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Genuine question: What is stopping some small percent of drivers from installing cameras and using ML to identify cars driving dangerously (e.g. speeding, runni

Genuine question: What is stopping some small percent of drivers from installing cameras and using ML to identify cars driving dangerously (e.g. speeding, running reds, changing multiple lanes at once, etc.), and when their license plate is identifiable, finding and informing their insurance company? If even a small subset of users did this, and insurers did something with this information, it would substantially disincentivize driving like a complete maniac. Are insurers unable to use this information? Are they afraid of the backlash from being the first to accept this information? Is there some legal reason this isn't doable?

joshu 2y ago
https://www.getnexar.com/ https://www.getnexar.com/
- monkeywork 2y ago
  Just tossing a product link into the discussion without any context isn't overly useful - why are you recommending (or are you) and why should I be clicking on that?
  - joshu 2y ago
    They were built to do the things in the comment that I replied to.
freejazz 2y ago
>If even a small subset of users did this, and insurers did something with this information, it would substantially disincentivize driving like a complete maniac. People who drive like complete maniacs aren't doing so rationally. It's called "road rage" not "road reason."
- gruez 2y ago
  Disagree. While "maniacs" could include road rage behavior (eg. brakechecking someone), it also arguably encompasses other risky behavior that's not obviously associated with "road rage", like speeding or aggressive weaving/lane changes.
  - freejazz 2y ago
    Road rage is but one example. No one brake checking someone else is doing it rationally. If someone was being rational, they would drive reasonably. They would forgive and forget, and they wouldn't do dangerous things. If drivers were worried about their rates going up, they would not do the very activities that put them in that risk in the first place.
    - gruez 2y ago
      > If drivers were worried about their rates going up, they would not do the very activities that put them in that risk in the first place. Not if they're underestimating the risk. For instance, if they think speed limits are instituted by clueless bureaucrats, or they think they're better than the average driver and therefore can drive more aggressively.
      - freejazz 2y ago
        Interesting how none of the risks you cite are an increase into their insurance premiums. In fact, what you point to are completely irrational thoughts that have nothing to do with the risks presented by undertaking those activities. It doesn't matter if speeds are set low or irrationally, the fee for a ticket is the same as is the insurance premium increase. Same with being better than another driver, it doesn't matter if you are or aren't better than another driver when they crash into you. Your premiums will increase the same. I appreciate you making my point for me.
        gruez 2y ago
        >In fact, what you point to are completely irrational thoughts that have nothing to do with the risks presented by undertaking those activities. It doesn't matter if speeds are set low or irrationally, the fee for a ticket is the same as is the insurance premium increase. I can't tell whether you wanted an opportunity to rant about unjust speed limits in your area, or are trying to get in a smug "well ackushally \u{1F913}" response. While it's true that speed limits can be arbitrary and driving above it doesn't magically make you a dangerous driver, it's pretty obvious when people say "driving like a complete maniac", that's not the sort of behavior they're referring to. Thinking "speeding" and "driving like a complete maniac" means driving 1 mile over the speed limit in an artificially low speed limit zone is about the least charitable way of interpreting that statement. >Same with being better than another driver, it doesn't matter if you are or aren't better than another driver when they crash into you. Again, I can't tell whether you're trying to be snarky. Being a better driver (however it's defined) might not fix your car when it gets into a crash, but I don't think anyone doubts that a professional driver is going to be able to avoid more accidents than the 90 year old granny that only drives every sunday to go to church, when put in the same situations. >I appreciate you making my point for me. Whatever you say, champ.
- sodality2 2y ago
  I disagree - people do it because they are angry, and _also_ because they're unlikely to get caught. Far less people commit hit&runs, because there's a much higher chance of getting caught.
  - freejazz 2y ago
    It's not because they will get caught, it's because of the repercussions that would happen if they did.
  - wil421 2y ago
    There are far less hit and runs than speeders or road ragers.
- bravetraveler 2y ago
  May not even have insurance, it's a coin toss
- CamperBob2 2y ago
  In most cases, it's a devil's brew of "Speed limits that are set too low" and "Drivers that aren't taught how to use lanes properly."
  - freejazz 2y ago
    Surely you don't live in a city.
    - CamperBob2 2y ago
      As long as we're trading non sequiturs: when you think about why you don't want your phone to behave this way, you'll understand why I don't want my car to.
      - freejazz 2y ago
        It's not a non sequitur, it's the only context in which your comment could ever make sense. Even then, most likely is objectively wrong.
- rbalicki 2y ago
  My superficial understanding of research on deterring criminal behavior (so, I may be bullshitting) is that it's more effective to make the likelihood of getting caught high than making the punishment severe. So this might be an effective (and cheap, compared to fiery auto crashes and arrests) way to discourage that behavior. And if someone does not respond to the initial incentive, their insurance rates would continue to climb, so at some point in time they either end up uninsured (in which case, this sousveillance really ought to just inform the cops, but anyway, the opinion in this thread is that cops are useless, so YMMV) or fix their behavior.
0xcafefood 2y ago
It would probably have "disproportionate impact." It's really the job of police forces to act on maniac drivers. And they stopped doing so in 2020 for the same reason.
- oxide 2y ago
  I lived in east Oakland for awhile, I'm pretty sure that driving stolen cars and torching them afterward don't give a fuck about auto insurance rates. The people who are driving like that on the 580 or @ 90th & Bancroft probably are uninsured as is. Do you really think everyone is just insured because it's the law? If so, you're fairly naive. Try leaving the bubble you live in now and then. Oakland cops stopping responding to anything less than murder at lot sooner than 2020 lmao.
- IncreasePosts 2y ago
  Disproportionate impact is already acceptable with insurance, because they know for example that the average young woman drives safer than the average young man. And charges them as such.
  - ThunderSizzle 2y ago
    [flagged]
renewiltord 2y ago
They might have been in the past and it's not a bad idea for a data aggregator company to enable crowdsourcing to make the data palatable to insurers but AI video is advanced enough to obscure the plates and change the car model slightly.
croes 2y ago
So they still drive like maniacs but without insurance.
croes 2y ago
Next step, we all wear body cams and they identify people with inappropriate behavior. For every mistake you get a point and with enough point a punishment. Sounds familiar.
- gruez 2y ago
  I mean, that already kinda happens today? Everyone carries a camera in their pocket, and public freakouts are recorded and posted on the internet, leading to social consequences for the person in question.
  - monkeywork 2y ago
    Which I also think has been a net negative to the Western world. Billy the dumbass in Gary Indiana does something stupid there he should be held to account by people from there, not posted online and receiving massive attention from the rest of the planet as people get off to their outrage porn online.
- tamimio 2y ago
  Yeah, I am personally against that as well. Enforcing laws is a police job, not the average citizen's, because they “supposedly” undergo certain training to do that. If everyone started acting like a police officer or reporting insignificant things, it would get chaotic, and it incentivizes people being hostile against each other. The only exception, in my opinion, is someone reporting something that’s substantially bad, like a homicide.
  - nox101 2y ago
