[yannyu]

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 of government overreach if we add any automation at all to enforcement.

I don't know the solution, but I do know that in the US we've lost 10-15 years of progress when it comes to traffic fatalities.

[autoexec]

> 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 without the need of these devices. We have evidence that they've been doing less traffic enforcement so maybe start there. Increasing our standards for driving tests (some of which were eliminated entirely over the first few years of the pandemic) would probably help. 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. Bringing physical buttons and dials back to cars instead of burying common functions in touchscreen menus might help.

There's a whole lot of places to look for solutions to safer roads before we have to resort to tracking everyone's movements at all times.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

In the US, a traffic ticket is an indictment of a crime (says it on the ticket. I wish I didn't know that fact).

That means that you have a right to trial/appeal, and the accuser (the cop) needs to show up, if you request a trial.

Traffic cameras can't accuse you of a crime, so they are considered civil infractions (no points, but also means they are a bitch to appeal). They can issue realtime civil citations, though.

ALPRS can't do either. They are forensic tools; not enforcement tools.

I believe in the UK, a camera can convict you of a crime, so they can issue severe tickets. They wouldn't really be able to do that, in the US.

In my county (Suffolk, NY), they just stopped all the redlight cameras. I doubt they would do so for ALPRs.

Also, I think some ALPRs are private. There's a shopping center, not too far from here, that's in a relatively high-crime neighborhood. They have cameras and ALPRs, all over the parking lots.

[nerdsniper]

> 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.

[potato3732842]

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.

[ericmcer]

They have done automated enforcement a few times and it always sucks because the systems don't use discretion.

Someone going 40 in a 30 and swerving around other cars gets treated the same as someone going 40 when the road is empty. Someone slowing to 1-2mph before safely rolling through a stop sign get the same ding as someone blowing through it at 30mph.

If AIs can somehow learn how to take all this footage and enforce the spirit of the law (citing dangerous driving) instead of the letter I will fully support it.

[fragmede]

The answer is to take the human out of the equation, and have the computer drive. Comma.ai works well enough. Tesla is mostly there. Waymo works.

[jollyllama]

This! Things keep getting worse and worse, and we keep getting more surveillance. It's clearly not the answer!

[chaps]

  > but it's also bad when you see people speeding around schools, rolling through stop signs, and running red lights.

This is not what Flock seeks to curb.

[genewitch]

so what do they seek to curb? freedom of movement?

[aners]

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.

[shiroiuma]

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).

[fusslo]

100% agree

my local middle school has their school zone on:

1. four lane highway

2. dedicated turning lanes

3. major thru-way between shops, apartments, and the rest of the city

4. great visibility

this is a recipe for 50mph. the speed limit is 25mph. If you do the speed limit, you WILL be tailgated. If you do ~35, you're risking a ticket. There will still be people doing 45-50 and weave through the lanes.

also in my town, the main thru-way is a route dating back to the 30s. There are red lights at major intersections and they WILL turn red even if no one is there. They're designed to slow people down. HOWEVER if you speed and run a yellow light, you'll hit ALL the lights green! It shaves significant time off your trip, is easier on your car, is more enjoyable, and requires less attention. It's a system designed to make people speed and run reds.

Where I used to live, I could get from one side of the city to the other in a maximum of 30 minutes. the lights were designed to keep traffic flowing at 30-35mph. It ENCOURAGED you to go no faster, or you'll have to slow down and come to a stop. This also kept traffic flowing so you felt like you HAD to focus on driving. They also did things to encourage bicycles and make things safer for pedestrians.

[hamdingers]

I agree. It's frustrating that we have ended up in a reality where vehicle movement is heavily tracked, but we're not using that technology to do the most obvious and productive thing.

My city spent a few million dollars installing Flock cameras to all its municipal parking garages in a matter of months, but has been hemming and hawing over adding a few speed cameras for years, despite petitioning the state for an allowance do so back in 2023.

Traffic enforcement cameras don't even have to become the networked surveillance system that Flock offers. Most are still cameras triggered by radar rather than perpetually recording all drivers.

[MisterTea]

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.

[cons0le]

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

[sodality2]

These cameras are currently not used at all for traffic/speed enforcement. The best they would do is track more serious crimes like hit-and-runs by photographing cars in the area.

[yannyu]

Ah, that's helpful and something for me to learn more about. Thanks for the info.

[jldugger]

On my way home, I noticed at a stoplight across the street from Apple Park that the driver in the lane next to me had his phone mounted up high in landscape mode and was watching the Simpsons. Just absolutely unhinged behavior lately.

[sgc]

Your examples don't seem to represent the leading causes of fatalities from traffic accidents in the US, which remain distracted driving (phones and crappy touchscreen controls, etc) and drunk driving. People rolling through a stop sign / performing a 'California' stop are nowhere near the massive security concern to authorize the ideal surveillance state. To deal with the bigger issues you would have to film peoples actions in their cars and run it all through ai to accuse them of driving while drowsy. That would be an incredible and lazy failure. Also, fatalities per mile had a massive surge in 2020-2021, but they have been steadily dropping since then (2024 in wikipedia estimated a 1.27 per 1m miles, about the same as 2008). If the trend continues, in a year or two we will be back to the early 2010s lows without draconian measures.

The solution, as always, is better infrastructure and support at multiple levels, not beating everybody with a stick.

[potato3732842]

I get the vibe from his comment that the visible deviance from rules of the state is what he's really concerned with and that the death and destruction is just the reason everyone else is suppose to care.

[drunner]

A camera doesn't stop those acts though, it may only discourage those who know about it at a huge cost of privacy and rights.

