| of negotiation and the most likely outcome given the
| parties involved.
|
| Reasonable people could differ I guess.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > You do realize a lot of these people have class A
| license already
|
| Admittedly, I didn't know that.
|
| > They also have wildly different politics.
|
| Yes, I'm just assuming self driving will be a topic
| broken down by politics. Do you disagree?
|
| My core thesis is that rural people won't want self
| driving because it's less compatible with their existing
| life, and the "saves lives argument is stronger in urban
| areas. I think, like guns and many other political
| topics, it'll be polarizing, and the rural voters will
| get an outsized influence to fight it. Highways are an
| important part of the road system. I can't imagine rural
| people being locked out nor forced to have two vehicles.
|
| Some people hunt for sustainance, and we protect that
| right despite being irrelevant for 99.9% of people. Many
| more people use trucks or heavy equipment on their
| farm/homestead for work (or pleasure eg off-roading). I
| assume we'll end up protecting that the same way.
| harmmonica wrote:
| I don't think you mean "you" as in me specifically, but in
| case that is what you meant I'm of course not banning
| anything and I'm not even advocating for that. I was
| predicting what I think will happen with self-driving cars
| and the privacy implications if that does to come to pass
| (still a big if).
|
| As for urban vs. rural, I feel like rural will benefit just
| as much from self-driving as urban. I won't detail why, but
| it's pretty much the same reasons as urban. Economics will
| have to be better if it's going to be corporate-controlled
| cars, but, really, if Elon's right (huge if) and you can
| successfully have autonomy with a Model 3-level of hardware,
| then rural America may very well have widespread autonomous
| car access in the next couple of years.
|
| Motorcyles? Great point. Not sure how that will shake out.
| RV's? Seems like a fantastic opportunity for autonomy. Sit in
| the captain's seat, beer in hand, actually watch the scenery
| as you drive on by. In fact I think the market for RV's will
| grow if folks don't have to drive them themselves because
| there are likely many people who wouldn't be comfortable
| driving an RV due to its size, but if it drives itself it
| could open up a whole new audience.
|
| As for pedestrians, do you think pedestrians are being
| restricted more and more as the years go on? I see the
| opposite in both urban and rural areas in the US. Genuinely
| curious how your experience is different and where. I tend to
| think autonomous cars will make walking more pleasant. No
| more worrying about a car clipping you making a right turn,
| or a car driving unnecessarily fast and losing control, or a
| drunk driver losing control. All of those things may go away
| with autonomy (I say "may" because we're millions if not
| billions of miles away from anyone saying definitively that
| self-driving is safer/better/etc. In my limited experience
| riding in Waymos, though, I am incredibly optimistic about
| the technology. And I really look forward to us figuring out
| the privacy implications and other negatives that could come
| along with it because I think the benefits are so enormous
| that it'll be a massive shame if the tech does not work out
| long term).
| rblatz wrote:
| I think this plays out where it becomes a luxury to drive
| oneself. Over the next 10-15 years it looks like self driving
| will continue to advance and will likely become safer than the
| alternative.
|
| Once that happens insurance companies will start charging more
| for people that drive themselves compared to people that let
| the car drive.
|
| I can see some states outlawing that practice. Then it's left
| to see who is still underwriting insurance in those states.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Won't happen unless tradesmen, engineers, etc can use self-
| driving cars, which will e awkward when you need to park up
| onto a curb or something to inspect a downed power line.
| rblatz wrote:
| That is what .5% of all drivers that need to drive on a
| curb to inspect a power line? I'm not sure what your point
| even is here?
| internet101010 wrote:
| Fourth of July, kids sports that take place outside, etc.
| are all regular occurrences where people need to be able
| to easily go up onto a curb and park in the grass.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| I agree with you that driving manually will become a luxury
| but it's important to recognise that it will manifest as a
| discount on self driving, not a surcharge on manual.
|
| The only way in which I can see a surcharge on manual
| happening is if it becomes so incredibly rare that it becomes
| a niche product, or if there ends up being a bias e.g. it
| turns out that the pool of manual drivers is now biased
| towards people who like to drive in a risky manner.
|
| If anything, in a competitive market that is able to price
| individual risk appropriately, the cost of manual insurance
| for you or I should be lower in the self driving world,
| because most other drivers are now "superhuman" and thus we
| should get into fewer accidents.
| azthecx wrote:
| And historically has this competitive market manifested
| itself? Or have insurance companies instead vastly changed
| from their 'distributed risk' origins and instead act more
| as corporate entities with profits at the forefront, where
| the moment you actually use them the cost of being insured
| rises?
