9 ms·

A smartphone app that allows public to submit evidence of speeding drivers

josephcsible 5y ago
Almost every speed limit is set lower than it should be, presumably to maximize revenue instead of maximizing safety. Until this changes, I want enforcement of speed limits to be poor.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- cnntth 5y ago
  Disagree - especially in cities -, but I think road design is a better way of enforcing speed limits. If everyone is going faster than the speed limit, the road is the problem not the limit.
- ay 5y ago
  Sometimes there’s fog. Heavy rain. Snow. Dusk. Or all or some of the above. I want the speed limits to be set situationally and automatically be capped via the communication to the car itself. This would eliminate the need of fines and human enforcement, and the associated conflicts.
- dashundchen 5y ago
  I would say in the US, our road design means our speed limits are way too high for safe travel. Speed limits are set high with no attempt at reducing points of conflict. It's a meme at this point, but Not Just Bikes does a great job covering the terrible "stroad". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM Most places in the US are filled with wide, multi-lane roads posted for speed limits of 35-45 mph. But those roads will be packed with unsignaled driveways, where drivers entering the road needed to make unprotected and right left turns with and against traffic that's likely going 45-55mph, and drivers on the road need to predict the behavior of cars coming from almost any direction. Meanwhile, a thin stripe of white paint gets added to the gutter and is somehow called a bike lane - like anyone wants to ride their bike at the same grade as 2+ ton trucks flying by within a foot of your handlebars. Those same lanes will frequently disappear or reappear within a shoulder, and at intersections will suddenly cross or dump you out into a right turn lane. Better hope that driver turning right noticed you before you get hooked. It's even worse for pedestrians, where even in dense cities, a walk signal is by no means a safe time to walk. Unsignaled left and right-on-red means a car will likely fly through their path at any given moment. On your way to this intersection, you'll continuously cross driveways and slip lanes with curve radii to encourage speeding, sidewalks that dump you into parking lots (if they exist at all!).
- bryanlarsen 5y ago
  There's a good argument to be made that almost all urban speed limits are too high. Below 20 mph a collision with a pedestrian might cause injury but is unlikely to be fatal. Above that, the fatality rate increases dramatically. Sweden has a policy that all roads shared with pedestrians and cyclists have a maximum speed of 20mph, and have spent a lot of money on infrastructure to separate roads so that cars aren't completely inconvenienced by the rules. https://visionzeronetwork.org/about/what-is-vision-zero/ https://visionzeronetwork.org/about/what-is-vision-zero/
- rkangel 5y ago
  Can you support this claim? Also it seems backwards - the UK got close to increasing its speed limits on motorways recently. The tradeoff was between economic benefits from more efficient travel on motorways and increased risk due to the higher speeds. The discussion was supported with ample data, although I believe it didn't succeed for political reasons. You're suggesting almost exactly the opposite.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Increasing speed limits to reflect the prevailing traffic speeds has long since been found to increase the speeds of most of the slowest traffic (the people blindly adhering to the posted number) and and reduce the amount of passing, lane changing and other interactions thereby increasing safety. Basically the more homogeneous in speed and behavior the traffic is the safer it is. You should be able to Google up some civil engineering studies at will. This stuff was "new" decades ago.
    - cnntth 5y ago
      Safer for whom though? Drivers are not the only road users.
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        Obviously you can't have traffic going 60mph in Manhatten but to a point everyone benefits. Uneven traffic flow results in a lot of lane changing and passing and when drivers are preparing to do those moves they're spending a lot of effort figuring out where the cars are and that creates a prime opportunity for anything motorcycle and smaller to be missed. So yeah, a uniform 30ish MPH traffic flow on your city street is probably better than a more bimodal one even if the average speed is slightly higher.
mc4ndr3 5y ago
Where do we submit public evidence of overly elaborate signage that distracts from road conditions?
Johnyma22 5y ago
Some of my wheelbases on some of my converted vehicles are not what will be stored on record (often the DVSA/DVLA provide the incorrect information especially for historic vehicles).
ho_schi 5y ago
Do I get that right, a denunciate app? I'm myself riding a road-bike and driving a car. Seeing an enemy in each other doesn't help! What is next? An app for car drivers to report road-bikers which ride on the road instead of a bad and dangerous bikeway? I recite the first and second traffic rules in Germany. I assume other countries have similar rules? Participation in road traffic requires constant caution and mutual consideration. Anyone participating in traffic must behave in such a way that no other person is harmed, endangered or obstructed or inconvenienced more than is unavoidable under the circumstances. I would appreciate if people care about each other on the road.
- tenebrisalietum 5y ago
  People should, but making people care without strong familial bonds is impossible, and even then it's not guaranteed. When people's behavior could kill others, stronger guarantees than the emotional or moral state of people are probably needed.
- deltarholamda 5y ago
  >Do I get that right, a denunciate app? Our always-on, instant communications combined with a rapid-fire news cycle has turned us into snitches and scolds instead of more and better informed citizens.
- tommiegannert 5y ago
  When I learned to drive on a highway, I realized from seeing others that being lawabiding is much less important than being predictable. Up to a point of course.
gerikson 5y ago
This does sound pretty dystopian but it's really no different from apps that allow people to report potholes, missing signage etc. The actual enforcement will be left to the police anyway.
- SllX 5y ago
  There is a difference if this can provide significant revenue and cut costs for the police. The police department itself is also a different entity than the department that repairs potholes and fixes signage: the latter doesn’t have any law enforcement powers.
  - gerikson 5y ago
    As far as I can see, the app in question is in the UK, which does not fund its police forces via fines. Of course other dynamics can appear in locales that do.
    - SllX 5y ago
      A contributor to that dynamic is that it isn’t always going straight towards the police department: it’s corrupting even if it is going into a general fund for the locality which sets the police budget. Further, that doesn’t address the potential for decreased costs for law enforcement.
tristor 5y ago
I don’t care about speeders. Realistically, they are not making me less safe. What I do care about are these things instead: 1. People on their phones not paying attention while driving. 2. Cops in effectively unmarked cars doing traffic duty and causing ripple effects when they suddenly enter the highway. 3. Slow drivers in the left lane toodling along and impeding traffic, forcing people to make dangerous lane changes 4. People who lift their vehicle to the point it both blinds everyone at night with its light and exceeds bumper height restrictions so would decapitate me in a crash with my normal car. 5. Motorcyclists with no gear whipping between lanes, lane splitting, and on the shoulders doing 20+ over the speed of traffic (although lets be honest, this problem will eventually take care of itself). Cars speeding (which is mostly a steady rate of 80 on most interstates which inexplicably have a speed limit of 65) is not something I am even remotely concerned with on the road.
