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Australia uses new technology to catch drivers on phones

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Re: Australia uses new technology to catch drivers on phones

#131

Post by manigandham »

megablast wrote: post #70
homonculus1 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't need police-connected camera networks running machine learning in any US city.

Yes, we do. Every single car should be tracked. 40,000 people are killed every year due to car drivers, we should start taking this seriously.

There is an eternal balance between freedom and privacy for the sake of security. The US has usually remained on the freedom side but rights are being eroded constantly.

There are better ways to increase driver and road safety than setting up an ever-present surveillance network in every city. I'm surprised by how many HN users argue against surveillance (for example some fuzzy ad tracking) and yet are fine with having recordings of every physical movement.

Re: Australia uses new technology to catch drivers on phones

#132

Post by megablast »

quotemstr wrote: post #29
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #21

Kinda funny how HN is normally anti-surveillance and against automated law enforcement unless you frame it as something pro-social. At the end of the day this is still a camera network capable of being repurposed for more sinister means of revenue generation at the whim of the government. If you really want to stop this behavior post a cop on the corner. His presence will prevent people from all sorts of other minor…

It's simpler than that: a lot of HN posters are just anti-car, and anything that makes driving less convenient is a good thing in their eyes.

Of course, there are a lot of smart people here.

Re: Australia uses new technology to catch drivers on phones

#133

Post by gnicholas »

foobar1962 wrote: post #93
gruez wrote: post #12

>But it is illegal to touch a phone while driving except to pass it to a passenger. The ban even applies to drivers who are stationary at red lights or stuck in traffic jams. This sounds like a hassle for anyone trying to use gps on their phones. Also, doesn't this essentially outlaw rideshare drivers? How can you accept rides or confirm a pickup if you can't touch the phone? I never saw any driver use voice commands…

I just read the NSW legislation. Phones cannot be touched except for passing to a passenger. To be used to take calls they must be operated hands-free. For GPS and speed apps, it IS legal to touch the device, as long as it is mounted.

That's a great way to treat GPS apps. In CA, our law is across-the-board, and it doesn't matter if you're playing candy crush or using navigation. I wish we had a GPS carveout, though I've never heard of anyone who was legit using navigation on a mounted device getting a ticket for having done so in CA.

Re: Australia uses new technology to catch drivers on phones

#134

Post by angry_octet »

clairity wrote: post #86
y4mi wrote: post #3

So they're ramping up the detection of people using their phones while waiting for the traffic light to turn green? Doesn't really sound like this is actually about safety. I doubt these cameras can capture the photo do a decent quality on that angle for anything but standing or very slow moving cars But I guess we can hope it will stop some people, even if there will be a lot of people caught that weren't really end…

i perused the article and saw nowhere that it said that this would only be used at red lights, which i'd oppose, since that's relatively safer (to look at a phone) than while actually driving (perfect shouldn't be the enemy of better). apparently some cameras are fixed and some are mobile, but presumably they're checking cars that are both moving and stationary (if it so happens to be in view of the camera when/where…

You are correct, it is designed to catch moving traffic, but it would also catch someone going underneath in a stationary traffic jam.

Actually studies have shown that people on (hands free) phone calls are also very distracted from the task of driving, driving slower than the traffic, around corners etc. [Haque et el at QUT. A small study in a simulator, but it certainly matches anecdotal observation... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00014... ]

Just tuning the radio or even listening to the radio can increase response times. Unsurprisingly, having children in the car can also significantly increase risk. [MUARC] Remember that next time you see a Baby On Board sign.

Re: Australia uses new technology to catch drivers on phones

#137

Post by drivingeve »

tiew9Vii wrote: post #114
Sendotsh wrote: post #89

Good. People in Australia don't take driving seriously. I spend a lot of time on the road, and have lived all over Australia, and the one defining thing I've found in common all over the country is that people are WAY too casual about driving. Sydney and Melbourne being the worst by far, with it being so bad it has become entertainment[0] On any given commute you'll see dozens of people playing with their phone while…

Completely agree. I can’t figure it out though, they have some strict standards getting a license, red p’s for 12-24 months + 120 logbook hours, then green p’s where they are restricted to dangerous below highway speeds so have drivers aggressively overtaking them. Despite this, standards seem far lower than Europe. The horn thing is really annoying, often the person being beeped can’t move forward anyway due to traf…

The difference between European and Australian drivers is not that Australians have to do 120 hours of supervised driving, but that the supervisor for the hours of driving in Australia is usually the parents of the learner. So any bad habbits from parents are taught between generations.

Compare that to the European system where you are requiredto hire a professional driving instructor to teach you (at great expense I might add) for the entire time you are learning.

And because of that, the culture in Australia seems to be that driving is a right where as Europeans seem to treat it as more of a privilege.

Re: Australia uses new technology to catch drivers on phones

#138

Post by Marsymars »

hug wrote: post #92
jjulius wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Can you demonstrate, using numbers, that the tradeoff is positive? Are you kidding? If I pull over to a safe place to use my phone, nobody is harmed. If I'm driving and take my attention off of the road and over to my phone, and I smack into a motorcyclist because I didn't see them, I could kill them . >The current animus against cell phone use while driving is the result of a moral panic, not a rational cost-benefi…

There are 268 million vehicles in the United States. If we assume that each vehicle makes two trips per day on average, and than the number of minutes of inconvenience taken up by pulling over to operate a phone is 5, that’d be 2.68 billion minutes of inconvenience per day alone! We can be generous and put the intrinsic value of a human life at the average lifespan in the US of 78 years, or 41 million minutes. That m…

> If we assume that each vehicle makes two trips per day on average, and than the number of minutes of inconvenience taken up by pulling over to operate a phone is 5,

Once you need to pull over to check your phone you realize that you can just wait until your destination. I never touch my phone while driving, but I'd estimate the time I spend pulled over to use my phone to be more in the area of 5 minutes per couple thousand km.

Re: Australia uses new technology to catch drivers on phones

#139

Post by badwolf »

uoaei wrote: post #130
megaremote wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That just sounds like a huge change that will take a long time and a lot of money to do.

With all the discussion on HN about "technical debt" I wonder why the same sort of strategies to avoid technical debt aren't applied outside the domain of software engineering. Sure, it's effort now to do the smarter-but-harder thing, but the payoff will be huge in a few decades. Sure beats having a police state that is precipitated by goody-two-shoes demanding video surveillance of nearly all public roads in the USA…

Probably because leaders have to get elected, and "we're going to work through this backlog" is far less exciting in general to "new features!"

Re: Australia uses new technology to catch drivers on phones

#140

Post by aussieguy1234 »

Australian drivers aren't the best, but they're better behaved than drivers in SE Asia. I've driven in Australia and the Philippines. In the Philippines, road rules aren't enforced. In Australia they are, but people don't always follow the rules anyway.
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