    reporting is not the same as policing. Telling the police about a crime is the norm. Then the police police based on the report.
    - monkeywork 2y ago
      when you start offering monetary rewards for non-serious crime reporting you end up where the number of reports will outrun the resources of the reviewers and eventually have someone be required to "protest" the report and claim they are innocent putting a burden on them rather than the burden being on the authorities to prove you've done something wrong first. Look at things like DMCA reporting on youtube and how it can be abused.
lr4444lr 2y ago
I doubt it'd tell them any more than they already know. These drivers tend to have been given citations already. The real money would be in giving civilians whose footage leads to a successful prosecution for moving violations a percentage of the fine. NYC already has something like this for people who catch too-long idling trucks and photograph/video record it.
- barbazoo 2y ago
  Do insurers really know about citations?
  - tylerrobinson 2y ago
    Are you kidding? Absolutely. For moving violations you can look forward to the ticket itself plus increased insurance premiums.
    - monkeywork 2y ago
      I'm not an expert and I'm not one to get many tickets however my understanding is that they only look up individuals during renewal time or if you change policy or company. If you got a speeding ticket on week 10 of the year there is unlikely to be any increase on your insurance on week 35. Like I said this was my perhaps incorrect understanding of how it works here in Canada.
      - SoftTalker 2y ago
        This is my understanding as well but with net technology perhaps they are checking more often now.
      - sib 2y ago
        This is not true in my experience in the US (thanks sneakily-placed rapidly-changing speed limit signs enforced against out-of-state plates in Utah!)
  - atonse 2y ago
andylynch 2y ago
Insurers may not be the best recipients given most of those things are criminal matters. In my country, most police forces accept dashcam evidence from other road users, and will prosecute on it. It’s seen be the police as a great road safety tool.
- paulryanrogers 2y ago
  Is there a risk such video could be fabricated to frame someone for a crime they didn't commit, or even that never happened?
  - johnisgood 2y ago
    With deepfake AI? Absolutely. You do not even need AI, you just need to time it just right (or crop the video).
zer00eyz 2y ago
Why would they need to do this when the car makers give them all the data they want already? https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driver-tracking-insurance.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driv...
- rbalicki 2y ago
  This seems to indicate that it shares data on the car itself, not on other drivers :/
- steelframe 2y ago
  My car doesn't spy on me. I've pulled the Data Communications Module fuse.
23B1 2y ago
Great question. There is nothing stopping them. Which is why a privacy amendment must be passed and enforced with ruthless abandon if we don't want to pave the way for – and eventually become – an Orwellian panopticon in the service of authoritarians.
xattt 2y ago
ALPR units are used the license plate recognition already.
tamimio 2y ago
It won’t work as you expect. Most of these drivers don’t have insurance. Second, you might make things worse, as now you have other Karen-like drivers who will eventually start threatening other people to report them, and that will escalate a situation from flipping a bird to a more dangerous situation. I sometimes watch dashcam rage videos on YouTube, and these drivers won’t care or even become more aggressive once told there’s a dashcam. This is not to mention the questionable results of ML that could report false positives.
- IncreasePosts 2y ago
  It's not clear to me how you can claim most of these drivers don't have insurance. Also. Nothing is stopping Karen's from reporting things right now. So what if they do? If you've done nothing wrong then the reviewer would just trash it. And probably put Karen's reports in the "immediately discard" pile in the future if she sends in frivolous claims all the time.
  - tamimio 2y ago
    I watched dashcam videos, and most times after accidents, it turned out that there is no insurance or, worse, wrong insurance information is given, only to be found later that it’s fake. Obviously, this is not real statistics, but something I observed. > nothing is stopping Karens from reporting things True, but when you provide a platform for that, you incentivize the behavior. As mentioned below, you might start getting “points” in the app for these reports, just like how you report gas prices and get points that might win you free gas.
    - IncreasePosts 2y ago
      And likewise, you might get points deducted for wasting the reviewers time with a frivolous submission.
      - nosianu 2y ago
        The far more risky and dangerous - ostensibly for the original caller too - phenomenon of swatting exists despite all that. I would not be so sure about the quality of society's controls and feedback mechanisms.
jrflowers 2y ago
> What is stopping some small percent of drivers from installing cameras and using ML to identify cars driving dangerously (e.g. speeding, running reds, changing multiple lanes at once, etc.), and when their license plate is identifiable, finding and informing their insurance company? What has stopped you from doing that personally?
- porphyra 2y ago
  Nobody has developed that yet and OP might not have the skills to do so, but if an easy-to-install github repo were available then the lowered barrier to entry might make it possible. Theoretically, Teslas already know how fast every car around them is going and how they are driving, as evidenced by the 3D "FSD visualization", but I am guessing that piping this information out to rat out the reckless drivers is going to be super hard.
- rbalicki 2y ago
  I would! But I have a job and side projects that take up my time.
- IncreasePosts 2y ago
  I've done it. When i saw a driver run a red light (intentionally, they slowed down, and then gunned it through) and almost killed 3 people legally crossing the street. It took a while though. Maybe 10 minutes in total to pull the dashcam clip and upload it to YouTube.
morkalork 2y ago
Where I live, speeding and red light cameras can only issue fines to the plate holder and don't affect the demerit points of the driver because they don't have evidence of who was driving the vehicle. I imagine it would go the same way with insurance. Unless a cop pulls the person over and gets their ID, tough luck.
- lalaithion 2y ago
  The comment you’re responding to is postulating enforcement via higher insurance costs. If insurance gets ~20 reports of someone running a red light, maybe they’ll double the cost to insure that person.
  - morkalork 2y ago
    But that's the catch, using ML to scan a plate doesn't confirm who was driving.
    - baby_souffle 2y ago
      Nor does it actually confirm that the plate _matches_ the car. Otherwise i'd spend some time 3d printing something that looks a LOT like my neighbors license plate and wait until 1 AM and just blow the same red light over and over and over.
      - whaleofatw2022 2y ago
        Idk about your state, but many have a 'swizzle' vertical or two that I'm pretty sure is to assist readers and detect fakes...
    - hermannj314 2y ago
      For insurance underwriting, would it need to? "People whose household receive X anonymous tips" is a cohort that either does or does not have more insurable risk, and if it does correlate then you can make an attempt to adjust premiums accordingly.
kragen 2y ago
you could report anyone you disliked, as long as you could find out what their car looked like, even if they weren't speeding or running reds etc. convincingly editing the traffic light color in a video doesn't even require artificial neural networks. trump voters in progressive communities, for example, or progressive voters in right-wing communities
rayiner 2y ago
We should do this for HOV violators.
kjkjadksj 2y ago
The same thing that allows drivers to run red light cameras and cover their face with their hand
tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
In Europe, this would most likely be considered a violation of various privacy rules (specifics depend on country, but could include criminal penalties for the person doing this). In the US, I could totally see that happening.
- mig39 2y ago
  Technically, dashcams are illegal in some European countries.
whaleofatw2022 2y ago
Ford AFAIK actually has a patent of some sort for this [0] [0] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a61793292/ford-cop-cars-speed-detector-patent/ https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a61793292/ford-cop-cars-sp...