- Miner49er 5y ago
  > I don’t care about speeders. Realistically, they are not making me less safe. I find this very hard to believe. Do you have a reason for believing this? Also, what about when you're a pedestrian or for cyclists?
- raldi 5y ago
  Don’t forget cars stopped in bike and bus lanes, or across sidewalks or crosswalks
- exabrial 5y ago
  I would add to your list: Following Distance
  - wildrhythms 5y ago
    One of my favorite videos of all time on this topic: Traffic Waves https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGFqfTCL2fs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGFqfTCL2fs (Not new information, but a fun video, and it's something truckers have known about for decades)
- tenebrisalietum 5y ago
quartz 5y ago
In NYC we have the Reported App [1] that lets anyone report driving violations for TLC vehicles (cabs & ubers mostly) which is the first time I've ever seen a public smartphone app actually have an impact. Reports go to the TLC commission who actually do process an enforcement (it takes a while) and they issue decently steep fines and points. It's basically the only way bike lane violations are ever enforced. Not sure how I'd feel about something like this rolling out officially where we're making citizens take over the role of enforcement agent in general. I'd much prefer the city implement more aggressive automated enforcement. As it stands we turn the bloody speed cameras OFF at night... as if speeding stops being illegal after 10pm! [1] https://reportedly.weebly.com/ https://reportedly.weebly.com/
thecrumb 5y ago
I'd take someone speeding and paying attention to the road vs someone playing around with their phone which it seems you would have to do to use this app? "...and when you press the shutter as a car is passing and centred on the screen it selects a video snip of the previous one second and next one second"
- dfxm12 5y ago
  You seem to be making an assumption that this app is only usable by drivers. You don't have to be in a car, let alone in the driver's seat to operate a phone. The lead image in the article is clearly taken from the sidewalk.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- wildrhythms 5y ago
  I ride a motorcycle with a helmet mounted GoPro, and I see people on their phone every single day. If there was a monetary reward for reporting distracted drivers I would quit my job and just ride around all day.
  - WelcomeShorty 5y ago
    My pet peeve: Incorrect / broken vehicle lights & ignoring red lights. In my country (dash) cams are practically forbidden due to privacy concerns and actively handing over footage of said evidence would get exactly one person in trouble: me, not the perpetuator.
- CWuestefeld 5y ago
  And in my experience, a key effect of speed limits is that when you're driving that slowly, you're more likely to be daydreaming because there's (99.9% of the time) no reason to pay attention. And that 1-in-a-thousand time in your induced daydream is when you really needed to be paying attention. In other words, higher velocities have longer stopping distances from a purely Newtonian perspective. But from a human factors perspective, making the job boring impairs the operator's reactions, also causing longer stopping distances. Obligatory anecdote: over last summer a new family moved in down the street, put up their own "no speeding!" signs, and pestered the town until they got the town to put one of those radar "your speed is" devices right in front of their house. This seems like a really stupid tactical error. If you're concerned about the reaction times of drivers endangering your kids, the very last thing you should want to do is to put a flashing sign that demands the driver's attention right in your front yard. Why distract the driver from seeing your kids?
exabrial 5y ago
I really don't care about speeders. Following Distance is what actually matters about 98% of the time.
- dfxm12 5y ago
  Someone speeding on the highway is different from someone speeding on a busy residential street, which is where it is most likely people will be around to use such an app.
  - exabrial 5y ago
    call it "reaction distance" then!
Nextgrid 5y ago
The "summary" in the example reports smells like someone has an agenda: > Compared to the legal limit of 30 mph, a typical vehicle driving at 36.1 mph takes an extra 8.0 metres to stop, is 2.2 times more likely to kill a pedestrian on impact, generates 14.6% more CO2, 55.4% more NOx and produces 1.7 BA more noise. [emphasis mine] The stopping distance and likelihood to kill (though the not sure whether said likelihood is properly calculated as it's not a linear scale) is the only thing that should be relevant from a safety point of view which is the purported reason behind speed limits & their enforcement. The extra information seems like an attempt to sway the decision against the driver and further some environmentalist agenda.
- gugagore 5y ago
  Why aren't pollutants (chemical and noise) safety considerations for humans?
- raldi 5y ago
  > safety […] is the purported reason behind speed limits & their enforcement. A reason, among several others. See, for instance, the most famous speed limit ever enacted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law
- mistrial9 5y ago
  > further some environmentalist agenda. poker response - I will see your "agenda" and raise you a "track cars all the time for ticket revenue agenda"
- oceanplexian 5y ago
  It's not an environmentalist agenda as much as a technique that media uses to mislead people. The more random statistics writers include, even if they are totally irrelevant, based on nonsense, or logically inconsistent, the more "informed" the readers feel when they skim the article. Once you include statistics it's no longer an opinion piece, but cold, hard fact backed by science... or something.
- hansvm 5y ago
bena 5y ago
I don't care about people consistently going a higher speed than what is posted. What I care is about the person with a 20 to 30 mph variance in speed on an empty road. The person who can't choose a lane and instead straddles both with a little wiggle so you can't tell where they're going. The person who uses the entire turning lane to actually merge into the turning lane, slowing down the whole time. People who don't understand 4 way stops. 4 way stops in general because they're always clusterfucks due to the fact no one understands them. People who don't turn on their blinker until they are stopped for their turn. People who attempt to jump the line in the turn lane by going around the people waiting for the turn lane and then stopping in the lane of traffic waiting for the turn lane (this one is really local). And a whole host of other bad driving behavior that basically boils down to "the driver doesn't seem to know what they want to do".
- tristor 5y ago
