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Speedcam Anywhere – catch speeding drivers from your smartphone

39 points by _rnwu 5y ago

lamontcg 5y ago
There's a lot of other problems with everyone else's attitude in this thread. There's an awful lot of fundamental attribution error. "Everyone else gets into accidents because they're morons, I'm a safe driver so I can handle speeding". One problem is that you're not likely to have an accident when you're driving at your best, you're likely to have an accident when you're driving at your worst. So its more likely when you're going through a messy breakup or divorce or stress at the job, haven't had enough sleep, etc. That shitty driver may very well be you on a bad day (and this may be one of the worst times of your life that you've had for a decade. The next problem is that even if you're a good driver and you're not otherwise at fault the speed limits are there to limit the damage when other people fuck up and get into accidents with you. If someone turns left in front of you without right of way and causes a collision, both of you will do better if you're not traveling that fast. Similarly those kinds of situations can be caused by speeding because the human optical system is very crappy at judging closing velocity and things like that. Your car doesn't have a bubble over it displaying its current speed like this was some kind of video game. And other road users are allowed to make assumptions that your rate of speed is reasonable for the road and conditions. The people who drive fast and road rage about getting cut off are often creating that problem themselves. And then if you're excusing speed limits, what else are you excusing? Do you not come to complete stops at stop signs when you don't see anyone there? Do you always signal even when you don't think anyone is around to see it? Do you come to a stop before the pedestrian crosswalk? Do you tailgate? Do you have the mistaken and backwards belief that traffic goes faster when people tailgate? Do you feel that you need to tailgate in order to avoid being "cut off" and that this has any measurable effect on the time when you get to your destination? If you think speeding doesn't matter you probably believe some or all of these which means that the bad driver who shouldn't speed so they don't cause accidents may really be you. So yeah the point of speed limits isn't necessarily about your or your mad skillz and fancy traction control in your expensive car, its about limiting the kinetic energy if someone else makes a mistake around you. Speed absolutely matters because all of us make mistakes, and mistakes shouldn't be a death penalty for anyone. If you think your $200k car gives you the right to drive 15 mph over the limit in residential neighborhoods, and some dumbass kid who runs out in the road deserves to die for it, then you might be a sociopath. And really GIVEN how horribly irresponsible everyone attitudes in this thread are around speeding, that makes me quite okay that we're going down this path towards decentralized surveillance. You all don't even recognize that there's any kind of a problem with velocity and kinetic energy. I sort of don't care if your rights and privacy get invaded at this point because a lot of you in this thread are pretty awful. If we can't reach an agreement to be responsible and think about the welfare of others, then bring on the decentralized nanny state where we're all tattling on each other I guess.
stmfreak 5y ago
Who is going to tell them speed limits are set artificially low to generate revenue from fines?
_rnwu 5y ago
One of the development team here - if anybody tries it and has feedback it would be very welcome!
- gfxgirl 5y ago
  I care less about speeding and more about other traffic violations (running red lights, turning right from a lane other than the right lane, ....) Have you talked to the law enforcement agencies? Will they actually use the footage?
  - deleted 5y ago
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    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - dazc 5y ago
    You can submit evidence like this to the Police in the UK and they may act on it. Incidentally, I was involved in a heated discussion with someone the other week about her poor parking. Turns out she sent webcam footage to the police and I received a letter saying I had been reported for a public order offence but there was not sufficient evidence to act further. Raising ones voice isn't yet an offence I am pleased to report.
  - btrettel 5y ago
    My experience in the US is that video alone is not sufficient to get a bad driver arrested. I'm a cyclist, and I was able to get a driver arrested for some misbehavior through a combination of helmet cam video and the fact that they were driving for Uber at the time so Uber's GPS placed them at the scene of the crime at the time of the crime. The driver plead guilty to a misdemeanor. This surprised one local bike activist who seemed to think the local police wouldn't do anything regardless of the amount of evidence.
    - discardedrefuse 5y ago
elmerfud 5y ago
Well now, this looks like it's just going to escalate roadrage interactions not decrease them. As if there's not enough tempers boiling over for very little reason, let's make an app to give busybodies even more to scream about. Next can we get a lawn length measurement app?
- zhte415 5y ago