sschueller 2y ago
In Switzerland it would be the law preventing that. Running ML on public footage of people who did not consent is a huge no-no. Dashcams are already a problem and technically illegal although tolerated. The footage can't generally be used on court.
- moate 2y ago
  Swiss privacy law is absolutely insane to me both for the protection it provides (good) but also for the protection it provides(bad). I guess all tools are weapons in the right hands.
- Der_Einzige 2y ago
  Very very good, and I want more societies which give a bigger middle finger to the karens of their world.
rootusrootus 2y ago
Given the potential for abuse, the insurance company probably can't really do much aside from writing a letter to the driver saying someone observed them driving dangerously. Probably the letter should be more specific, include pictures, and it should not be entirely anonymous. You should be able to find out if someone is trying to make trouble for you. It might not even be legally possible anyway. Insurance companies have a lot of regulation.
pmichaud 2y ago
Setting aside the obvious dystopian next steps, I think the main problem with automated traffic law enforcement is that our laws are quite bad in the sense that they rely on enforcement being loose and somewhat subjective to even work at all. The speeds on various roads, the timing of traffic lights, the places one can park and for how long, etc, are not carefully planned or thought out enough to actually work if everyone were to strictly adhere to them. It all works because lots of people can briefly park in illegal places, choose reasonable times to speed, or reasonable moments to use the shoulder to go around obstructions, etc. Obviously you capture some craziness on the margin that you want to capture, but also on the margin is the fudging that makes the whole thing work at all.
- mft_ 2y ago
  I’m struggling to understand your point, or to imagine many examples which support it. I agree that brief minor parking infringements may occasionally make people’s lives more efficient; but I can’t think of any examples where traffic lights and speed limits need to be routinely disregarded?
  - laweijfmvo 2y ago
    From what I remember of my CA driver’s license test (had to re-take the written test when I moved to CA), there is no actual speed limit in CA. The speed limit is “whatever conditions deem safe”. Maybe OP meant something like that?
    - aduffy 2y ago
      As someone who got their first drivers license in California, I can say with certainty that there are in fact speed limits.
    - acdha 2y ago
      You might want to review the handbook again. What you’re referring to is the basic speed law, which never trumps the absolute speed limits posted (or the special restrictions like the 15 mph railroad track law). Think of it as a clamped function: the speed limit is min(posted limit, safe speed under current conditions).
jdietrich 2y ago
Here in the UK, the police actively encourage the public to submit dashcam footage of motoring offences. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-64386371 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-64386371 https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/news/driving-1/2021-02/one-in-four-dash-cam-submissions-to-police-end-in-prosecution/ https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/news/driving-1/2021-02/one-in-f...
- kelnos 2y ago
  Oof, conditioning people to tattle on their neighbors. That's never gone horribly wrong... /s
paradox460 2y ago
Back when I used to cross the San Mateo bridge frequently, I'd see the same group of drivers routinely driving dangerously and breaking multiple laws. I had dashcam footage. I once called up CHP and asked if they wanted it. They politely told me where to shove it The police don't want to enforce the laws that are written. They don't even pull over drivers without license plates.
- kenjackson 2y ago
  Problem is there is no punishment to the criminals. Why risk your life/job just to have the criminal released hours later. I was a big believer of police reform, but realized the whole system was broken and police are just a symptom. And most actors are actually behaving somewhat rationally. The sad part is criminals are finally realizing this. I have a cousin who hangs with a “crowd” and it’s amazing how prolific and bold some are. And how many people know about the crimes and no one really says anything. And apparently police know about a lot of it too, but apparently a case that prosecutors will take is an exceptionally high bar.
_moof 2y ago
As much as I think I'd love to be able to write traffic tickets during my commutes, I don't think anyone wants to live in a world where everyone is a cop. I think you'll find too that a lot of people think laws are for other people. My speeding is totally justified.
- Swizec 2y ago
  As someone who speeds on highways (but not in cities/towns), I wish more people sped. The left lane is for crime, get out of the way.
hnburnsy 2y ago
> Genuine question: What is stopping some small percent of drivers from installing cameras and using ML to identify cars driving dangerously (e.g. speeding, running reds, changing multiple lanes at once, etc.), and when their license plate is identifiable, finding and informing their insurance company? GM is already doing this, look it up.
- rbalicki 2y ago
  Do you have more info about this?
  - hnburnsy 2y ago
    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/technology/general-motors-spying-driver-data-consent.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/technology/general-motors... This is the reporting bad drivers to insurance companies part, not the cameras part.
alexvitkov 2y ago
"The Snitch-mobile"
eddd-ddde 2y ago
I have 100% thought about a drivers rating system where users rate other drivers. Even better, not only notify insurance companies, but notify other drivers that the idiot in front of them is dangerous so they can react.
- rbalicki 2y ago
  The touch screen in a Tesla could easily surface such information about the cars around them. That's great
- steelframe 2y ago
  > not only notify insurance companies I can immediately think of half a dozen ways this would be abused. The clique of brats in their daddies' Teslas at Sammamish High School bully the unpopular kid. Black guy who drives through predominately white neighborhoods in the deep south. Prius with a Harris/Walz bumper sticker in eastern Idaho. Need I go on?
- johnisgood 2y ago
  You should watch Black Mirror.
pdar4123 2y ago
Seems like a great idea. The police should do this… bring back red light cameras and automated speed traps.
- duped 2y ago
  Red light cameras have perverse incentives that have led to municipal corruption and made intersections more dangerous.
  - jclulow 2y ago
    Can you perhaps expand on the incentives and the mechanism of increased danger?
    - lolinder 2y ago
      The goal of a red light camera is ostensibly to make an intersection safer, but the fact that the city gets money when people get tickets incentivizes them to actually keep the intersection difficult to navigate correctly. They lose money if they adjust timings to be more appropriate for the situation or if they make the lights more visible or if they replace the light with a roundabout. It also penalizes driving behaviors that are objectively not very dangerous far more harshly than a human police officer would—a lot of the profit from a red light camera comes from rolling right turns on red, which is very often a perfectly safe behavior that actually helps traffic move more smoothly (for example, when you technically have a red but there's a left turn crossing in the opposite direction providing complete cover for your move).
    - duped 2y ago
      Sure, when the cameras start turning into a source of revenue then the city has an incentive to adjust the timing of the lights to maximize revenue and not minimize harm. This has happened (notably, the city of Chicago reduced the time of yellows and it led to more tickets and more accidents). The other thing to remember is that governments don't operate red light cameras. They hire contracting businesses to install and operate them, and normally instead of paying a fixed rental/maintenance rate for the cameras those companies typically get paid a fraction of the fines. That means the designer/operator of the camera doesn't have much incentive to make the camera accurate or maximize safety, but to maximize how many cars it can issue tickets to (whether or not they're actually breaking the law or not). When you take that to the extreme, the red light camera companies will even lobby local politicians to install more of them, and advertise them not as a tool for safety but for revenue. In some cases they've straight up bribed mayors and city officials with kickbacks from the ticket revenue. All told, red light cameras are pretty shitty at making roads safer. What we really need are narrower roads with fewer lanes and smaller cars, but that's systemic. If we want to make specific intersections safer you can park a traffic enforcement officer at the intersection which will do more than any camera will.