  > And a whole host of other bad driving behavior that basically boils down to "the driver doesn't seem to know what they want to do". Honestly, my observation having driven in multiple different countries (but predominantly in the US and across different states) is that Americans drive without forethought. One of the things you learn in drivers education in most countries, and are also taught during on-track instruction if you ever go to an HPDE, is to look farther ahead so you can be focusing on what your next action is going to be. The natural inclination of drivers in America is to look at whats /directly/ in front of their vehicle and think no further ahead. This type of (semi-literal) short-sightedness is a direct cause of so many of the bad (and sometimes downright stupid) behaviors I see on roads in the US. And then you have legitimate bad actors who are selfish and behave in purely anti-social ways. These folks should frankly be identified and just straight out banned from driving. Driving enforcement is lax in the US, as well, mostly used for revenue generation via fines rather than license removal. There should be a LOT less licensed drivers in the US, but we have no real alternative transportation pathways in most locales, so our society is not willing to actually take away a license from someone despite considerable evidence that they can't drive safely. Even multiple DUIs will not get a license permanently removed in the US.
YPPH 5y ago
This has the potential to be used for improper collateral purposes, eg by neighbour annoys me so I will dob them in for speeding. This is why an independent officer should be the person charging people, not vigilantes.
eptcyka 5y ago
I'm all for it if I can use the same app to report drivers who drive both under and over the speedlimit (25 in both a 30mph and 20mph roads). It seems to me that more than half of the drivers that I'm stuck behind are either dangerously distracted or dangerously incompetent at maneuvering their vehicle, as they generally have poor lane hygiene, they do not observe the speed limit. Will I also be able to report road users that hold up significant amounts of traffic behind them without stopping and passing them?
- Miner49er 5y ago
  Maybe I'm misunderstanding your comment, but isn't it rarely illegal to drive under the speed limit?
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Except at the obvious extremes the correlation between legal and safe or legal and "in good taste" is marginal at best.
  - eptcyka 5y ago
    If you're holding up traffic, as per the recent updates to the highway code, you should pull over and let people pass. Regardless if it's legal, if a driver is not driving at the maximum safe speed they can (which in an MOT'ed vehicle on a clear summer day on a straight and empty road should be the speed limit), they are either distracted, incompetent or they're not bothered about getting to their destination, and in all of those cases I would prefer if the drivers in question considered using a bus to fulfill their transportation needs.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - yucky 5y ago
    It's called impeding traffic, and is in fact illegal in many (most) places. But obviously this only applies to cars driving significantly under, not just a few mph under.
incomingpain 5y ago
Depends on enforcement. Not all jurisdictions are immediately going to accept this data. It's rife with potential abuse. What's even the point? Have you ever tried not speeding? Literally everyone is technically speeding. So what's the point? Government revenue? I guess sure it needs that, so many governments are tremendously bankrupt. Flipside, what does this really do? It's worse than police. When governments choose to develop revenue like this, it makes the police hostile toward the populace. Every single ticket incrementally increases fear in police and decreases police effectiveness. Now do this with general populace at scale? Your fellow citizens are now the enemy. Ever so slightly those same knobs will tweak and what happens? Fear of your fellow citizens will not go well. Politicians would be forced to discontinue the app, but at the same time the amount of revenue would make it never happened. Speed limits do nothing but decrease, despite increase in driving safety tech. The incentives of this creates a system which will be very bad for society.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  >Now do this with general populace at scale? Your fellow citizens are now the enemy. Ever so slightly those same knobs will tweak and what happens? Fear of your fellow citizens will not go well The 11/10ths cynical and optimistic take is that the sooner we make things so bad that the people who don't wanna be involved get involve the sooner the people who think these sorts of "turn people on each other" things are good will, um, return their carbon to the environment.
  - incomingpain 5y ago
    >The 11/10ths cynical and optimistic take is that the sooner we make things so bad that the people who don't wanna be involved get involve the sooner the people who think these sorts of "turn people on each other" things are good will, um, return their carbon to the environment. It never really plays out into violence. France implemented speed trap cams all over their highways and I'm sure they are all 100% calibrated and only ever give out legitimate tickets... So what happens? People stop driving on the highways. They hit the backroads where those speedtraps dont exist. Then those backroads get WRECKED. They havent had the investment or design for this sudden change in usage. Hell, I used to live in a small city. Per capita speeding tickets issued was often listed as highest in north america. Year after year. So what did I do? I left. I dont even speed, but it's obvious why the city is in huge decline for decades. Why they objectively have one of the worst brain drain per capita issues in the world.
jasonladuke0311 5y ago
I don't care about speeders. I care about stopping people from using their phones while driving. EVERY SINGLE TIME I drive, I see people staring at their phones and not the road. It's infuriating. I think it's even worse than drunk driving for a few reasons: - more likely to happen during the day so more potential for accidents - more socially acceptable - more likely to be done by the least experienced drivers (citation needed, I know. anecdotal evidence from living near a high school) I suspect there will have to be some major event with multiple or high-profile casualties that will catalyze some sort of legislative action before anything changes.
- tristor 5y ago
  Out on the local interstates nearly every time I see someone do something stupid or weave/fail to lane-keep, they're on their phone when I pass them (to avoid them). I have seen no correlation with age, honestly many of these people are middle-aged, some of them are even in work vehicles (dump trucks, or marked vehicles). I've even seen cops do it. It's ridiculous.
csharpminor 5y ago
I’ve been looking for something like this. My residential street is a short cut for drivers and we have people doing 40+ down it trying to skip the lights. We (as a neighborhood) can petition the city to install traffic calming measures like speed bumps. But the city requires some form of traffic analysis to prove that more than a certain percent of drivers are speeding. I don’t know if this app would be acceptable as a data source (e.g. if I mounted a phone to our mailbox somehow). But I was surprised by seemingly how few affordable traffic / speed measurement devices there were. Most cost thousands of dollars, or we could hire a consultant which would cost even more thousands of dollars. Seems like a market opportunity, though maybe a niche one.
nixpulvis 5y ago
I wonder if other drivers will be using this app to report people they encounter while driving? How do you even account for that while calculating speeds? More importantly, how many accidents will this cause? This idea sounds like some half-baked high school physics mixed with OpenCV, and yet they are talking about pioneers hassling the cops with iffy reports using it already. I'm lost. Would any of this be admissible in court?

