> pay a second company $58 million to outfit an additional 1,000 buses with mobile camera systems How could it be $58k per bus to install a camera?
I imagine the actual cameras are a relatively small part of the overall price
MTA's A.I. bus cameras issue mistaken parking violations
41–50 of 114 posts
Re: MTA's A.I. bus cameras issue mistaken parking violations
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Inscrutable, impossible-to-win appeals processes seem to go hand in hand with automated enforcement mechanisms. Otherwise the financials don't work. This may be an area where govt needs to set some kind of standard of talking to a live human and getting a straightforward explanation of why an appeal is denied. EU will probably lead the way if it happens.
It's not much different from anything involving the legal system. If everyone charged with anything ranging from a fine to a criminal misdemeanor just requested either a trial or an administrative hearing, the system would vanish overnight. I did once discover that in at least one jurisdiction criminal charges were not guaranteed a jury trial, only a bench trial was given. The judge in that circumstance is the prosec…
At least you get to look a human being in the eye in actual court.
I ran into the buzzsaw of Amazon's KDP self-publishing fraud detection bots, which decided that my Kindle was plagiarizing my paperback (duh, it's the same book). I went through a series of Kafkaesque email appeals — all denied with progressively vaguer justifications. By the final appeal, there was literally no concrete point left to even argue against, just vague wording about creating a negative experience for readers.
I'm not sure a human ever looked at my case. Or if they did, they had a huge incentive to just rubber-stamp the bot's decision and move on. The whole experience was soul-crushing, and I didn't even have that much at stake compared to some. I hope the architects and implementers of this system run into something similar someday so they know how it feels. The only recourse I've ever seen work is to tweet or create a blog post and have it go viral.
Re: MTA's A.I. bus cameras issue mistaken parking violations
#43When I lived in California years ago I had a custom 2-letter plate. I gave the car to a relative who switched its registration to another state. Years later, I got a toll demand from an express lane around LA that had a false positive scan of my plate number—someone else’s partially obscured maybe? I argued the car was registered elsewhere and wasn’t driven in CA, and they denied the appeal. I asked for evidence but…
When Homer Simpson gets a parking ticket, there's a number to call.
He does.
"If you would like to appeal your ticket, press 2."
He presses 2.
"Your appeal has been [<1 second pause] denied. Thank you. Goodbye."
Re: MTA's A.I. bus cameras issue mistaken parking violations
#44When I lived in California years ago I had a custom 2-letter plate. I gave the car to a relative who switched its registration to another state. Years later, I got a toll demand from an express lane around LA that had a false positive scan of my plate number—someone else’s partially obscured maybe? I argued the car was registered elsewhere and wasn’t driven in CA, and they denied the appeal. I asked for evidence but…
Interesting how different our experiences were in a similar situation. I had a false positive FasTrak ticket from the San Diego area for a timeframe I was living in Sacramento that was tossed (including gigantic late penalties) after a phone call explaining I was at work hundreds of miles away at the time. I was all ready to go with Google Maps Timeline location data but they just took me at my word when they saw whe…
Same in SF; I used the FastTrak chat for a wrong overdue charge (I was never sent a notice) and they just cancelled. Every notice also comes with a photo of your car, so not sure what happened to og or when.
Re: MTA's A.I. bus cameras issue mistaken parking violations
#45> pay a second company $58 million to outfit an additional 1,000 buses with mobile camera systems How could it be $58k per bus to install a camera?
I imagine the actual cameras are a relatively small part of the overall price
also keep in mind this is automotive grade stuff in relatively harsh conditions (the front of a bus); it needs to be more rugged than your average camera
Re: MTA's A.I. bus cameras issue mistaken parking violations
#46in other recent news, the Alameda County Transit system has enabled "AI" cameras on busses, that will auto-generate violations for civilian vehicles in the bus stop, in the new fast transit dedicated lanes, and who knows where else. In previous times, Alameda County special officers would issue $500 tickets for letting a passenger out of a private vehicle within a bus stop area. In case you don't know, the bus stops…
the point of the cameras, to some degree, is to make the common violations stop happening. you don't really have a right to pull over anywhere you want in 'a busy downtown area'.
Re: MTA's A.I. bus cameras issue mistaken parking violations
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Inscrutable, impossible-to-win appeals processes seem to go hand in hand with automated enforcement mechanisms. Otherwise the financials don't work. This may be an area where govt needs to set some kind of standard of talking to a live human and getting a straightforward explanation of why an appeal is denied. EU will probably lead the way if it happens.
It's not much different from anything involving the legal system. If everyone charged with anything ranging from a fine to a criminal misdemeanor just requested either a trial or an administrative hearing, the system would vanish overnight. I did once discover that in at least one jurisdiction criminal charges were not guaranteed a jury trial, only a bench trial was given. The judge in that circumstance is the prosec…
> I did once discover that in at least one jurisdiction criminal charges were not guaranteed a jury trial, only a bench trial was given. The judge in that circumstance is the prosecutor from another nearby jurisdiction.
What? In the US? Where?
Re: MTA's A.I. bus cameras issue mistaken parking violations
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting how different our experiences were in a similar situation. I had a false positive FasTrak ticket from the San Diego area for a timeframe I was living in Sacramento that was tossed (including gigantic late penalties) after a phone call explaining I was at work hundreds of miles away at the time. I was all ready to go with Google Maps Timeline location data but they just took me at my word when they saw whe…
San Diego County is run closely aligned with the military. Any chance that "active duty" or other sorts of status are part of this story ? Second part of San Diego County -- I believe they have a stated goal of tracking all vehicles at all times in some automated way.
If you mean me then no I am not military (or been to San Diego at all in over a decade). The fact that my FasTrak account only had tolls for Bay Area bridges and nothing in SoCal (other than the erroneous one) probably made my story more believable.
Re: MTA's A.I. bus cameras issue mistaken parking violations
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
That seems like a far superior solution.
Unless you're on the hype train "all things AI". It's always surprising how many real life problems do not necessarily need a solution based on the buzzwords du jour. All things blockchain, all things microservices, all things as-a-service, all those came and went, washing off the bubbles and leaving behind the (fewer) worthy pieces.
Buzzwords aside, I'm pretty sure the MTA's license recognition here is plain old ALPR, of the kind that's already been in use for municipal fare/toll enforcement for ~15 years.
Re: MTA's A.I. bus cameras issue mistaken parking violations
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
San Diego County is run closely aligned with the military. Any chance that "active duty" or other sorts of status are part of this story ? Second part of San Diego County -- I believe they have a stated goal of tracking all vehicles at all times in some automated way.
If you mean me then no I am not military (or been to San Diego at all in over a decade). The fact that my FasTrak account only had tolls for Bay Area bridges and nothing in SoCal (other than the erroneous one) probably made my story more believable.
thx for the reply