[HN Gopher] AI cameras change driver behavior at intersections
___________________________________________________________________
AI cameras change driver behavior at intersections
Author : sohkamyung
Score : 26 points
Date : 2025-07-07 12:15 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| mindslight wrote:
| Another example of draconian enforcing the letter of the law in
| the name of making things "safer", then Goodhart's lawwing
| themselves into thinking they're succeeding. At least for myself,
| when I've got to deal with some kind of traffic control device
| and optimize my driving around that (say a speed bump), it takes
| my view/attention/focus away from looking for pedestrians
| elsewhere.
|
| There's also the general problem with stop signs that if you do
| stop before the line as you're technically supposed to, then most
| times you can't actually see oncoming vehicle traffic. So most
| people stop over the line where they will be able to see, which
| means they're not planning on stopping where pedestrians walk.
| But fixing intersections is expensive meticulous work, while
| fining drivers for dealing with what they've been given is
| profitable.
|
| If this were targeted at flagrant violations with warnings for a
| percentile of marginal cases (ie getting people who don't stop at
| all, and warning those who strain the idea of a rolling "stop"),
| then I could see it. But as it's worded, and as speed/red light
| cameras have been implemented, it just seems like another dynamic
| of a dystopian hellhole.
| TheJoeMan wrote:
| The issue you're highlighting is called the sight triangle.
| There are supposed to be restrictions on maximum landscaping
| height, etc, so you can see from the stop bar. Unfortunately
| many smaller crossings violate this.
|
| For example see fig. 71 at
| https://highways.dot.gov/safety/other/older-road-user/handbo...
| kenjackson wrote:
| > There's also the general problem with stop signs that if you
| do stop before the line as you're technically supposed to, then
| most times you can't actually see oncoming vehicle traffic.
|
| In these cases there's usually some other violation that is
| occurring, e.g., cars parked too close to the intersection, or
| shrubbery not properly cut back. As you note, the result is
| often they have to go beyond the stop sign. Even worse, I often
| end up so far in the street that if there was a car that was
| within its lane, but on the right-most side of it, they'd hit
| me (fortunately most drivers are aware enough to stop).
| mindslight wrote:
| Sure, or the "violation" is by the city who would have to
| spend money to fix the intersection, thus they're
| incentivized to ignore it.
|
| I think the general problem is that the presence of the stop
| sign and the 80-99% case (depending on the area/intersection)
| being to only worry about cars creates a type of blindness to
| pedestrians when they are there. Rather than these devices, I
| would say it would be more effective to install flashing
| lights on or around the stop sign, that turn on to signal a
| pedestrian is crossing.
|
| (of course that would now be a bit of an uphill battle owing
| to the signs with the lights that flash all the time)
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yea, then we have flashing lights all over the place and
| people become blind to them, too.
| mindslight wrote:
| I recognized that in my last parenthetical sentence, as
| we've now got stop signs that flash all the time for
| similar "must do something" reasons. My point was
| specifically to only draw attention when it's warranted,
| to avoid that kind of fatigue. Like I think the
| crosswalks with flashing yellow lights when pedestrians
| are crossing are ridiculous overkill, but they don't add
| to my oversignage fatigue because they only demand that
| attention when the attention is needed.
| webdevver wrote:
| whenever a cop car is around, everyone becomes grandma and starts
| driving 5 under. very annoying.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Nothing wrong with a "rolling stop" if the sight lines are good
| and there are no pedestrians or crossing traffic. The point of a
| stop is to allow traffic to cross the intersection in a safe and
| orderly fashion. If you slow down, and verify that everything is
| clear, then that objective is achieved even if you don't come to
| a complete stop.
|
| If these cameras were smart enough to issue citations _when
| pedestrians or cross-traffic is present_ I could support it. But
| issuing a citation at a deserted intersection when no risk is
| created is just absurd.
| tempodox wrote:
| It's just optimizing the reward function. The traffic ticket
| maximizer is the paperclip maximizer's sibling.
| wat10000 wrote:
| The problem is that you can't always tell that there are no
| pedestrians or crossing traffic unless you take enough time to
| come to a complete stop. There are plenty of stop signs where
| that's not true, but also plenty where it is, and it's not
| always clear which one it is to the driver.
|
| I think the right fix here isn't total enforcement nor relaxed
| enforcement, but relaxed signage. If sight lines are good
| enough that it's safe to roll through, that should be a yield,
| not a stop. Stop should mean, you actually need to come to a
| complete stop to safely navigate this intersection. Then you
| can enforce it without qualms.
| ygjb wrote:
| Signage is ineffective in addressing short term environmental
| or visibility impacts. Sure, it might be easy to see during
| the day with clear visibility. What about at night? Fog? Snow
| or rainstorm that is restricting visibility? Some dropped a
| storage pod on the road that obstructs the view of everything
| except a yield sign?
