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Citizen uses OpenCV to track speeders near his home

cvilletomorrow.org

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Re: Citizen uses OpenCV to track speeders near his home

#41

Post by edwhitesell »

pc86 wrote: post #25
edwhitesell wrote: post #2

I've often thought of doing the same thing. Our current and previous houses are/were on corner intersections of our neighborhood. I'd love to see an open source implementation of this. I'd put it up to get data on speeding and see if it could be adapted to catch people running the stop sign in front of my house. I see at least 2 cars per day run it and that's just in the time I'm outside to do quick things like check…

This seems like it would be harder. Would you have to lock onto the tires to catch a certain number of frames without movement? I would thinking rolling through a stop sign (especially at an intersection that is not a 4-way stop) would be much more dangerous than going 30 in a 25.

> I would thinking rolling through a stop sign (especially at an intersection that is not a 4-way stop) would be much more dangerous than going 30 in a 25.

This is exactly the scenario I have outside of my house. The speed limit on both streets is 25mph, but when most people don't stop at the stop signs and everyone is going too fast...

The issue is even worse at certain times of the year (right now) because, depending on the direction you are going, the cars with no stop signs are mostly blinded by the position of the sun between trees and houses. Just last Monday a neighbor stopped by to say he turned the corner and side-swiped my mailbox because he couldn't see anything.

Re: Citizen uses OpenCV to track speeders near his home

#42

Post by pavel_lishin »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #26
OhHeyItsE wrote: post #7

I wonder how the HN commentariat would feel about this if it was a government agency behind this rather than a fellow hacker...

Do you have an objection to government-run cameras enforcing a safe speed limit? In my experience, an awful lot of drivers are really, really bad at driving. Speeding, in particular. If there is no other way to ensure idiots behind the wheel stick to a safe speed, then I'm all for it. This is merely a step towards fully-automated vehicles, anyway, which will be literally incapable of breaking the speed limit.

In practice, implementations of things like red-light cameras end up making things worse, by shortening yellow light durations (which makes intersections less safe) in order to generate more revenue for the city and the company running the program.

http://pix11.com/2015/11/19/red-light-cameras-may-be-causing...

Re: Citizen uses OpenCV to track speeders near his home

#43

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

pc86 wrote: post #8
notacoward wrote: post #5

I think an even better application of this technology would be to catch people who aren't stopping at signs/lights, or not yielding at merges. Radar-equipped signs can handle the speeding case fairly well, but are useless in these other - and often more dangerous - cases.

Red light cameras increase rear-end collisions as well as injury because people would rather lock up their brakes one car length before the intersection than get a ticket. I haven't seen any information on the effect of cameras at merging sites, though.

At least here in the UK, there are sensible guidelines to ensure you don't do that. For example, if the light is amber (turning from green to red) and you are so close to the line that braking would be hazardous, you should carry on. A system as sophisticated as the one presented here could surely take speed and stopping distance into account. And even apart from all that, I'd rather have one car rear-ending another that's braked too harshly, at slow speed, than a car careering through the light, much faster.

Re: Citizen uses OpenCV to track speeders near his home

#44

Post by Someone1234 »

gus_massa wrote: post #31

I'll copy a very interesting comment by Anton Largiader http://www.cvilletomorrow.org/news/article/22908-locust-aven... > One very interesting approach I have seen overseas is a traffic light that turns red if you are speeding as you approach it. It's incredibly effective; instant feedback on your behavior, and immediate loss of any time you gained by speeding. No ticket, unless you run the light. Drivers quickly con…

I like that idea but I do worry about it causing rear-end collisions.

In an ideal world drivers wouldn't speed and they also wouldn't tailgate, but in the world we currently occupy both are extremely common (even amongst law enforcement).

So while this would act to reduce speeding, the unpredictability may increase accidents and it is definitely going to reduce traffic flow.

Re: Citizen uses OpenCV to track speeders near his home

#46

Post by notacoward »

pc86 wrote: post #8
notacoward wrote: post #5

I think an even better application of this technology would be to catch people who aren't stopping at signs/lights, or not yielding at merges. Radar-equipped signs can handle the speeding case fairly well, but are useless in these other - and often more dangerous - cases.

Red light cameras increase rear-end collisions as well as injury because people would rather lock up their brakes one car length before the intersection than get a ticket. I haven't seen any information on the effect of cameras at merging sites, though.

I wasn't suggesting anything that triggers red lights or leads directly to a citation. Just gathering the data would often be useful, to drive design of intersections and allocation of other resources in a quantitative way.

Also, if people aren't maintaining a safe distance from the car in front of them, then that's useful information too. So is video of people illegally using their celphones while driving, which this technology could also provide.

Re: Citizen uses OpenCV to track speeders near his home

#47

Post by dsfyu404ed »

Speed limits are very much consensus based. The rule of thumb is "set the speed limit so that if you didn't have any signs only 10% of people would be in excess of it if left to their own devices. Adjustments for things like high traffic intersections, pedestrian traffic, school zones, (speed traps the local PD insists upon having) etc are made after that. Typically they're much lower than people consider reasonable and IMO this has resulted in two generations of drivers being trained to always exceed the posted speed limit and instead of thinking about how fast they should be going think about how best to speed (e.g "I'm driving on a 4 lane boulevard at 1AM and I'm the only one around, I can do 10-20 over" or "It's a school zone on a week day, better do 0-5 over")

Looks like Mr. Reynolds has begun building a data-set to support what the handful of highway engineers I've spoken to on the subject just assume based on observation.

Re: Citizen uses OpenCV to track speeders near his home

#48

Post by mikeash »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #33
masklinn wrote: post #24

A pretty common sight around here (western europe) which seems to work pretty well are dynamic reminder signs: electronic signposts with a speed radar, which simply displays your speed in green if you're under the limit, orange if you're a bit over and blinking red if you're way over (using fairly bright led arrays so it's visible in most conditions) Anecdotally, it seems to work pretty well, drivers do slow down whe…

The article shows evidence for the contrary, the city actually installed such a sign. It slowed motorists for a while, but they eventually sped back up again.

I think people hope that they work by shaming. Remind people that they're breaking the law, and they'll break the law less.

I think they actually work by intimidation. Remind them that The Man is watching and they could get a speeding ticket. Once people realize that this is an empty threat and nobody is handing out tickets, they'll go back to their usual behavior.

Re: Citizen uses OpenCV to track speeders near his home

#49

Post by jurassic »

Some commenters here are commenting as if speeding is some petty thing that doesn't matter.

Speeding kills. Something as small as 10 miles over a 30mph may mean a doubling in fatality rate for pedestrians and bicyclists.

One source: https://www.aaafoundation.org/sites/default/files/2011Pedest...

Re: Citizen uses OpenCV to track speeders near his home

#50

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #42
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an objection to government-run cameras enforcing a safe speed limit? In my experience, an awful lot of drivers are really, really bad at driving. Speeding, in particular. If there is no other way to ensure idiots behind the wheel stick to a safe speed, then I'm all for it. This is merely a step towards fully-automated vehicles, anyway, which will be literally incapable of breaking the speed limit.

In practice, implementations of things like red-light cameras end up making things worse, by shortening yellow light durations (which makes intersections less safe) in order to generate more revenue for the city and the company running the program. http://pix11.com/2015/11/19/red-light-cameras-may-be-causing...

In no way should revenue ever be tied to law enforcement. As you point out, the potential for corruption is just too great.
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