16 ms·

Show HN: Report idling vehicles in NYC (and get a cut of the fines) with AI

194 points by rafram 1y ago

New York City has this cool program that lets anyone report idling commercial vehicles and get a large cut of the fines [1]. It's been in the news recently [2]. I've filed a few reports, and I found the process frustrating and error-prone. The forms are fiddly, there's way too much information that needs to be copied down from the video by hand, you have to use a third-party app to take a timestamped video and a different app to compress it before uploading, and approximately none of it can be done on your phone — the device you probably used to record your video in the first place. I built Idle Reporter to make filing complaints into a five-minute process that you can do entirely from your phone. Idle Reporter uses AI to automatically extract all the required information and screenshots from the video and fill out the form for you. It compresses your video, adds the required screenshots, and uploads the whole thing to DEP. All you have to do is log in, give it a final check, and submit. The AI features cost me money to run, so I put those behind a subscription ($5.99/month, which can pay for itself after a single report). There's a one-week free trial so you can test it out. All the other features — including a fully-featured timestamp camera, which other apps charge for, and an editor for filling out the forms manually and submitting in a single step — will be free forever, as a service to the community. The app is iOS-only for now — part of this was an exercise in learning SwiftUI in my spare time. Check it out on the App Store and let me know what you think! [1]: https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/environment/idling-citizens-air-complaint-program.page https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/environment/idling-citizens-air... [2]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-city-idling-law-reporters/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-city-idling-law-report...

