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Show HN: Automated license plate reader coverage in the USA

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Re: Show HN: Automated license plate reader coverage in the USA

#61

Post by LeifCarrotson »

nerdsniper wrote: post #60
autoexec wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surveillance is generally a net negative, but it's also bad when you see people speeding around schools, rolling through stop signs, and running red lights. The fact that these cameras are already pervasive and the problem of bad drivers hasn't been solved anywhere doesn't give me a lot of hope that these cameras are the solution to that particular problem. It seems like police can do a lot to increase enforcement…

> Automatically shutting off/disabling or limiting the use of cell phones (all of which come with sensors that can detect when you are going at speeds you'd expect while in cars) might help. I can’t think of a way to implement this that wouldn’t ban passengers from using their phone while riding in a vehicle. Which could be even a bus or limousine.

I don't disagree, but I can totally imagine a society where this inability is perfectly acceptable because it severely reduces the #1 killer of people from 5-55yo. I don't think we live in that society, if Apple and Google flipped a switch tomorrow to do that people would freak out, but I could imagine a rational, fictional society that had different shared values.

Re: Show HN: Automated license plate reader coverage in the USA

#62

Post by mikem170 »

nerdsniper wrote: post #60
autoexec wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surveillance is generally a net negative, but it's also bad when you see people speeding around schools, rolling through stop signs, and running red lights. The fact that these cameras are already pervasive and the problem of bad drivers hasn't been solved anywhere doesn't give me a lot of hope that these cameras are the solution to that particular problem. It seems like police can do a lot to increase enforcement…

> Automatically shutting off/disabling or limiting the use of cell phones (all of which come with sensors that can detect when you are going at speeds you'd expect while in cars) might help. I can’t think of a way to implement this that wouldn’t ban passengers from using their phone while riding in a vehicle. Which could be even a bus or limousine.

A lot of people would be fine with that. Drivers are impaired while on the phone, even hands-free. Not to mention texting while driving!

I kind of picture the cellular telcos doing this. Maybe buses and trains come with wifi hotspots allowed to connect. Otherwise auto passengers could use their devices offline, maybe read an ebook or something. Not the end of the world.

Re: Show HN: Automated license plate reader coverage in the USA

#63

Post by dylan604 »

mikem170 wrote: post #62
nerdsniper wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Automatically shutting off/disabling or limiting the use of cell phones (all of which come with sensors that can detect when you are going at speeds you'd expect while in cars) might help. I can’t think of a way to implement this that wouldn’t ban passengers from using their phone while riding in a vehicle. Which could be even a bus or limousine.

A lot of people would be fine with that. Drivers are impaired while on the phone, even hands-free. Not to mention texting while driving! I kind of picture the cellular telcos doing this. Maybe buses and trains come with wifi hotspots allowed to connect. Otherwise auto passengers could use their devices offline, maybe read an ebook or something. Not the end of the world.

Lots of cars now come with a WiFi hot spot as part of their offerings. There's no way to prevent the driver from also connecting to it and circumventing whatever ill conceived notion this is

Re: Show HN: Automated license plate reader coverage in the USA

#64

Post by autoexec »

nerdsniper wrote: post #60
autoexec wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surveillance is generally a net negative, but it's also bad when you see people speeding around schools, rolling through stop signs, and running red lights. The fact that these cameras are already pervasive and the problem of bad drivers hasn't been solved anywhere doesn't give me a lot of hope that these cameras are the solution to that particular problem. It seems like police can do a lot to increase enforcement…

> Automatically shutting off/disabling or limiting the use of cell phones (all of which come with sensors that can detect when you are going at speeds you'd expect while in cars) might help. I can’t think of a way to implement this that wouldn’t ban passengers from using their phone while riding in a vehicle. Which could be even a bus or limousine.

Not entirely. The phones can defect if there are other phones nearby, so a single phone in a car on a highway going 75mph could be assumed to be a driver, but that is still just an assumption.

Re: Show HN: Automated license plate reader coverage in the USA

#65

Post by dylan604 »

quamserena wrote: post #37
yannyu wrote: post #12

I've thought about this a lot as I see more and more reckless driving in the areas I live in. Surveillance is generally a net negative, but it's also bad when you see people speeding around schools, rolling through stop signs, and running red lights. We seem to have a worst of all situations where traffic is getting increasingly difficult to enforce, driving is getting more dangerous year by year, and we're terrified…

Part of the public pushback is that people almost always drive the “feels like” speed and not the posted speedlimit. We build 6 lane roads and then wonder why people go 50mph when it’s 35 posted, it’s because it’s 6 lanes and 35 feels slow. Cities profit from this in the form of speed cameras, which is why they’ve been outlawed in a lot of places.