  Speeding kills and seriously injures people. Being afraid someone's going to go unstable doesn't make it any less so. Your lawn, despite having a such neighbourhood zoning laws that dictate maintaining a lawn, specifically a lawn, or preventing washing lines, as much as an oddity as they are for someone alien to them, does not. Not a good comparison.
  - akira2501 5y ago
    It also tends to kill the person doing the speeding, which is something they probably know, and they choose to do it anyway. Seeing that as an opportunity to inject yourself into an enforcement role does not seem like a decision designed to actually improve safety for everyone. Some areas in China had a program like this. Turn people in, get a payment from the local government. What you would see is people going out, intentionally driving badly near other drivers in an effort to get them to speed away or make an illegal move just to get away from them, or to even start road raging in return and then they would start recording after the fact. Finally, the last time I looked at the data, the correlation between speed and pedestrian deaths was not at all clear. Time of day was a much stronger point of correlation. The majority of pedestrian deaths happen after sun down and on the sides of road types you would not expect. I'm not sure how arming people with this rather unsocial technology is going to solve this exact problem.
    - usefulcat 5y ago
      > It also tends to kill the person doing the speeding Most definitely not true when the speeding motorist hits a pedestrian or a cyclist.
JNRowe 5y ago
Fair chunk of discussion earlier this week on a submission discussing the app¹. ¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30906561 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30906561
- _rnwu 5y ago
  I hadn't spotted that, thanks!
  - JNRowe 5y ago
    If you also read that comment tyre fire then I suspect you'll snatch the thanks back ;) Hat tip for the thoughtful replies to the comments on your app, interesting to read as dispassionate observer.
uuyi 5y ago
I dislike this and it should go away. Firstly, anything which normalises surveillance by citizens on citizens is a death spiral for society. On top of that the £14.99 for 1000 credits approach empowers only the lunatic classes of society who would consider that as a price worth paying to get people into trouble. Secondly, I have problems with the accuracy claims here which are presented disingenuously. The measurement of vehicle wheelbase and the system clock and frame rate is seen as the reference with no mention of the issues with accurately measuring that nor issues like frame stalling and jitter. Thirdly, this will create a lot of noise for law enforcement agencies which may mask other higher priority crimes.
- consumer451 5y ago
  > Firstly, anything which normalises surveillance by citizens on citizens is a death spiral for society. The new SaaS is Stasi as a Service.
  - uuyi 5y ago
    That’s a great analogy. Even if it is slightly depressing.
- bradknowles 5y ago
  So, I don't want to use a system like this to generate actual fines. I want to embarrass people who are speeding through my neighborhood at 2x the local speed limit, just because they can. In some cases, including school buses. Uploading only the most egregious cases to YouTube on an automated basis would make me happy.
- antattack 5y ago
  Counting on one's crime not being discovered by keeping odds of detection low is a loosing battle. I think it's better to work towards laws, enforcement and punishment that make sense.
- _rnwu 5y ago
  > Thirdly, this will create a lot of noise for law enforcement agencies which may mask other higher priority crimes. If it becomes accepted as an automated solution where either a very quick human check or no human check is required, it would reduce their burden.
jlarocco 5y ago
They should market this to the nosy busy-bodies on NextDoor. Can anybody explain why they would install an app like this? What ever happened to people minding their own business?
- brimble 5y ago
  You're already being recorded by a dozen surveillance doorbells and cheap outdoor cameras when you walk outside your house, in a normal middle-class neighborhood, these days :-/ For whatever reason, a bunch of other tech-crap has caught on only unevenly, but those seem to be fairly common everywhere.
- Angostura 5y ago
  I imagine if you live on an urban street where (say) kids walk to school and there are various selfish drivers who regularly speed, this could be rather useful.
  - jlarocco 5y ago
    I don't see how this helps. What would be useful is for you (and your neighbors) to report the issue to the city and have them install speed bumps and maybe have a speed trap setup. Not everything needs an app.
    - dodgerdan 5y ago
      What percentage of American communities do you think the police force or council would do either of those things on the basis of a request? In Oakland it took years after multiple fatalities at crosswalks for there to be enforcement and road works.
      - the_only_law 5y ago
        Fair point, though at the same time I don’t see how this app would help any more or less.
      - 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
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ospzfmbbzr 5y ago
Weak little people love stuff like this -- it gives them power they could never hope to have to interfere with the lives of better people who they live in envy of.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
btrettel 5y ago