dale_huevo 1y ago
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- dang 1y ago
  Would you please stop posting like this? Once was fine, but half a dozen is too much. You've made your point, and that's ok, but this is not curious conversation. Also when the posts start getting dyspeptic-meta like this, something has gone wrong. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
rahimnathwani 1y ago
I love that you and others are making it easier for the public to report issues and violations. Another example in the same vein (but no financial reward for reporting!) is the Solve SF app: https://www.solvesf.com/ https://www.solvesf.com/
- rafram 1y ago
  Thank you!
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elektor 1y ago
Now this is a practical use of AI, kudos!
- rafram 1y ago
  Thank you!
hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
This is a phenomenal application of how fine-based bounties can be used to rapidly improve compliance with the law. Incredible work. I would absolutely use this if I lived in NYC; I'll recommend it to my friends there.
- gametorch 1y ago
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- ffsm8 1y ago
  I wish it was was more common around the world. Not just with parking though, but everything in the context of cars. Like letting the police install a permanent speed trap on your property or even pay for the privilege of them doing so. I'd bet that'd curb a lot of speeding in short order
  - hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
    There's no need for violence. In fact, the capital outlay would be inefficient. If you want to curb speeding, the solution looks much the same: Pay reporters some portion of the fines collected from the speeder. You will very quickly see a cottage industry of Internet connected dashcams and on-board AI solutions spring up, because it's practically free money if you drive safely yourself for long enough. Pretty soon nobody will be speeding, simply because you never know who or what is watching. This is a set of economic-legal policies I've been writing about here and there for a long time. It's great stuff.
    - gametorch 1y ago
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      - hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
        You have it backwards. A perfect detection rate for crime makes it much more important that we define conservatively what we even consider to be a crime in the first place, and then what kind of punishment we levy upon it. You also have it backwards because it already reliably makes society better for you. Take the case of Biogen employee Michael Bawduniak, who spent seven years documenting covert payments that steered doctors toward Biogen’s multiple‑sclerosis drugs illegally. When the United States Department of Justice settled the case for $900 million in 2022, Bawduniak received roughly $266 million, or about 30% of the federal proceeds, under the False Claims Act. It's a very similar mechanism, and anyone you may know who suffers from multiple sclerosis has likely had their treatment options materially improved thanks to Bawduniak's actions. But those kinds of actions only happen when you have the right mechanisms in place, to reward people who do the right thing.
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MathMonkeyMan 1y ago
It seems the lawyers are making it difficult: https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/environment/idling-citizens-air-complaint-program.page?question=faq9 https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/environment/idling-citizens-air...
- rafram 1y ago
  It used to be that as long as the vehicle was on the same block as a school or park, you only had to take a one-minute video (versus three-minute). Now there are some annoying documentation requirements if you want to submit a shorter video. Doesn’t impact the overall usefulness of the program very much IMO — I just didn’t add special handling for school/park reports like I would’ve before they made that change.
  - michaelmrose 1y ago
    Presumably they don't want you taking videos of people who aren't in fact breaking the law and profiting from tickets. NYC regulation requires you to not idle more than 5 minutes. https://dec.ny.gov/environmental-protection/air-quality/controlling-motor-vehicle-pollution/youre-the-key-to-being-idle-free https://dec.ny.gov/environmental-protection/air-quality/cont... Although they don't require you to actually take a 5 minute video it is overwhelmingly likely that most people don't pull out there phone every time a vehicle stops in NYC so that most 3 minute videos are liable to be of 5 minute idles. There are obviously 2 types of problem children cheaters and dummies. It's easier for cheaters to take a 1 minute video since even those who don't intend to idle for any substantial time may pause a moment. For dummies making them actually sit there and film 3 minutes decreases the chance that they will accidentally misunderstand how much time has passed. People are heavily biased towards their own benefits and are liable to miss-perceive 4.5 minutes as 5. Less possible when he pulled out his phone at the 2+ minute mark and now has to wait 3 minutes to have enough.
    - rafram 1y ago
      New York City has different rules from New York State, and commercial vehicles have different rules from personal vehicles. The limit for commercial vehicles in NYC is three minutes, or one minute when adjacent to a park/school: https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/environment/idling-citizens-air-complaint-program.page https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/environment/idling-citizens-air...
narcotraffico1 1y ago
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deadbabe 1y ago
We need something similar for tax evaders, and now we’ll be talking real money.
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- haunter 1y ago
  https://www.sec.gov/enforcement-litigation/whistleblower-program https://www.sec.gov/enforcement-litigation/whistleblower-pro...
  - deadbabe 1y ago
    Put some automation in front of it
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J7jKW2AAsgXhWm 1y ago
Would be great to have this for illegally parked parks as well.
- meindnoch 1y ago
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  - mh- 1y ago
    Yeah, people just up and leave those things all over the place. I'm glad someone is finally speaking up.
theptip 1y ago
Nice. Pricing seems a bit steep for occasional use; does iOS make it easy to do micro-transactions with Apple Pay? (I get the dev may be trying to put bread on the table with this, which is also fine…)
- rafram 1y ago
  That's a fair point. I have to see how the AI costs stack up, since heavy use can run up the bill pretty quickly with video inputs, and all subscriptions come with unlimited usage.
  - dummydummy1234 1y ago
    Wouldn't it make more sense to charge per report?
  - theptip 1y ago
    As a user I’d be happy to pay $5 for a bundle of credits and just top up whenever it runs out. And as you say you don’t want to be in the position where a whale costs you $50 by submitting a crazy number of requests. Maybe these are big-scale problems though :)
- sumedh 1y ago
  > Pricing seems a bit steep for occasional use; I believe most the fines are from small group of dedicated people who actively find offenders.
dale_huevo 1y ago
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- Doctor_Fegg 1y ago
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  - bluescrn 1y ago
    We've got a brand new war in the Middle East, and a big ongoing one in Ukraine. If we can't prevent wars between nations, there's no hope of the planet coming together to the extent required to manipulate the climate in a meaningful way.
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RamblingCTO 1y ago
Kinda offtopic, but I think this is so dystopian as it's only the beginning. Technocracy at its best. Have a bad starter and don't wanna stop the car? The numbers and rules don't care, no room for benevolence.
- olivermuty 1y ago
  My kids asthma wants your commercial car in a service bay, not idling outside a restaurant. I am all for not making a technocratic dystopia but this reasoning seems wrong lol
  - dale_huevo 1y ago
    Maybe the commercial driver has asthma too and needs to run the AC.
  - ksynwa 1y ago
    Your kid's asthms would appreciate more if there were fewer cars on roads and logistics leaned more on robust public transportation rather than putting the onus on individual household to own and operate multi-tonne vehicles.
    - toomuchtodo 1y ago
      New York City has already implemented a congestion surcharge in Manhattan to destroy demand for using personal vehicles, and has a robust public transit system. The only step left would be mandating EVs, and outlawing combustion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_fossil_fuel_vehicles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_fossil_fuel_vehic...
  - whycome 1y ago
    That’s the problem. Major polluters have convinced people it’s the small scale production to attack rather than the giant industrial polluters. We also allow incredibly inefficient engines that produce lots of pollution. How about a pollution credit trading program then? If my efficient car produces way less pollution than your gas-guzzling truck, I should get the room to idle until I reach our agreed max. A technological snitch program is a weird and messed up outcome when we ignore the base problems. But, cool technical achievement. I’m scared that a similar parking snitch program is all too easy as well. Car parked 3.5 hours in a 3hr max neighbourhood? Get them fined and get a sweet bounty! Thanks I hate it.
theptip 1y ago
I like the general idea, and I’ve been surprised this hasn’t taken off elsewhere, eg citizen videos for traffic violations like blocking intersections, it seems these should be ROI positive for the city to implement (lower enforcement costs, more ticket revenue).
- bluefirebrand 1y ago
  I really don't understand why anyone would want this Do you really want to live in a society where we're monitored for even the slightest infractions at all times and automatically punished regardless of any circumstances that might explain the behavior?
  - collingreen 1y ago
    I get your take and agree with the sentiment BUT I don't think this somehow requires "automatic punishment". Also, if the laws are there then I tend to think they should be enforced. Maybe this kind of thing will empower places to drop some of the laws most folks agree are "slightest infractions".
    - bluefirebrand 1y ago
      This sounds reasonable but I think it's a bit optimistic I don't think "increased government ability to enforce rules and collect fines" is likely to lead to less rules I would love to be proven wrong
      - collingreen 1y ago
        I agree with you on every thing you wrote here
  - gorbachev 1y ago
    New York City doesn't do this for "even the slightest infractions at all times". The idling regulations are based on real harm, and the reporting requirements include things like recording video to prove that the car you're reporting didn't start idling in the last 5 seconds, but has, in fact, been doing that for 3 minutes or longer, or 1 minute or longer adjacent to a school. More info here: https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/environment/idling-citizens-air-complaint-program.page https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/environment/idling-citizens-air... You have to actually submit a 3:01 (or 1:01) minute video as part of the report for that to be actionable. And, yes, I would really, really want to live in a society where unnecessary idling is not allowed. And if I was living next to a street corner where that happens regularly, I would be on that street corner recording videos any time I'd have free time, and more, if I had babies, who are especially vulnerable to air pollution, living with me.
eth0up 1y ago
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a5c11 1y ago
Since you've mentioned it, that'd be great to give some details regarding the AI mechanism you used. I really find that trend of hiding everything behind "The Divine AI" off-putting. What exactly AI does in the context of the application?
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vineyardmike 1y ago
Within the last year or so, I discovered my city’s 311 app, which I’ve become addicted to. I don’t drive, so I’m always walking around the neighborhood, and got in the habit of always reporting graffiti, dumping, illegally parked cars, etc. This had inspired me to try and make a few apps for civic use, but I discovered that many of the accessible web tools for my city have rules against bots. For example, the city maintains a list of locations and dates where parking is temporarily restricted for short term things like construction, but I can’t scrape it. I really wish that the government (at any level) made more serviced and data available as APIs or digital formats. The government is usually bad at building/buying websites and services, and I’d have done it for free (or for $0.99 on the App Store).
