Obviously you capture some craziness on the margin that you want to capture, but also on the margin is the fudging that makes the whole thing work at all.
I 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?
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...
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.
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.
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.
If you observe a yellow and can safely stop, then stop. If you can't safely stop, then don't stop.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/08/31/how-lo...
You are railing against an example which doesn't exist.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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
Either way I moved to a very rural and remote location. One of my many hopes is that it will buy enough time for urban and suburban areas to duke it out in courts for a couple decades before I have to deal with the fallout.
I 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.
I don't know very many drivers who wouldn't recognize that camera behavior at 3:00 in the morning as unreasonable.
(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.)
The second stop may actually be illegal in its own right depending on the state.
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.
To use your phrasing, the risk of anything bad happening after a not-quite stop may be overblown.
Since the failure mode is an auto accident and the cost of the habit is marginal I feel comfortable promoting this behavior. I have definitely seen accidents and many near misses caused by people who failed to come to a complete stop and look around when conditions did warrant it.
Another lesson I learned in driver's ed is that traffic approaching from the left can be traveling at a speed that completely synchronizes with the A-pillar of your moving vehicle, causing it to be completely invisible to you right up until the moment it collides with your front driver's side fender. This is why I stop and move my head around while I look, to make sure I'm not missing anything. I'm just a stupid human after all.
You 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Seems to be more of an issue in the US.
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.
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?
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.
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?
I highly doubt this person would have rolled through the light if a cop were sitting at the intersection watching them, and they knew they were being observed.
To several other posters' points, the specific regulation in question exists for safety reasons. Those safety reasons don't go away just because you don't think they apply in the moment. I'm sure every person who has hit (or been hit by) another person when rolling through a right turn like that thought their judgement in the moment was reasonable, too. I'm also sure not every one of those would have been prevented by coming to a complete stop and looking at the turn, but certainly some of them would have, which is a net positive for everyone. This comes at a cost of a handful of seconds, which seems like the most trivial of inconveniences, and wholly worth paying every time.
I think the issue is that you're taking as fact that "in order to be safe, you must come to a full stop at a red light before turning right", and that not doing so is, indisputably, "bad behavior". I dispute that. I think in many situations it is just as safe to nearly-but-not-completely come to a full stop before continuing, and it's entirely fine behavior.
The law has some difficulty encoding that. (Not that it's impossible, but it's difficult, and enforcement perhaps gets weirder if you try.)
Let's take a related example: jaywalking. In many places, you can get a ticket for crossing the street somewhere where there isn't a crosswalk, or crossing against a red light or a don't-walk sign. I was taught as a child how to look both ways and only cross when and where it's safe to do so. I don't need a sign or stripes on the road to tell me that (though I do appreciate those things as hints and suggestions). Hell, in some places (Manhattan comes to mind), if you don't jaywalk, everyone around you will look at you funny and get annoyed with you.
California, recognizing this, finally eliminated most jaywalking laws a year and half ago[0]. You can only get cited here if you've failed to do what your parents told you, and you're crossing when it's not safe to do so.
Stopping fully at a red light before turning right is, IMO, similar enough. For many (most?) intersections, you're only going to be a teeny tiny fraction of a percent safer coming to a full stop. So why bother?
[0] Let's also remember that jaywalking laws exist only because car manufacturers wanted them. Walking in the street!? How absurd! Streets are only for our beautifully-produced cars! Not you grubby plebeian pedestrians. Away with you!
I'm sure the multiple people that would have hit me if I hadn't jumped out of the way because they were looking the ither way to see if cars where coming thought the same.
> Let's take a related example: jaywalking.
When walking one is not impaired in one's vision of the surroundings, and you're not operating heavy machinery. The worst you can do is get yourself killed. With a car, the most likely scenario is to kill someone else.
I 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".
I agree with you, FWIW.
However, I don't think any violation is justified by what more or less amounts to laziness and the desire to save an inconsequential amount of time.
> 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.
Maybe OP meant something like that?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Better needs to mean something other than gather revenue. And it don't with automated things.
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.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-64386371
https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/news/driving-1/2021-02/one-in-f...
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.
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.
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.
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.
If the government was really contracting something out, then there's an argument to be made that it's on behalf of the government therefore it's government action and therefore it may be prohibited.
If nothing else, I'm pretty confident that my 3rd-amendment rights to not have soldiers crashing on my couch is safe from whatever my neighbor does with their dashcam.
I'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.)
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).
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."
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJYaXy5mmA8 [video][15 mins]
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.