rbalicki 2y ago
Responses here seem to not take into account: - elasticity of laws. If all of a sudden every well-to-do law-abiding doctor, engineer and lawyer gets a fine on their daily commute for speeding 5 mph over the limit, there's going to instantly be a lot of pressure to change the speed limit to something reasonable. - the amount of absolutely insane, dangerous behavior on the highways (people weaving in and out at 100 mph, etc.). It may be tough for an insurance company to act on a tip that someone changed lanes without using their blinkers, it certainly won't be tough if there's video evidence of them going 100 mph. - the fact that insurance companies (presumably) do not need to know the identity of the driver to raise rates. If your car is regularly being driven by your brother at 100mph, it's still your insurance that's going to pay if he gets in an accident. - while the police sound like they've given up on enforcing any traffic laws, it's in the insurance company's financial interest not to insure dangerous drivers. (And while that's sad, maybe private sousveillance is better than anarchy. People can have differing opinions.)
- kelnos 2y ago
  > If your car is regularly being driven by your brother at 100mph, it's still your insurance that's going to pay if he gets in an accident. Not if your brother isn't listed as an insured party on your insurance. The insurance company will tell you to pound sand in that case. And if your brother is on your insurance, and you're paying for it and giving him a free ride, that's on you. > And while that's sad, maybe private sousveillance is better than anarchy. People can have differing opinions. ::raises hand:: We shouldn't accept either. Private surveillance is not the solution to anarchically poor enforcement.
m463 2y ago
It's an ROA, like an HOA, but for everywhere. I wonder if folks could wear an emitter mask to prevent identification of their face? (like a hockey mask but covered in bright IR LEDs to confuse cameras)
Aurornis 2y ago
This is an idea that only sounds good when you imagine it being applied to the drivers you dislike. When people started getting higher insurance rates because a vigilante dashcam operator caught them driving 68 in a 65 three different times or because they only slowed to 1MPH instead of 0MPH at a 4-way stop, then it wouldn't seem like such a good idea any more.
39896880 2y ago
Informing the insurance company… how? Everything done by a large corp like an insurer has a specific workflow. There is no form to upload a video of someone behaving badly. Emailing some rando at Geico with an mp4 is going to be met with total indifference because the corporate drone answering whatever emails aren’t autoreplied or spamcanned will have no process by which to respond
- froggit 2y ago
  There's no way insurance companies haven't already done the cost-benefit analysis for implementing a way to take videos from randos and turning it into actionable rate hikes. If it were favorable to their bottom lines there'd already be a link to "submit evidence" on every insurer's home page.
akira2501 2y ago
> it would substantially disincentivize driving like a complete maniac. You are presuming that the manics are otherwise legally entitled to drive and have valid insurance. It should be no surprise to learn that they, very largely, do not. They already don't care about your incentive system.
lolinder 2y ago
It's so very HN that we get into fits about Google and Facebook and Apple and so on tracking us to make a buck, but the idea of an insurance company deputizing millions of cameras to perform mass surveillance to make a buck is suddenly okay because drivers that make us angry on the road get hurt by it. The obvious answer to this proposal is that I believe that I have a right to not be monitored and penalized by autonomous algorithms, and I'm not ready to compromise on that right just because some people drive dangerously. All of the same arguments HN will reliably raise against algorithmic anything apply here, but apparently that all goes out the window when cars become involved.
- unshavedyak 2y ago
  > but the idea of an insurance company deputizing millions of cameras to perform mass surveillance to make a buck is suddenly okay because drivers that make us angry on the road get hurt by it. I'd word it more like drivers who put me and others around me in danger should be punished for driving recklessly.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    Fair enough. After all, as we all know, the only reason to object to massive surveillance nets is if you're a criminal who has something to hide. Since I keep the law all that tracking and monitoring won't affect me.
    - unshavedyak 2y ago
      > Fair enough. After all, as we all know, the only reason to object to massive surveillance nets is if you're a criminal who has something to hide Yea, that's the case when i'm submitting a video of a crime being committed. I also submitted video of crimes in my neighborhood being committed (home security cams), is that also an invasion of the criminals privacy?
    - try_the_bass 2y ago
      I mean, you do have to admit that by objecting to "massive surveillance nets", you're actively helping criminals who have things to hide, even if you don't. If you think that's worth it, that's up to you, but you do have to admit that your position helps those with antisocial goals. You'll probably argue that "massive surveillance nets are inherently antisocial", but we both know that's not any more true than saying that "absolute freedom of speech is inherently antisocial". Arguably true, but wholly subjective.
hindsightbias 2y ago
What makes you think the drivers who drive that way have insurance?
b59831 2y ago
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deleted 2y ago
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magnetowasright 2y ago
The proliferation of dash cams and the (...paltry) threat of having footage of bad behaviour put on the internet, or more importantly, having proof of what happened in an incident/accident to be able to pass onto insurance or police (where there's consequences from determining fault, theoretically) hasn't magically stopped people driving like homicidal maniacs, has it? There's a million reasons why a dystopic snitch on your neighbours program isn't practical, as others have highlighted. I love the idea that insurance companies would be afraid of backlash lol. There's also easier options like I imagine asking car manufacturers to hand over data collected on driver behaviour would be. Don't US insurers already collect data like that from willing customers? Why not get that data from all customers regardless of consent? We've seen time and time again that most car manufacturers will throw all the data they can at whichever corporation asks for it. Even lower tech than that, speed and red light cameras have existed for a long time and they work on vehicles regardless of how many touchscreen tablets have been glued into it. Stupid(er) comment time: even lower tech again, the potential threat of gun violence in road rage incidents doesn't seem to disincentivise driving like a homicidal maniac, judging by how much worse US dash cam captured accidents seem to be compared to those from Europe or Australia. Maybe that's more to do with how many giant yank tanks there are on US roads and how much more effective they are at obliterating other road users and the sense of safety that comes with driving such huge things? Jokes aside, road safety is a complex problem and insurance companies have other ways to protect their interests with significantly less effort.
throwaway2037 2y ago
Maybe insurers will pay bounty for it. Mostly, you want to get rid of dangerous drivers, not just charge them more!
globular-toast 2y ago
That was my first thought upon reading the headline. Did your car witness a crime? Yes, literally hundreds every time it hits the road. Most drivers break the law every single journey. Many do it egregiously.
lofaszvanitt 2y ago
People already police others, there is no need for a complete psycho society where everyone is a potential snitch. Plus, a few minutes of speeding and shouting helps to calm people. Now imagine that people cannot even use their expensive car for speeding... where will people vent their aggression?