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- gametorch 1y ago
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- yodsanklai 1y ago
  > always reporting graffiti How does your city deal with graffitis? mine is plagued with graffitis and I can't see how they can be fought. It takes too much resources to remove them in a timely manner and impossible to catch the perpetrators.
  - gametorch 1y ago
    Yeah, graffiti is a real big problem compared to surveillance tech. Lol.
  - dcsan 1y ago
    And the cost is often on the small business owner
  - vineyardmike 1y ago
    It’s just a game of cat and mouse. I dont think there is a way to “win”, because it’s so easy to make new graffiti, and not practical to try and police and catch people in the act. I think they require private property owners to clean their own graffiti, which really sucks, but makes it more manageable for the city to focus on public areas. The city really just has a queue of cleanup sites and priorities locations that are high visibility or important, like school yards or transit infrastructure. An elementary school nearby had its mural destroyed by graffiti, and it was cleaned up within a day.
yapyap 1y ago
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Ekaros 1y ago
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- bapak 1y ago
  For those who don't know, this is China today.
- loufe 1y ago
  This is incredible sarcasm. It seems like people who like this sort of control always find a narrative to sell it to the people. The US still has the Patriot act on the books, and that's been the norm for some people's entire lives.
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- bluescrn 1y ago
  Facial recognition isn't enough. We need nano-drones that can grab DNA samples. Can't avoid that by wearing a mask/balaclava...
- perihelions 1y ago
  > "You walk against red light and your face gets plastered around billboards as named criminal." I'm unsure if you were obliquely referring to this, or if you were intending to suggest a fictional idea. But what you described is already a thing that's happening in mainland China, > "In the southern city of Shenzhen, Chinese authorities have launched a new surveillance system loaded with facial recognition, artificial intelligence, and a big database to crack down on jaywalking as well as other crimes." > "As a result, photographs of pedestrians caught in the act, along with their names and social identification numbers, are now instantly displayed on LED screens installed at Shenzhen road junctions." https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-20/china-deploys-ai-cameras-to-tackle-jaywalkers-in-shenzhen/9567430 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-20/china-deploys-ai-came... ("Chinese authorities use facial recognition, public shaming to crack down on jaywalking, criminals")
bluescrn 1y ago
Milking motorists is very profitable. Stopping more problematic crime, not so much. So we end up with anarcho-tyranny, where 'real' crime is policed poorly, if at all - but loads of resources and tech are deployed aggressively policing+punishing mostly-law-abiding people for the most minor of infractions.
- calvinmorrison 1y ago
  Anarcho-Tyranny: A of government in which the good citizen lives in fear of government , while the criminals run amok without fear of repercussions.
  - eth0up 1y ago
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    - dang 1y ago
      The comments you're talking about are getting flagged, mostly because they're off topic. Edit: I've unflagged some of the others, but here are some examples of the kind I mean: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44349249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44349249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44349183 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44349183 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44348874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44348874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44348759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44348759
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eth0up 1y ago
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dale_huevo 1y ago
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- dang 1y ago
  That's not a remotely accurate description of HN's readership!
screye 1y ago
Amazing ! Decentralizing traffic enforcement is a win-win. Bravo to NYC for opening this sort of program and OP for turning it into an "efficient free market". Will try it out soon. Bookmarked.
- dale_huevo 1y ago
  > Decentralizing traffic enforcement is a win-win Win-win for who exactly? Maybe we need to decentralize and AI-accelerate construction permit reporting too. Your backyard fence looks DIY and not up to code and your porch light looks like a fire hazard.
  - pvg 1y ago
    We absolutely do that all the time?
  - organsnyder 1y ago
    Most cities have ways for neighbors to report things like this.
    - dale_huevo 1y ago
      Yes, and they're almost exclusively used by the worst type of vindictive chickenshit humans imaginable. I've known people affected by this, whose evil neighbors used 311 as a weapon because they simply didn't like them, and caused them tens of thousands of dollars in forced unnecessary renovations not to mention stress, for trivial violations that are widely ignored.
  - jen20 1y ago
    > Win-win for who exactly? Society at large? All the people who don't have the breathe the fumes of some garbage commercial vehicle. > Your backyard fence looks DIY Provided it's up for code, whether it was "done yourself" or not doesn't matter. > your porch light looks like a fire hazard. Absolutely this should be reported.
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theyknowitsxmas 1y ago
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- dang 1y ago
  Maybe so, but can you please not post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?
gametorch 1y ago
Genuinely curious, why aren't people allowed to say this is dystopian without getting flagged? What rule, specifically, does that violate? I think this is dystopian. Paying people to rat out their fellow citizens. Nightmarish. What if this idea was applied to the laws ICE is trying to enforce? Would you think that's dystopian?
- rafram 1y ago
  This program specifically fines businesses with fleets of commercial vehicles (delivery trucks, buses, et cetera) for illegal idling, and escalates the fines for repeat offenders. You can't report random individuals, nor would I really want to build an app for that. The point is to get businesses to stop polluting.
  - gametorch 1y ago
    Okay, that makes it a little less dystopian. But you make money off people snitching. And you're setting the stage for something far worse, imo.
    - paulgb 1y ago
      I see where you’re coming from, but the alternatives are either that the law isn’t enforced, or the state ramps up its own surveillance, which is more dystopian to me. I see this as in the same vein as SEC whistleblower awards, which I’ve never heard described as dystopian. Businesses just don’t have the same expectation of privacy that individuals do.
      - gametorch 1y ago
        I mean, the law not being enforced is wayyyyyyyyy less dystopian than this app and the numerous other ones like it that are bound to spring up. I'd rather live in truck fumes than a hyper-automated snitch surveillance state.
        1y ago
matsemann 1y ago
Man, I wish my city would make it possible to report drivers breaking the law. My big issue is cars parking in the cycle lanes. 1830 cars got fined for that in my city in total in 2024. Aka 5 a day. As a single cyclist I see more cars parked in cycle lanes every day on my commute than all those hundred officers give tickets to in total..
- cosmic_cheese 1y ago
  What I’d like to see is hard separation of roads and bike lanes. As a cyclist, nothing but a line painted on the road makes me feel unsafe, as a driver it’s difficult to not get nervous when passing a cyclist in the lane, and culturally drivers are generally favored over cyclists which results in things like parking in bike lanes not being adequately enforced. All these things would be solved by bike lanes being fully independent from the road.
  - josephcsible 1y ago
    > What I’d like to see is hard separation of roads and bike lanes. That's a great idea, as long as the hard separation goes both ways with bikes no longer being allowed in car lanes.
    - cosmic_cheese 1y ago
      Doable, but would probably require bike paths to be wider than they currently are and split into two lanes: one for road bikers and one for everybody else.
    - matsemann 1y ago
      Why? I don't get this "gotcha". Is there any actual rational reason for making such rules, or is it stemming from some annoyance from seeing cyclists in the road? There already exists roads where cyclists can't be: Highways/motorways. If the problem is cyclists in the road, that solves itself by building better infrastructure. Where there's adequate cycling infrastructure, cyclists prefer to use it. Where there's lacking or none, one should of course be able to use the road. Otherwise it would be a de facto ban on cycling, which I'm sure was your point?
georgeburdell 1y ago
Wish my California city had this attitude that you can report people via an app. So many offenses “run with the driver”, i.e. they will not prosecute unless a cop sees it happening and positively identifies the driver. They won’t even prosecute red light running from a video with the license plate clearly visible.
- samtho 1y ago
  A motor vehicle cannot receive a citation. If law enforcement cannot ID the driver as a particular individual when the infraction or crime occurred, a citation should not be issued.
  - orthoxerox 1y ago
    Why not issue it to the owner of the vehicle?
    - samtho 1y ago
      The owner of the vehicle may not be the one driving it.
      - orthoxerox 1y ago
        So? The one driving it is someone the owner willingly gave their keys to.
        samtho 1y ago
        Guilt by association, then? This is not how any sane legal system works.
  - georgeburdell 1y ago
    Yes, that is the rationale, even though in the specific case I cite, said red light runner caused an accident and left their insurance info and produced a driver’s license. The police don’t care. It doesn’t have to be like that. Why does New York not need to ID the driver to cite for idling? “The owner of the vehicle may not be the one driving it.”
Nifty3929 1y ago
I feel it's Orwellian, or Stalin-esq to have us being paid off to snitch on each other. Certainly, if you have evidence of murder or something, please do report it. But for an idling vehicle? Note that these laws are only targeting idling while parked, rather than during normal use, such as at a traffic light. This is called "true-idling" or "long-duration" idling. Has anybody considered how much CO2 or other greenhouse gases are actually released by "true-idling" or "long-duration" idling vehicles, either individually or in aggregate? I spent a few minutes researching it with an LLM and couldn't come up with much. Most of the information and numbers I got were for ALL idling, including during normal driving like at a traffic light. My guess based on that is that it (true idling) is a trivially small amount of CO2 compared to the overall. But it's plenty to earn yourself a nice payoff at the expense of your hard working delivery driver!
- paulgb 1y ago
  I think the intent is less about the CO2 emissions as about the air quality that people have to breathe (hence a stricter standard in some locations). I don’t know about measurable effects but I hate when I pass a long-idling truck and can taste it in the air.
  - gametorch 1y ago
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  - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
    Diesel exhaust is horrifying. Why aren't diesel engines subject to the same pollution regulations as the rest of us?
- toast0 1y ago