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| > If sight lines are good enough that it's safe to roll
| through, that should be a yield, not a stop
|
| They are
| wat10000 wrote:
| Definitely not, there are tons of stop signs in places with
| low speeds and great sight lines that are perfectly safe to
| treat as a yield. And conversely, there are occasionally
| some interesting places (on-ramps for very old freeways)
| that have a yield where it's not safe to proceed without
| stopping first.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| I would bet on traffic planners' assessment of these
| variables to be more reliable and comprehensive than
| yours, in general.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Spoken like someone who has never driven a car.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| Nah, spoken like someone repeatedly humbled by the
| complexity and detail of domains other than my own.
|
| "I can drive a car therefore I understand traffic design
| better than traffic designers" is obviously an absurd
| statement when you just say it outright instead of
| condescendingly implying it.
|
| > HN commentator revolutionizes traffic design with
| groundbreaking insight: consider the sight lines
| wat10000 wrote:
| I doubt anyone is even analyzing most of these
| intersections. Low-traffic residential streets just
| automatically get a stop sign regardless.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Good point, another thing that the EU tends to do differently
| from the US. US rarely uses "Yield." The only places I
| generally see it are at roundabout entries.
|
| Often on EU roads they will use "sharks teeth" yeild markers
| where a side road enters or crosses a main road. The
| requirement there is essentially "proceed if clear" a full
| stop is not required. I have rarely (maybe never) seen a US-
| style 4-way stop there (my experience is limited to
| Scandinavia and Germany).
| ygjb wrote:
| > If you slow down, and verify that everything is clear, then
| that objective is achieved even if you don't come to a complete
| stop.
|
| There are too many failure points there to trust mediocre meat
| sacks to follow that process correctly. Remember that driving
| rules and restrictions are not written assuming an alert,
| effective, and skilled driver operating a well maintained
| vehicle, they are written assuming an average person who has
| successfully completed a driver's test driving something that
| passes basic road worthiness checks.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| It works well enough in other countries than America.
|
| E.g. in the Netherlands or Germany there's no need for 4-way
| stops and such. If no other signage applies, then whoever is
| on the "right" side has priority over the people on the
| "left" side. And exceptions do apply, i.e. it's not "that
| simple" either. It does depend on whether both roads are on
| the same level or not. A road to your right that has a
| sidewalk border stone running across it does _not_ give them
| the right of way, while if the sidewalk border stops and both
| roads intersect directly at the same level, then the road to
| your right does have right of way.
|
| So e.g. if you take a typical urban development with lots of
| little streets and houses, where you'd see a lot of rolling
| stops in America, nobody's gonna stop at every intersection,
| rolling or not there. This does go as far as when cars from
| all directions arrive at the same time, then nobody has
| automatic right of way and one of them has to wave the person
| to their right through and will be the last allowed to
| proceed.
| samrus wrote:
| With computer vision the case of checking for pedestrians in
| the vicinity is trivial. So these cameras are definitely worth
| it for that
|
| I do disagree about the rolling stop though. After drunk
| driving, drivers getting too relaxed and working off of
| predictive execution has to be the biggest cause of road
| accidents. A driver rolling past a stop at high speed in a
| school zone cant react fast enough to kids running past or even
| just walking on predictive execution themselves because they
| think the car will stop.
|
| Obviously there are degrees to rolling stops. one so slow that
| the driver can react easily (and is scanning so they can see
| the thing they need to react to) is fine, but some of the
| "rolling stops" ive seen in residential neighborhoods are
| crazy. Those definitely need to be made an example of.
|
| Obviously thats when police discretion comes in. The police
| officer is the one issuing the ticket at the end of the day, so
| you need to trust that law enforcement wont be corrupt and
| pedantic. No amount of technology is gonna fix that
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yes, and to clarify that is the "rolling stop" I am talking
| about. Slow down, enough to verify that everything is clear,
| this will often mean coming to a nearly complete stop,
| especially if there are cars ahead of you or crossing.