I'm a cyclist who often rides with a helmet camera due to misbehavior from drivers, including speeding. Does the app only allow one to measure speeds in video recorded in the app, or could I upload a short clip of an offending vehicle from a separate camera? In the past I've measured speed by manually counting how many frames it takes a vehicle to pass landmarks, but this can be time consuming.
- deleted 5y ago
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- zionic 5y ago
  I love riding bikes in neighborhoods, trails, a greenway-like city paths. Despite it being perfectly legal, I have a hard time finding people who choose to "share the road" with 5,000lb cars going 45+mph anything but crazy. You're rolling the dice every time someone overtakes you. At least in a car I have some of the best engineering available dedicated to protecting me (crash test engineers are gods). Do you value your life so little?
  - 1-more 5y ago
    What am I gonna do, tell them they won? Never.
  - btrettel 5y ago
    I rarely ride on roads with speed limits 45 mph or faster. I can't recall riding on roads with speed limits above 35 mph in recent memory, in fact. And 5000 lbs is quite heavy as that's more than a F150. Many non-cyclists' perceptions of what is safe differ greatly from reality. For instance, passing can be dangerous, but intersections are where the vast majority of the risk are. And it also shows that a lot of dedicated bike infrastructure is designed to address perceptions of what's unsafe rather than what is actually unsafe. A lot of "protected" bike lanes in my view increase risk because they make the cyclists less visible at intersections. I recommend looking at websites like https://bicyclesafe.com/ https://bicyclesafe.com/ for a more realistic view of the risks of cycling and how to reduce them. My own style of riding makes the top 4 collisions there unlikely (I often "take the lane" as appropriate to improve how visible I am), though I do have issues with various types of right hooks. I'm not sure whether those can be avoided as I ride with hi-viz gear and try to be as visible as possible otherwise.
rgrieselhuber 5y ago
Speedcam? More like Snitchcam.
- rgrieselhuber 5y ago
  Karencam? Stasicam? C'mon, these are great.
btrettel 5y ago
As a cyclist, I see a lot of dangerous driving, and a lot of hypocrisy with regards to the law on the roads. Unfortunately, I'm seeing some of that hypocrisy in the comments here. Here's a good example of the hypocrisy: A lot of drivers speed and will tell you that speeding is safe, even a victimless crime. To them the real problem are people like cyclists who run red lights. Yet I have watched probably hundreds of cyclists run red lights and few did so without first checking that the road was clear. Fact is, unless one is brazenly stupid, running red lights in practice is almost always safe. Note that I'm not saying someone should run red lights or that doing so is always safe! (I don't run reds.) The problem with both speeding and running red lights is that the even though most of the time nothing bad will happen, I think people who do such things underestimate the chances that a bad thing will occur, and don't make a good cost-benefit analysis for that reason. Wishful thinking explains why both happen. The small amount of time saved from speeding or running red lights isn't worth the carnage in my view. And the amount of time saved from speeding is indeed small, particularly given how much time one spends at stoplights. As a cyclist I'd see a lot of drivers speed to the next stoplight... only for me to catch up with them so in practice they weren't going much faster than a cyclist. The bottleneck frequently is not speed when in motion. (Factor in time spent finding parking and the comparison to cyclist is frequently worse, as cyclists can usually park much closer.) To be clear, I follow the law in my local jurisdiction to the letter. I have no patience for speeding drivers or cyclists who run red lights, for example. And in my experience the only people who don't like misbehavior on the road from any road users are cyclists, particularly the ones who wear hi-viz clothing.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Yeah no, this is not how roads works. I don't care if you're a pedestrian, cyclist or driver, if you're following the letter of the law you are causing problems for the other two. All three of these groups routinely ignore laws on a situation specific basis and with local variations. And that selective compliance with the law is what constitutes normal traffic flow. To robotically follow the law in spite of this is ill-advised because it makes your actions less predictable to every other traffic participant. Cyclists (unfairly, IMO, but that's beside the point) catch shit for rolling signs and lights because it's a toss up whether they will or not and that really inhibits the ability of everyone else around to plan accordingly. Cars don't get crap for speeding because their actions are still predicable allowing everyone else to plan accordingly. Likewise nobody cares when pedestrians jaywalk as long as they don't surprise other traffic when they do it. And nobody cares when cyclists roll stop signs when they time it so that their actions are compatible with the other traffic in the stop. Frankly, I think the cyclist expectation problem will solve itself when cycling becomes a normal way of commuting and not a lifestyle and fitness thing.
sschueller 5y ago