Just because a road "feels" like it can handle more speed does not mean that it is. The wider streets are built to handle the volume of cars, not necessarily meant to become a speed way. There are several 6 lane roads in my area while being wide and well built still have many intersections only controlled by stop signs for the smaller streets with multiple intersections controlled by stop lights at the larger cross streets.

People unable to recognize this and only driving by the feels are the problem. Hand wavy comments like yours suggesting using the feels as being okay do not help the situation

Re: Show HN: Automated license plate reader coverage in the USA

#66

Post by dylan604 »

asdff wrote: post #56
quamserena wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the public pushback is that people almost always drive the “feels like” speed and not the posted speedlimit. We build 6 lane roads and then wonder why people go 50mph when it’s 35 posted, it’s because it’s 6 lanes and 35 feels slow. Cities profit from this in the form of speed cameras, which is why they’ve been outlawed in a lot of places.

The driver blithely keeping with the flow of traffic is not the one I am worried about. It is the one who is aggressively trying to cut through the flow of traffic while putting everyone and themselves in danger that I worry about.

I love when cities time their lights so that aggressive drivers just get hit with waiting at a red light while driving the speed limit means hitting greens for long stretches.

Re: Show HN: Automated license plate reader coverage in the USA

#67

Post by autoexec »

dylan604 wrote: post #63
mikem170 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people would be fine with that. Drivers are impaired while on the phone, even hands-free. Not to mention texting while driving! I kind of picture the cellular telcos doing this. Maybe buses and trains come with wifi hotspots allowed to connect. Otherwise auto passengers could use their devices offline, maybe read an ebook or something. Not the end of the world.

Lots of cars now come with a WiFi hot spot as part of their offerings. There's no way to prevent the driver from also connecting to it and circumventing whatever ill conceived notion this is

Even connected to wifi a cell phone canstill use the wireless network. Even airplane more won't actually stop your phone from connecting anymore. GPS data can also be transmitted in the background over wifi back to apple/google and/or the device manufacturer.

If they really wanted to push this they could do it directly in the baseband chipset and bypass the OS entirely when deciding to lock down the device to some kind of "travel mode" with limited functionality (such as no texting or no browser)

Not that I'm advocating for that sort of thing, but it's good to keep in mind that we don't really own the cellular devices we pay for and that even in the rare case we have root we can't stop them from doing what they want to our devices as long as they control the closed hardware.

Re: Show HN: Automated license plate reader coverage in the USA

#68

Post by dylan604 »

yannyu wrote: post #12

I've thought about this a lot as I see more and more reckless driving in the areas I live in. Surveillance is generally a net negative, but it's also bad when you see people speeding around schools, rolling through stop signs, and running red lights. We seem to have a worst of all situations where traffic is getting increasingly difficult to enforce, driving is getting more dangerous year by year, and we're terrified…

We cracked down on driving under the influence with changes from DWI to DUI. In the 10-15 years you mention, the prevalence of distracted driving from mobile devices has gotten out of hand. There's no field sobriety test that can prove one was distracted by a device. That makes this much more difficult to crack down on.

Re: Show HN: Automated license plate reader coverage in the USA

#69

Post by aners »

yannyu wrote: post #12

I've thought about this a lot as I see more and more reckless driving in the areas I live in. Surveillance is generally a net negative, but it's also bad when you see people speeding around schools, rolling through stop signs, and running red lights. We seem to have a worst of all situations where traffic is getting increasingly difficult to enforce, driving is getting more dangerous year by year, and we're terrified…

We have very few alternatives to driving in the US so we have very lax driver training and testing.

Across the US we have roads and infrastructure that encourage speed right next to decaying pedestrian infrastructure. It's very difficult to get state DOTs to roll back or do traffic calming. They often prohibit the use of bollards or barriers near these roadways.

In a lot, not all, physical changes to the environment could drastically reduce traffic fatalities without surveillance.

Re: Show HN: Automated license plate reader coverage in the USA

#70

Post by cons0le »

MisterTea wrote: post #34
yannyu wrote: post #12

I've thought about this a lot as I see more and more reckless driving in the areas I live in. Surveillance is generally a net negative, but it's also bad when you see people speeding around schools, rolling through stop signs, and running red lights. We seem to have a worst of all situations where traffic is getting increasingly difficult to enforce, driving is getting more dangerous year by year, and we're terrified…

I live in NYC. People used to be afraid of double parking. Like you I regularly see the same bat-shit driving and no one seems to care to say or do anything. It's bonkers.

NYC should have been the model to follow. Instead of flock cameras, cities should have bounty systems: record a video of a speed violation with a plate, and get 10% of the ticket revenue. Enforcement would explode.

We could of had a system where we used the technology we already had in our hands to democratize speed enforcement, instead of corporatizing it

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