Almost every speed limit is set lower than it should be, presumably to maximize revenue instead of maximizing safety. Until this changes, I want enforcement of speed limits to be poor.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cnntth 5y ago
Disagree - especially in cities -, but I think road design is a better way of enforcing speed limits. If everyone is going faster than the speed limit, the road is the problem not the limit.
ay 5y ago
Sometimes there’s fog. Heavy rain. Snow. Dusk. Or all or some of the above. I want the speed limits to be set situationally and automatically be capped via the communication to the car itself. This would eliminate the need of fines and human enforcement, and the associated conflicts.
dashundchen 5y ago
I would say in the US, our road design means our speed limits are way too high for safe travel. Speed limits are set high with no attempt at reducing points of conflict. It's a meme at this point, but Not Just Bikes does a great job covering the terrible "stroad". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM Most places in the US are filled with wide, multi-lane roads posted for speed limits of 35-45 mph. But those roads will be packed with unsignaled driveways, where drivers entering the road needed to make unprotected and right left turns with and against traffic that's likely going 45-55mph, and drivers on the road need to predict the behavior of cars coming from almost any direction. Meanwhile, a thin stripe of white paint gets added to the gutter and is somehow called a bike lane - like anyone wants to ride their bike at the same grade as 2+ ton trucks flying by within a foot of your handlebars. Those same lanes will frequently disappear or reappear within a shoulder, and at intersections will suddenly cross or dump you out into a right turn lane. Better hope that driver turning right noticed you before you get hooked. It's even worse for pedestrians, where even in dense cities, a walk signal is by no means a safe time to walk. Unsignaled left and right-on-red means a car will likely fly through their path at any given moment. On your way to this intersection, you'll continuously cross driveways and slip lanes with curve radii to encourage speeding, sidewalks that dump you into parking lots (if they exist at all!).
bryanlarsen 5y ago
There's a good argument to be made that almost all urban speed limits are too high. Below 20 mph a collision with a pedestrian might cause injury but is unlikely to be fatal. Above that, the fatality rate increases dramatically. Sweden has a policy that all roads shared with pedestrians and cyclists have a maximum speed of 20mph, and have spent a lot of money on infrastructure to separate roads so that cars aren't completely inconvenienced by the rules. https://visionzeronetwork.org/about/what-is-vision-zero/ https://visionzeronetwork.org/about/what-is-vision-zero/
rkangel 5y ago
Can you support this claim? Also it seems backwards - the UK got close to increasing its speed limits on motorways recently. The tradeoff was between economic benefits from more efficient travel on motorways and increased risk due to the higher speeds. The discussion was supported with ample data, although I believe it didn't succeed for political reasons. You're suggesting almost exactly the opposite.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Increasing speed limits to reflect the prevailing traffic speeds has long since been found to increase the speeds of most of the slowest traffic (the people blindly adhering to the posted number) and and reduce the amount of passing, lane changing and other interactions thereby increasing safety. Basically the more homogeneous in speed and behavior the traffic is the safer it is. You should be able to Google up some civil engineering studies at will. This stuff was "new" decades ago.
  - cnntth 5y ago
    Safer for whom though? Drivers are not the only road users.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      Obviously you can't have traffic going 60mph in Manhatten but to a point everyone benefits. Uneven traffic flow results in a lot of lane changing and passing and when drivers are preparing to do those moves they're spending a lot of effort figuring out where the cars are and that creates a prime opportunity for anything motorcycle and smaller to be missed. So yeah, a uniform 30ish MPH traffic flow on your city street is probably better than a more bimodal one even if the average speed is slightly higher.