joshu 2y ago

https://www.getnexar.com/ https://www.getnexar.com/

monkeywork 2y ago
Just tossing a product link into the discussion without any context isn't overly useful - why are you recommending (or are you) and why should I be clicking on that?
- joshu 2y ago
  They were built to do the things in the comment that I replied to.

freejazz 2y ago

>If even a small subset of users did this, and insurers did something with this information, it would substantially disincentivize driving like a complete maniac. People who drive like complete maniacs aren't doing so rationally. It's called "road rage" not "road reason."

gruez 2y ago
Disagree. While "maniacs" could include road rage behavior (eg. brakechecking someone), it also arguably encompasses other risky behavior that's not obviously associated with "road rage", like speeding or aggressive weaving/lane changes.
- freejazz 2y ago
  Road rage is but one example. No one brake checking someone else is doing it rationally. If someone was being rational, they would drive reasonably. They would forgive and forget, and they wouldn't do dangerous things. If drivers were worried about their rates going up, they would not do the very activities that put them in that risk in the first place.
  - gruez 2y ago
    > If drivers were worried about their rates going up, they would not do the very activities that put them in that risk in the first place. Not if they're underestimating the risk. For instance, if they think speed limits are instituted by clueless bureaucrats, or they think they're better than the average driver and therefore can drive more aggressively.
    - freejazz 2y ago
      Interesting how none of the risks you cite are an increase into their insurance premiums. In fact, what you point to are completely irrational thoughts that have nothing to do with the risks presented by undertaking those activities. It doesn't matter if speeds are set low or irrationally, the fee for a ticket is the same as is the insurance premium increase. Same with being better than another driver, it doesn't matter if you are or aren't better than another driver when they crash into you. Your premiums will increase the same. I appreciate you making my point for me.
      - gruez 2y ago
        >In fact, what you point to are completely irrational thoughts that have nothing to do with the risks presented by undertaking those activities. It doesn't matter if speeds are set low or irrationally, the fee for a ticket is the same as is the insurance premium increase. I can't tell whether you wanted an opportunity to rant about unjust speed limits in your area, or are trying to get in a smug "well ackushally \u{1F913}" response. While it's true that speed limits can be arbitrary and driving above it doesn't magically make you a dangerous driver, it's pretty obvious when people say "driving like a complete maniac", that's not the sort of behavior they're referring to. Thinking "speeding" and "driving like a complete maniac" means driving 1 mile over the speed limit in an artificially low speed limit zone is about the least charitable way of interpreting that statement. >Same with being better than another driver, it doesn't matter if you are or aren't better than another driver when they crash into you. Again, I can't tell whether you're trying to be snarky. Being a better driver (however it's defined) might not fix your car when it gets into a crash, but I don't think anyone doubts that a professional driver is going to be able to avoid more accidents than the 90 year old granny that only drives every sunday to go to church, when put in the same situations. >I appreciate you making my point for me. Whatever you say, champ.
sodality2 2y ago
I disagree - people do it because they are angry, and _also_ because they're unlikely to get caught. Far less people commit hit&runs, because there's a much higher chance of getting caught.
- freejazz 2y ago
  It's not because they will get caught, it's because of the repercussions that would happen if they did.
- wil421 2y ago
  There are far less hit and runs than speeders or road ragers.
bravetraveler 2y ago
May not even have insurance, it's a coin toss
CamperBob2 2y ago
In most cases, it's a devil's brew of "Speed limits that are set too low" and "Drivers that aren't taught how to use lanes properly."
- freejazz 2y ago
  Surely you don't live in a city.
  - CamperBob2 2y ago
    As long as we're trading non sequiturs: when you think about why you don't want your phone to behave this way, you'll understand why I don't want my car to.
    - freejazz 2y ago
      It's not a non sequitur, it's the only context in which your comment could ever make sense. Even then, most likely is objectively wrong.
rbalicki 2y ago
My superficial understanding of research on deterring criminal behavior (so, I may be bullshitting) is that it's more effective to make the likelihood of getting caught high than making the punishment severe. So this might be an effective (and cheap, compared to fiery auto crashes and arrests) way to discourage that behavior. And if someone does not respond to the initial incentive, their insurance rates would continue to climb, so at some point in time they either end up uninsured (in which case, this sousveillance really ought to just inform the cops, but anyway, the opinion in this thread is that cops are useless, so YMMV) or fix their behavior.

0xcafefood 2y ago

It would probably have "disproportionate impact." It's really the job of police forces to act on maniac drivers. And they stopped doing so in 2020 for the same reason.

oxide 2y ago
I lived in east Oakland for awhile, I'm pretty sure that driving stolen cars and torching them afterward don't give a fuck about auto insurance rates. The people who are driving like that on the 580 or @ 90th & Bancroft probably are uninsured as is. Do you really think everyone is just insured because it's the law? If so, you're fairly naive. Try leaving the bubble you live in now and then. Oakland cops stopping responding to anything less than murder at lot sooner than 2020 lmao.
IncreasePosts 2y ago
Disproportionate impact is already acceptable with insurance, because they know for example that the average young woman drives safer than the average young man. And charges them as such.
- ThunderSizzle 2y ago
  [flagged]

renewiltord 2y ago

They might have been in the past and it's not a bad idea for a data aggregator company to enable crowdsourcing to make the data palatable to insurers but AI video is advanced enough to obscure the plates and change the car model slightly.

croes 2y ago

So they still drive like maniacs but without insurance.

croes 2y ago

Next step, we all wear body cams and they identify people with inappropriate behavior. For every mistake you get a point and with enough point a punishment. Sounds familiar.

gruez 2y ago
I mean, that already kinda happens today? Everyone carries a camera in their pocket, and public freakouts are recorded and posted on the internet, leading to social consequences for the person in question.
- monkeywork 2y ago
  Which I also think has been a net negative to the Western world. Billy the dumbass in Gary Indiana does something stupid there he should be held to account by people from there, not posted online and receiving massive attention from the rest of the planet as people get off to their outrage porn online.
tamimio 2y ago
Yeah, I am personally against that as well. Enforcing laws is a police job, not the average citizen's, because they “supposedly” undergo certain training to do that. If everyone started acting like a police officer or reporting insignificant things, it would get chaotic, and it incentivizes people being hostile against each other. The only exception, in my opinion, is someone reporting something that’s substantially bad, like a homicide.
- nox101 2y ago
  reporting is not the same as policing. Telling the police about a crime is the norm. Then the police police based on the report.
  - monkeywork 2y ago
    when you start offering monetary rewards for non-serious crime reporting you end up where the number of reports will outrun the resources of the reviewers and eventually have someone be required to "protest" the report and claim they are innocent putting a burden on them rather than the burden being on the authorities to prove you've done something wrong first. Look at things like DMCA reporting on youtube and how it can be abused.