FYI, this is not legal in Switzerland and most likely Germany. Your footage will not be accepted by the police or authorities and you may have the person depicted in the footage go after you for violating their privacy. Capturing speeders and red light runners is the job of the state. Red light cameras are very expensive in Switzerland because they need to be certified to be accurate.
sleepdreamy 5y ago
This is seriously terrible. Gross
giantg2 5y ago
At least here in the US, police don't really care about minor speeding. I don't see them pursuing the crime just because someone provides a video. The legalities of issuing the ticket without validating driver identity vary from state to state, but in many states it's not feasible.
incomingpain 5y ago
If someone ever admits to me that they have this app installed. They will not hear another word from me. I can't risk them hearing the words I say and reporting them to the government. If I ever get a speeding ticket sourced from this app. I will be challenging it to the maximum using as much court time as I can. I will also be joining politics with the goal of making possession of this app a crime.
tln 5y ago
I'd try it but it isn't compatible with my phone, which is an up to date Pixel. Maybe region locked?
- _rnwu 5y ago
  Yes, it's only available to download in the UK at the moment I'm afraid.
  - mdrzn 5y ago
    Is there a way to try the app outside of the UK? Maybe in "basic" mode where you only guesstimate the wheelbases?
mind-blight 5y ago
Anyone creating a large database of license plates coupled with location and timestamp needs to be extremely careful. That kind of data at scale can be used for all kinds of privacy abuses and needs to have rigorous checks and balances. Using just that data you can often determine occupation, religion (what church/synagogue/etc. do you park at), potential medical issues (do you regularly drive to a specialist?), Do you have a drug or alcohol problem (Drive as well as a whole host of other PII, including networs off associates. Police make broad, sweeping requests with subpoenas. (And there are plenty of other abuses that come outside of law enforcement and the state) How equipped are you to deal with the practical and ethical ramifications of you succeed?
nunez 5y ago
I dream of a world where either speed limits are removed entirely or speed limits are enforced so well and penalized so strongly that no-one attempts to speed. Speed limits are this weird thing where the rule is de facto strict (most driving manuals will say that drivers need to drive at or slightly below the speed limit), but de jure a recommendation (as most will drive at the speed they feel most comfortable in the situation at hand). Law enforcement agencies _could_ install more speed traps and automated speed checkers, but any politician advocating for that will be run out of their city (despite it enforcing a law that's already in place). Law enforcement agencies _could also_ spend more resources on prosecuting and catching speeders, but there are n-many more important things they could be doing with their staff, many agencies are strapped for funds, and many courts are backlogged to the ages with pending cases. Law enforcement agencies _could also also_ make speed detectors highly illegal and revoke the licenses of anyone that has one on their dash or in their person, but see above as to why that hasn't happened. Thus, we get our current system, where people break the law by default, harass folks (like me) who want to drive at the speed limit, openly advocate for cheat devices to prevent getting caught (Waze's police scanning feature; radar detectors; etc.) and then slow to a crawl whenever they see a police offer who is usually already busy ticketing someone. A solution like this that is cheap, works anywhere in most situations, and auto-tickets (or auto-revokes) people when caught would be awesome. What would also be awesome is if we just removed speed limits entirely. If people are going to break the law by default, then maybe it's a bad law. I live next to an eight-lane highway that's dead straight for tens of miles that has a 60-mph speed limit set on it . It used to be 75-mph, but Houston lowered speed limits across the city to tackle their horrible smog problem. I would love to drive this at 85-mph, since we have an electric car that's zero emissions, but if I do that, that's points on my license, a driver's responsibility fee, and mandated defensive driver training. That doesn't stop the oodles of people that go this fast anyway, but it stops me, since my time is valuable and I'd rather spend the money on other things. I know that removing the speed limit increases the chance of a chucklehead driving their car at 160-mph, but those people would drive insanely fast anyway!
- 0xffff2 5y ago
  >Speed limits are this weird thing where the rule is de facto strict (most driving manuals will say that drivers need to drive at or slightly below the speed limit), but de jure a recommendation (as most will drive at the speed they feel most comfortable in the situation at hand). Not really relevant, but I think you have the terminology backwards. The written rule is "de jure". The true behavior is "de facto".
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
Near me, someone was worried about speeding cars on a particular road and their complaint got a device installed that measured the time between cars driving over two spaced sensors. This collective data was then used to guide decisions on whether speed bumps or other enforcement measures were required. Feels like something this app could possibly do too if a spare tablet or phone could be left in position for a while.

