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The author does a good job highlighting the profiteering use of these devices. My concern is that when you're issued a ticket by one of these you're never trul

The author does a good job highlighting the profiteering use of these devices. My concern is that when you're issued a ticket by one of these you're never truly given a chance to examine the evidence. We have fallen prey to the idea that the magic box says you did it, therefore you did it. There is no examination of the "thought process" of the magic box. That's all protected as proprietary. In a setting where you have an arresting officer you can question the officer in court you can question his thought process his procedure you can understand why he made the decision he made and challenge all of those base assumptions. Because if there was some flaw in his initial reason for the suspicion there was no basis of charging you with a crime. With the magic box we are allowed to do none of this. It's assumed that the software in the magic box apparently has zero bugs or those bugs would become readily apparent when you test a known set of inputs against a expected set of outputs. Anyone who's got any kind of software engineering experience knows that if you have a test of expected inputs with expected outputs you will make your software match that. without the full disclosure of the code that's running on the device for examination there is no effective cross-examination of the one witness the state has against you for violation of a crime. That's the only way we can examine the thought process of the magic box itself. Until courts can be convinced to throw out cases when the source code is not produced this kind of thing will happen. The assumption that the magic box is right and will always be right. Because you can't even get the magic box to perform your own testing you are never allowed to examine the evidence against you.

throwawayq6tti 6y ago
IANAL, but the way I understand it is that the way they get around that is by making the violation a civil penalty, not a criminal offense. You can fight it and maybe get a "hearing" but really would have to go out of your way to get an actual judge involved. Good news, doesn't affect your driving record. Bad news, everything else that is wrong with it on every level still applies.
- chris_wot 6y ago
  At this point, it sounds like they need a class action lawsuit.
beagle3 6y ago
Israel has, in many cities, switched to video evidence - you can review the a movie of the claimed infraction from a few minutes before to a few minutes after it happened. The exact algorithm doesn't matter w.r.t to any specific event -- although it does matter if you claim e.g. selective enforcement. There's still issues of authenticity, integrity, time keeping precision, etc - but I think these are better understood problems; no idea if source code for those was ever demanded (or available), or if they were challenged.
suifbwish 6y ago
It’s an awful shame that it is becoming so popular to burn out the sensors on these with high wattage infrared lasers
- phobosanomaly 6y ago
  Slightly different tack, but I was thinking if you had a license frame that had enough infrared LEDs around it, it wouldn't be visible to LEO officers, but the glare might disrupt any license-plate scanners on police cars, or traffic cameras. I googled it, and it's been discussed a bit in a previous HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9258462 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9258462
AlfeG 6y ago
In Russia tickets from camera are issued by police officer. There is also a lot of errors, but You can go to court with a person that sign You a ticket. And it works.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  And if you don’t want a ticket, you can just buy one of the license plates that are exempt. It works!
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- merpnderp 6y ago
  In my state in the US traffic cameras can not be used to issue traffic fines and license plate readers can only be used by an officer in an equipped car. Corruption is real and it’s good to have laws reflect this.
smileysteve 6y ago
> In a setting where you have an arresting officer you can question the officer in court you can question his thought process his procedure you can understand why he made the decision he made and challenge all of those base assumptions. This is strange as many jurisdictions take an officer's written report of crimes as a higher form of evidence than any other evidence (video), combined with post court revealations that officers routinely lie under oath. Then you have the whole escalation issue, where a failed turn signal, excessive (or, now less than excessive) speed, or failure to stop leads to a situation where 1. The police officer is likely to be hit by a vehicle while on the side of the road 2. The stopped driver may react erratically 3. The stopping officer may act erratically. With recent American police failings coming to light, we should welcome video evidence as safer and more accurate for all parties
- Fjolsvith 6y ago
  A person could just remove themselves from statutory jurisdiction and travel "outside the box". https://theamericanstatesassembly.net/correct-your-status https://theamericanstatesassembly.net/correct-your-status
duxup 6y ago
The state supreme court of Minnesota struck down traffic cams as they felt it was unfair because: >The court argued that Minneapolis had, in effect, created a new type of crime: "owner liability for red-light violations where the owner neither required nor knowingly permitted the violation."
LorenPechtel 6y ago
I would take a different approach: The source code shouldn't be allowed to testify in the first place. Do whatever you want with the black box but the court should ignore it. What the camera should do is produce a video of the offense and that's the only thing the court should look at. The case where the source matters is the breathalyzer--and in that case it shouldn't matter because the the system is *inherently* seriously flawed by biology: breath alcohol is not a good indication of blood alcohol. The breathalyzer should only be used to figure out who needs to be blood tested, it is not remotely reliable enough for court.
perryizgr8 6y ago
> My concern is that when you're issued a ticket by one of these you're never truly given a chance to examine the evidence. This is my issue with alcohol breath-analyzers as well. I have no knowledge about how they work, whether they truly measure the amount of alcohol one has ingested, or they infer it from some other measure. I have read accounts from people saying even eating a lot of carbs can trigger the detectors. But since I am no expert, challenging the issue at a traffic stop is very difficult. I am very particular about never driving after having a drink, I even go so far as not driving the same day if I've had even a single beer. But every time a policeman stops me and asks me to blow into the device, I'm scared that it will go off. And my point is that I shouldn't be scared, given that I am not breaking the rule.