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| I don't think insurance companies need to distribute risk
| from auto insurance. They do, however, need it for
| property insurance. Floods, earthquakes, and fires and
| level thousands of homes quickly. There isn't any risk
| like that for driving.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > I think this plays out where it becomes a luxury to drive
| oneself. Over the next 10-15 years it looks like self driving
| will continue to advance and will likely become safer than
| the alternative.
|
| I think this is a long way away and will vary geographically.
|
| For a long time, self driving cars will be more expensive
| because they'll have expensive sensors on it. Not many people
| will want a $100K self driving car instead of a $30k Camry.
| This means the cost-per-mile goes up unless utilization rate
| goes up. The most effective way to do that is make it a Taxi.
|
| The natural result of self-driving-taxis is that the people
| least likely to take a taxi but most dependent on a car
| (rural Americans) will drive themselves still and those cars
| will be cheaper because they're sensor free. That will never
| be a luxury product.
|
| In urban environments though, the poorest people will
| continue to own cars but be slowly priced out by insurance.
| But maybe insurance won't go _up_ for manual cars, but _down_
| for self driving cars. They've already priced the cost of
| manual driving, which won't get more dangerous as less cars
| are human. States might try to protect them, but I think
| politicians and citizens will be persuaded by "safety" over
| "poor people need to afford transportation".
| adrianN wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if safety requirements will
| gradually tighten until every car will need most sensors.
| Manufacturers have an interest in selling expensive
| difficult to manufacture cars and politicians like to
| reduce traffic fatalities.
| sokoloff wrote:
| The average age of a car in the US is 12.6 years old
| right now. History shows that we've not forced safety
| items into existing cars. (I have one car where I would
| be permitted to pass safety inspection without _seat
| belts_ (any) because it wasn't originally equipped. [I
| have chosen to add them.])
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| 12.6 and rising.
| grecy wrote:
| > _Not many people will want a $100K self driving car
| instead of a $30k Camry_
|
| What you said is true, but does not reflect reality.
|
| Today The Model 3 is ~$40k, and once self driving is
| "solved", there is no reason a ~$40k car won't be capable
| of it.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Sure, but that's assuming the technology on a Tesla Model
| 3 actually is capable of safely self driving. Today,
| Waymo is the clear winner, and the equipment costs a lot
| more than a Tesla.
|
| I know Elon/Tesla can be a charged topic, but teslas
| don't self drive today. It might be true, but I don't
| think we can assume they're capable with just a software
| update based on the info we have today.
| grecy wrote:
| > _Waymo is the clear winner, and the equipment costs a
| lot more than a Tesla._
|
| I don't think that is true. What costs a lot more? Lidar?
|
| Call it $10k more on the very high end. So you have fully
| self driving cars for $50k. A very long way from your
| $100k
| vineyardmike wrote:
| The LIDAR sensors are significantly more expensive than
| 10k. There are a lot of them on it too. Additionally, I
| expect that the GPUs or other compute requirements are an
| extra 10+k at least.
|
| While I'm sure the prices can come down with mass
| production, the estimated BOM for a Waymo are speculated
| to be >200k per vehicle. Maybe we can that down to 100K,
| but I'd be very suspicious of a 50k vehicle anytime soon.
| rblatz wrote:
| Tesla Model 3 is right below that $30,000 mark, Tesla FSD
| does the bulk of my driving today. I think your core
| premise is flawed, it will be cheaper and sooner than you
| anticipate which will alter the conclusions you've come to.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Teslas 'FSD' is not the commonly understood HOOTL self
| driving.
