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With advances in technology, the trend is that we are more and more able to catch speeding, red light passing, and other infractions. And it turns out a lot of

With advances in technology, the trend is that we are more and more able to catch speeding, red light passing, and other infractions. And it turns out a lot of people are eventually doing some. I'm wondering what would be the consequences of a truly omniscient system, where each and every infraction would be immediately caught. We could maybe have mandatory black boxes in vehicles that transmit the infraction in real time. It seems with a truly complete system, every driver would eventually run out of points on their license and wouldn't be allowed to drive anymore.

ryanmarsh 8y ago
I started asking my family over ten years ago: What do you imagine life will be like when a super high resolution camera with terabytes of storage that can run on a solar cell costs $5? Because that’s where we’re headed.
btrettel 8y ago
I don't think following the rules of the road the vast majority of the time is that hard. Yes, you will make mistakes from time to time, but any reasonable system would recognize that. And sometimes following the law is less safe, but that's extremely rare in my experience. The problem is that many drivers, if not the majority of drivers, have no problem intentionally breaking the law as it suits them (e.g., speeding, unsafe passing, etc.). I am a cyclist who rides with a helmet camera. It's amazing how much this seems to change some drivers' behavior. One moment they're rude and/or dangerous, the next they are keeping their distance and driving the speed limit. These drivers choose to drive dangerously because they think it saves time. (I'd argue the time savings are much smaller than they believe.) These people are the ones I think an automated system would catch, and I have no problem with that. (As a cyclist, I follow the law to the letter, by the way. You will not catch me running reds. In fact, I have gone through the local police's stop sign enforcement efforts twice and passed.)

ryanmarsh 8y ago

I started asking my family over ten years ago: What do you imagine life will be like when a super high resolution camera with terabytes of storage that can run on a solar cell costs $5? Because that’s where we’re headed.

btrettel 8y ago

I don't think following the rules of the road the vast majority of the time is that hard. Yes, you will make mistakes from time to time, but any reasonable system would recognize that. And sometimes following the law is less safe, but that's extremely rare in my experience. The problem is that many drivers, if not the majority of drivers, have no problem intentionally breaking the law as it suits them (e.g., speeding, unsafe passing, etc.). I am a cyclist who rides with a helmet camera. It's amazing how much this seems to change some drivers' behavior. One moment they're rude and/or dangerous, the next they are keeping their distance and driving the speed limit. These drivers choose to drive dangerously because they think it saves time. (I'd argue the time savings are much smaller than they believe.) These people are the ones I think an automated system would catch, and I have no problem with that. (As a cyclist, I follow the law to the letter, by the way. You will not catch me running reds. In fact, I have gone through the local police's stop sign enforcement efforts twice and passed.)