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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

#81

Post by theptip »

rafram wrote: post #26
theptip wrote: post #19

Nice. Pricing seems a bit steep for occasional use; does iOS make it easy to do micro-transactions with Apple Pay? (I get the dev may be trying to put bread on the table with this, which is also fine…)

That's a fair point. I have to see how the AI costs stack up, since heavy use can run up the bill pretty quickly with video inputs, and all subscriptions come with unlimited usage.

As a user I’d be happy to pay $5 for a bundle of credits and just top up whenever it runs out.

And as you say you don’t want to be in the position where a whale costs you $50 by submitting a crazy number of requests.

Maybe these are big-scale problems though :)

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

#82

Post by gametorch »

Genuinely curious, why aren't people allowed to say this is dystopian without getting flagged? What rule, specifically, does that violate?

I think this is dystopian. Paying people to rat out their fellow citizens. Nightmarish.

What if this idea was applied to the laws ICE is trying to enforce? Would you think that's dystopian?

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

#83

Post by matsemann »

Man, I wish my city would make it possible to report drivers breaking the law. My big issue is cars parking in the cycle lanes. 1830 cars got fined for that in my city in total in 2024. Aka 5 a day. As a single cyclist I see more cars parked in cycle lanes every day on my commute than all those hundred officers give tickets to in total..

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

#84

Post by perihelions »

dale_huevo wrote: post #59
screye wrote: post #53

Amazing ! Decentralizing traffic enforcement is a win-win. Bravo to NYC for opening this sort of program and OP for turning it into an "efficient free market". Will try it out soon. Bookmarked.

> Decentralizing traffic enforcement is a win-win Win-win for who exactly? Maybe we need to decentralize and AI-accelerate construction permit reporting too. Your backyard fence looks DIY and not up to code and your porch light looks like a fire hazard.

They're trialing something like that in France. There's a project that uses machine learning on aerial photography databases to search for objects in peoples' backyards, for enforcement,

https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/30/23328442/france-ai-swimmi... ("French government uses AI to spot undeclared swimming pools — and tax them / The government used machine learning to scan aerial photos of properties")

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

#85

Post by theptip »

bluescrn wrote: post #71
theptip wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now we are in the “laws are seldom actually enforced” regime. It seems pretty clear that laws will be enforced more in future, the obvious response is to go prune the laws to get rid of the ones that we actually aren’t OK with being enforced.

Laws will be enforced if it's safe and profitable to do so, especially if the process can be fully automated. Meanwhile, industrial-scale shoplifting, hard drugs, sex crimes, riots. No automated enforcement possible there, let alone profitable automated enforcement.

I feel things like shoplifting should actually be automatable, it’s a question of ROI currently.

One idea I play with is “police 2.0” where you can dispatch a small fast drone to a crime scene, and follow the perp from a safe distance. A lot of crimes could be solved this way (eg car chases, illegal dirt bike gangs, petty robbery etc).

I really don’t want pervasive surveillance, but perhaps there is a middle ground where response times are fast enough that you can be purely reactive to a 911 call/app.

Feels quite slippery-slope though. I think we should expect increased debate on the social contract as these new systems become more capable and the “enforcement gap” becomes larger.

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

#86

Post by gametorch »

mjmsmith wrote: post #51
bluescrn wrote: post #41

Milking motorists is very profitable. Stopping more problematic crime, not so much. So we end up with anarcho-tyranny, where 'real' crime is policed poorly, if at all - but loads of resources and tech are deployed aggressively policing+punishing mostly-law-abiding people for the most minor of infractions.

This has nothing to do with "milking motorists", whatever that means. (The phrase generally seems to be used by people who are angry that they can't speed and run red lights with impunity).

> This has nothing to do with "milking motorists"

Forcing motorists to pay for minor infractions is the entire point of the app.

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

#87

Post by georgeburdell »

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.

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

#88

Post by Nifty3929 »

I feel it's Orwellian, or Stalin-esq to have us being paid off to snitch on each other.

Certainly, if you have evidence of murder or something, please do report it.

But for an idling vehicle?

Note that these laws are only targeting idling while parked, rather than during normal use, such as at a traffic light. This is called "true-idling" or "long-duration" idling.

Has anybody considered how much CO2 or other greenhouse gases are actually released by "true-idling" or "long-duration" idling vehicles, either individually or in aggregate? I spent a few minutes researching it with an LLM and couldn't come up with much. Most of the information and numbers I got were for ALL idling, including during normal driving like at a traffic light. My guess based on that is that it (true idling) is a trivially small amount of CO2 compared to the overall.

But it's plenty to earn yourself a nice payoff at the expense of your hard working delivery driver!

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

#89

Post by rafram »

gametorch wrote: post #82

Genuinely curious, why aren't people allowed to say this is dystopian without getting flagged? What rule, specifically, does that violate? I think this is dystopian. Paying people to rat out their fellow citizens. Nightmarish. What if this idea was applied to the laws ICE is trying to enforce? Would you think that's dystopian?

This program specifically fines businesses with fleets of commercial vehicles (delivery trucks, buses, et cetera) for illegal idling, and escalates the fines for repeat offenders. You can't report random individuals, nor would I really want to build an app for that. The point is to get businesses to stop polluting.

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

#90

Post by bluescrn »

gametorch wrote: post #86
mjmsmith wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has nothing to do with "milking motorists", whatever that means. (The phrase generally seems to be used by people who are angry that they can't speed and run red lights with impunity).

> This has nothing to do with "milking motorists" Forcing motorists to pay for minor infractions is the entire point of the app.

So when actual criminals leave their stolen getaway car idling as they go and loot a store, the owner of the stolen car now gets an extra fully-automated fine with likely no way to appeal it, and the real criminals get away free.
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