| hansvm wrote:
| > freedom crowd might fight it
|
| Look at the 2020 covid vaccines. The freedom crowd said this
| was going to have massive privacy implications, there was a
| propaganda machine pushing those people as being crazy
| antivaxers (maybe many were, let's talk about the large subset
| who just had privacy concerns), and the net result is that most
| US citizens have their names, addresses, preferred vaccination
| locations, preferred vaccination times, propensity for
| following local regulations, ..., recorded in a database so
| broken it's basically public.
|
| The freedom crowd didn't have a lot of power against a
| propaganda machine turning their neighbors against them. Tack
| in a few dozens of billions from Tesla or Google claiming their
| cars are safer than the average driver (in well-studied, dry,
| daylight, slow streets) and using that to push anyone unwilling
| to roll that tech out globally as a road-raged Luddite, and I'm
| not sure the freedom crowd are going to be able to do much to
| slow down our corporate overlords.
| harmmonica wrote:
| I'm not going to respond to your Covid commentary in an
| effort to avoid going down a rabbit hole, but I should say
| that when I wrote "freedom crowd" it's not some monolith.
| Specifically, I think there are plenty of freedom-minded
| folks across the political spectrum, and I do believe that
| those folks, again, across the spectrum, are going to have a
| hard time accepting self-driving cars en masse because of the
| privacy implications. I do think it will weigh more to the
| conservative side of the fence, but if you haven't hung
| around with extremely progressive people there is a huge
| contingent on that side that is very wary of government
| mandates and, I feel dumb even writing something this
| obvious, far more wary of corporate America's agenda than any
| other population in the country. Maybe you were talking about
| the left in the first place, but I think you were referring
| to the right based on bringing up Covid and the other
| language you used.
| hansvm wrote:
| That isn't a political statement. The flow from "we won't
| shove you in a database" to "the non-existent database was
| leaked" is something that's independently verifiable.
|
| > left/right
|
| Yes, many people care about freedom
|
| > going to have a hard time accepting self-driving cars
|
| I'm usually optimistic, but I don't think public sentiment
| matters here. To the extent it does, it'll be some sort of
| Faustian bargain, where the law says your car must have a
| backup camera (arguably useful) and as a byproduct brings
| in unwanted, undisclosed tracking and also remote takeover
| capabilities through radio bugs (buffer overflows plus
| poorly designed canbus access). However self-driving
| inflicts itself on the masses, it'll be in a series of
| small enough steps that the freedom crowd can't
| appropriately fight back.
| kelnos wrote:
| I'll certainly accept the possibility of bugs allowing
| remote takeover of vehicle cameras, but in general I
| don't think rear cameras are much of a risk to privacy.
| They're not always-on (generally they only turn on when
| the car is in reverse gear), and on many car models
| they're even physically covered when they're not active.
| (E.g. on my car, the manufacturer logo on the rear of the
| car flips up to allow the rear camera to "see" when I'm
| in reverse gear.)
|
| Regarding bugs and remote takeover, the one thing that
| does feel like a mitigating factor is I expect for many
| car models it might be tough to find an exploit that
| enables the rear camera, but doesn't let the driver know
| that it's active. Usually when the rear camera is active,
| the infotainment display automatically switches to the
| rear view, and I wouldn't be surprised that there's no
| mode for "turn on rear camera but don't display the video
| feed to the driver" on most cars. Not as a
| security/privacy feature, but just because it's easier to
| write the code that links the two all the time rather
| than having it be conditional on something.
|
| But yeah, as autonomous driving becomes more pervasive,
| there will be more cars with cameras recording everything
| around them at all times. I expect the
| manufacturers/operators of these cars to store that video
| for some time after capturing it, even just for quality
| control, bug tracking, and dispute resolution if there's
| a crash. And certainly law enforcement already has legal
| tools to compel the release of this kind of video.
