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

sfchronicle.com

351–360 of 683 posts

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

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That’s not the point, a surveillance state where the panopticon autonomously gives $250 tickets is the issue Rules aren’t meant to be cold hard algorithms to blindly punish people with; we wouldn’t automate a judge with an algorithm why is it somehow different to automate a police officer with one?

It’s hardly a surveillance state to say operators of heavy machinery should do so safely: there are many, many dead pedestrians and bicyclists who were hit by someone who _thought_ the road was empty, and American traffic laws are so lenient that it’s disturbing that people think they’re overbearing.

It’s estimated that we are effectively subsidizing drivers by close to a trillion dollars annually by not requiring adequate insurance to cover the full cost to victims. Just pay your ticket and drive better before you make a mistake you’ll never recover from.

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

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Fair enough. After all, as we all know, the only reason to object to massive surveillance nets is if you're a criminal who has something to hide. Since I keep the law all that tracking and monitoring won't affect me.

I mean, you do have to admit that by objecting to "massive surveillance nets", you're actively helping criminals who have things to hide, even if you don't.

If you think that's worth it, that's up to you, but you do have to admit that your position helps those with antisocial goals. You'll probably argue that "massive surveillance nets are inherently antisocial", but we both know that's not any more true than saying that "absolute freedom of speech is inherently antisocial". Arguably true, but wholly subjective.

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

#353

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.

Surely object recognition models will catch up to whatever attempts to thwart it (especially if it becomes popular). As long as a person is recognizable to another person, a computer should also be able to recognize them.

Trying to camouflage seems like a losing battle.

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

#354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear to me how you can claim most of these drivers don't have insurance. Also. Nothing is stopping Karen's from reporting things right now. So what if they do? If you've done nothing wrong then the reviewer would just trash it. And probably put Karen's reports in the "immediately discard" pile in the future if she sends in frivolous claims all the time.

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…

The whole concept of calling people NPC’s is weird as fuck.

You aren’t a superior being, Derek.

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

#355
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m struggling to understand your point, or to imagine many examples which support it. I agree that brief minor parking infringements may occasionally make people’s lives more efficient; but I can’t think of any examples where traffic lights and speed limits need to be routinely disregarded?

From what I remember of my CA driver’s license test (had to re-take the written test when I moved to CA), there is no actual speed limit in CA. The speed limit is “whatever conditions deem safe”. Maybe OP meant something like that?

You might want to review the handbook again. What you’re referring to is the basic speed law, which never trumps the absolute speed limits posted (or the special restrictions like the 15 mph railroad track law). Think of it as a clamped function: the speed limit is min(posted limit, safe speed under current conditions).

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

#356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 j…

Calumet park is a village right next to Chicago with under 7000 people. Northfield village has under 6000 people and it's located within about 15 miles of Chicago. It wasn't until I was about 18 that I realized what I thought was Chicago were actually small towns/villages. There's a whole slew of small villages next to or "in" larger cities.

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

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sometimes safer to speed up 5mph over the limit to get through a yellow light, than to slam your brakes with someone behind you. It's frequently safer to speed to match people speeding around you then to match the stated speed limit (usually on freeways).

You don't ever need to slam on your brakes or speed up for yellow lights, that's the entire point of the yellow light existing instead of just going straight to red.

Not if they're poorly timed.

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

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. After all, as we all know, the only reason to object to massive surveillance nets is if you're a criminal who has something to hide. Since I keep the law all that tracking and monitoring won't affect me.

I mean, you do have to admit that by objecting to "massive surveillance nets", you're actively helping criminals who have things to hide, even if you don't. If you think that's worth it, that's up to you, but you do have to admit that your position helps those with antisocial goals. You'll probably argue that "massive surveillance nets are inherently antisocial", but we both know that's not any more true than saying…

It's just an observation: this proposal aimed at penalizing bad drivers gets upvoted and generally supported, but proposals aimed at hunting down child pornographers get attacked as dangerous overreach. "I have nothing to hide" is an invalid argument for E2E encryption backdoors, but it's the correct way to think about a dashcam botnet.

It's just an interesting insight into the collective tech consciousness.

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

#359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sometimes safer to speed up 5mph over the limit to get through a yellow light, than to slam your brakes with someone behind you. It's frequently safer to speed to match people speeding around you then to match the stated speed limit (usually on freeways).

You don't ever need to slam on your brakes or speed up for yellow lights, that's the entire point of the yellow light existing instead of just going straight to red.

Some yellows aren't too well timed, especially if on a downhill slope.

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

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you kidding? Absolutely. For moving violations you can look forward to the ticket itself plus increased insurance premiums.

I'm not an expert and I'm not one to get many tickets however my understanding is that they only look up individuals during renewal time or if you change policy or company. If you got a speeding ticket on week 10 of the year there is unlikely to be any increase on your insurance on week 35. Like I said this was my perhaps incorrect understanding of how it works here in Canada.

This is not true in my experience in the US (thanks sneakily-placed rapidly-changing speed limit signs enforced against out-of-state plates in Utah!)
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