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Show HN: Report idling vehicles in NYC (and get a cut of the fines) with AI

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Re: Show HN: Report idling vehicles in NYC (and get a cut of the fines) with AI

#211

Post by bluefirebrand »

woodruffw wrote: post #198
bluefirebrand wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't understand why anyone would want this Do you really want to live in a society where we're monitored for even the slightest infractions at all times and automatically punished regardless of any circumstances that might explain the behavior?

This isn’t for chewing gum on the Subway. It’s for a specific kind of scofflaw activity that no society would tolerate were it not for the presumptive shield of goodness that surrounds drivers in this country. Having grown up in the city and gone to a public school where over half of my peers had asthma from the heavy truck route next to our playground, I welcome any kind of financial realignment between drivers ( es…

> It’s for a specific kind of scofflaw activity

Well, history shows us that any system that grants a power to government eventually expands beyond its original use. So you will forgive me for thinking it's a bad idea to start

Re: Show HN: Report idling vehicles in NYC (and get a cut of the fines) with AI

#212

Post by southernplaces7 »

Awesome. Offer tech that helps people more easily become arbitrary snitches on activity in ways that's absurdly easy to manipulate or take advantage of, all while further moving forward a culture of spying on those around you just in case yo can snatch up something worth reporting for some personal gain.

Truly, an obvious win for society....

Re: Show HN: Report idling vehicles in NYC (and get a cut of the fines) with AI

#213

Post by ghostpepper »

kennywinker wrote: post #150
9cb14c1ec0 wrote: post #138

Spying on your friends, neighbors, and family? Nothing to see here, just old Soviet style repression tactics.

I understand the sentiment, but if you accept the premise that idling vehicles harm everyone, which they probably do - via air quality, foreign wars to keep oil flowing, and climate change - then why should we not fine the heck out of anybody who harms us all? Don’t like getting reported by randos with apps? Don’t idle. My only beef with the law itself, is that the fines need to be income-linked - otherwise it’s only…

Try mentally substituting a law that you don't agree with, once the app is widely used.

Re: Show HN: Report idling vehicles in NYC (and get a cut of the fines) with AI

#214

Post by aoeusnth1 »

Zenbit_UX wrote: post #163

You created a subscription service for power-~~users~~ snitches? This is wild demonstration of misaligned incentive structures at every level.

Can you explain in what way the incentives are misaligned here? Or did that mis- prefix slip in there because of how you feel overall about the law?

Re: Show HN: Report idling vehicles in NYC (and get a cut of the fines) with AI

#215

Post by serf »

kennywinker wrote: post #150
9cb14c1ec0 wrote: post #138

Spying on your friends, neighbors, and family? Nothing to see here, just old Soviet style repression tactics.

I understand the sentiment, but if you accept the premise that idling vehicles harm everyone, which they probably do - via air quality, foreign wars to keep oil flowing, and climate change - then why should we not fine the heck out of anybody who harms us all? Don’t like getting reported by randos with apps? Don’t idle. My only beef with the law itself, is that the fines need to be income-linked - otherwise it’s only…

>Don’t like getting reported by randos with apps? Don’t idle.

a lot of friction is removed from society when we sequester surveillance/reporting/judgement/apprehension to one side of society, the criminal justice system.

a lot of friction is added to society when we bump surveillance and reporting back into the domain of the pedestrian. Social interaction becomes reduced between nodes, new cultural standards emerge, and overall communications between nodes tends to become reduced from the fear that the person you're speaking to candidly is actually a double-agent spy.

We have seen this in literally every society with rules or concepts like this. It isn't experiment psychology anymore, embedding citizen spies ruins societies, more so when they receive gifts for blabbing.

It's one thing applied to violent crimes; "see something say something", whatever -- it's another thing when a bounty-incentivized law produces rogue agents from within the populous that answer the call to become miniature 'bounty hunters' within the new rules. It makes life worse for everyone, and it spawns assholes that game the concept into a personality. The world waits with baited breath for the next 'Dog the Bounty Hunter' car-idler equivalent.

I'm not ever going to report another 'regular ole human being' for their car idling while the administrations of the world move literally hundreds of thousands of tons of metal around the world for military parades and whatever other flight of fancy and Dolly Parton or whoever the fuck is riding her coal-fired train through Tennessee on a whim -- there are so many more impressive fruit to pick from that tree than to step on bystanders that are probably having a crummy day anyway for a few bucks.