  > I feel it's Orwellian, or Stalin-esq to have us being paid off to snitch on each other. Sure, but it's a different kind of dystopia to have commercial vehicles idling and fouling the air outside of normal driving. As described where you have to capture 3 minutes of idling (1 minute near schools) and assuming most people take a while to notice, rather than starting the timer immediately when the vehicle stops, it seems like a reasonable way to enhance compliance. Idling while parked may not be a large contribution to total emissions, but it's harder to justify than idling in normal operation, and easier to enforce against, so there you go. Sometimes refrigerated transport more or less needs to idle to keep the contents at temperature, not sure if there's exceptions for that or if they just need to retrofit with more insulation or batteries to run the compressor or etc in order to comply. Idling at lights probably gets reduced by auto start/stop in new vehicles as well as congestion charges reducing traffic and probably dwell time at lights. Auto start/stop isn't a universally loved thing; it makes some cars really frustrating to use, but when done well, it seems like a reasonable tradeoff to reduce unneccesary emissions.
stemlord 1y ago
Feature request: the ability to report illegally parked police vehicles
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rurcliped 1y ago
feature request: AI-based risk analysis, with a model of which types of commercial vehicles at that location are likely to be controlled by organized crime
gametorch 1y ago
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- userbinator 1y ago
  Hopefully more than half.
9cb14c1ec0 1y ago
Spying on your friends, neighbors, and family? Nothing to see here, just old Soviet style repression tactics.
- userbinator 1y ago
  Orwell was right.
  - kennywinker 1y ago
    You mean when he said “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism, as I understand it.” or something else?
    - carlosjobim 1y ago
      He famously wrote a book about a totalitarian society, where people were encouraged to spy on their neighbors and report them.
      - kennywinker 1y ago
        Noticing a car is idling on a public street isn’t really spying, is it?
        nandomrumber 1y ago
        Noticing a vehicle idling on a street isn’t the same thing as noticing a vehicle idling on a street, taking video evidence of it, reporting it and providing a copy of the video with the expectation of getting a cut of the fine. Is it?
        amanaplanacanal 1y ago
        Honestly, even without a financial incentive, I've thought about getting a dashcam to record the fuckheads "rolling coal" in my city and reporting them. Some behavior is so anti social that yes, it should be reported.
crusty 1y ago
I'll have to hunt down a link to the piece but I swear I saw a video about a few people in NYC who muddy go around finding idling vehicles and piece together the fine bounties into full time equivalent work. This could really disrupt their industry.
kennywinker 1y ago
If a crime’s punishment is a fine, that means it’s legal if you’re rich. https://upriseri.com/the-inequality-of-fines-how-monetary-penalties-exacerbate-wealth-disparity-and-undermine-the-rule-of-law/ https://upriseri.com/the-inequality-of-fines-how-monetary-pe...
Zenbit_UX 1y ago
You created a subscription service for power-~~users~~ snitches? This is wild demonstration of misaligned incentive structures at every level.
- aoeusnth1 1y ago
  Can you explain in what way the incentives are misaligned here? Or did that mis- prefix slip in there because of how you feel overall about the law?
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- fortyseven 1y ago
  This whole idea and, worse, the excited support for it in the comments creeps the shit out of me.
wingspar 1y ago
In this age of generative AI, how would a someone defend against a maliciously AI generated/altered video report?
- bob_theslob646 1y ago
  Most of NYC has cameras. The timestamp and location data from those can be linked. You could also have multiple references to validate via crowdscoring. You can also find people who are bad actors to decentivize them from mass reporting.
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    a) They won't use AI to fact check reports submitted when those reports stand to make them money. b) They can't/wont use the dragnet for daily petty revenue enforcement because then people will complain about it and it'll get reigned in and they won't be able to use it for that and all the other things people don't want them using it for.
    - bob_theslob646 1y ago
      >a) They won't use AI to fact check reports submitted when those reports stand to make them money. They may not, but an outside vendor will. Most munis in the US usually have an outside party process their parking tickets
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BoxFour 1y ago
New Yorker here: Glad this exists. My sense is that most actual residents of the city feel similarly.
southernplaces7 1y ago
Awesome. Offer tech that helps people more easily become arbitrary snitches on activity in ways that's absurdly easy to manipulate or take advantage of, all while further moving forward a culture of spying on those around you just in case yo can snatch up something worth reporting for some personal gain. Truly, an obvious win for society....
- chillenb23 1y ago
  Snitches get wishes granted
up2isomorphism 1y ago
This is another example geek are usually bad at politics and they often think they do.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
Commercial vehicles? Aw, man. Back to tossing birdseed in the bed of lifted pickups for me I guess. :(
- globular-toast 1y ago
  I heard that some of the newer manchild carriers are technically counted as commercial vehicles due to their excessive width. They have to have different lights on the front or something. So you might still be able to report those. Presumably you don't have to prove that it was being used for commercial purposes at the time.
mannicken 1y ago
[flagged]
Zaylan 1y ago
Using AI to improve enforcement makes sense, but I do worry a bit when reporting turns into a way to make money. If people start watching each other for profit, it feels like we could slowly lose some of that everyday trust. I wonder if there’s a better balance between efficiency and a healthy community vibe.
Valodim 1y ago
Ah yes, if everybody is scared they'll be in trouble for any kind of misbehavior, everyone will behave. Good old stasi logic.
globular-toast 1y ago
I don't understand people saying it's dystopian. This kind of thing is empowering people who are otherwise suffering from a lack of law enforcement. Motor vehicle operators take huge liberties all the time. Speeding, parking, excessive noise etc. None of these are their rights. They have just been taken at the cost of the rest of society. With great power comes great responsibility. That's how it should work. Stuff like this is just resetting the imbalance, giving power now to those outside of cars to force those inside to take responsibility.
casenmgreen 1y ago
It seems to me this is probing behaviour. It is a low-risk, initial probe, to test the bounds of what currently is considered normal. If it fails - it it is rejected - it was not controversial (parking fines) and so the cost is low. If it succeeds, the boundary of normal has been moved, and then civilian reporting of crimes for money will be extended to other crimes. Given USA now has authoritarian Government of Donald, this is obviously and incredibly bad. An obvious thought is that it will come to be used by ICE to incentivize civilians to report on "illegal immigrants", as defined by Donald. In Nazi Germany, Anne Frank was betrayed, revealed to the Gestapo, sent to a concentration camp and died there, because two Dutch brothers accepted the incentive provided by the Nazi party, the reward for doing so, to hand in Jews. You do not use civilians for law enforcement because when misused it fundamentally and profoundly undermines civil society. The State defines profoundly unjust new "crimes", and then sets everyone watching everyone, in return for pay, to accuse each other - and this in the "mass deportation", and "due process not necessary" environment now brought into being by Donald.
- Kbelicius 1y ago
  This line of reasoning makes no sense. It's a slippery slope fallacy. > An obvious thought is that it will come to be used by ICE to incentivize civilians to report on "illegal immigrants", as defined by Donald. How would this program lead to that? If this didn't exist why wouldn't it be possible for ICE to make something similar for reporting "illegal immigrants"? > In Nazi Germany, Anne Frank was betrayed, revealed to the Gestapo, sent to a concentration camp and died there, because two Dutch brothers accepted the incentive provided by the Nazi party, the reward for doing so, to hand in Jews. Again, besides using money as a incentive what is the relevance here? Are you saying that using money as incentive is inherently bad? > You do not use civilians for law enforcement because when misused it fundamentally and profoundly undermines civil society. Everything can be misused. Are you saying that we shouldn't do anything about anything? Do you think that laws and rules would stop the likes of Hitler?
- chillenb23 1y ago
  However, in this case, the idlers are the Nazi's killing people's lungs, and the citizens are accepting the incentive provided by the people to catch the killers?
nandomrumber 1y ago
To make these even easily more malicious than it obviously already can be: Why don’t you add another AI step that makes any parked commercial vehicle look and sound as those it is idling.
sneak 1y ago
Now we need one for police abuse.
lan321 1y ago
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- Kbelicius 1y ago
  This is becoming a cliche here on HN, to call laws and lawmakers stupid after reading a headline. > I don't idle for fun, I do it to reduce wear and tear. And this law isn't there for fun either. > I'm also sure normies will recognise when a commercial vehicle is idling to maintain cargo cooling, to maintain hydraulics, etc... Everybody is stupid but me!!!!! How tireing. Idling is allowed for running a piece of equipment.
  - lan321 1y ago
    > Everybody is stupid but me!!!!! How tireing. Idling is allowed for running a piece of equipment. No. More so, along the lines of, random people should not be given financial incentives to regulate things they don't understand, especially not without a long checklist. A 2,01m video covers only the most basic thing. > And this law isn't there for fun either. Yeah, it's driven by the hippies who made OEMs write in manuals that you should immediately go after starting your car or bike. Scrape the cylinders real good while they're bone dry..
    - Kbelicius 1y ago
      > random people should not be given financial incentives to regulate things they don't understand They aren't regulating...
      - lan321 1y ago
        Yes they are. The summons part is essentially what happens when a cop issues you a ticket.. > What happens after I submit my complaint? > Where DEP issues the summons, you will be informed of the summons number and hearing date. You may need to be available in person or by phone to testify. If the summons is upheld, the respondent must pay the penalty in order for you to receive payment for your complaint, You should submit your request for payment to OATH. If the summons is dismissed, you are not entitled to any payment. So any random can waste your time severely at no cost to themselves, and you have to prove you were idling legally unless it's a refrigeration truck: > If you submit a complaint regarding a refrigeration truck, you must document that the engine that moves the vehicle was on and was not being used to run the refrigeration unit. Where I severely doubt they know which license plates belong to refrigeration trucks to begin with, so you'll likely still have to waste time. It leads to a hearing date with you on the hook for up to 18000$ the first time and them risking nothing after investing 5 minutes to get in that joyful situation. The more I read about it, the more it seems like a great scam, though. Film trucks, make them appear to be running for a couple of tokens and drown your competition in fines. Once a day on some trial will likely be enough even.
waffletower 1y ago
While a deeply problematic solution which pits citizens against each other, idling is also deeply problematic and awareness of the toxicity of internal combustion engines (ICE) needs to grow. While hardly a massive feedback loop, it is at least a bit tragic to see the growth of ICE idling during heatwaves encouraged in part by global warming and also the growth of smart phone usage in cars.
RENOKJHNVHBH 1y ago
GCC
rangestransform 1y ago
Why not use AI for actual good and make a dashcam app that generates a live map of where police are at all times
mannicken 1y ago
Just for clarification, I'm not making a phone of any kind, nor do I really feel strongly about this subject. I really kind of wish YC had an option to remove my own comments. For some reason, I always thought you could remove your own comment. This is probably off-topic for this one, but I feel like enforcing this permanence of speech onto people doesn't make for a good metaphor for normal friendly discussion. I'll write a blog post on it maybe.