| There's no need to come to a dead stop (and for how long? One
| second? Five? If you wait too long the driver on the cross
| street will get impatient and go out of turn). If I roll
| through a stop sign at a walking pace or slower that's not
| materially more unsafe than coming to a dead stop, and
| perhaps it is safer as it doesn't frustrate other drivers).
|
| Of course if there are pedestrians waiting to cross, or the
| sight lines are bad, you behave accordingly.
| wrs wrote:
| Spoken like a C programmer!
| Reubachi wrote:
| Laws, rules, morays, norms etc. are in place for the "lowest
| common denominator", wether that be malicious people, people
| with impairments, older drivers, newer drivers etc. etc.
|
| you as a human of course know not to hit a person walking thru
| an intersection. But a drunk person might think "eh I never
| fully stop and I don't see anyone".
|
| We must all follow the rules to a TEE, ie; stopping even if
| completely clear, to signal to the lowest common denominators
| "this is the rule, you must stop regardless."
|
| If this where not the case, by your logic, you can blow thru
| red lights, make left turns on red, drive against traffic etc.
| "as long as it's clear."
|
| I personally am okay with enshittification of AI traffic cams
| if it promotes more aggressive traffic compliance. The police
| sure aren't.
| tqi wrote:
| > Nothing wrong with a "rolling stop" if the sight lines are
| good and there are no pedestrians or crossing traffic.
|
| Why bother rolling the stop, it should be ok to blow through it
| at full speed if you're sure it's clear.
| axus wrote:
| It's about the incremental injury / death; full speed is
| going to cause more. Going through at 3mph shouldn't cause
| more, but if rolling statistically does then full stop should
| be enforced.
| tqi wrote:
| But what is the point of rolling through at 3mph? To save 2
| seconds? The reality is people roll stops because they are
| a bit lazy, and stopping fully requires marginally more
| effort. And while that laziness is harmless at empty
| intersections, it invariably turns into complacency and
| habit that bleeds into situations that aren't as safe. The
| same dynamic happens with signaling lane changes.
| michael1999 wrote:
| Then cities should adopt the yield signs that say that. I agree
| our system could be much smarter. So may timer-driven systems
| would be better if the computer knew the presence and number of
| cars, pedestrians, bikes, etc.
|
| I could support this if you combined it with criminal and civil
| liability when you guess wrong and run someone over while
| blowing your stop-sign. Right now, that's a $500 ticket at
| best, and it happens every day.
|
| The whole problem is that people don't look for pedestrians --
| they look for another car that might hit them. So they are
| looking the wrong way. And then they tell the cops some sob-
| story about how the dead pedestrian "came out of nowhere".
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Um, no. If you hit and injure someone in a crosswalk you can
| be sure you will face civil liability. Hope you have enough
| insurance (the legally required minimums are far too low).
| pj_mukh wrote:
| Jokes on them, my city doesn't enforce cars without license
| plates very commonly visible [1]. So these plate readers are
| useless and people are regularly getting murdered on the streets
| with little to no consequences and to hit and run is the most
| advantageous position.
|
| [1]
| https://www.reddit.com/r/oakland/comments/4wdd57/whats_the_d...
| el_benhameen wrote:
| While I don't doubt that OPD is ignoring plateless cars, that
| thread has outdated info. CA now does require temp plates, most
| places seem to be pretty good about enforcing the rule, and
| seeing a plateless car now seems (to me) to be a pretty good
| indicator that the person driving it is up to no good. My city
| further East in the East Bay is not exactly great about
| enforcing most traffic laws, but you'll rarely see a car
| without a plate or temp these days.
| maeln wrote:
| As an aside, the U.S got roughly twice the number of fatal crash
| than the E.U [1][2], despite the E.U having ~100 millions more
| people.
|
| There is a clear need to change a lot of things, whether it be
| (automatic) enforcement, redesigning infrastructure, and driver
| mentality.
|
| [1] https://www.iihs.org/research-areas/fatality-
| statistics/deta...
|
| [2] https://transport.ec.europa.eu/news-events/news/eu-road-
| fata...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| EU has much higher training and licensing requirements in
| general.