|
| I suppose this is just the next step of what's already
| the status quo, though. Many public places already have
| (stationary) cameras, either operated by the police or by
| private individuals, and police generally have the
| ability to access the latter, even. Cameras on autonomous
| vehicles just mean many more cameras over time, cameras
| that move around.
|
| I don't really love this situation; I would like to see
| legislation that makes all of this data protected, and
| requires companies that store it to delete it after a
| relatively short amount of time (unless subject to a
| legal hold). But like most things, legal protections tend
| to lag behind technological progress.
| hansvm wrote:
| My complaint (from above, not the only problem with
| cameras) about the rear camera is that the cheapest way
| for them to be installed nowadays, given that other
| people want infotainment systems, is for them to go hand-
| in-hand with an infotainment system. Whether the camera
| is on or not, the car is now vulnerable.
|
| The sin being committed is having too much code,
| especially too much untrusted, untested code (it's "just
| a radio") wired into the canbus. Toss in a little auto-
| update functionality and some always-on antennas, and you
| have all the makings of a nasty exploit. Last I checked,
| none of those have been known to be exploited in the
| wild, but they've also not been patched in the last
| decade. It's a fundamental design flaw that saves a few
| dollars, so it persists.
| conradev wrote:
| Can't I just buy a car that lets me drive it but also can drive
| itself?
|
| I can already today add functionality to cars with after-market
| hardware: https://comma.ai/?
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| What is the legality of comma.ai kit? I find it hard to
| believe that states would want to allow it. It is surely much
| worse than Waymo.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > This commentary assumes self-driving cars are here to stay
| and become the de facto way we drive instead of driving
| ourselves.
|
| This seems like an _extremely_ myopic "tech bubble" take to
| me. I'm trying to find a way to put this so that it doesn't
| sound like an attack, but have you been to suburban or rural
| areas outside of places like SF, NYC or Phoenix? Being reliant
| on third party transportation, on roads the are often in
| disrepair with poor signage, is a nonstarter for probably most
| of the US population.
| hiddencost wrote:
| https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/urban-
| ru...
|
| > urban areas, defined as densely developed residential,
| commercial, and other nonresidential areas, now account for
| 80.0% of the U.S. population
| WrongAssumption wrote:
| They are including suburbs in that number, so that doesn't
| really counter the post you are responding to.
| gcanyon wrote:
| As I just replied, counting just the largest 100 cities
| covers more people than the rural population.
| grecy wrote:
| > _is a nonstarter for probably most of the US population._
|
| I disagree.
|
| I grew up in Rural Australia, lived in the Yukon and have
| driven to many of the world's most remote and undeveloped
| countries.
|
| You are saying "Self driving cars will NEVER work in <this
| specific case>"
|
| When what you mean to say is "Self driving cars will first
| work in the easy cases, and then years later will work in
| more and more cases until they eventually work everywhere."
|
| FWIW, people said exactly the same thing when the automobile
| came around and horses were the best transport. Of course
| automobiles didn't work well in places with no gas stations
| or very nasty horse tracks for many years. But the years will
| always roll on, and things will change.
| chias wrote:
| While self driving cars are provided by private companies,
| self driving cars will first work in the _profitable_
| cases, and then years later will still only work in the
| profitable cases.
| grecy wrote:
| The Model 3 and Model Y will eventually be self
| driving... any anyone that wants to can simply buy one.
|
| Obviously many other manufacturers will also sell
| consumer cars that can completely drive themselves.
|
| Even a person who lives in Tok, Alaska will just be able
| to buy one and then sleep in the car as it drives down
| the Alaska Highway*
|
| * Trust me, once you've driven it a handful of times it's
| a chore.
| dageshi wrote:
| Having given this some thought recently, I don't actually
| think anyone will sell self driving cars for a long time,
| if ever.
|
| I don't think there will be a big bang moment where self
| driving is suddenly here and it works everywhere. Instead
| I think it looks like what waymo is doing now, self
| driving taxi services that expand to cover specific
| regions and then expand more as they begin to handle more
| edge cases and more extreme weather.
