Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

sfchronicle.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 683 posts

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

#321

Post by PeterisP »

akira2501 wrote: post #293
harmmonica wrote: post #247

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…

> 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. Perhaps in the urban setting but the majority of this country is not contained within cities. Even then are you planning on banning motorcycles and RVs? > because they will consider it their right to drive themselves…

> Perhaps in the urban setting but the majority of this country is not contained within cities.

83% of USA population live in urban areas, and that proportion is still steadily growing. The same trends apply everywhere else in the world as well.

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

#322

Post by monkeywork »

ryandrake wrote: post #185
lr4444lr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. 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…

That is typically a case of police trying to negotiate funding, it will go in a cycle once a contract gets renegotiated they will go on a blitz to show how effective the funding was and then over time let it start to slide again.

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

#323

Post by monkeywork »

lurking_swe wrote: post #279
croes wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Next step, we all wear body cams and they identify people with inappropriate behavior. For every mistake you get a point and with enough point a punishment. Sounds familiar.

you conveniently left out the fact that anyone driving a car or truck is driving a dangerous vehicle that can trivially kill or maim others. Driving is supposed to be a privilege, not a right. That comes with responsibility. How you think this is the same as “being naughty while walking outside” is hilarious to me.

so if someone is carrying a baseball bat, a knife, or any other sort of weapon that can trivially kill or maim others they should be wearing the body cam?

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

#324

Post by monkeywork »

gruez wrote: post #44
croes wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Next step, we all wear body cams and they identify people with inappropriate behavior. For every mistake you get a point and with enough point a punishment. Sounds familiar.

I mean, that already kinda happens today? Everyone carries a camera in their pocket, and public freakouts are recorded and posted on the internet, leading to social consequences for the person in question.

Which I also think has been a net negative to the Western world.

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.

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

#325

Post by hnburnsy »

rbalicki wrote: post #272
hnburnsy wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? GM is already doing this, look it up.

Do you have more info about this?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/technology/general-motors...

This is the reporting bad drivers to insurance companies part, not the cameras part.

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

#326

Post by sseagull »

PeterisP wrote: post #321
akira2501 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Perhaps in the urban setting but the majority of this country is not contained within cities. Even then are you planning on banning motorcycles and RVs? > because they will consider it their right to drive themselves…

> Perhaps in the urban setting but the majority of this country is not contained within cities. 83% of USA population live in urban areas, and that proportion is still steadily growing. The same trends apply everywhere else in the world as well.

According to the 2020 US Census, about 80% live in an urban area. However, the definition is not exactly what people think of when you say “urban”.

In 2020, the census lists 2,611 urban areas, including areas with a few thousand people.

https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/g...

Shouldn’t be too hard to break this down with a more colloquial definition (say, areas over 500k or 750k people). I’m just not at a real computer :)

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

#327

Post by chefandy »

threecheese wrote: post #273
harmmonica wrote: post #247

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 am hoping for an urban camouflage fashion revolution as a response to more pervasive monitoring: https://www.axios.com/2019/09/07/fooling-facial-recognition-... Public access to object recognition models may be important.

I'd like to see that too, but time and time again we've seen that:

a) laypeople aren't usually moved by privacy violations more abstract than someone physically watching you do something.

b) most people aren't willing to don practical accessories that noticably change the perception of your face unless it emphasizes qualities considered sexy.

c) safety gear generally isn't considered sexy

I think that this stuff would be perceived like wearing a physical bike helmet for your data privacy with all the cachet of Google Glass.

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

#328

Post by sweetjuly »

Tempest1981 wrote: post #116
y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't turn it on simply because it drains an absurd amount of battery. I don't even understand why it does so. Is it old tech? My Blink cameras have 2 AA Lithium batteries that take motion-activated video all day on a busy side-walk for at least a couple of months. Yet one shopping trip drains like 2% battery in Sentry mode, wtf? That's a lot.

You're comparing a motherboard with dual CPUs at 12+ cores each, a GPU, and 16GB of RAM -- to perhaps an ESP32. Very different design goals.

Even so, you shouldn't be waking all 24 cores, the GPU, etc. just to record video. Let the cameras DMA into their buffers and wake up a single core when the buffers hit a high water line. The core only needs to be awake long enough to queue up the writes to storage and then it can go back to sleep.

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

#329

Post by akira2501 »

PeterisP wrote: post #321
akira2501 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Perhaps in the urban setting but the majority of this country is not contained within cities. Even then are you planning on banning motorcycles and RVs? > because they will consider it their right to drive themselves…

> Perhaps in the urban setting but the majority of this country is not contained within cities. 83% of USA population live in urban areas, and that proportion is still steadily growing. The same trends apply everywhere else in the world as well.

> 83% of USA population live in urban areas

If you combine dense urban areas with suburbs. It's about 33% in dense areas and 55% in suburban areas. Which actually doesn't improve the driving situation.

> and that proportion is still steadily growing

Which is why I specifically mentioned motorcycles. In areas of the world with even greater urban density than the USA there are a lot of these on the road.

> The same trends apply everywhere else in the world as well.

These trends are influenced by economic policy and socioeconomic mobility of the population, which are not similar everywhere, so expectations do need to be tailored to them.

Editing to add, I actually think we'll see a new class of Drivers License, one that allows you to operate semi autonomous vehicles, and one that allows you to operate fully manual vehicles with a higher level of continuous written and on the road testing required to hold it. Which is a reasonable and non discriminatory solution to the problem.

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

#330

Post by reillys »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #178
reillys wrote: post #165

If I or somebody else was the victim of a crime I would 100% support using every available source of information to solve that crime. I think we need adequate controls sure, but mostly we need to increase trust in government and police forces so we know we can trust the relevant people with our data. There is epic fear in the US about the government. That is the actual problem. Now the US gov is a shady piece of shit…

It's not just the police. How could such a corrupt police exist without corrupt superiors higher up in the government? Fear of governments is justified, they're the most powerful entity in our world. They can get away with murder. The US is not Iceland, a simple fix that would just make people trust the police is impossible. Also as an aside, the police isn't your only problem. Tesla, Google & co are paving the way n…

Well actually that brings up an interesting piece about how the US is structured. I think the reason your police can be more corrupt is because of the federated nature of policing.

Cops are usually only answerable to the mayor of the city (and sometimes the electorate) rather than higher ups in the government. So there is a lack of authority and control there. If they were answerable to politicians and politicians were actually responsible for their actions you could take very firm political actions against those politicians - but in the states nobody in the Cabinet or Government is responsible for law enforcement.

And I understand why this federated system was originally put in place, but this isn't the 1700s. In communication terms the US might as well be Iceland - you can communicate from one end of the land mass to the other instantly, so we don't need to have localized and federated decision making.

Post reply on HN