|
| In the US a 15 year old can get a learner's permit and start
| driving (with an adult) the same day. They can be licensed to
| drive on their own at 16 by passing a fairly cursory written
| exam and a short road test. No formal/classroom instruction is
| required.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Roughly the same in Canada. I wish we had more stringent
| testing, including periodic re-testing (especially over 60).
| MaKey wrote:
| For Germany there is even a subreddit about old people
| crashing into things:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/RentnerfahreninDinge/
|
| Sadly it will be next to impossible to implement re-testing
| at a certain age as old people are the majority of the
| voters.
| mh- wrote:
| Like everything in the US, those rules vary by state, and
| this is incorrect for at least those that I'm familiar with.
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| The cost of getting a drivers license has increased a lot in
| Germany. 2500-3500EUR isn't uncommon today.
| StrandedKitty wrote:
| Here in the NL I'd say it's at least EUR3600 if you have
| zero experience. This is my estimation for both theory &
| practical parts based on my own experience, current rates,
| and what little statistics I could find. Often much more if
| you fail and have to take more lessons.
| lumost wrote:
| Raising requirements in the US is prohibitive due to the lack
| of options individuals have when they cannot drive. A 16 year
| old often needs, or wants to work for an income. Owning a car
| is often a job requirement due to the distances involved in
| american cities. Getting a job within walking distance is
| often a non-option due to availability of employers, and
| biking is of limited safety profile depending on the area. If
| the only way to get to your job is through a state highway -
| driving may be the only safe method.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| Lisence requirements vary by state. Here in Maryland, you
| need 30 classroom hours and 60 hours behind the wheel before
| before getting a provisional license.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Possible causes for this include the prevalence of really large
| SUVs, which make it physically much more difficult to even see
| pedestrians - especially children.
|
| Another part is truck design. Same reason: American trucks have
| elongated noses for the engine, whereas European trucks have
| the driver sitting directly above the engine.
|
| On top of that, European countries have much more strict
| testing requirements on vehicles. Basically, every 2-4 years
| you have to have your vehicle inspected for roadworthiness -
| foundational stuff such as structural rust, worn-down tires or
| brakes gets caught much, _much_ earlier than in the US.
| nemomarx wrote:
| To be fair to the US, various states have yearly inspections
| that include undercarriage rusting and other issues. It's a
| factor but I think less important than the truck part.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| Police no longer feel the need to do their jobs, and Americans
| in general have just lost any sense of empathy or even
| awareness of other people.
|
| But also we have a _serious_ problem where taking away someone
| 's license to drive is to sentence them to poverty if not
| homelessness and starvation. We don't have decent public
| transit and there are very few jobs within walking distance of
| most residential areas. Those jobs that do exist don't pay a
| living wage because pegging minimum wage to inflation or even
| the poverty line is "communism" and an "attack on businesses".
|
| Our problems with car fatalities is really only one _small_
| symptom of the ongoing collapse of American society.
| hyperpape wrote:
| I can't speak to every European country, but Portugal also has
| a lot fewer stop signs and traffic lights than the US
| (roundabouts are one reason, but there are multiple four-way
| intersections on my street that would have stop signs in the
| US).
|
| Given the way American streets are set up, rigorously enforcing
| stop signs is probably beneficial, but I think other factors
| about how streets are arranged and how people drive are more
| important.
| lawlessone wrote:
| I'm just speculating. But people in US in general drive a lot
| further for everything.
|
| Most of shops i visit , other family members, my job , parks
| etc are all within about 5km of me.
|
| The longest drive i do to visit a family member is 90km, every
| few months.
|
| Anytime i've visited the US even going to the nearest shop
| seemed like a very long drive.
|
| So if all other things are equal, theres just more opportunity
| for accidents.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yes, this is why any statistics about driving that are meant
| to be compared across cultures need to have "distance driven"
| somewhere in the denominator.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| Yea, I don't know I disagree. The denominator should always
| be just be population. I don't want to use sprawl as some
| sort of justification for more deaths per capita. Sprawl
| should be reduced and/or mitigated somehow.
| accrual wrote:
| I agree with the parent that distance driven should be in
| the equation. If there's a certain risk percentage
| associated with driving as a whole, then it's almost
| certainly somehow bound to distance driven.