194 points by rafram 1y ago

dale_huevo 1y ago

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dang 1y ago
Would you please stop posting like this? Once was fine, but half a dozen is too much. You've made your point, and that's ok, but this is not curious conversation. Also when the posts start getting dyspeptic-meta like this, something has gone wrong. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

rahimnathwani 1y ago

I love that you and others are making it easier for the public to report issues and violations. Another example in the same vein (but no financial reward for reporting!) is the Solve SF app: https://www.solvesf.com/ https://www.solvesf.com/

rafram 1y ago
Thank you!
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elektor 1y ago

Now this is a practical use of AI, kudos!

rafram 1y ago
Thank you!

hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago

This is a phenomenal application of how fine-based bounties can be used to rapidly improve compliance with the law. Incredible work. I would absolutely use this if I lived in NYC; I'll recommend it to my friends there.

gametorch 1y ago
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ffsm8 1y ago
I wish it was was more common around the world. Not just with parking though, but everything in the context of cars. Like letting the police install a permanent speed trap on your property or even pay for the privilege of them doing so. I'd bet that'd curb a lot of speeding in short order
- hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
  There's no need for violence. In fact, the capital outlay would be inefficient. If you want to curb speeding, the solution looks much the same: Pay reporters some portion of the fines collected from the speeder. You will very quickly see a cottage industry of Internet connected dashcams and on-board AI solutions spring up, because it's practically free money if you drive safely yourself for long enough. Pretty soon nobody will be speeding, simply because you never know who or what is watching. This is a set of economic-legal policies I've been writing about here and there for a long time. It's great stuff.
  - gametorch 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - hiAndrewQuinn 1y ago
      You have it backwards. A perfect detection rate for crime makes it much more important that we define conservatively what we even consider to be a crime in the first place, and then what kind of punishment we levy upon it. You also have it backwards because it already reliably makes society better for you. Take the case of Biogen employee Michael Bawduniak, who spent seven years documenting covert payments that steered doctors toward Biogen’s multiple‑sclerosis drugs illegally. When the United States Department of Justice settled the case for $900 million in 2022, Bawduniak received roughly $266 million, or about 30% of the federal proceeds, under the False Claims Act. It's a very similar mechanism, and anyone you may know who suffers from multiple sclerosis has likely had their treatment options materially improved thanks to Bawduniak's actions. But those kinds of actions only happen when you have the right mechanisms in place, to reward people who do the right thing.

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MathMonkeyMan 1y ago

It seems the lawyers are making it difficult: https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/environment/idling-citizens-air-complaint-program.page?question=faq9 https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/environment/idling-citizens-air...

rafram 1y ago
It used to be that as long as the vehicle was on the same block as a school or park, you only had to take a one-minute video (versus three-minute). Now there are some annoying documentation requirements if you want to submit a shorter video. Doesn’t impact the overall usefulness of the program very much IMO — I just didn’t add special handling for school/park reports like I would’ve before they made that change.
- michaelmrose 1y ago
  Presumably they don't want you taking videos of people who aren't in fact breaking the law and profiting from tickets. NYC regulation requires you to not idle more than 5 minutes. https://dec.ny.gov/environmental-protection/air-quality/controlling-motor-vehicle-pollution/youre-the-key-to-being-idle-free https://dec.ny.gov/environmental-protection/air-quality/cont... Although they don't require you to actually take a 5 minute video it is overwhelmingly likely that most people don't pull out there phone every time a vehicle stops in NYC so that most 3 minute videos are liable to be of 5 minute idles. There are obviously 2 types of problem children cheaters and dummies. It's easier for cheaters to take a 1 minute video since even those who don't intend to idle for any substantial time may pause a moment. For dummies making them actually sit there and film 3 minutes decreases the chance that they will accidentally misunderstand how much time has passed. People are heavily biased towards their own benefits and are liable to miss-perceive 4.5 minutes as 5. Less possible when he pulled out his phone at the 2+ minute mark and now has to wait 3 minutes to have enough.
  - rafram 1y ago
    New York City has different rules from New York State, and commercial vehicles have different rules from personal vehicles. The limit for commercial vehicles in NYC is three minutes, or one minute when adjacent to a park/school: https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/environment/idling-citizens-air-complaint-program.page https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/environment/idling-citizens-air...

narcotraffico1 1y ago

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deadbabe 1y ago

We need something similar for tax evaders, and now we’ll be talking real money.