I assume other states are similar
If you got a speeding ticket on week 10 of the year there is unlikely to be any increase on your insurance on week 35.
Like I said this was my perhaps incorrect understanding of how it works here in Canada.
This is 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.
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.
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.
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.
It also has lots of subtle penalties for not having insurance that bite people in the butt.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The only thing baffling here us your reading comprehension bud.
You missed my entire point. You think I think that? Well, if I was on another website I would say something about you as a person about the type of human being who can't even understand what they are reading but then replies with an ignorant comment.
I disagree with this completely. I have a car. I drive safely. It is unlikely that I will get in an accident and hurt someone. But I pay for insurance because it's _possible_ it will happen anyways. If something goes wrong, I could either
- Have the insurance I pay for cover the expense of handling it, or
- Have everything I own taken from me to cover the expense of handling it
The cost of insurance is above the the cost of (<covering the expense of a catastrophic event> * <likelihood of me having such an outcome>), but still very much below the cost of (<covering the expense of a catastrophic event>). As such, it is my belief that it makes sense for me to pay for that insurance.
I find it confusing that anyone would believe otherwise. Unless perhaps you're saying that the government should cover all such catastrophic outcomes, which doesn't seem realistic to me.
> Well, if I was on another website I would say something about you as a person
So, you'll insult me and pretend like you didn't? What are you, 6 years old? Clearly you found it insulting that I could not comprehend your view on the subject (which was not my intent), but seriously?
People who insult out of nowhere grew up in the softest environment where you could get away with that. You lived a privileged charmin lifestyle where you could say whatever you wanted and not have any consequences. I wish just for a second i could see you in person.
To paint a clearer picture for you since you love to twist whatever I say, certain people from privileged groups have mastered the art of aggression from a thin vaneer of social acceptability. I deny this aggression. If you show me aggression, I don't care what socially acceptable way you show it. This isn't football, in real life its not a game. Your life is a game, never experienced anything real. Suburban fraud.
Admittedly, having it since we got her would have wound up saving us money overall, since she's had two CCL surgeries (at ~6-7k a piece). But the decision we made was based on expected cost and averages; so the choice me made was (effectively) a bet that didn't turn out to be the right one. But it generally _would_ be the right one given the facts we had at the time we originally got her.
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.
What makes you think anyone wants to see your deranged diatribes?
You might feel better overall if you kept some thoughts like this to yourself (based on what you're saying seeking professional help might be a good idea as well).
You aren’t a superior being, Derek.
> 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.
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.
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.
That's an argument for automating the system, taking the biased human actor out of the process.
I think you'll find too that a lot of people think laws are for other people. My speeding is totally justified.
The police don't want to enforce the laws that are written. They don't even pull over drivers without license plates.
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.
For every mistake you get a point and with enough point a punishment.
Sounds familiar.
Look at things like DMCA reporting on youtube and how it can be abused.
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.
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.
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.
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".
How you think this is the same as “being naughty while walking outside” is hilarious to me.
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.
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.
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...
It's really the job of police forces to act on maniac drivers. And they stopped doing so in 2020 for the same reason.
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.
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.
[0] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a61793292/ford-cop-cars-sp...
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.
In the US, I could totally see that happening.
What has stopped you from doing that personally?
It took a while though. Maybe 10 minutes in total to pull the dashcam clip and upload it to YouTube.
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.
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.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driv...
People who drive like complete maniacs aren't doing so rationally. It's called "road rage" not "road reason."
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.
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.
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?
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.
GM is already doing this, look it up.
This is the reporting bad drivers to insurance companies part, not the cameras part.
Even better, not only notify insurance companies, but notify other drivers that the idiot in front of them is dangerous so they can react.
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?
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.
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).
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.
- 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.)
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
I'd word it more like drivers who put me and others around me in danger should be punished for driving recklessly.
If you think that's worth it, that's up to you, but you do have to admit that your position helps those with antisocial goals. You'll probably argue that "massive surveillance nets are inherently antisocial", but we both know that's not any more true than saying that "absolute freedom of speech is inherently antisocial". Arguably true, but wholly subjective.
It's just an interesting insight into the collective tech consciousness.
This is such a disengenious gaslighting way of framing critic it would make politicians blush. I hope none of your "positions" could ever be used for anything bad ever or its your fault wether you want or not
Yea, that's the case when i'm submitting a video of a crime being committed. I also submitted video of crimes in my neighborhood being committed (home security cams), is that also an invasion of the criminals privacy?
And to make roads safer.
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.
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?