39 points by _rnwu 5y ago

There's a lot of other problems with everyone else's attitude in this thread. There's an awful lot of fundamental attribution error. "Everyone else gets into accidents because they're morons, I'm a safe driver so I can handle speeding". One problem is that you're not likely to have an accident when you're driving at your best, you're likely to have an accident when you're driving at your worst. So its more likely when you're going through a messy breakup or divorce or stress at the job, haven't had enough sleep, etc. That shitty driver may very well be you on a bad day (and this may be one of the worst times of your life that you've had for a decade. The next problem is that even if you're a good driver and you're not otherwise at fault the speed limits are there to limit the damage when other people fuck up and get into accidents with you. If someone turns left in front of you without right of way and causes a collision, both of you will do better if you're not traveling that fast. Similarly those kinds of situations can be caused by speeding because the human optical system is very crappy at judging closing velocity and things like that. Your car doesn't have a bubble over it displaying its current speed like this was some kind of video game. And other road users are allowed to make assumptions that your rate of speed is reasonable for the road and conditions. The people who drive fast and road rage about getting cut off are often creating that problem themselves. And then if you're excusing speed limits, what else are you excusing? Do you not come to complete stops at stop signs when you don't see anyone there? Do you always signal even when you don't think anyone is around to see it? Do you come to a stop before the pedestrian crosswalk? Do you tailgate? Do you have the mistaken and backwards belief that traffic goes faster when people tailgate? Do you feel that you need to tailgate in order to avoid being "cut off" and that this has any measurable effect on the time when you get to your destination? If you think speeding doesn't matter you probably believe some or all of these which means that the bad driver who shouldn't speed so they don't cause accidents may really be you. So yeah the point of speed limits isn't necessarily about your or your mad skillz and fancy traction control in your expensive car, its about limiting the kinetic energy if someone else makes a mistake around you. Speed absolutely matters because all of us make mistakes, and mistakes shouldn't be a death penalty for anyone. If you think your $200k car gives you the right to drive 15 mph over the limit in residential neighborhoods, and some dumbass kid who runs out in the road deserves to die for it, then you might be a sociopath. And really GIVEN how horribly irresponsible everyone attitudes in this thread are around speeding, that makes me quite okay that we're going down this path towards decentralized surveillance. You all don't even recognize that there's any kind of a problem with velocity and kinetic energy. I sort of don't care if your rights and privacy get invaded at this point because a lot of you in this thread are pretty awful. If we can't reach an agreement to be responsible and think about the welfare of others, then bring on the decentralized nanny state where we're all tattling on each other I guess.

stmfreak 5y ago

Who is going to tell them speed limits are set artificially low to generate revenue from fines?

_rnwu 5y ago

One of the development team here - if anybody tries it and has feedback it would be very welcome!

gfxgirl 5y ago
I care less about speeding and more about other traffic violations (running red lights, turning right from a lane other than the right lane, ....) Have you talked to the law enforcement agencies? Will they actually use the footage?
- deleted 5y ago
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  - deleted 5y ago
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- dazc 5y ago
  You can submit evidence like this to the Police in the UK and they may act on it. Incidentally, I was involved in a heated discussion with someone the other week about her poor parking. Turns out she sent webcam footage to the police and I received a letter saying I had been reported for a public order offence but there was not sufficient evidence to act further. Raising ones voice isn't yet an offence I am pleased to report.
- btrettel 5y ago
  My experience in the US is that video alone is not sufficient to get a bad driver arrested. I'm a cyclist, and I was able to get a driver arrested for some misbehavior through a combination of helmet cam video and the fact that they were driving for Uber at the time so Uber's GPS placed them at the scene of the crime at the time of the crime. The driver plead guilty to a misdemeanor. This surprised one local bike activist who seemed to think the local police wouldn't do anything regardless of the amount of evidence.
  - discardedrefuse 5y ago

elmerfud 5y ago

Well now, this looks like it's just going to escalate roadrage interactions not decrease them. As if there's not enough tempers boiling over for very little reason, let's make an app to give busybodies even more to scream about. Next can we get a lawn length measurement app?