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haunter 1y ago
https://www.sec.gov/enforcement-litigation/whistleblower-program https://www.sec.gov/enforcement-litigation/whistleblower-pro...
- deadbabe 1y ago
  Put some automation in front of it

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J7jKW2AAsgXhWm 1y ago

Would be great to have this for illegally parked parks as well.

meindnoch 1y ago
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- mh- 1y ago
  Yeah, people just up and leave those things all over the place. I'm glad someone is finally speaking up.

theptip 1y ago

Nice. Pricing seems a bit steep for occasional use; does iOS make it easy to do micro-transactions with Apple Pay? (I get the dev may be trying to put bread on the table with this, which is also fine…)

rafram 1y ago
That's a fair point. I have to see how the AI costs stack up, since heavy use can run up the bill pretty quickly with video inputs, and all subscriptions come with unlimited usage.
- dummydummy1234 1y ago
  Wouldn't it make more sense to charge per report?
- theptip 1y ago
  As a user I’d be happy to pay $5 for a bundle of credits and just top up whenever it runs out. And as you say you don’t want to be in the position where a whale costs you $50 by submitting a crazy number of requests. Maybe these are big-scale problems though :)
sumedh 1y ago
> Pricing seems a bit steep for occasional use; I believe most the fines are from small group of dedicated people who actively find offenders.

dale_huevo 1y ago

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Doctor_Fegg 1y ago
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- bluescrn 1y ago
  We've got a brand new war in the Middle East, and a big ongoing one in Ukraine. If we can't prevent wars between nations, there's no hope of the planet coming together to the extent required to manipulate the climate in a meaningful way.
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RamblingCTO 1y ago

Kinda offtopic, but I think this is so dystopian as it's only the beginning. Technocracy at its best. Have a bad starter and don't wanna stop the car? The numbers and rules don't care, no room for benevolence.

olivermuty 1y ago
My kids asthma wants your commercial car in a service bay, not idling outside a restaurant. I am all for not making a technocratic dystopia but this reasoning seems wrong lol
- dale_huevo 1y ago
  Maybe the commercial driver has asthma too and needs to run the AC.
- ksynwa 1y ago
  Your kid's asthms would appreciate more if there were fewer cars on roads and logistics leaned more on robust public transportation rather than putting the onus on individual household to own and operate multi-tonne vehicles.
  - toomuchtodo 1y ago
    New York City has already implemented a congestion surcharge in Manhattan to destroy demand for using personal vehicles, and has a robust public transit system. The only step left would be mandating EVs, and outlawing combustion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_fossil_fuel_vehicles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_fossil_fuel_vehic...
- whycome 1y ago
  That’s the problem. Major polluters have convinced people it’s the small scale production to attack rather than the giant industrial polluters. We also allow incredibly inefficient engines that produce lots of pollution. How about a pollution credit trading program then? If my efficient car produces way less pollution than your gas-guzzling truck, I should get the room to idle until I reach our agreed max. A technological snitch program is a weird and messed up outcome when we ignore the base problems. But, cool technical achievement. I’m scared that a similar parking snitch program is all too easy as well. Car parked 3.5 hours in a 3hr max neighbourhood? Get them fined and get a sweet bounty! Thanks I hate it.

theptip 1y ago

I like the general idea, and I’ve been surprised this hasn’t taken off elsewhere, eg citizen videos for traffic violations like blocking intersections, it seems these should be ROI positive for the city to implement (lower enforcement costs, more ticket revenue).

bluefirebrand 1y ago
I really don't understand why anyone would want this Do you really want to live in a society where we're monitored for even the slightest infractions at all times and automatically punished regardless of any circumstances that might explain the behavior?
- collingreen 1y ago
  I get your take and agree with the sentiment BUT I don't think this somehow requires "automatic punishment". Also, if the laws are there then I tend to think they should be enforced. Maybe this kind of thing will empower places to drop some of the laws most folks agree are "slightest infractions".
  - bluefirebrand 1y ago
    This sounds reasonable but I think it's a bit optimistic I don't think "increased government ability to enforce rules and collect fines" is likely to lead to less rules I would love to be proven wrong
    - collingreen 1y ago
      I agree with you on every thing you wrote here
- gorbachev 1y ago
  New York City doesn't do this for "even the slightest infractions at all times". The idling regulations are based on real harm, and the reporting requirements include things like recording video to prove that the car you're reporting didn't start idling in the last 5 seconds, but has, in fact, been doing that for 3 minutes or longer, or 1 minute or longer adjacent to a school. More info here: https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/environment/idling-citizens-air-complaint-program.page https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/environment/idling-citizens-air... You have to actually submit a 3:01 (or 1:01) minute video as part of the report for that to be actionable. And, yes, I would really, really want to live in a society where unnecessary idling is not allowed. And if I was living next to a street corner where that happens regularly, I would be on that street corner recording videos any time I'd have free time, and more, if I had babies, who are especially vulnerable to air pollution, living with me.

eth0up 1y ago

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a5c11 1y ago

Since you've mentioned it, that'd be great to give some details regarding the AI mechanism you used. I really find that trend of hiding everything behind "The Divine AI" off-putting. What exactly AI does in the context of the application?

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vineyardmike 1y ago

Within the last year or so, I discovered my city’s 311 app, which I’ve become addicted to. I don’t drive, so I’m always walking around the neighborhood, and got in the habit of always reporting graffiti, dumping, illegally parked cars, etc. This had inspired me to try and make a few apps for civic use, but I discovered that many of the accessible web tools for my city have rules against bots. For example, the city maintains a list of locations and dates where parking is temporarily restricted for short term things like construction, but I can’t scrape it. I really wish that the government (at any level) made more serviced and data available as APIs or digital formats. The government is usually bad at building/buying websites and services, and I’d have done it for free (or for $0.99 on the App Store).

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gametorch 1y ago
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yodsanklai 1y ago
> always reporting graffiti How does your city deal with graffitis? mine is plagued with graffitis and I can't see how they can be fought. It takes too much resources to remove them in a timely manner and impossible to catch the perpetrators.
- gametorch 1y ago
  Yeah, graffiti is a real big problem compared to surveillance tech. Lol.
- dcsan 1y ago
  And the cost is often on the small business owner
- vineyardmike 1y ago
  It’s just a game of cat and mouse. I dont think there is a way to “win”, because it’s so easy to make new graffiti, and not practical to try and police and catch people in the act. I think they require private property owners to clean their own graffiti, which really sucks, but makes it more manageable for the city to focus on public areas. The city really just has a queue of cleanup sites and priorities locations that are high visibility or important, like school yards or transit infrastructure. An elementary school nearby had its mural destroyed by graffiti, and it was cleaned up within a day.

