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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

#101

Post by shiroiuma »

aners wrote: post #69
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…

Yep, the US has built itself a car-centric society over the last century, and there's essentially no way to change that now without burning everything down and starting over from scratch. They can't make driver training too strict because too many people would fail, and then have no way to get to work, and then who knows what those people would do. They can't turn cities pedestrian-friendly without tearing down everything there now and just the legal hurdles there are immense. I just don't see a way for this to change meaningfully in a lifetime, outside of a few little pockets here and there (like some towns or cities creating extremely limited pedestrian-only zones, which would then need a lot of parking to be useful for people, basically like an outdoor shopping mall).

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

#102

Post by shiroiuma »

selectodude wrote: post #58
ajross wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are incorrect Sigh. I hate that phrasing. But OK, fine: you are misreading me, misanalysing the data, or just plain spinning to mislead readers. Fatalities per capita and per mile driven go steadily downward until covid, and maybe there's a bump after that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in... If you have numbers (you don't cite any) showing otherwise, they are being polluted by demog…

According to the link that you posted, the roads in Germany in 2002 were quite a bit safer than the roads are in the USA in 2025. And they don’t have speed limits. Absolute no brainer to me. Anyway, not to pile on but you are absolutely incorrect. Forgive the phrasing.

German roads absolutely do have speed limits. Only certain rural sections of the Autobahn don't, but that's not representative of the country as a whole, or even the Autobahn as a whole.

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

#104

Post by duskdozer »

tamimio wrote: post #73

What about Ring cams? Is there a deRing site? Also, the flock cams are beyond ALPR, I saw a video before about some investigation and one of the things was how flock was used to recognize a car without a plate. Flock is an automated car recognition system, the plate is just part of it. Makes me wonder if having extremely unique or “cloaking” car design will fool it.

I swear it's about 75% of houses I come across that have ring (or similar) cameras

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

#105

Post by chiefalchemist »

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…

Eventually we’ll have autonomous vehicles which will mitigate many of these issues, but will the surveillance infrastructure then be reduced? Probably not.

War is peace.

Surveillance is safety.

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

#106

Post by DeathArrow »

So you have a set of positions for some services (coffee shops, groceries), a set of positions for cameras and a set of positions for homes.

But how you model people actually driving each day and their paths? Because the accuracy of your conclusions seems to heavily depend on the accuracy of modelling.

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

#108

Post by mschuster91 »

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…

> 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.

Speeding and running red lights can be combated without affecting the privacy of innocents on the road. A debate can and should be had about the placement of radar traps though, many are straight off highway robberies trapping people who don't notice a speed-limit sign that is visually hard to notice.

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

#109

Post by potato3732842 »

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…

The solution is to have you abused by the system so that you realize that petty deviance is not something the dragnet should be brought to bear on if it must exist at all.

Your opinions are directly counterproductive on these petty issues. You ask for the state to use the jackboot. The jackboot just makes people hate the state and think in terms of "will I get caught". If not for you people trying to force compliance on this, that and the next thing the state would be in higher standing in people's minds and voluntary "when it matters" or "because it's the right thing to do" compliance would be higher. Sure, we could add more jackboot, but that costs money and no democratic-ish system is gonna allocate a bunch of money to do stuff everyone hates.

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

#110

Post by potato3732842 »

autoexec wrote: post #39
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…

> 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…

The standards for evidince, processes for enforcement and court side of things are not set up for cheap enforcement of "that clearly ain't right" behavior. They're set up for revenue enforcement of easy to prove but not necessarily bad in abstract offenses.

Police can't substantially increase enforcement overall because that would just cause bad political optics, say nothing of stops that needlessly escalate to being newsworthy in a bad way. They'd necessarily issue a hundred petty bullshit tickets for every deserved ticket for legitimately bad behavior. It just wouldn't work. It would be like trying to plow a field with the ripper on the back of a bulldozer. It kinda looks similar but it's wrong for the job.

And all of this is based on the assumption that we're trying to enforce things that the broad public agrees need strict enforcement, not whatever the original comment wants.

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