Re: Show HN: Report idling vehicles in NYC (and get a cut of the fines) with AI

#216

Post by serf »

tptacek wrote: post #182
9cb14c1ec0 wrote: post #138

Spying on your friends, neighbors, and family? Nothing to see here, just old Soviet style repression tactics.

These are people spying on commercial vehicles abusing rights of way to avoid paying their fair share of the cost to carry them in the area (parking, in particular). Why are you taking the side of the trucks?

taking the side of the trucks?

No. Taking the side of people who want to live in a place that isn't Brazil the Movie.

I love watching HN swim outside of technical depth. "Well, what if we put explosive collars on citizens at birth? That'll surely fix the crime problems.."

Well, guess what : it doesn't matter how you apply this concept, it's psychological poison. Incentivizing trivial taddling ruins the world, ruin businesses, ruins schools, it literally ruins any group of people that have to converse and deal with one another.

It's like people totally forgot that the primary methods behind groups like East Germany were to turn the populations in on each other for the sake of the state.

The truck idling problem is closer than ever to being permanently solved -- why is it that NOW we decide to create citizen spies when the problem is as least-bad as we've ever witnessed it since the advent of trucks?

I'm sure it's surely not a stepping-stone to adjust us into our future entirely-surveillance driven criminal justice system that's further bolstered by citizen-spy/tattle-tales, right?

Re: Show HN: Report idling vehicles in NYC (and get a cut of the fines) with AI

#217

Post by tptacek »

serf wrote: post #216
tptacek wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are people spying on commercial vehicles abusing rights of way to avoid paying their fair share of the cost to carry them in the area (parking, in particular). Why are you taking the side of the trucks?

taking the side of the trucks? No. Taking the side of people who want to live in a place that isn't Brazil the Movie. I love watching HN swim outside of technical depth. "Well, what if we put explosive collars on citizens at birth? That'll surely fix the crime problems.." Well, guess what : it doesn't matter how you apply this concept, it's psychological poison. Incentivizing trivial taddling ruins the world, ruin bu…

This is like "protecting commercial interests who exploit gaps in law enforcement to save a few bucks at everyone else's expense, but leftistly".

People call in complaints all the time. They always have. It's part of city life. When they're complaining about truck drivers fucking up the streets, they're not rats; they're the good guys. Getting mad that their lives are being made easier seems super weird. But you do you! We're not going to agree.

Re: Show HN: Report idling vehicles in NYC (and get a cut of the fines) with AI

#218

Post by michaelmrose »

rafram wrote: post #202
michaelmrose wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably they don't want you taking videos of people who aren't in fact breaking the law and profiting from tickets. NYC regulation requires you to not idle more than 5 minutes. https://dec.ny.gov/environmental-protection/air-quality/cont... Although they don't require you to actually take a 5 minute video it is overwhelmingly likely that most people don't pull out there phone every time a vehicle stops in NYC so t…

New York City has different rules from New York State, and commercial vehicles have different rules from personal vehicles. The limit for commercial vehicles in NYC is three minutes, or one minute when adjacent to a park/school: https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/environment/idling-citizens-air...

Thanks

Re: Show HN: Report idling vehicles in NYC (and get a cut of the fines) with AI

#219

Post by samtho »

georgeburdell wrote: post #87

Wish my California city had this attitude that you can report people via an app. So many offenses “run with the driver”, i.e. they will not prosecute unless a cop sees it happening and positively identifies the driver. They won’t even prosecute red light running from a video with the license plate clearly visible.

A motor vehicle cannot receive a citation. If law enforcement cannot ID the driver as a particular individual when the infraction or crime occurred, a citation should not be issued.

Re: Show HN: Report idling vehicles in NYC (and get a cut of the fines) with AI

#220

Post by EasyMark »

9cb14c1ec0 wrote: post #138

Spying on your friends, neighbors, and family? Nothing to see here, just old Soviet style repression tactics.

I agree. See something, say something if it's "a big one" otherwise being a tattler only helps increase the paranoia we alread have against others and further damages societal cohesion. I don't want to be stasi-lite for city, state, or federal government.
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