zhte415 5y ago
Speeding kills and seriously injures people. Being afraid someone's going to go unstable doesn't make it any less so. Your lawn, despite having a such neighbourhood zoning laws that dictate maintaining a lawn, specifically a lawn, or preventing washing lines, as much as an oddity as they are for someone alien to them, does not. Not a good comparison.
- akira2501 5y ago
  It also tends to kill the person doing the speeding, which is something they probably know, and they choose to do it anyway. Seeing that as an opportunity to inject yourself into an enforcement role does not seem like a decision designed to actually improve safety for everyone. Some areas in China had a program like this. Turn people in, get a payment from the local government. What you would see is people going out, intentionally driving badly near other drivers in an effort to get them to speed away or make an illegal move just to get away from them, or to even start road raging in return and then they would start recording after the fact. Finally, the last time I looked at the data, the correlation between speed and pedestrian deaths was not at all clear. Time of day was a much stronger point of correlation. The majority of pedestrian deaths happen after sun down and on the sides of road types you would not expect. I'm not sure how arming people with this rather unsocial technology is going to solve this exact problem.
  - usefulcat 5y ago
    > It also tends to kill the person doing the speeding Most definitely not true when the speeding motorist hits a pedestrian or a cyclist.

JNRowe 5y ago

Fair chunk of discussion earlier this week on a submission discussing the app¹. ¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30906561 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30906561

_rnwu 5y ago
I hadn't spotted that, thanks!
- JNRowe 5y ago
  If you also read that comment tyre fire then I suspect you'll snatch the thanks back ;) Hat tip for the thoughtful replies to the comments on your app, interesting to read as dispassionate observer.

uuyi 5y ago

I dislike this and it should go away. Firstly, anything which normalises surveillance by citizens on citizens is a death spiral for society. On top of that the £14.99 for 1000 credits approach empowers only the lunatic classes of society who would consider that as a price worth paying to get people into trouble. Secondly, I have problems with the accuracy claims here which are presented disingenuously. The measurement of vehicle wheelbase and the system clock and frame rate is seen as the reference with no mention of the issues with accurately measuring that nor issues like frame stalling and jitter. Thirdly, this will create a lot of noise for law enforcement agencies which may mask other higher priority crimes.

consumer451 5y ago
> Firstly, anything which normalises surveillance by citizens on citizens is a death spiral for society. The new SaaS is Stasi as a Service.
- uuyi 5y ago
  That’s a great analogy. Even if it is slightly depressing.
bradknowles 5y ago
So, I don't want to use a system like this to generate actual fines. I want to embarrass people who are speeding through my neighborhood at 2x the local speed limit, just because they can. In some cases, including school buses. Uploading only the most egregious cases to YouTube on an automated basis would make me happy.
antattack 5y ago
Counting on one's crime not being discovered by keeping odds of detection low is a loosing battle. I think it's better to work towards laws, enforcement and punishment that make sense.
_rnwu 5y ago
> Thirdly, this will create a lot of noise for law enforcement agencies which may mask other higher priority crimes. If it becomes accepted as an automated solution where either a very quick human check or no human check is required, it would reduce their burden.

jlarocco 5y ago

They should market this to the nosy busy-bodies on NextDoor. Can anybody explain why they would install an app like this? What ever happened to people minding their own business?

brimble 5y ago
You're already being recorded by a dozen surveillance doorbells and cheap outdoor cameras when you walk outside your house, in a normal middle-class neighborhood, these days :-/ For whatever reason, a bunch of other tech-crap has caught on only unevenly, but those seem to be fairly common everywhere.
Angostura 5y ago
I imagine if you live on an urban street where (say) kids walk to school and there are various selfish drivers who regularly speed, this could be rather useful.
- jlarocco 5y ago
  I don't see how this helps. What would be useful is for you (and your neighbors) to report the issue to the city and have them install speed bumps and maybe have a speed trap setup. Not everything needs an app.
  - dodgerdan 5y ago
    What percentage of American communities do you think the police force or council would do either of those things on the basis of a request? In Oakland it took years after multiple fatalities at crosswalks for there to be enforcement and road works.
    - the_only_law 5y ago
      Fair point, though at the same time I don’t see how this app would help any more or less.
    - 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

ospzfmbbzr 5y ago

Weak little people love stuff like this -- it gives them power they could never hope to have to interfere with the lives of better people who they live in envy of.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