yapyap 1y ago

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Ekaros 1y ago

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bapak 1y ago
For those who don't know, this is China today.
loufe 1y ago
This is incredible sarcasm. It seems like people who like this sort of control always find a narrative to sell it to the people. The US still has the Patriot act on the books, and that's been the norm for some people's entire lives.
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bluescrn 1y ago
Facial recognition isn't enough. We need nano-drones that can grab DNA samples. Can't avoid that by wearing a mask/balaclava...
perihelions 1y ago
> "You walk against red light and your face gets plastered around billboards as named criminal." I'm unsure if you were obliquely referring to this, or if you were intending to suggest a fictional idea. But what you described is already a thing that's happening in mainland China, > "In the southern city of Shenzhen, Chinese authorities have launched a new surveillance system loaded with facial recognition, artificial intelligence, and a big database to crack down on jaywalking as well as other crimes." > "As a result, photographs of pedestrians caught in the act, along with their names and social identification numbers, are now instantly displayed on LED screens installed at Shenzhen road junctions." https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-20/china-deploys-ai-cameras-to-tackle-jaywalkers-in-shenzhen/9567430 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-20/china-deploys-ai-came... ("Chinese authorities use facial recognition, public shaming to crack down on jaywalking, criminals")

bluescrn 1y ago

Milking motorists is very profitable. Stopping more problematic crime, not so much. So we end up with anarcho-tyranny, where 'real' crime is policed poorly, if at all - but loads of resources and tech are deployed aggressively policing+punishing mostly-law-abiding people for the most minor of infractions.

calvinmorrison 1y ago
Anarcho-Tyranny: A of government in which the good citizen lives in fear of government , while the criminals run amok without fear of repercussions.
- eth0up 1y ago
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  - dang 1y ago
    The comments you're talking about are getting flagged, mostly because they're off topic. Edit: I've unflagged some of the others, but here are some examples of the kind I mean: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44349249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44349249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44349183 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44349183 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44348874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44348874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44348759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44348759
    - eth0up 1y ago
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eth0up 1y ago

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dale_huevo 1y ago

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dang 1y ago
That's not a remotely accurate description of HN's readership!

screye 1y ago

Amazing ! Decentralizing traffic enforcement is a win-win. Bravo to NYC for opening this sort of program and OP for turning it into an "efficient free market". Will try it out soon. Bookmarked.

dale_huevo 1y ago
> Decentralizing traffic enforcement is a win-win Win-win for who exactly? Maybe we need to decentralize and AI-accelerate construction permit reporting too. Your backyard fence looks DIY and not up to code and your porch light looks like a fire hazard.
- pvg 1y ago
  We absolutely do that all the time?
- organsnyder 1y ago
  Most cities have ways for neighbors to report things like this.
  - dale_huevo 1y ago
    Yes, and they're almost exclusively used by the worst type of vindictive chickenshit humans imaginable. I've known people affected by this, whose evil neighbors used 311 as a weapon because they simply didn't like them, and caused them tens of thousands of dollars in forced unnecessary renovations not to mention stress, for trivial violations that are widely ignored.
- jen20 1y ago
  > Win-win for who exactly? Society at large? All the people who don't have the breathe the fumes of some garbage commercial vehicle. > Your backyard fence looks DIY Provided it's up for code, whether it was "done yourself" or not doesn't matter. > your porch light looks like a fire hazard. Absolutely this should be reported.
  - 1y ago

theyknowitsxmas 1y ago

[flagged]

dang 1y ago
Maybe so, but can you please not post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

gametorch 1y ago

Genuinely curious, why aren't people allowed to say this is dystopian without getting flagged? What rule, specifically, does that violate? I think this is dystopian. Paying people to rat out their fellow citizens. Nightmarish. What if this idea was applied to the laws ICE is trying to enforce? Would you think that's dystopian?

rafram 1y ago
This program specifically fines businesses with fleets of commercial vehicles (delivery trucks, buses, et cetera) for illegal idling, and escalates the fines for repeat offenders. You can't report random individuals, nor would I really want to build an app for that. The point is to get businesses to stop polluting.
- gametorch 1y ago
  Okay, that makes it a little less dystopian. But you make money off people snitching. And you're setting the stage for something far worse, imo.
  - paulgb 1y ago
    I see where you’re coming from, but the alternatives are either that the law isn’t enforced, or the state ramps up its own surveillance, which is more dystopian to me. I see this as in the same vein as SEC whistleblower awards, which I’ve never heard described as dystopian. Businesses just don’t have the same expectation of privacy that individuals do.
    - gametorch 1y ago
      I mean, the law not being enforced is wayyyyyyyyy less dystopian than this app and the numerous other ones like it that are bound to spring up. I'd rather live in truck fumes than a hyper-automated snitch surveillance state.
      - 1y ago

matsemann 1y ago

Man, I wish my city would make it possible to report drivers breaking the law. My big issue is cars parking in the cycle lanes. 1830 cars got fined for that in my city in total in 2024. Aka 5 a day. As a single cyclist I see more cars parked in cycle lanes every day on my commute than all those hundred officers give tickets to in total..

cosmic_cheese 1y ago
What I’d like to see is hard separation of roads and bike lanes. As a cyclist, nothing but a line painted on the road makes me feel unsafe, as a driver it’s difficult to not get nervous when passing a cyclist in the lane, and culturally drivers are generally favored over cyclists which results in things like parking in bike lanes not being adequately enforced. All these things would be solved by bike lanes being fully independent from the road.
- josephcsible 1y ago
  > What I’d like to see is hard separation of roads and bike lanes. That's a great idea, as long as the hard separation goes both ways with bikes no longer being allowed in car lanes.
  - cosmic_cheese 1y ago
    Doable, but would probably require bike paths to be wider than they currently are and split into two lanes: one for road bikers and one for everybody else.
  - matsemann 1y ago
    Why? I don't get this "gotcha". Is there any actual rational reason for making such rules, or is it stemming from some annoyance from seeing cyclists in the road? There already exists roads where cyclists can't be: Highways/motorways. If the problem is cyclists in the road, that solves itself by building better infrastructure. Where there's adequate cycling infrastructure, cyclists prefer to use it. Where there's lacking or none, one should of course be able to use the road. Otherwise it would be a de facto ban on cycling, which I'm sure was your point?

georgeburdell 1y ago

Wish my California city had this attitude that you can report people via an app. So many offenses “run with the driver”, i.e. they will not prosecute unless a cop sees it happening and positively identifies the driver. They won’t even prosecute red light running from a video with the license plate clearly visible.

samtho 1y ago
A motor vehicle cannot receive a citation. If law enforcement cannot ID the driver as a particular individual when the infraction or crime occurred, a citation should not be issued.
- orthoxerox 1y ago
  Why not issue it to the owner of the vehicle?
  - samtho 1y ago
    The owner of the vehicle may not be the one driving it.
    - orthoxerox 1y ago
      So? The one driving it is someone the owner willingly gave their keys to.
      - samtho 1y ago
        Guilt by association, then? This is not how any sane legal system works.
- georgeburdell 1y ago
  Yes, that is the rationale, even though in the specific case I cite, said red light runner caused an accident and left their insurance info and produced a driver’s license. The police don’t care. It doesn’t have to be like that. Why does New York not need to ID the driver to cite for idling? “The owner of the vehicle may not be the one driving it.”