lr4444lr 2y ago

I doubt it'd tell them any more than they already know. These drivers tend to have been given citations already. The real money would be in giving civilians whose footage leads to a successful prosecution for moving violations a percentage of the fine. NYC already has something like this for people who catch too-long idling trucks and photograph/video record it.

barbazoo 2y ago
Do insurers really know about citations?
- tylerrobinson 2y ago
  Are you kidding? Absolutely. For moving violations you can look forward to the ticket itself plus increased insurance premiums.
  - monkeywork 2y ago
    I'm not an expert and I'm not one to get many tickets however my understanding is that they only look up individuals during renewal time or if you change policy or company. If you got a speeding ticket on week 10 of the year there is unlikely to be any increase on your insurance on week 35. Like I said this was my perhaps incorrect understanding of how it works here in Canada.
    - SoftTalker 2y ago
      This is my understanding as well but with net technology perhaps they are checking more often now.
    - sib 2y ago
      This is not true in my experience in the US (thanks sneakily-placed rapidly-changing speed limit signs enforced against out-of-state plates in Utah!)
- atonse 2y ago

andylynch 2y ago

Insurers may not be the best recipients given most of those things are criminal matters. In my country, most police forces accept dashcam evidence from other road users, and will prosecute on it. It’s seen be the police as a great road safety tool.

paulryanrogers 2y ago
Is there a risk such video could be fabricated to frame someone for a crime they didn't commit, or even that never happened?
- johnisgood 2y ago
  With deepfake AI? Absolutely. You do not even need AI, you just need to time it just right (or crop the video).

zer00eyz 2y ago

Why would they need to do this when the car makers give them all the data they want already? https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driver-tracking-insurance.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driv...

rbalicki 2y ago
This seems to indicate that it shares data on the car itself, not on other drivers :/
steelframe 2y ago
My car doesn't spy on me. I've pulled the Data Communications Module fuse.

23B1 2y ago

Great question. There is nothing stopping them. Which is why a privacy amendment must be passed and enforced with ruthless abandon if we don't want to pave the way for – and eventually become – an Orwellian panopticon in the service of authoritarians.

xattt 2y ago

ALPR units are used the license plate recognition already.

tamimio 2y ago

It won’t work as you expect. Most of these drivers don’t have insurance. Second, you might make things worse, as now you have other Karen-like drivers who will eventually start threatening other people to report them, and that will escalate a situation from flipping a bird to a more dangerous situation. I sometimes watch dashcam rage videos on YouTube, and these drivers won’t care or even become more aggressive once told there’s a dashcam. This is not to mention the questionable results of ML that could report false positives.

IncreasePosts 2y ago
It's not clear to me how you can claim most of these drivers don't have insurance. Also. Nothing is stopping Karen's from reporting things right now. So what if they do? If you've done nothing wrong then the reviewer would just trash it. And probably put Karen's reports in the "immediately discard" pile in the future if she sends in frivolous claims all the time.
- tamimio 2y ago
  I watched dashcam videos, and most times after accidents, it turned out that there is no insurance or, worse, wrong insurance information is given, only to be found later that it’s fake. Obviously, this is not real statistics, but something I observed. > nothing is stopping Karens from reporting things True, but when you provide a platform for that, you incentivize the behavior. As mentioned below, you might start getting “points” in the app for these reports, just like how you report gas prices and get points that might win you free gas.
  - IncreasePosts 2y ago
    And likewise, you might get points deducted for wasting the reviewers time with a frivolous submission.
    - nosianu 2y ago
      The far more risky and dangerous - ostensibly for the original caller too - phenomenon of swatting exists despite all that. I would not be so sure about the quality of society's controls and feedback mechanisms.

jrflowers 2y ago

> What is stopping some small percent of drivers from installing cameras and using ML to identify cars driving dangerously (e.g. speeding, running reds, changing multiple lanes at once, etc.), and when their license plate is identifiable, finding and informing their insurance company? What has stopped you from doing that personally?

porphyra 2y ago
Nobody has developed that yet and OP might not have the skills to do so, but if an easy-to-install github repo were available then the lowered barrier to entry might make it possible. Theoretically, Teslas already know how fast every car around them is going and how they are driving, as evidenced by the 3D "FSD visualization", but I am guessing that piping this information out to rat out the reckless drivers is going to be super hard.
rbalicki 2y ago
I would! But I have a job and side projects that take up my time.
IncreasePosts 2y ago
I've done it. When i saw a driver run a red light (intentionally, they slowed down, and then gunned it through) and almost killed 3 people legally crossing the street. It took a while though. Maybe 10 minutes in total to pull the dashcam clip and upload it to YouTube.

morkalork 2y ago

Where I live, speeding and red light cameras can only issue fines to the plate holder and don't affect the demerit points of the driver because they don't have evidence of who was driving the vehicle. I imagine it would go the same way with insurance. Unless a cop pulls the person over and gets their ID, tough luck.

lalaithion 2y ago
The comment you’re responding to is postulating enforcement via higher insurance costs. If insurance gets ~20 reports of someone running a red light, maybe they’ll double the cost to insure that person.
- morkalork 2y ago
  But that's the catch, using ML to scan a plate doesn't confirm who was driving.
  - baby_souffle 2y ago
    Nor does it actually confirm that the plate _matches_ the car. Otherwise i'd spend some time 3d printing something that looks a LOT like my neighbors license plate and wait until 1 AM and just blow the same red light over and over and over.
    - whaleofatw2022 2y ago
      Idk about your state, but many have a 'swizzle' vertical or two that I'm pretty sure is to assist readers and detect fakes...
  - hermannj314 2y ago
    For insurance underwriting, would it need to? "People whose household receive X anonymous tips" is a cohort that either does or does not have more insurable risk, and if it does correlate then you can make an attempt to adjust premiums accordingly.

kragen 2y ago

you could report anyone you disliked, as long as you could find out what their car looked like, even if they weren't speeding or running reds etc. convincingly editing the traffic light color in a video doesn't even require artificial neural networks. trump voters in progressive communities, for example, or progressive voters in right-wing communities

rayiner 2y ago

We should do this for HOV violators.

kjkjadksj 2y ago

The same thing that allows drivers to run red light cameras and cover their face with their hand

tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago

In Europe, this would most likely be considered a violation of various privacy rules (specifics depend on country, but could include criminal penalties for the person doing this). In the US, I could totally see that happening.

mig39 2y ago
Technically, dashcams are illegal in some European countries.

whaleofatw2022 2y ago

Ford AFAIK actually has a patent of some sort for this [0] [0] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a61793292/ford-cop-cars-speed-detector-patent/ https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a61793292/ford-cop-cars-sp...