mc4ndr3 5y ago

Where do we submit public evidence of overly elaborate signage that distracts from road conditions?

Johnyma22 5y ago

Some of my wheelbases on some of my converted vehicles are not what will be stored on record (often the DVSA/DVLA provide the incorrect information especially for historic vehicles).

ho_schi 5y ago

Do I get that right, a denunciate app? I'm myself riding a road-bike and driving a car. Seeing an enemy in each other doesn't help! What is next? An app for car drivers to report road-bikers which ride on the road instead of a bad and dangerous bikeway? I recite the first and second traffic rules in Germany. I assume other countries have similar rules? Participation in road traffic requires constant caution and mutual consideration. Anyone participating in traffic must behave in such a way that no other person is harmed, endangered or obstructed or inconvenienced more than is unavoidable under the circumstances. I would appreciate if people care about each other on the road.

tenebrisalietum 5y ago
People should, but making people care without strong familial bonds is impossible, and even then it's not guaranteed. When people's behavior could kill others, stronger guarantees than the emotional or moral state of people are probably needed.
deltarholamda 5y ago
>Do I get that right, a denunciate app? Our always-on, instant communications combined with a rapid-fire news cycle has turned us into snitches and scolds instead of more and better informed citizens.
tommiegannert 5y ago
When I learned to drive on a highway, I realized from seeing others that being lawabiding is much less important than being predictable. Up to a point of course.

gerikson 5y ago

This does sound pretty dystopian but it's really no different from apps that allow people to report potholes, missing signage etc. The actual enforcement will be left to the police anyway.

