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Did your car witness a crime? Bay Area police may be coming for your Tesla

sfchronicle.com

301–310 of 683 posts

Re: Did your car witness a crime? Bay Area police may be coming for your Tesla

#301
post #130
post #122

Creepy stuff. Maybe we ought not to constantly record everything happening around us all the time.

The incidental and systemic benefits of the recordings are exciting to people and celebrated with stories. The hazards of this constant "pollution" of data — how it is slowly changing our society, our economy, our humanity — is harder to quantify or build opposition to. It's a bit like climate change. Slow, invisible poison.

> and celebrated with stories.

Are you sure those are organic?

Re: Did your car witness a crime? Bay Area police may be coming for your Tesla

#302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You clearly haven’t received a letter in the mail for $250 because a camera saw you barely not fully stop for a red light right turn at 3am with zero traffic 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

Were you in that much of a hurry to not be able to wait 30 seconds for the traffic light?

I believe the commenter is in US where you are allowed to make a right turn on a red light but you must stop and make sure it's safe to do so.

Re: Did your car witness a crime? Bay Area police may be coming for your Tesla

#303

I used to keep my Sentry mode on all the time. Then my car got broken into twice. The police didn’t bother to follow up despite having a video footage of what happened. Now I never turn it on. And now police wants to tow vehicles for the footage.

I was watching a youtube video about the "Kia Boys." A group of young men who made a lifestyle out of stealing Kia vehicles with flawed anti theft systems installed.

What interested me is that they make a habit of connecting their personal phone to the entertainment systems of vehicles they steal. They then use the large list of connected devices in their phone to brag about their stature as criminals.

Which is hilarious because it's not only evidence that connects them to a rash of vehicle thefts, but it also means every stolen vehicle retains evidence of who _precisely_ stole that vehicle.

The police don't seem to have a clue. The criminals surely don't.

Re: Did your car witness a crime? Bay Area police may be coming for your Tesla

#304
post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To which Constitutional protections are you referring?

The 4th Amendment

What does the 4th Amendment have to say about this? The guiding philosophy at the time 4A was framed is "the public is entitled to every man's evidence".

Re: Did your car witness a crime? Bay Area police may be coming for your Tesla

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It saved me $2000 bill by recording a hit an runner

Can you elaborate why? As in, you got hit by an insured driver and so your insurance was able to bill them, whereas you didn't have collision coverage of your own?

> whereas you didn't have collision coverage of your own?

That's the majority of people who don't have a lien on their title. Liability insurance covers what you do, it doesn't cover what someone does to you. So having evidence of who caused the accident is important when everyone just has liability coverage.

In California, though, I really do recommend you have the "Uninsured and Underinsured Counterparty" option on your insurance. It's usually far cheaper than the alternatives and it just covers you with no effort on your part.

Re: Did your car witness a crime? Bay Area police may be coming for your Tesla

#306

As a somewhat regular user of Waymo, these types of conversations seem like they're going to be more and more in the (sorry!) rearview mirror because we won't own the car nor the cameras that are recording the world as we "drive" around. That's not to say that we should give up fighting for some level of privacy even when we don't own the cars, but seems more likely that legislation would be passed that forces the ve…

I think this plays out where it becomes a luxury to drive oneself. Over the next 10-15 years it looks like self driving will continue to advance and will likely become safer than the alternative.

Once that happens insurance companies will start charging more for people that drive themselves compared to people that let the car drive.

I can see some states outlawing that practice. Then it’s left to see who is still underwriting insurance in those states.

Re: Did your car witness a crime? Bay Area police may be coming for your Tesla

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around 10-30% of drivers in the United States don't have car insurance depending on the state. 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…

> 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. 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 h…

If I'm reading RCW 46.29.560 correctly, you do get the interest, and I think you can shop around to hopefully get a decent rate on a CD to deposit?

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.

Re: Did your car witness a crime? Bay Area police may be coming for your Tesla

#308
post #6

Genuine question: What is stopping some small percent of drivers from installing cameras and using ML to identify cars driving dangerously (e.g. speeding, running reds, changing multiple lanes at once, etc.), and when their license plate is identifiable, finding and informing their insurance company? If even a small subset of users did this, and insurers did something with this information, it would substantially dis…

It's so very HN that we get into fits about Google and Facebook and Apple and so on tracking us to make a buck, but the idea of an insurance company deputizing millions of cameras to perform mass surveillance to make a buck is suddenly okay because drivers that make us angry on the road get hurt by it.

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.

Re: Did your car witness a crime? Bay Area police may be coming for your Tesla

#309
post #6

Genuine question: What is stopping some small percent of drivers from installing cameras and using ML to identify cars driving dangerously (e.g. speeding, running reds, changing multiple lanes at once, etc.), and when their license plate is identifiable, finding and informing their insurance company? If even a small subset of users did this, and insurers did something with this information, it would substantially dis…

It's so very HN that we get into fits about Google and Facebook and Apple and so on tracking us to make a buck, but the idea of an insurance company deputizing millions of cameras to perform mass surveillance to make a buck is suddenly okay because drivers that make us angry on the road get hurt by it. The obvious answer to this proposal is that I believe that I have a right to not be monitored and penalized by auton…

> but the idea of an insurance company deputizing millions of cameras to perform mass surveillance to make a buck is suddenly okay because drivers that make us angry on the road get hurt by it.

I'd word it more like drivers who put me and others around me in danger should be punished for driving recklessly.

Re: Did your car witness a crime? Bay Area police may be coming for your Tesla

#310
post #6

Genuine question: What is stopping some small percent of drivers from installing cameras and using ML to identify cars driving dangerously (e.g. speeding, running reds, changing multiple lanes at once, etc.), and when their license plate is identifiable, finding and informing their insurance company? If even a small subset of users did this, and insurers did something with this information, it would substantially dis…

I doubt it'd tell them any more than they already know. These drivers tend to have been given citations already. 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.

> The real money would be in giving civilians whose footage leads to a successful prosecution for moving violations a percentage of the fine.

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.

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