How about we build better infrastructure and regulate vehicles since those do actually stop this behavior. Most of those red lights and stoplights in the US should be roundabouts. Narrower lanes and other traffic calming measures should be much more pervasive. Vehicle size, specifically bumper height is out of control.

Compare US traffic and pedestrian deaths to the rest of the world, or at least a lot of EU countries. Its embarrassing.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/74/wr/mm7408a2.htm#F1_down

[mrb]

Thanks for this CDC link! So the pedestrian death rate and the overall road traffic death rate is about three times higher in the US compared to other high-income countries... Mind-boggling.

[tristor]

> Vehicle size, specifically bumper height is out of control.

Many manufacturers are now selling pre-lifted trucks. Here in Texas around a third of the vehicles on the road are pickup trucks, and about half of those have been lifted beyond standard height either from the factory or aftermarket, another third of vehicles are SUVs, most of which are significantly larger than necessary to be fit for purpose for the driver and occupants.

This situation was /caused/ by government regulation and it can be fixed by government regulation. It's absolutely absurd the gargantuan vehicles most people drive in the US, and the fact that we let people turn their vehicles into monster trucks and then operate them on public roads with impunity. I don't care how small someone's dick is, they don't get the right to drive a truck down the highway that can literally drive /over/ a modern standard sedan/hatchback. The continuing absurdity has turned into an iterated prisoner's dilemma which has resulted in more and more people buying SUVs and crossovers who by every measure do NOT need them. Absolutely is out of control, and it negatively impacts everyone, including the drivers of these vehicles.

[Breza]

Here in Washington DC we've set up many different types of traffic cameras. One side effect is a reduction in the number of negative interactions the average person has with the police. There are communities where the cops treat people like piggy banks and spend tons of time aggressively enforcing minor traffic violations. That has negative effects on trust, not to mention the number of fatal interactions that have stemmed from traffic stops. Other jobs that can be done by the police in other places are handled by Parking Enforcement, the Department of Buildings, etc.

The recent presence of federal agents and soldiers has reversed some of the hard-fought gains in trust, but my broader point still stands: more automated enforcement of traffic laws has positive effects in how people interact with the police. This effect needs to be balanced against the harms of increased surveillance.

[1][https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/transportation/poli...]

[chiefalchemist]

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.

[tristor]

> driving is getting more dangerous year by year

My observation has been that the danger increase is a combination of three things:

1. Lack of situational awareness/awareness of surroundings. This manifests in various ways like improper merging, improper turns into traffic, turning across multiple lanes, and left-lane hogs.

2. Frustration becomes aggression. This also manifests in multiple ways, but primarily is seen through tail-gating (in response to left-lane hogs) and swimming through traffic (in response to left-lane hogs), as well as road-rage (mostly in response to the other misbehavior).

3. Constant distraction. I have seen SO MANY drivers literally watching videos on a tablet, playing games, or otherwise driving at high rates of speed (70mph+) while fully engaged in something other than driving. It's at epidemic proportions.

The issue is, by and large, not people doing rolling stops (which by the way have never been proven to cause an increase in accidents when performed properly) or speeding (generally, some exceptions like school zones do matter). Running red lights is definitely a problem that is more common place, and is likely a part of all 3 of these these.

I feel like to a large degree all of this is a symptom of a wider societial issue where everyone acts in selfish and self-centered ways, completely ignoring their impacts on others, and moving from moments to moments where they can engage with their phone/social-media, to the exclusion of all else. I don't think phones/social-media /caused/ the problem, I think it exacerbates it though. Every aspect of our society is worsening because the revealed behavior of our population is one of lack of care or outright disdain for everyone else around them and an absolute obsession with serving their own interests above all else. That this manifests in driving is unsurprising.

[lunias]

IMO the issue is that there's little to no enforcement outside of speeding. I see people get pulled over for speeding in a straight line even if it's relatively safe to do so, but never for talking on their phone, messing with the touch screen in their vehicle, left turns from the right lane and vice versa, failure to keep lane, failure to yield, failure to signal, cutting people off, driving a vehicle unfit for the road, etc.

It usually takes about 5 minutes of driving to observe someone doing something that I would pull them over for. I don't think cops need all this automated surveillance, they just need to drive around and be proactive.

[mschuster91]

> 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.

[gosub100]

I would actually be for civil asset forfeiture in these cases. The laws of physics don't care about due process; sue the car and save the video. Let the owner pay the fines and if they can prove some other driver did it, let them file civil suit against them to recoup the fines. Driving on public property is not a right.

[dylan604]

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.

[loeg]

Sure, though it is very easy to visually identify drivers looking at their phones. (Unless they have illegal tint.)

[quamserena]

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.

[asdff]

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.

[derektank]

If the speeds aren’t appropriate for the built environment, then the limits should be changed or the environment should be changed. Enforcement of the law should be consistent regardless of the quality of the law.

[arjie]

The speed cameras in San Francisco have to result in lowered speeding over the 18 month period they're active. If they don't, they will be pulled. Seems pretty well-designed. Perhaps the fines are weak but it's good that they're there.

[dylan604]

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

[privacypoet]

I agree. And Flock doesn’t help one bit with reducing reckless driving.

[potato3732842]

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.

[ajross]

> driving is getting more dangerous year by year

Not over the long term, no. There may have been a recent uptick in the post-pandemic US but it's mostly just noise. Fatalities per mile driven have been going down markedly in recent decades. Driving was twice as dangerous in the 80's as it is now.

[hamdingers]

You are incorrect. Fatalities in the US leveled out in the early 2010s and have been climbing since then. In all other developed nations they continued trending downwards.

This is not a statistical anomaly that can be handwaved by pointing out that things were worse 40 years ago. Roads in the US are uniquely lethal and getting moreso.

[standardUser]

That's thanks entirely to government-required safety features, not skilled drivers.