NYC wants you to stop taking traffic cam selfies, but here's how to do it anyway

[rKarpinski]

The referenced project is open source https://github.com/wttdotm/traffic_cam_photobooth

TIL NYC traffic cams have a live feed on the web

"NYC DOT traffic cameras only provide live feeds and do not record any footage. There are 919 cameras available via the NYCTMC.org website."[1]

random traffic camera https://webcams.nyctmc.org/api/cameras/a8f2d065-c266-4378-ac...

[1] https://webcams.nyctmc.org/about

[01HNNWZ0MV43FF]

What is their use if they don't record anything? Just to measure current traffic levels? I assumed they were all used as ALPRs. I've seen some cameras sprouting up in my small town and it worries me.

[dave78]

Isn't the most likely outcome here that the city will simply stop allowing public access to the camera feeds?

This feels like it has the potential to be a "this is why we can't have nice things" outcome even though I don't think the app author is doing anything wrong.

[autoexec]

What's the point of making a thing avilable to the public online if you're only going to pull it offline as soon as regular people start using it? I'm sure there are corporations and data brokers quietly collecting info on us using every scrap of publicly avilable data including traffic cams, but the moment regular folks start getting in on the fun and they post a pic of themselves being surveilled on twitter suddenly it's time to shut everything down?

If it's a problem as soon as the average American starts using something, it's probably better if those resources stop being made available period.

[euniceee3]

That is what happened to the local feed for the city I live in. Their mapping data was trash. I went through fixed the GPS, found the typical focalized center of frame, built a basic frontend, and then they shut it all down.

I found the dude that ran it and emailed back and forth with him for a few years. They made excuses about how it is an IT issue.

[alufers]

A bit tangential, but in Poland we also had such traffic cameras with public access (it wasn't a live feed, but a snapshot updated every minute or so). It was provided by a company which won a lot of tenders for IT infrastructure around roads (https://www.traxelektronik.pl/pogoda/kamery/).

What is interesting to me is that the public access to the cameras has been blocked a few months after the war in Ukraine started. For a few months I could watch the large convoys of equipment going towards Ukraine, and my personal theory is that so did the MoD of Russia. I haven't seen any reports about that, just my personal observation.

[zulban]

If you cannot harmlessly use it publicly then it never was a "nice thing we had".

[blackeyeblitzar]

Why does NYC even care? This tendency to govern in a controlling way is not just weird but plain unethical. I hope this goes viral and embarrasses them.

[highcountess]

The response to that should be filing lawsuits to force the government to make public resources like that publicly accessible.

[kayo_20211030]

> "this is why we can't have nice things"

Of course, it'll be used, but that's just a bad, bad argument at any level.

[gosub100]

Tangential, but I'm a subscriber to a YouTube channel called VRF - virtual railfan - that shows essentially "traffic cams" of trains throughout North America. People do take selfies for the cam but always from a safe location.

Over the years, the cams have caught some extraordinary events: maintenance equipment starting fires, trains on fire, numerous derailments, and, I'm not kidding, probably about 100 occurrences of people driving onto the tracks and getting stuck. A disproportionate number of them occurred at Ashland, VA. Which makes me think it's a bug in the traffic design.

[toast0]

> A disproportionate number of them occurred at Ashland, VA. Which makes me think it's a bug in the traffic design.

Without knowledge of the crossing, it's definitely possible. Some crossing designs are better than others, and changing the design of a crossing can be very difficult depending on the site details. Changing the path of rails is always difficult due to the constraints of trains, so a poor crossing will almost certainly need to have the alignment of the road changed, but sometimes there's not enough buildable space around the crossing to build an over or undercrossing (grade separation) and it is expensive and disruptive. Sometimes it's possible to close the road if the crossing is bad and the road is deemed unnecessary, but it's pretty rare to deem roads unnecessary.

[mschuster91]

> and, I'm not kidding, probably about 100 occurrences of people driving onto the tracks and getting stuck. A disproportionate number of them occurred at Ashland, VA. Which makes me think it's a bug in the traffic design.

Can't speak for Ashland, but... educated guess, too steep elevation on the crossing, either from faulty design or bad road maintenance (the segment of road outside the compacted zone surrounding the rail settles from the load of the trucks).

In Germany, we solved that issue mostly by demanding automated radar or manual visual (direct or by camera) checks before clearing a crossing for the passing of a train at intersections that carry heavy haul traffic. However, we have on rarely-used crossings no monitoring, sometimes even no signalling, and just a day ago a freight train absolutely demolished the shit out of a rubble hauler [1].

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AbruptChaos/comments/1hdjzek/a_truc...