|
| For example, the risk of a car crash should be near zero
| if the distance driven is also zero. But even in the
| safest of vehicles, driving 100KM, 1,000KM, or 10,000KM+
| each are going to have higher rates of accidents assuming
| real-life road conditions.
|
| In the US, on average, people need to travel further to
| get to their destinations, and so on average I'd expect
| car accident and death statistics to likewise be higher.
|
| I'm very in favor of reducing urban sprawl, utilizing
| public transit, etc., but in present state the US has
| vast quantities of existing road networks which can't be
| consolidated or mitigated overnight, so the next best way
| to improve those statistics would be improving traffic
| controls, vehicles, safety features, etc.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| It depends on which level of government we're talking
| about. The city governments can only really improve
| traffic controls.
|
| But state and federal governments should absolute zero-in
| on reducing sprawl and travel distances and those actions
| should've started yesterday and they should stay laser
| focussed on reducing driving distances (especially for
| non-leisure reasons)
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Measuring the wrong thing results in the wrong outcome.
|
| Many of the most effective and efficient measures to
| reduce traffic fatalities work by reducing traffic. For
| example, promoting public transit. However, if you
| measure fatalities per kilometer these highly effective
| mechanisms have no effect on the metric.
| variadix wrote:
| Different metrics measure different things. The right
| metric depends on what you want to compare and what kinds
| of claims you want to make, which determines what should
| be adjusted for in the metric.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| "The longest drive i do to visit a family member is 90km,
| every few months."
|
| In the USA, I have a friend who will do a tour visiting
| family every few months that takes him 1400 km outbound.
| lawlessone wrote:
| That's about 3 times the length of my country, i'd be in
| the sea lol.
| Kuinox wrote:
| So the obvious solution is driving less. Redesign the way of
| life to have to drive less.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| I wonder if the size of the cars matter. Two Honda Fits
| crashing into each other is going to be different than a Honda
| Fit and a Ford 150.
| trod1234 wrote:
| Fatalities are horrible to the people involved, and in many
| cases the people responsible for such are punished. This is
| about saving a fractional percent of people while backdooring
| the technologies as a surrogate for control of everyone else.
|
| The error in agreeing to automatic enforcement lay in the
| indirect failures that naturally follow within centrally
| structured systems, when those automatic systems stop working
| correctly, or worse selectively work; the world will be worse
| off than not having the solution in place at all.
|
| There are dramatically more risks of this becoming a component
| of a panopticon prison in a fascist state, something the US is
| degrading into right now with the slow erosion; and stress
| fractures to our rule of law, it might very well suddenly fail
| overnight.
|
| What impact will these solutions have in breeding discontent if
| everyone has the boot of the government on their neck every
| time they roll through an empty stop-sign where no one is
| there..., or worse when they did stop and the AI mis-
| categorized it as a rolling stop. What feedback systems correct
| a faulty running system? Government and government apparatus
| have trouble getting sufficient benefits to legitimate welfare
| recipients, what makes you think they'll do this any better?
| Competency is not a common trait for government workers.
|
| Who do you think will be most impacted, the people with less
| awareness, or the people with more awareness. Lower
| IQ/cognitive speed vs. Higher IQ/cognitive speed. Would this
| result in an evolutionary filter against intelligence?
|
| Would these dramatic changes drive the intelligent people which
| society rests upon (dependently so), so crazy that they end
| themselves, don't have children, or end their children and
| themselves? Is there any hope for a future under such
| repressive and stagnant systems. No there isn't. Intelligent
| thought is largely based in cognitive speed, and multiplied by
| education. There are some very educated people who are not
| necessarily sufficiently intelligent to stand in for these
| people. Their words and ideas often cause more harm, the more
| complex the system becomes.
|
| The moment you rest an argument on do it for the dead people,
| or do it for the children, which is what %, you dismiss all the
| failures of the proposed system. Those failures still occur,
| those harms still happen, and the type of people you have left
| are less capable of adapting, or rather become enraged with
| each additional reminder that they are not people, they are
| slaves or animals.
|
| A nation becomes strong only as a result of its strong people
| in unity.
|
| When you make people necessarily dependent on the imagined
| detriment of what could happen, prevent them from acting, and
| do this at the expense of what is actually happening, you get a
| weak fragile complacent brittle people who break and are
| parasitically dependent on a pool of people that shrinks to
| nothing.