sschueller 2y ago

In Switzerland it would be the law preventing that. Running ML on public footage of people who did not consent is a huge no-no. Dashcams are already a problem and technically illegal although tolerated. The footage can't generally be used on court.

moate 2y ago
Swiss privacy law is absolutely insane to me both for the protection it provides (good) but also for the protection it provides(bad). I guess all tools are weapons in the right hands.
Der_Einzige 2y ago
Very very good, and I want more societies which give a bigger middle finger to the karens of their world.

rootusrootus 2y ago

Given the potential for abuse, the insurance company probably can't really do much aside from writing a letter to the driver saying someone observed them driving dangerously. Probably the letter should be more specific, include pictures, and it should not be entirely anonymous. You should be able to find out if someone is trying to make trouble for you. It might not even be legally possible anyway. Insurance companies have a lot of regulation.

pmichaud 2y ago

Setting aside the obvious dystopian next steps, I think the main problem with automated traffic law enforcement is that our laws are quite bad in the sense that they rely on enforcement being loose and somewhat subjective to even work at all. The speeds on various roads, the timing of traffic lights, the places one can park and for how long, etc, are not carefully planned or thought out enough to actually work if everyone were to strictly adhere to them. It all works because lots of people can briefly park in illegal places, choose reasonable times to speed, or reasonable moments to use the shoulder to go around obstructions, etc. Obviously you capture some craziness on the margin that you want to capture, but also on the margin is the fudging that makes the whole thing work at all.

mft_ 2y ago
I’m struggling to understand your point, or to imagine many examples which support it. I agree that brief minor parking infringements may occasionally make people’s lives more efficient; but I can’t think of any examples where traffic lights and speed limits need to be routinely disregarded?
- laweijfmvo 2y ago
  From what I remember of my CA driver’s license test (had to re-take the written test when I moved to CA), there is no actual speed limit in CA. The speed limit is “whatever conditions deem safe”. Maybe OP meant something like that?
  - aduffy 2y ago
    As someone who got their first drivers license in California, I can say with certainty that there are in fact speed limits.
  - acdha 2y ago
    You might want to review the handbook again. What you’re referring to is the basic speed law, which never trumps the absolute speed limits posted (or the special restrictions like the 15 mph railroad track law). Think of it as a clamped function: the speed limit is min(posted limit, safe speed under current conditions).

jdietrich 2y ago

Here in the UK, the police actively encourage the public to submit dashcam footage of motoring offences. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-64386371 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-64386371 https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/news/driving-1/2021-02/one-in-four-dash-cam-submissions-to-police-end-in-prosecution/ https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/news/driving-1/2021-02/one-in-f...

kelnos 2y ago
Oof, conditioning people to tattle on their neighbors. That's never gone horribly wrong... /s

paradox460 2y ago

Back when I used to cross the San Mateo bridge frequently, I'd see the same group of drivers routinely driving dangerously and breaking multiple laws. I had dashcam footage. I once called up CHP and asked if they wanted it. They politely told me where to shove it The police don't want to enforce the laws that are written. They don't even pull over drivers without license plates.

kenjackson 2y ago
Problem is there is no punishment to the criminals. Why risk your life/job just to have the criminal released hours later. I was a big believer of police reform, but realized the whole system was broken and police are just a symptom. And most actors are actually behaving somewhat rationally. The sad part is criminals are finally realizing this. I have a cousin who hangs with a “crowd” and it’s amazing how prolific and bold some are. And how many people know about the crimes and no one really says anything. And apparently police know about a lot of it too, but apparently a case that prosecutors will take is an exceptionally high bar.

_moof 2y ago

As much as I think I'd love to be able to write traffic tickets during my commutes, I don't think anyone wants to live in a world where everyone is a cop. I think you'll find too that a lot of people think laws are for other people. My speeding is totally justified.

Swizec 2y ago
As someone who speeds on highways (but not in cities/towns), I wish more people sped. The left lane is for crime, get out of the way.

hnburnsy 2y ago

> Genuine question: What is stopping some small percent of drivers from installing cameras and using ML to identify cars driving dangerously (e.g. speeding, running reds, changing multiple lanes at once, etc.), and when their license plate is identifiable, finding and informing their insurance company? GM is already doing this, look it up.

rbalicki 2y ago
Do you have more info about this?
- hnburnsy 2y ago
  https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/technology/general-motors-spying-driver-data-consent.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/23/technology/general-motors... This is the reporting bad drivers to insurance companies part, not the cameras part.

alexvitkov 2y ago

"The Snitch-mobile"

eddd-ddde 2y ago

I have 100% thought about a drivers rating system where users rate other drivers. Even better, not only notify insurance companies, but notify other drivers that the idiot in front of them is dangerous so they can react.

rbalicki 2y ago
The touch screen in a Tesla could easily surface such information about the cars around them. That's great
steelframe 2y ago
> not only notify insurance companies I can immediately think of half a dozen ways this would be abused. The clique of brats in their daddies' Teslas at Sammamish High School bully the unpopular kid. Black guy who drives through predominately white neighborhoods in the deep south. Prius with a Harris/Walz bumper sticker in eastern Idaho. Need I go on?
johnisgood 2y ago
You should watch Black Mirror.

pdar4123 2y ago

Seems like a great idea. The police should do this… bring back red light cameras and automated speed traps.

duped 2y ago
Red light cameras have perverse incentives that have led to municipal corruption and made intersections more dangerous.
- jclulow 2y ago
  Can you perhaps expand on the incentives and the mechanism of increased danger?
  - lolinder 2y ago
    The goal of a red light camera is ostensibly to make an intersection safer, but the fact that the city gets money when people get tickets incentivizes them to actually keep the intersection difficult to navigate correctly. They lose money if they adjust timings to be more appropriate for the situation or if they make the lights more visible or if they replace the light with a roundabout. It also penalizes driving behaviors that are objectively not very dangerous far more harshly than a human police officer would—a lot of the profit from a red light camera comes from rolling right turns on red, which is very often a perfectly safe behavior that actually helps traffic move more smoothly (for example, when you technically have a red but there's a left turn crossing in the opposite direction providing complete cover for your move).
  - duped 2y ago
    Sure, when the cameras start turning into a source of revenue then the city has an incentive to adjust the timing of the lights to maximize revenue and not minimize harm. This has happened (notably, the city of Chicago reduced the time of yellows and it led to more tickets and more accidents). The other thing to remember is that governments don't operate red light cameras. They hire contracting businesses to install and operate them, and normally instead of paying a fixed rental/maintenance rate for the cameras those companies typically get paid a fraction of the fines. That means the designer/operator of the camera doesn't have much incentive to make the camera accurate or maximize safety, but to maximize how many cars it can issue tickets to (whether or not they're actually breaking the law or not). When you take that to the extreme, the red light camera companies will even lobby local politicians to install more of them, and advertise them not as a tool for safety but for revenue. In some cases they've straight up bribed mayors and city officials with kickbacks from the ticket revenue. All told, red light cameras are pretty shitty at making roads safer. What we really need are narrower roads with fewer lanes and smaller cars, but that's systemic. If we want to make specific intersections safer you can park a traffic enforcement officer at the intersection which will do more than any camera will.