|
| By the time self driving is actually to the standard
| needed to sell it with a car a younger generation will
| probably have grown up using self driving taxi's and
| wonder what they need to own a car for.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| With scale and time, the tech gets cheaper and the number
| profitable cases continues to increase. As long as it
| isn't human labor intensive (and it's not), they can
| expand profitable territory almost indefinitely.
| berdario wrote:
| As long as the expensive bits continue to be externalized
| (i.e. publicly funded), I think that there might not be
| any cases that aren't profitable.
|
| The expensive bits being:
|
| - road maintenance
|
| - theft and vandalism policing
|
| Surely, once Waymo covers most cities, the marginal cost
| of getting one extra waymo car on the road should be
| substantially lower than a Bus (and maybe even a
| Marshrutka?)
|
| ...And then, once you have the cars on the road, to avoid
| increasing waiting times too much (which will lead users
| to prefer alternative transport methods, walking,
| cycling, etc.) you need to have slack/extra-capacity in
| any area that you're serving.
|
| This means that I don't see why Waymo might not expand
| even in remote mountain towns: they are not going to have
| a massive fleet, but keeping one or two cars there
| shouldn't have a different overhead than for a Waymo car
| serving a city.
|
| (the only caveat might be in making sure that the
| overnight depot/parking lot won't be too far from the
| area served).
|
| I think that would be pretty cool, if it means that
| people won't have to drive themselves anymore... but I'm
| also quite concerned about the consequences this might
| have for public transport: if its usage numbers falls,
| and thus public investments in it stops, entire small
| town might end up depending on extremely few (one?) self-
| driving taxi providers.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I don't think I really disagree with you, but I think the
| economic models and tech that would be required for people
| in more remote areas (in the US at least) to solely rely on
| 3rd parties for transportation is _so_ far in the future
| that it 's basically unknowable from our current position.
|
| That is, for many areas, I don't think it's just a case of
| the tech improving bit-by-bit and taking over more and more
| areas. I think that will happen in some ways, but take for
| example a friend of mine who lives in Pennsylvania. Where
| he lives is a far-out suburb, but he often drives out to
| rural areas on the weekend to go camping, or he drives long
| distances to various client sites. Forget the tech, I just
| don't see how an economic model of a self-driving car
| company would make these kinds of trips feasible anytime in
| the foreseeable future.
| gcanyon wrote:
| > most of the US population
|
| You do realize that "most" of the US population lives in
| cities, right? The "rural" population has remained almost
| constant since the 1960s, while the "urban" population has
| grown to roughly 5x the rural population's size. Even just
| counting the largest 100 cities is more than the rural
| population. Setting that aside for a moment, how does poor
| signage affect self-driving cars? They're not like humans
| expecting to take the third left but miscounting, or turning
| right at the Dairy Queen (which has shut down). They have GPS
| and full maps. Those maps might not be perfect, but they'll
| only ever be wrong once if they're part of a system, which is
| what's being proposed here.
|
| To be clear, I'm matching your tone here. Normally I'd try to
| be a little more understanding and tempered.
| ghaff wrote:
| Most of the US population is urban per the census bureau but
| a lot of that is spread out suburbs and exurbs. I'm "urban"
| between many acres of orchards and conservation land.
| Depending on third party transportation day to day would be
| utterly impractical.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| In a typical suburb, providing a 2-3 minute wait would
| require one idling self-driving car per hundreds of houses.
| I think that sounds practical.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| This is fun because until the last couple of decades, private
| transportation wasn't very common in China at all, people
| simply didn't own their own cars and taxis were (and still
| are) ubiquitous even in small rural towns (though they might
| be breadbox vans to supplement shared minibuses). Almost
| everyone was relying in third party transportation and even
| today most still are.
|
| And really, this kind of thing was common in most countries
| and turned out America (along with Canada, Australia) are the
| odd ones out with almost ubiquitous private car ownership in
| most of its area.