SllX 5y ago
There is a difference if this can provide significant revenue and cut costs for the police. The police department itself is also a different entity than the department that repairs potholes and fixes signage: the latter doesn’t have any law enforcement powers.
- gerikson 5y ago
  As far as I can see, the app in question is in the UK, which does not fund its police forces via fines. Of course other dynamics can appear in locales that do.
  - SllX 5y ago
    A contributor to that dynamic is that it isn’t always going straight towards the police department: it’s corrupting even if it is going into a general fund for the locality which sets the police budget. Further, that doesn’t address the potential for decreased costs for law enforcement.

tristor 5y ago

I don’t care about speeders. Realistically, they are not making me less safe. What I do care about are these things instead: 1. People on their phones not paying attention while driving. 2. Cops in effectively unmarked cars doing traffic duty and causing ripple effects when they suddenly enter the highway. 3. Slow drivers in the left lane toodling along and impeding traffic, forcing people to make dangerous lane changes 4. People who lift their vehicle to the point it both blinds everyone at night with its light and exceeds bumper height restrictions so would decapitate me in a crash with my normal car. 5. Motorcyclists with no gear whipping between lanes, lane splitting, and on the shoulders doing 20+ over the speed of traffic (although lets be honest, this problem will eventually take care of itself). Cars speeding (which is mostly a steady rate of 80 on most interstates which inexplicably have a speed limit of 65) is not something I am even remotely concerned with on the road.

Miner49er 5y ago
> I don’t care about speeders. Realistically, they are not making me less safe. I find this very hard to believe. Do you have a reason for believing this? Also, what about when you're a pedestrian or for cyclists?
raldi 5y ago
Don’t forget cars stopped in bike and bus lanes, or across sidewalks or crosswalks
exabrial 5y ago
I would add to your list: Following Distance
- wildrhythms 5y ago
  One of my favorite videos of all time on this topic: Traffic Waves https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGFqfTCL2fs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGFqfTCL2fs (Not new information, but a fun video, and it's something truckers have known about for decades)
tenebrisalietum 5y ago

quartz 5y ago

In NYC we have the Reported App [1] that lets anyone report driving violations for TLC vehicles (cabs & ubers mostly) which is the first time I've ever seen a public smartphone app actually have an impact. Reports go to the TLC commission who actually do process an enforcement (it takes a while) and they issue decently steep fines and points. It's basically the only way bike lane violations are ever enforced. Not sure how I'd feel about something like this rolling out officially where we're making citizens take over the role of enforcement agent in general. I'd much prefer the city implement more aggressive automated enforcement. As it stands we turn the bloody speed cameras OFF at night... as if speeding stops being illegal after 10pm! [1] https://reportedly.weebly.com/ https://reportedly.weebly.com/

thecrumb 5y ago

I'd take someone speeding and paying attention to the road vs someone playing around with their phone which it seems you would have to do to use this app? "...and when you press the shutter as a car is passing and centred on the screen it selects a video snip of the previous one second and next one second"

dfxm12 5y ago
You seem to be making an assumption that this app is only usable by drivers. You don't have to be in a car, let alone in the driver's seat to operate a phone. The lead image in the article is clearly taken from the sidewalk.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
wildrhythms 5y ago
I ride a motorcycle with a helmet mounted GoPro, and I see people on their phone every single day. If there was a monetary reward for reporting distracted drivers I would quit my job and just ride around all day.
- WelcomeShorty 5y ago
  My pet peeve: Incorrect / broken vehicle lights & ignoring red lights. In my country (dash) cams are practically forbidden due to privacy concerns and actively handing over footage of said evidence would get exactly one person in trouble: me, not the perpetuator.
CWuestefeld 5y ago
And in my experience, a key effect of speed limits is that when you're driving that slowly, you're more likely to be daydreaming because there's (99.9% of the time) no reason to pay attention. And that 1-in-a-thousand time in your induced daydream is when you really needed to be paying attention. In other words, higher velocities have longer stopping distances from a purely Newtonian perspective. But from a human factors perspective, making the job boring impairs the operator's reactions, also causing longer stopping distances. Obligatory anecdote: over last summer a new family moved in down the street, put up their own "no speeding!" signs, and pestered the town until they got the town to put one of those radar "your speed is" devices right in front of their house. This seems like a really stupid tactical error. If you're concerned about the reaction times of drivers endangering your kids, the very last thing you should want to do is to put a flashing sign that demands the driver's attention right in your front yard. Why distract the driver from seeing your kids?