|
| These detrimental characteristics spread over time both
| laterally among people but also generationally, and eventually
| circumstances occur where your people simply cannot adapt to
| what the environment requires as needed, and in that
| existential threat you face oblivion as a species, extinction.
|
| Complacency, and a blindness or reactance to the risks, breed
| delusion which takes root spreading to those that remain, as a
| contagion.
|
| The moment you think you can make people better by treating
| them like animals or slaves, or prisoners, is the inflection
| point towards your people's ultimate destruction; although it
| may be many years between. Every person is dependent on every
| other person indirectly, and some carry more than others.
|
| How do you suppose such camera's of an all seeing eye will
| change the populace for the worse, might it make them more
| animalistic, ugly, violent... just as Sauron did as described
| by Tolkien, and much of the basis for Tolkien's works is based
| on the bible.
|
| The only way to win a game of thermonuclear war is to not play
| the game. The same can be said about a lot of decisions which
| pigeonhole your future into a box without a future.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| In southern CA, traffic cameras were rolled out in tons of cities
| at basically every major intersection. They were a huge headache,
| did effectively nothing but waste taxdollars, and were scrapped
| for the purpose of issuing tickets. Except they weren't actually
| scrapped. They now feed data into several location-for-sale data
| brokers' pool which is queried by police. You're a little bit of
| a fool if you think this is about about "safety." Imagine the
| current license plate scanner tech combined with advanced facial
| recognition - if this isn't happening somewhere already - and
| tell me with a straight face cops aren't more excited about that
| dystopian future than stopping a few fender benders and
| generating meager city revenue (which they won't see anyway).
|
| The dead giveaway to all these blatantly dishonest "safety"
| measures is they always, nearly without fail invoke safety "for
| the children." After all, who could be against that?
| samrus wrote:
| Itd be great if this sort of system could be trustworthy. How
| could that be done. Public data? But then that opens the data
| stream up to criminals who could stalk people and stuff. Third
| party audits? Who do you trust to do that? NGOs?
| crmd wrote:
| Remove the municipal revenue motive: no fines, only points on
| the license, with an option to plead not guilty in traffic
| court like a normal police interaction.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| They don't even pretend it's about safety anymore. Flock
| cameras are all over the place and were never installed on the
| pretense of issuing citations or enforcing safety. It's all
| about tracking who is coming and going.
| BlarfMcFlarf wrote:
| The whole idea that the way to reduce crime is by surveillance
| and enforcement is a con. Like in this case, all the places
| that managed to significantly reduce traffic accidents do so by
| carefully redesigning their street network to make safety
| easier and more intuitive.
| chasd00 wrote:
| didn't get past the "Unblinking eyes could lower the vehicular
| death toll". The unblinking eye is there to maximize citations,
| end of story.
| samrus wrote:
| Incentive structures need to be alligned better. Its so
| disheartening to see tech that works fine in europe fail in the
| US because of corruption and negative motivations.
|
| What incentive structure could make these things be more
| benficial than just money grabbing? Laws that revenue from
| citations must be spend for direct public benefit only? With
| public audit?
| grogenaut wrote:
| If they actually cared about safety they'd license it to auto
| manufacturers and let people roll stop signs when it's safe and
| warm them when it's not. Or just put cheap traffic lights
| everywhere to speed up traffic. This is about earning revenue for
| municipallitues with micro enforcement zones.
|
| (note/edit) I'm talking about flashing lights in the cab like
| when my car thinks I need to break. Forcing me to break unless
| I'm about to kill someone. Or just re-thinking the stop sign. The
| point of stop signs is they're effing cheap. If you're going to
| put AI cameras on all of them that is no longer cheap, could you
| not just turn them into lighted intersections that give the green
| to the right person and remove confusion and detect or have
| slappers for the pedestrians and just smooth out traffic
| everywhere? Or is the unsaid thing that stop signs are actually
| smoother because well you can roll them using your human brain to
| make decisions?
| samrus wrote:
| I feel like private companies enforcing when you can and cant
| move at a stop sign is a libertarian hellscape.
|
| This isnt alot better, but at least its a provate vendor that
| gets data to the government who then decide to cite whats
| supposed to be dangerous behavior. Theres obviously corruption
| there, but these people are at least somewhat beholden tp the
| public through local elections and stuff. The toyota executives
| are not
| ryandrake wrote:
| Private companies enforcing the law with a profit motive is
| always a recipe for awfulness. Literally every other solution
| (including just not enforcing) is going to be a better one.