rbalicki 2y ago

Responses here seem to not take into account: - elasticity of laws. If all of a sudden every well-to-do law-abiding doctor, engineer and lawyer gets a fine on their daily commute for speeding 5 mph over the limit, there's going to instantly be a lot of pressure to change the speed limit to something reasonable. - the amount of absolutely insane, dangerous behavior on the highways (people weaving in and out at 100 mph, etc.). It may be tough for an insurance company to act on a tip that someone changed lanes without using their blinkers, it certainly won't be tough if there's video evidence of them going 100 mph. - the fact that insurance companies (presumably) do not need to know the identity of the driver to raise rates. If your car is regularly being driven by your brother at 100mph, it's still your insurance that's going to pay if he gets in an accident. - while the police sound like they've given up on enforcing any traffic laws, it's in the insurance company's financial interest not to insure dangerous drivers. (And while that's sad, maybe private sousveillance is better than anarchy. People can have differing opinions.)

kelnos 2y ago
> If your car is regularly being driven by your brother at 100mph, it's still your insurance that's going to pay if he gets in an accident. Not if your brother isn't listed as an insured party on your insurance. The insurance company will tell you to pound sand in that case. And if your brother is on your insurance, and you're paying for it and giving him a free ride, that's on you. > And while that's sad, maybe private sousveillance is better than anarchy. People can have differing opinions. ::raises hand:: We shouldn't accept either. Private surveillance is not the solution to anarchically poor enforcement.

m463 2y ago

It's an ROA, like an HOA, but for everywhere. I wonder if folks could wear an emitter mask to prevent identification of their face? (like a hockey mask but covered in bright IR LEDs to confuse cameras)

Aurornis 2y ago

This is an idea that only sounds good when you imagine it being applied to the drivers you dislike. When people started getting higher insurance rates because a vigilante dashcam operator caught them driving 68 in a 65 three different times or because they only slowed to 1MPH instead of 0MPH at a 4-way stop, then it wouldn't seem like such a good idea any more.

39896880 2y ago

Informing the insurance company… how? Everything done by a large corp like an insurer has a specific workflow. There is no form to upload a video of someone behaving badly. Emailing some rando at Geico with an mp4 is going to be met with total indifference because the corporate drone answering whatever emails aren’t autoreplied or spamcanned will have no process by which to respond

froggit 2y ago
There's no way insurance companies haven't already done the cost-benefit analysis for implementing a way to take videos from randos and turning it into actionable rate hikes. If it were favorable to their bottom lines there'd already be a link to "submit evidence" on every insurer's home page.

akira2501 2y ago

> it would substantially disincentivize driving like a complete maniac. You are presuming that the manics are otherwise legally entitled to drive and have valid insurance. It should be no surprise to learn that they, very largely, do not. They already don't care about your incentive system.

lolinder 2y ago

It's so very HN that we get into fits about Google and Facebook and Apple and so on tracking us to make a buck, but the idea of an insurance company deputizing millions of cameras to perform mass surveillance to make a buck is suddenly okay because drivers that make us angry on the road get hurt by it. The obvious answer to this proposal is that I believe that I have a right to not be monitored and penalized by autonomous algorithms, and I'm not ready to compromise on that right just because some people drive dangerously. All of the same arguments HN will reliably raise against algorithmic anything apply here, but apparently that all goes out the window when cars become involved.

unshavedyak 2y ago
> but the idea of an insurance company deputizing millions of cameras to perform mass surveillance to make a buck is suddenly okay because drivers that make us angry on the road get hurt by it. I'd word it more like drivers who put me and others around me in danger should be punished for driving recklessly.
- lolinder 2y ago
  Fair enough. After all, as we all know, the only reason to object to massive surveillance nets is if you're a criminal who has something to hide. Since I keep the law all that tracking and monitoring won't affect me.
  - unshavedyak 2y ago
    > Fair enough. After all, as we all know, the only reason to object to massive surveillance nets is if you're a criminal who has something to hide Yea, that's the case when i'm submitting a video of a crime being committed. I also submitted video of crimes in my neighborhood being committed (home security cams), is that also an invasion of the criminals privacy?
  - try_the_bass 2y ago
    I mean, you do have to admit that by objecting to "massive surveillance nets", you're actively helping criminals who have things to hide, even if you don't. If you think that's worth it, that's up to you, but you do have to admit that your position helps those with antisocial goals. You'll probably argue that "massive surveillance nets are inherently antisocial", but we both know that's not any more true than saying that "absolute freedom of speech is inherently antisocial". Arguably true, but wholly subjective.

hindsightbias 2y ago

What makes you think the drivers who drive that way have insurance?

b59831 2y ago

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deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

magnetowasright 2y ago

The proliferation of dash cams and the (...paltry) threat of having footage of bad behaviour put on the internet, or more importantly, having proof of what happened in an incident/accident to be able to pass onto insurance or police (where there's consequences from determining fault, theoretically) hasn't magically stopped people driving like homicidal maniacs, has it? There's a million reasons why a dystopic snitch on your neighbours program isn't practical, as others have highlighted. I love the idea that insurance companies would be afraid of backlash lol. There's also easier options like I imagine asking car manufacturers to hand over data collected on driver behaviour would be. Don't US insurers already collect data like that from willing customers? Why not get that data from all customers regardless of consent? We've seen time and time again that most car manufacturers will throw all the data they can at whichever corporation asks for it. Even lower tech than that, speed and red light cameras have existed for a long time and they work on vehicles regardless of how many touchscreen tablets have been glued into it. Stupid(er) comment time: even lower tech again, the potential threat of gun violence in road rage incidents doesn't seem to disincentivise driving like a homicidal maniac, judging by how much worse US dash cam captured accidents seem to be compared to those from Europe or Australia. Maybe that's more to do with how many giant yank tanks there are on US roads and how much more effective they are at obliterating other road users and the sense of safety that comes with driving such huge things? Jokes aside, road safety is a complex problem and insurance companies have other ways to protect their interests with significantly less effort.

throwaway2037 2y ago

Maybe insurers will pay bounty for it. Mostly, you want to get rid of dangerous drivers, not just charge them more!

globular-toast 2y ago

That was my first thought upon reading the headline. Did your car witness a crime? Yes, literally hundreds every time it hits the road. Most drivers break the law every single journey. Many do it egregiously.

lofaszvanitt 2y ago

People already police others, there is no need for a complete psycho society where everyone is a potential snitch. Plus, a few minutes of speeding and shouting helps to calm people. Now imagine that people cannot even use their expensive car for speeding... where will people vent their aggression?