exabrial 5y ago

I really don't care about speeders. Following Distance is what actually matters about 98% of the time.

dfxm12 5y ago
Someone speeding on the highway is different from someone speeding on a busy residential street, which is where it is most likely people will be around to use such an app.
- exabrial 5y ago
  call it "reaction distance" then!

Nextgrid 5y ago

The "summary" in the example reports smells like someone has an agenda: > Compared to the legal limit of 30 mph, a typical vehicle driving at 36.1 mph takes an extra 8.0 metres to stop, is 2.2 times more likely to kill a pedestrian on impact, generates 14.6% more CO2, 55.4% more NOx and produces 1.7 BA more noise. [emphasis mine] The stopping distance and likelihood to kill (though the not sure whether said likelihood is properly calculated as it's not a linear scale) is the only thing that should be relevant from a safety point of view which is the purported reason behind speed limits & their enforcement. The extra information seems like an attempt to sway the decision against the driver and further some environmentalist agenda.

gugagore 5y ago
Why aren't pollutants (chemical and noise) safety considerations for humans?
raldi 5y ago
> safety […] is the purported reason behind speed limits & their enforcement. A reason, among several others. See, for instance, the most famous speed limit ever enacted: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law
mistrial9 5y ago
> further some environmentalist agenda. poker response - I will see your "agenda" and raise you a "track cars all the time for ticket revenue agenda"
oceanplexian 5y ago
It's not an environmentalist agenda as much as a technique that media uses to mislead people. The more random statistics writers include, even if they are totally irrelevant, based on nonsense, or logically inconsistent, the more "informed" the readers feel when they skim the article. Once you include statistics it's no longer an opinion piece, but cold, hard fact backed by science... or something.
hansvm 5y ago

bena 5y ago

I don't care about people consistently going a higher speed than what is posted. What I care is about the person with a 20 to 30 mph variance in speed on an empty road. The person who can't choose a lane and instead straddles both with a little wiggle so you can't tell where they're going. The person who uses the entire turning lane to actually merge into the turning lane, slowing down the whole time. People who don't understand 4 way stops. 4 way stops in general because they're always clusterfucks due to the fact no one understands them. People who don't turn on their blinker until they are stopped for their turn. People who attempt to jump the line in the turn lane by going around the people waiting for the turn lane and then stopping in the lane of traffic waiting for the turn lane (this one is really local). And a whole host of other bad driving behavior that basically boils down to "the driver doesn't seem to know what they want to do".

tristor 5y ago
> And a whole host of other bad driving behavior that basically boils down to "the driver doesn't seem to know what they want to do". Honestly, my observation having driven in multiple different countries (but predominantly in the US and across different states) is that Americans drive without forethought. One of the things you learn in drivers education in most countries, and are also taught during on-track instruction if you ever go to an HPDE, is to look farther ahead so you can be focusing on what your next action is going to be. The natural inclination of drivers in America is to look at whats /directly/ in front of their vehicle and think no further ahead. This type of (semi-literal) short-sightedness is a direct cause of so many of the bad (and sometimes downright stupid) behaviors I see on roads in the US. And then you have legitimate bad actors who are selfish and behave in purely anti-social ways. These folks should frankly be identified and just straight out banned from driving. Driving enforcement is lax in the US, as well, mostly used for revenue generation via fines rather than license removal. There should be a LOT less licensed drivers in the US, but we have no real alternative transportation pathways in most locales, so our society is not willing to actually take away a license from someone despite considerable evidence that they can't drive safely. Even multiple DUIs will not get a license permanently removed in the US.

YPPH 5y ago

This has the potential to be used for improper collateral purposes, eg by neighbour annoys me so I will dob them in for speeding. This is why an independent officer should be the person charging people, not vigilantes.

eptcyka 5y ago

I'm all for it if I can use the same app to report drivers who drive both under and over the speedlimit (25 in both a 30mph and 20mph roads). It seems to me that more than half of the drivers that I'm stuck behind are either dangerously distracted or dangerously incompetent at maneuvering their vehicle, as they generally have poor lane hygiene, they do not observe the speed limit. Will I also be able to report road users that hold up significant amounts of traffic behind them without stopping and passing them?