[dhx]

For anyone wanting to look at traffic cameras across the US states, almost all are now available in a readily consumable GeoJSON format (with webcam URLs as properties) at [1]. There are two "Intelligent Transport Systems" software providers with 50%+ of US market share and the remainder of states generally use a custom developed website.

[1] Type "transport" and "traffic" as search terms at https://www.alltheplaces.xyz/spiders

[crtasm]

The image with the camera in the mirror shows not every camera requires standing in traffic.

The C&D letter: https://trafficcamphotobooth.com/assets/CeaseAndDesist.pdf

[hackernewds]

breaking the law continues to be a good form of monetization

[aendruk]

Not familiar with this project but I’ve taken a “selfie” with Seattle’s live traffic cameras and it didn’t involve violating any traffic laws. The video lag was such that you could wave at the camera halfway through a crosswalk, get safely to the other side, then pull out your phone and see yourself waving back.

So maybe NYC should just add some lag.

[readthenotes1]

This reminds me of an old sci-fi story, whose name I forgot, which had a world building aside that the government had 1person moviebooths stren throughout the cities where people could pay a quarter to see a 1 minute snippet of the surveillance feeds of every public place. The goal was to see yourself, or at least someone you recognized.

[Something1234]

That sounds incredibly interesting anymore details on where to go see it?

[smelendez]

That may be Triton by Samuel Delany. As I recall, people would go to see a collection of footage of themselves to better understand their personality.

[bofh23]

Channel 72 on Spectrum Cable in NYC cycles through the NYC DOT traffic cameras with realtime update speed albeit in standard definition.

I tune in and leave it on in the background and it’s like having a window with an interesting view. It’s great ambient TV as noted in this article:

[2012-09-18] The Inadvertent Cinema: City Drive Live | The New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/the-inadvert...

The cameras are old, some are black & white, and often they’re over or underexposed with all the interesting video artifacts that entails.

Unlike the webcam access at https://webcams.nyctmc.org/ the cameras update at realtime rates (30 fps) though some are slower.

Sadly, they don’t make the realtime camera cycling available to live stream that I’m aware of. I wish they would for homesick NYers. They don’t even show channel 72 in the Live TV tab of the Spectrum app (perhaps it works when using Spectrum Internet access).

[pbronez]

Buried gem:

“”” Kolman’s mother is a former newspaper writer who was dubbed "The World’s Worst Mom" after she let [his younger brother] ride a New York City subway alone at the age of nine. She parlayed the infamy into a reality TV series of the same name, wrote a book about over-parenting titled Free Range Kids and now travels around the world lecturing on the topic. “””

Nice to see independence-focused parenting churning out some high quality adults.

[olalonde]

It seems the C&D letter caused a Streisand effect.

[thread_id]

That's exactly what it did. Which makes it even funnier!!!!

[crabmusket]

Side note, but I find this image caption very amusing

> Kolman shows the traffic cams his cease-and-desist in Brooklyn and Times Square.

The use of "shows" feels to me like it anthropomorphises the cameras, as if he's sharing the joke with his traffic cam pals.

[myself248]

This reminds me of learning the term "culture jamming", and the antics of a group that would perform silent plays in front of surveillance cameras, not knowing whether someone in a security booth was even watching.

At the time I wondered if they might've anthropomorphized the camera itself as the audience, to be able to emote to it and not focus on the uncertainty of whether there was anyone "else" in attendance.

[microcow]

Makes me thing of Remi Gaillard's "Speed Cameras" from nine years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqrJ_OY8byY

[aaronbrethorst]

Pedantry alert: the Seattle-focused project referenced in the article is showing data about fire and ambulance emergency responses, not police.

“Crime Cameras” certainly sounds more lurid and attention-getting than the reality, which is more like “People in Crisis Cameras”

The data it’s using can be found here: https://web.seattle.gov/sfd/realtime911/getRecsForDatePub.as...

https://driesdepoorter.be/seattlecrimecams/

[Simon_ORourke]

How come I've got to this years old and only learned today that there's a "school for poetic computation" that's mentioned in the article.

[noncanc]

And that has courses described as: the study of art, code, hardware, and critical theory through lenses of decolonization and transformative justice.

[qudat]

That site is ad cancer, can’t see the content at all

[nicce]

> We Care About Your Privacy

> We and our 870 partners store and access personal data, like browsing data or unique identifiers, on your device

They always care so much.

[varenc]

My iOS ad blocker seems to block it all since I see none

[qwe----3]

The page crashed on my phone

[wttdotm]

that's meeeeeeee

[escapecharacter]

I’m so proud of this man.

[radley]

Has this been used for a music video yet?

[Topgamer7]

How the PCMag has fallen.

[irthomasthomas]

"From the experimental School for Poetic Computation, which describes itself as dedicated to “the study of art, code, hardware, and critical theory through lenses of decolonization and transformative justice."