| mullingitover wrote:
| > But instead of automating the entire setup, local governments
| review potential infractions before any citations are issued,
| ensuring a human is always in the loop.
|
| IIRC, California abandoned automated traffic enforcement systems
| like these in the past because at the end of the day they were
| revenue negative. Having a human in the loop reduces the false
| positive rate, but drives up operating expenses to the point that
| it isn't sustainable.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Oddly enough, policing as a business leads to some undesirable
| outcomes.
| mullingitover wrote:
| I think there's also the problem that the non-fiscal outcomes
| of red light cameras are mixed. There's this DOT research
| showing that red light cameras likely decreased right-angle
| collisions, but _increased_ rear end collisions[1]. Studies
| weren 't conclusive, but they seem to point to red light
| cameras not being a slam dunk that makes their deployment a
| no-brainer.
|
| [1]
| https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/05049/
| samrus wrote:
| Public services arent supposed to generate a profit, they are
| supposed to serve the public. If the system prevents people
| from being run over then its well worth the money
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Wondering what the opinion is about "Vision Zero." My little town
| is all over this. I think it's a bad idea. Goals should be
| realistic, and I think it's unrealistic to get to literally zero
| traffic deaths. There will always be random events leading to
| accidents and you can spend as much money as you want but you
| will never be able to prevent them all. At some point you're
| committing statistical murder by spending money that could be
| better used on ther things.
| michael1999 wrote:
| This post is about ticketing people who run stop signs. Is that
| the kind of price you consider too high?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| No, certainly there is low hanging fruit. Just that "Vision
| Zero" isn't a realistic goal. I would have chosen a different
| name and goals to avoid pedantic debate on whether it's
| achievable.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Vision Zero is based on a simple principle: if cars are driving
| less than 20mph a pedestrian collision is highly unlikely to be
| fatal.
|
| So they set a speed limit of 20mph on any mixed use street, and
| create separated pedestrian/cyclist infrastructure for any
| street with higher speed limits.
|
| The latter is super expensive, but it's what you need if you
| want usually zero fatalities and to go faster than 20mph.
|
| Actually zero all the time is impossible, of course. It's
| possible that a 5mph collision with a frail pedestrian will
| kill them. So Norway and Sweden sometimes have a fatality. But
| a goal of "zero pedestrian fatalities most years" is actually
| feasible for polities with fewer than 10 million citizens.
| aljgz wrote:
| There's a verse I like a lot in Tao Te Jing:
|
| "One must know when it is enough. Those who know when it is
| enough will not perish."
|
| I think it's good to aim for zero traffic deaths, as in many
| countries the situation is so bad that a lot of improvement is
| feasible.
|
| The long tail would definitely be much harder to tackle, but I
| don't expect this to be a serious problem in practice.
| djoldman wrote:
| Technology is not the roadblock here.
|
| People don't want automated ticketing, so governments don't
| implement it.
|
| In addition, there are many laws that aren't enforced and would
| generate instant outcry if they were. For example: it's illegal
| for someone of any age to ride a bicycle on the sidewalk, as
| opposed to the roadway, in many cities (in some cities it's the
| opposite).
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| It is generally illegal in the USA to be accused of a crime
| without being "confronted by the witnesses against him".
|
| Red light cameras foundered on that obligation since they were
| generally run out of State and fly the camera operators in was
| not cost effective.
|
| Also, just because your car broke the law doesn't mean you did,
| which was another defense that worked.
|
| I'm surprised that the citations aren't thrown out...
| djoldman wrote:
| If someone takes someone else's property without anyone
| seeing the act except a video camera, the video may be
| admitted as evidence.
|
| Moving something into evidence that isn't testimony from a
| living breathing human is commonplace. A lawyer has someone
| attest to the authenticity and/or provenance of the item.
| thrill wrote:
| > "Ultimately, we hope our technology becomes obsolete," says
| Maheshwari.
|
| They may, but once something becomes a revenue stream, their
| successors won't.
| pacificmaelstrm wrote:
| If your idea of solving a problem is "how can we use technology
| to control people's behavior", you are a net negative value to
| humanity, full stop.
|
| Self driving cars are the real solution to this problem and the
| only solution to this problem. And maybe also teach your kids to
| look both ways.
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