Miner49er 5y ago
Maybe I'm misunderstanding your comment, but isn't it rarely illegal to drive under the speed limit?
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Except at the obvious extremes the correlation between legal and safe or legal and "in good taste" is marginal at best.
- eptcyka 5y ago
  If you're holding up traffic, as per the recent updates to the highway code, you should pull over and let people pass. Regardless if it's legal, if a driver is not driving at the maximum safe speed they can (which in an MOT'ed vehicle on a clear summer day on a straight and empty road should be the speed limit), they are either distracted, incompetent or they're not bothered about getting to their destination, and in all of those cases I would prefer if the drivers in question considered using a bus to fulfill their transportation needs.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- yucky 5y ago
  It's called impeding traffic, and is in fact illegal in many (most) places. But obviously this only applies to cars driving significantly under, not just a few mph under.

incomingpain 5y ago

Depends on enforcement. Not all jurisdictions are immediately going to accept this data. It's rife with potential abuse. What's even the point? Have you ever tried not speeding? Literally everyone is technically speeding. So what's the point? Government revenue? I guess sure it needs that, so many governments are tremendously bankrupt. Flipside, what does this really do? It's worse than police. When governments choose to develop revenue like this, it makes the police hostile toward the populace. Every single ticket incrementally increases fear in police and decreases police effectiveness. Now do this with general populace at scale? Your fellow citizens are now the enemy. Ever so slightly those same knobs will tweak and what happens? Fear of your fellow citizens will not go well. Politicians would be forced to discontinue the app, but at the same time the amount of revenue would make it never happened. Speed limits do nothing but decrease, despite increase in driving safety tech. The incentives of this creates a system which will be very bad for society.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
>Now do this with general populace at scale? Your fellow citizens are now the enemy. Ever so slightly those same knobs will tweak and what happens? Fear of your fellow citizens will not go well The 11/10ths cynical and optimistic take is that the sooner we make things so bad that the people who don't wanna be involved get involve the sooner the people who think these sorts of "turn people on each other" things are good will, um, return their carbon to the environment.
- incomingpain 5y ago
  >The 11/10ths cynical and optimistic take is that the sooner we make things so bad that the people who don't wanna be involved get involve the sooner the people who think these sorts of "turn people on each other" things are good will, um, return their carbon to the environment. It never really plays out into violence. France implemented speed trap cams all over their highways and I'm sure they are all 100% calibrated and only ever give out legitimate tickets... So what happens? People stop driving on the highways. They hit the backroads where those speedtraps dont exist. Then those backroads get WRECKED. They havent had the investment or design for this sudden change in usage. Hell, I used to live in a small city. Per capita speeding tickets issued was often listed as highest in north america. Year after year. So what did I do? I left. I dont even speed, but it's obvious why the city is in huge decline for decades. Why they objectively have one of the worst brain drain per capita issues in the world.

jasonladuke0311 5y ago

I don't care about speeders. I care about stopping people from using their phones while driving. EVERY SINGLE TIME I drive, I see people staring at their phones and not the road. It's infuriating. I think it's even worse than drunk driving for a few reasons: - more likely to happen during the day so more potential for accidents - more socially acceptable - more likely to be done by the least experienced drivers (citation needed, I know. anecdotal evidence from living near a high school) I suspect there will have to be some major event with multiple or high-profile casualties that will catalyze some sort of legislative action before anything changes.

tristor 5y ago
Out on the local interstates nearly every time I see someone do something stupid or weave/fail to lane-keep, they're on their phone when I pass them (to avoid them). I have seen no correlation with age, honestly many of these people are middle-aged, some of them are even in work vehicles (dump trucks, or marked vehicles). I've even seen cops do it. It's ridiculous.

csharpminor 5y ago

I’ve been looking for something like this. My residential street is a short cut for drivers and we have people doing 40+ down it trying to skip the lights. We (as a neighborhood) can petition the city to install traffic calming measures like speed bumps. But the city requires some form of traffic analysis to prove that more than a certain percent of drivers are speeding. I don’t know if this app would be acceptable as a data source (e.g. if I mounted a phone to our mailbox somehow). But I was surprised by seemingly how few affordable traffic / speed measurement devices there were. Most cost thousands of dollars, or we could hire a consultant which would cost even more thousands of dollars. Seems like a market opportunity, though maybe a niche one.

nixpulvis 5y ago

I wonder if other drivers will be using this app to report people they encounter while driving? How do you even account for that while calculating speeds? More importantly, how many accidents will this cause? This idea sounds like some half-baked high school physics mixed with OpenCV, and yet they are talking about pioneers hassling the cops with iffy reports using it already. I'm lost. Would any of this be admissible in court?