btrettel 5y ago

I'm a cyclist who often rides with a helmet camera due to misbehavior from drivers, including speeding. Does the app only allow one to measure speeds in video recorded in the app, or could I upload a short clip of an offending vehicle from a separate camera? In the past I've measured speed by manually counting how many frames it takes a vehicle to pass landmarks, but this can be time consuming.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
zionic 5y ago
I love riding bikes in neighborhoods, trails, a greenway-like city paths. Despite it being perfectly legal, I have a hard time finding people who choose to "share the road" with 5,000lb cars going 45+mph anything but crazy. You're rolling the dice every time someone overtakes you. At least in a car I have some of the best engineering available dedicated to protecting me (crash test engineers are gods). Do you value your life so little?
- 1-more 5y ago
  What am I gonna do, tell them they won? Never.
- btrettel 5y ago
  I rarely ride on roads with speed limits 45 mph or faster. I can't recall riding on roads with speed limits above 35 mph in recent memory, in fact. And 5000 lbs is quite heavy as that's more than a F150. Many non-cyclists' perceptions of what is safe differ greatly from reality. For instance, passing can be dangerous, but intersections are where the vast majority of the risk are. And it also shows that a lot of dedicated bike infrastructure is designed to address perceptions of what's unsafe rather than what is actually unsafe. A lot of "protected" bike lanes in my view increase risk because they make the cyclists less visible at intersections. I recommend looking at websites like https://bicyclesafe.com/ https://bicyclesafe.com/ for a more realistic view of the risks of cycling and how to reduce them. My own style of riding makes the top 4 collisions there unlikely (I often "take the lane" as appropriate to improve how visible I am), though I do have issues with various types of right hooks. I'm not sure whether those can be avoided as I ride with hi-viz gear and try to be as visible as possible otherwise.

rgrieselhuber 5y ago

Speedcam? More like Snitchcam.

rgrieselhuber 5y ago
Karencam? Stasicam? C'mon, these are great.

btrettel 5y ago

As a cyclist, I see a lot of dangerous driving, and a lot of hypocrisy with regards to the law on the roads. Unfortunately, I'm seeing some of that hypocrisy in the comments here. Here's a good example of the hypocrisy: A lot of drivers speed and will tell you that speeding is safe, even a victimless crime. To them the real problem are people like cyclists who run red lights. Yet I have watched probably hundreds of cyclists run red lights and few did so without first checking that the road was clear. Fact is, unless one is brazenly stupid, running red lights in practice is almost always safe. Note that I'm not saying someone should run red lights or that doing so is always safe! (I don't run reds.) The problem with both speeding and running red lights is that the even though most of the time nothing bad will happen, I think people who do such things underestimate the chances that a bad thing will occur, and don't make a good cost-benefit analysis for that reason. Wishful thinking explains why both happen. The small amount of time saved from speeding or running red lights isn't worth the carnage in my view. And the amount of time saved from speeding is indeed small, particularly given how much time one spends at stoplights. As a cyclist I'd see a lot of drivers speed to the next stoplight... only for me to catch up with them so in practice they weren't going much faster than a cyclist. The bottleneck frequently is not speed when in motion. (Factor in time spent finding parking and the comparison to cyclist is frequently worse, as cyclists can usually park much closer.) To be clear, I follow the law in my local jurisdiction to the letter. I have no patience for speeding drivers or cyclists who run red lights, for example. And in my experience the only people who don't like misbehavior on the road from any road users are cyclists, particularly the ones who wear hi-viz clothing.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
Yeah no, this is not how roads works. I don't care if you're a pedestrian, cyclist or driver, if you're following the letter of the law you are causing problems for the other two. All three of these groups routinely ignore laws on a situation specific basis and with local variations. And that selective compliance with the law is what constitutes normal traffic flow. To robotically follow the law in spite of this is ill-advised because it makes your actions less predictable to every other traffic participant. Cyclists (unfairly, IMO, but that's beside the point) catch shit for rolling signs and lights because it's a toss up whether they will or not and that really inhibits the ability of everyone else around to plan accordingly. Cars don't get crap for speeding because their actions are still predicable allowing everyone else to plan accordingly. Likewise nobody cares when pedestrians jaywalk as long as they don't surprise other traffic when they do it. And nobody cares when cyclists roll stop signs when they time it so that their actions are compatible with the other traffic in the stop. Frankly, I think the cyclist expectation problem will solve itself when cycling becomes a normal way of commuting and not a lifestyle and fitness thing.