|
| I have no idea how self driving taxis will change the USA,
| but I rode in my first Waymo last week on a trip to SF and it
| felt very real. Having lived in a country where I took a taxi
| to work everyday, I can totally see that life working for me
| (since I already lived it anyways).
| majormajor wrote:
| Private car ownership has not been unusual in developed
| countries. There is a reason so many large car manufactures
| are not American, after all. It's not just to sell to
| people in NA and Australia.
|
| What's different about the US and those other places is
| that far more large cities were built _after_ private
| automobiles were common. There are cars everywhere in both
| countryside and cities in Italy, say, but there is ALSO
| more walkability and transit because the cities were there
| first (and even there, there are cities like Florence that
| didn 't invest in rail for decades before starting to build
| some more light rail again very recently).
|
| China is something of an odd one out for development
| patterns because of the much higher levels of state
| control.
|
| What I don't really see is places voluntarily giving up
| point-to-point private transit after having it as an easy
| option for generations. Places where even the super-wealthy
| have turned in their private cars and drivers and take the
| bus with everyone else. I think the market that self-
| driving cars could potentially capture over mass transit is
| exactly those people who would _rather_ have a private
| point-to-point experience. Which can be an overlapping set
| with the people who would _also_ be willing to use mass
| transit if it was "good enough", in addition to the people
| who actively dislike mass transit. The total pool of users
| is very large.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Nothing really replaces good mass transit. But in a rural
| town a taxi is often the best you can manage as an
| alternative. Even in cities, taxis fill in gaps that make
| it possible to live without cars and use mass transit
| more. Like a trip can involve a taxi to a station then a
| train ride then a taxi from destination station to your
| actual destination.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| The reason it "works" in rural China is people largely
| don't drive places, at least not the way Americans do.
|
| Lots of tech folks love to shit on "car-culture" in the US,
| and while I agree it has resulted in really crappy urban
| design for a lot of US cities, you can't ignore that a lot
| of people love their cars because it gives them a ton of
| freedom. People _like_ being able to go off at a moment 's
| notice, independently, and drive long distances.
|
| America may be an "outlier", but that still doesn't mean
| that it's reasonable to think we'll move from where we are
| now to getting rid of our cars because that's how China
| does it.
| harmmonica wrote:
| No attack taken. Fair question. I'm in a bubble at the moment
| because I'm located in one of the few areas where Waymo is
| available (think that qualifies as a (tech) bubble any way
| you look at it). But I feel like experiencing this tech
| answers a lot of questions about what is and isn't possible
| (or better yet what is and what _will be_ possible with self-
| driving cars).
|
| Also, I work in a very rural environment that couldn't be
| more hostile to self-driving cars, at least as I thought
| about them before riding in Waymos (an example: where I stay
| when I work there I have to give people turn by turn
| directions because if you rely on Google or Apple Maps your
| car will get stuck on a road with foot-deep ruts where you'll
| need to be pulled out; I mean it's not driving on those crazy
| roads in Pakistan you see videos about (never been) but I
| would be willing to bet those roads, which I transit
| regularly, are amongst the poorer-quality roads in the US and
| I can see self-driving tech working there before long).
|
| And I have spent a few evenings trying to understand how the
| corporate-owned-fleet economics work in rural areas (and in
| urban). I don't think it works today. But I do think that
| when costs come down, and they will come down if regulation
| doesn't kill self-driving cars broadly, or if Elon's right
| and you can do it with "cameras only," then it will only be a
| matter of time before the tech is adapted to crappy rural
| roads.
| forinti wrote:
| Not so bad if my car can drop me off at work and, go to court,
| and then pick me up at the end of the day to go home.
| tiziano88 wrote:
| "You have ad-blocker turned on" despite that being completely
| untrue.
| btilly wrote:
| I'm sorry, but what happened to the 4th Amendment? Your car was
| parked in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even though you
| followed all rules, we're taking it.
|
| Not without a judge.