throwawayq6tti 6y ago

IANAL, but the way I understand it is that the way they get around that is by making the violation a civil penalty, not a criminal offense. You can fight it and maybe get a "hearing" but really would have to go out of your way to get an actual judge involved. Good news, doesn't affect your driving record. Bad news, everything else that is wrong with it on every level still applies.

chris_wot 6y ago
At this point, it sounds like they need a class action lawsuit.

beagle3 6y ago

Israel has, in many cities, switched to video evidence - you can review the a movie of the claimed infraction from a few minutes before to a few minutes after it happened. The exact algorithm doesn't matter w.r.t to any specific event -- although it does matter if you claim e.g. selective enforcement. There's still issues of authenticity, integrity, time keeping precision, etc - but I think these are better understood problems; no idea if source code for those was ever demanded (or available), or if they were challenged.

suifbwish 6y ago

It’s an awful shame that it is becoming so popular to burn out the sensors on these with high wattage infrared lasers

phobosanomaly 6y ago
Slightly different tack, but I was thinking if you had a license frame that had enough infrared LEDs around it, it wouldn't be visible to LEO officers, but the glare might disrupt any license-plate scanners on police cars, or traffic cameras. I googled it, and it's been discussed a bit in a previous HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9258462 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9258462

AlfeG 6y ago

In Russia tickets from camera are issued by police officer. There is also a lot of errors, but You can go to court with a person that sign You a ticket. And it works.

tinus_hn 6y ago
And if you don’t want a ticket, you can just buy one of the license plates that are exempt. It works!
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
merpnderp 6y ago
In my state in the US traffic cameras can not be used to issue traffic fines and license plate readers can only be used by an officer in an equipped car. Corruption is real and it’s good to have laws reflect this.

smileysteve 6y ago

> In a setting where you have an arresting officer you can question the officer in court you can question his thought process his procedure you can understand why he made the decision he made and challenge all of those base assumptions. This is strange as many jurisdictions take an officer's written report of crimes as a higher form of evidence than any other evidence (video), combined with post court revealations that officers routinely lie under oath. Then you have the whole escalation issue, where a failed turn signal, excessive (or, now less than excessive) speed, or failure to stop leads to a situation where 1. The police officer is likely to be hit by a vehicle while on the side of the road 2. The stopped driver may react erratically 3. The stopping officer may act erratically. With recent American police failings coming to light, we should welcome video evidence as safer and more accurate for all parties

Fjolsvith 6y ago
A person could just remove themselves from statutory jurisdiction and travel "outside the box". https://theamericanstatesassembly.net/correct-your-status https://theamericanstatesassembly.net/correct-your-status

duxup 6y ago

The state supreme court of Minnesota struck down traffic cams as they felt it was unfair because: >The court argued that Minneapolis had, in effect, created a new type of crime: "owner liability for red-light violations where the owner neither required nor knowingly permitted the violation."

LorenPechtel 6y ago

I would take a different approach: The source code shouldn't be allowed to testify in the first place. Do whatever you want with the black box but the court should ignore it. What the camera should do is produce a video of the offense and that's the only thing the court should look at. The case where the source matters is the breathalyzer--and in that case it shouldn't matter because the the system is *inherently* seriously flawed by biology: breath alcohol is not a good indication of blood alcohol. The breathalyzer should only be used to figure out who needs to be blood tested, it is not remotely reliable enough for court.

perryizgr8 6y ago

> My concern is that when you're issued a ticket by one of these you're never truly given a chance to examine the evidence. This is my issue with alcohol breath-analyzers as well. I have no knowledge about how they work, whether they truly measure the amount of alcohol one has ingested, or they infer it from some other measure. I have read accounts from people saying even eating a lot of carbs can trigger the detectors. But since I am no expert, challenging the issue at a traffic stop is very difficult. I am very particular about never driving after having a drink, I even go so far as not driving the same day if I've had even a single beer. But every time a policeman stops me and asks me to blow into the device, I'm scared that it will go off. And my point is that I shouldn't be scared, given that I am not breaking the rule.