sschueller 5y ago

FYI, this is not legal in Switzerland and most likely Germany. Your footage will not be accepted by the police or authorities and you may have the person depicted in the footage go after you for violating their privacy. Capturing speeders and red light runners is the job of the state. Red light cameras are very expensive in Switzerland because they need to be certified to be accurate.

sleepdreamy 5y ago

This is seriously terrible. Gross

giantg2 5y ago

At least here in the US, police don't really care about minor speeding. I don't see them pursuing the crime just because someone provides a video. The legalities of issuing the ticket without validating driver identity vary from state to state, but in many states it's not feasible.

incomingpain 5y ago

If someone ever admits to me that they have this app installed. They will not hear another word from me. I can't risk them hearing the words I say and reporting them to the government. If I ever get a speeding ticket sourced from this app. I will be challenging it to the maximum using as much court time as I can. I will also be joining politics with the goal of making possession of this app a crime.

tln 5y ago

I'd try it but it isn't compatible with my phone, which is an up to date Pixel. Maybe region locked?

_rnwu 5y ago
Yes, it's only available to download in the UK at the moment I'm afraid.
- mdrzn 5y ago
  Is there a way to try the app outside of the UK? Maybe in "basic" mode where you only guesstimate the wheelbases?

mind-blight 5y ago

Anyone creating a large database of license plates coupled with location and timestamp needs to be extremely careful. That kind of data at scale can be used for all kinds of privacy abuses and needs to have rigorous checks and balances. Using just that data you can often determine occupation, religion (what church/synagogue/etc. do you park at), potential medical issues (do you regularly drive to a specialist?), Do you have a drug or alcohol problem (Drive as well as a whole host of other PII, including networs off associates. Police make broad, sweeping requests with subpoenas. (And there are plenty of other abuses that come outside of law enforcement and the state) How equipped are you to deal with the practical and ethical ramifications of you succeed?

nunez 5y ago

I dream of a world where either speed limits are removed entirely or speed limits are enforced so well and penalized so strongly that no-one attempts to speed. Speed limits are this weird thing where the rule is de facto strict (most driving manuals will say that drivers need to drive at or slightly below the speed limit), but de jure a recommendation (as most will drive at the speed they feel most comfortable in the situation at hand). Law enforcement agencies _could_ install more speed traps and automated speed checkers, but any politician advocating for that will be run out of their city (despite it enforcing a law that's already in place). Law enforcement agencies _could also_ spend more resources on prosecuting and catching speeders, but there are n-many more important things they could be doing with their staff, many agencies are strapped for funds, and many courts are backlogged to the ages with pending cases. Law enforcement agencies _could also also_ make speed detectors highly illegal and revoke the licenses of anyone that has one on their dash or in their person, but see above as to why that hasn't happened. Thus, we get our current system, where people break the law by default, harass folks (like me) who want to drive at the speed limit, openly advocate for cheat devices to prevent getting caught (Waze's police scanning feature; radar detectors; etc.) and then slow to a crawl whenever they see a police offer who is usually already busy ticketing someone. A solution like this that is cheap, works anywhere in most situations, and auto-tickets (or auto-revokes) people when caught would be awesome. What would also be awesome is if we just removed speed limits entirely. If people are going to break the law by default, then maybe it's a bad law. I live next to an eight-lane highway that's dead straight for tens of miles that has a 60-mph speed limit set on it . It used to be 75-mph, but Houston lowered speed limits across the city to tackle their horrible smog problem. I would love to drive this at 85-mph, since we have an electric car that's zero emissions, but if I do that, that's points on my license, a driver's responsibility fee, and mandated defensive driver training. That doesn't stop the oodles of people that go this fast anyway, but it stops me, since my time is valuable and I'd rather spend the money on other things. I know that removing the speed limit increases the chance of a chucklehead driving their car at 160-mph, but those people would drive insanely fast anyway!

0xffff2 5y ago
>Speed limits are this weird thing where the rule is de facto strict (most driving manuals will say that drivers need to drive at or slightly below the speed limit), but de jure a recommendation (as most will drive at the speed they feel most comfortable in the situation at hand). Not really relevant, but I think you have the terminology backwards. The written rule is "de jure". The true behavior is "de facto".

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

Near me, someone was worried about speeding cars on a particular road and their complaint got a device installed that measured the time between cars driving over two spaced sensors. This collective data was then used to guide decisions on whether speed bumps or other enforcement measures were required. Feels like something this app could possibly do too if a spare tablet or phone could be left in position for a while.