| hk-hater420 wrote:
| My car ain't no snitch
| savrajsingh wrote:
| Free feature idea: - Tesla needs a public facing website that
| allows anyone to request a video for a cost -- any location at
| any point in time - vehicle owners can review video footage and
| approve request - vehicle owner gets a cut, Tesla gets a cut,
| authority or person in fender bender or whatever gets video
| nothercastle wrote:
| There are already plenty of cameras out there. It would not be
| very difficult to identify criminals. The problem is there is not
| sufficient motivation to do so and nobody knows what to do once
| the criminals are identified. My city just practices catch and
| release policing so laws only apply to those that will pay fines
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| >so laws only apply to those that will pay fines.
|
| So, penalising the poors who are not as poor as the other
| poors.
| nothercastle wrote:
| The rich pay the fines too, it's just that it's not a
| meaningful deterrence. The poorest simply drive without
| plates or licenses so they are immune
| personjerry wrote:
| Kinda sounds like we're heading for the authoritarian
| surveillance state that China has spearheaded, only with more
| steps
| reissbaker wrote:
| LMFAO. My Tesla has been broken into multiple times in the Bay
| Area, with footage of the perpetrators _and their license plate
| numbers_ , and the police have refused to investigate and were
| often unwilling to even accept the footage. And this isn't just
| me: literally everyone I know with a Tesla in the Bay Area has
| had a similar experience. The cops do not care, at all.
|
| Towing someone's car on the off chance it had video surveillance
| of a crime the police bother working on is insane overreach when
| they won't even investigate crimes to that owner's car in the
| first place.
| hiddencost wrote:
| Refactor the police into micro services.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| I was once pitched a business where external-facing cameras would
| be provided to car owners, distributed through auto insurance
| companies. The business intended to make money from selling the
| video data to law enforcement. I'm skipping a lot of details, but
| one of the main objections is that the police wouldn't pay for
| the data, they would just take it.
| x3haloed wrote:
| I'm sorry you've been inconvenienced by a murder... Or is that
| the country we're living in now? "Murder happens, just don't
| bother me."
| caseyy wrote:
| Did your house witness a crime?
|
| We already have cameras on many of our homes, so it should be
| roughly the same process.
|
| Towing sounds ridiculous. No one should be penalized for a crime
| someone else did. But taking away one's car is a major penalty.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| Hotels should maybe have cameras on their parking lots.
| worik wrote:
| The video should not be stored.
|
| Have a 24 hour wiping cycle
| paweladamczuk wrote:
| I wonder why the title of this HN posting was edited to only
| include the first sentence of the headline.
| MichaelRo wrote:
| We got a new expression it seems. Used to have "drive-by
| shooting", now we're gonna have "drive-by witnessing" :)
| squarefoot wrote:
| Phew... good thing that the eye recording implant hasn't been
| invented yet, or some of us would have their personal life turned
| into an evidence log.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| I don't own a Tesla, and frankly, don't want to own anything
| associated with Musk. However, I do have dash cams in both my
| vehicles that will start recording when the car is not running.
|
| If I was driving in my car near a crime scene and discovered my
| dash cam recorded something that could be used as evidence,
| personally, I would call the local police and ask them if they
| were interested. However, to have the police discover my vehicle
| was in close proximity to the crime, and me not realizing my dash
| cam had recorded anything of value, and then the police try to
| impound my vehicle in a parking lot without my knowledge is
| outrageous!
|
| The above situation is the result of two major realities: once
| again technology has emerged without adequate laws to deal with
| the consequences.(I realize this is usually the norm, law makers
| MUST speed up the process to protect citizens.) Second, police
| reform has to bring local law enforcement up to date with current
| reality. (The seizing of a vehicle based on possible crime info
| isn't protecting citizens, it's theft. Contacting the vehicle
| owner and requesting the info is serving the citizens, if they're
| not willing there is a court system.)
| aswanson wrote:
| There was a recent murder caught in HD by a Tesla in a hotel
| parking lot. The quality is unreal:
| https://youtu.be/ij85PgNjqAI?si=lGlJBOWdgLDSKSj7
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| Sounds ridiculous. What happens if you have a home camera? Do
| they take your home? Really?
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