Nifty3929 1y ago

I feel it's Orwellian, or Stalin-esq to have us being paid off to snitch on each other. Certainly, if you have evidence of murder or something, please do report it. But for an idling vehicle? Note that these laws are only targeting idling while parked, rather than during normal use, such as at a traffic light. This is called "true-idling" or "long-duration" idling. Has anybody considered how much CO2 or other greenhouse gases are actually released by "true-idling" or "long-duration" idling vehicles, either individually or in aggregate? I spent a few minutes researching it with an LLM and couldn't come up with much. Most of the information and numbers I got were for ALL idling, including during normal driving like at a traffic light. My guess based on that is that it (true idling) is a trivially small amount of CO2 compared to the overall. But it's plenty to earn yourself a nice payoff at the expense of your hard working delivery driver!

paulgb 1y ago
I think the intent is less about the CO2 emissions as about the air quality that people have to breathe (hence a stricter standard in some locations). I don’t know about measurable effects but I hate when I pass a long-idling truck and can taste it in the air.
- gametorch 1y ago
  [flagged]
- amanaplanacanal 1y ago
  Diesel exhaust is horrifying. Why aren't diesel engines subject to the same pollution regulations as the rest of us?
toast0 1y ago
> I feel it's Orwellian, or Stalin-esq to have us being paid off to snitch on each other. Sure, but it's a different kind of dystopia to have commercial vehicles idling and fouling the air outside of normal driving. As described where you have to capture 3 minutes of idling (1 minute near schools) and assuming most people take a while to notice, rather than starting the timer immediately when the vehicle stops, it seems like a reasonable way to enhance compliance. Idling while parked may not be a large contribution to total emissions, but it's harder to justify than idling in normal operation, and easier to enforce against, so there you go. Sometimes refrigerated transport more or less needs to idle to keep the contents at temperature, not sure if there's exceptions for that or if they just need to retrofit with more insulation or batteries to run the compressor or etc in order to comply. Idling at lights probably gets reduced by auto start/stop in new vehicles as well as congestion charges reducing traffic and probably dwell time at lights. Auto start/stop isn't a universally loved thing; it makes some cars really frustrating to use, but when done well, it seems like a reasonable tradeoff to reduce unneccesary emissions.

stemlord 1y ago

Feature request: the ability to report illegally parked police vehicles

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rurcliped 1y ago

feature request: AI-based risk analysis, with a model of which types of commercial vehicles at that location are likely to be controlled by organized crime

gametorch 1y ago

[flagged]

userbinator 1y ago
Hopefully more than half.

9cb14c1ec0 1y ago

Spying on your friends, neighbors, and family? Nothing to see here, just old Soviet style repression tactics.

userbinator 1y ago
Orwell was right.
- kennywinker 1y ago
  You mean when he said “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism, as I understand it.” or something else?
  - carlosjobim 1y ago
    He famously wrote a book about a totalitarian society, where people were encouraged to spy on their neighbors and report them.
    - kennywinker 1y ago
      Noticing a car is idling on a public street isn’t really spying, is it?
      - nandomrumber 1y ago
        Noticing a vehicle idling on a street isn’t the same thing as noticing a vehicle idling on a street, taking video evidence of it, reporting it and providing a copy of the video with the expectation of getting a cut of the fine. Is it?
        amanaplanacanal 1y ago
        Honestly, even without a financial incentive, I've thought about getting a dashcam to record the fuckheads "rolling coal" in my city and reporting them. Some behavior is so anti social that yes, it should be reported.

crusty 1y ago

I'll have to hunt down a link to the piece but I swear I saw a video about a few people in NYC who muddy go around finding idling vehicles and piece together the fine bounties into full time equivalent work. This could really disrupt their industry.

kennywinker 1y ago

If a crime’s punishment is a fine, that means it’s legal if you’re rich. https://upriseri.com/the-inequality-of-fines-how-monetary-penalties-exacerbate-wealth-disparity-and-undermine-the-rule-of-law/ https://upriseri.com/the-inequality-of-fines-how-monetary-pe...

Zenbit_UX 1y ago

You created a subscription service for power-~~users~~ snitches? This is wild demonstration of misaligned incentive structures at every level.

aoeusnth1 1y ago
Can you explain in what way the incentives are misaligned here? Or did that mis- prefix slip in there because of how you feel overall about the law?
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fortyseven 1y ago
This whole idea and, worse, the excited support for it in the comments creeps the shit out of me.

wingspar 1y ago

In this age of generative AI, how would a someone defend against a maliciously AI generated/altered video report?

bob_theslob646 1y ago
Most of NYC has cameras. The timestamp and location data from those can be linked. You could also have multiple references to validate via crowdscoring. You can also find people who are bad actors to decentivize them from mass reporting.
- potato3732842 1y ago
  a) They won't use AI to fact check reports submitted when those reports stand to make them money. b) They can't/wont use the dragnet for daily petty revenue enforcement because then people will complain about it and it'll get reigned in and they won't be able to use it for that and all the other things people don't want them using it for.
  - bob_theslob646 1y ago
    >a) They won't use AI to fact check reports submitted when those reports stand to make them money. They may not, but an outside vendor will. Most munis in the US usually have an outside party process their parking tickets

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BoxFour 1y ago

New Yorker here: Glad this exists. My sense is that most actual residents of the city feel similarly.

southernplaces7 1y ago

Awesome. Offer tech that helps people more easily become arbitrary snitches on activity in ways that's absurdly easy to manipulate or take advantage of, all while further moving forward a culture of spying on those around you just in case yo can snatch up something worth reporting for some personal gain. Truly, an obvious win for society....

chillenb23 1y ago
Snitches get wishes granted

up2isomorphism 1y ago

This is another example geek are usually bad at politics and they often think they do.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago

Commercial vehicles? Aw, man. Back to tossing birdseed in the bed of lifted pickups for me I guess. :(

globular-toast 1y ago
I heard that some of the newer manchild carriers are technically counted as commercial vehicles due to their excessive width. They have to have different lights on the front or something. So you might still be able to report those. Presumably you don't have to prove that it was being used for commercial purposes at the time.

mannicken 1y ago

[flagged]

Zaylan 1y ago

Using AI to improve enforcement makes sense, but I do worry a bit when reporting turns into a way to make money. If people start watching each other for profit, it feels like we could slowly lose some of that everyday trust. I wonder if there’s a better balance between efficiency and a healthy community vibe.

Valodim 1y ago

Ah yes, if everybody is scared they'll be in trouble for any kind of misbehavior, everyone will behave. Good old stasi logic.

globular-toast 1y ago

I don't understand people saying it's dystopian. This kind of thing is empowering people who are otherwise suffering from a lack of law enforcement. Motor vehicle operators take huge liberties all the time. Speeding, parking, excessive noise etc. None of these are their rights. They have just been taken at the cost of the rest of society. With great power comes great responsibility. That's how it should work. Stuff like this is just resetting the imbalance, giving power now to those outside of cars to force those inside to take responsibility.

casenmgreen 1y ago

It seems to me this is probing behaviour. It is a low-risk, initial probe, to test the bounds of what currently is considered normal. If it fails - it it is rejected - it was not controversial (parking fines) and so the cost is low. If it succeeds, the boundary of normal has been moved, and then civilian reporting of crimes for money will be extended to other crimes. Given USA now has authoritarian Government of Donald, this is obviously and incredibly bad. An obvious thought is that it will come to be used by ICE to incentivize civilians to report on "illegal immigrants", as defined by Donald. In Nazi Germany, Anne Frank was betrayed, revealed to the Gestapo, sent to a concentration camp and died there, because two Dutch brothers accepted the incentive provided by the Nazi party, the reward for doing so, to hand in Jews. You do not use civilians for law enforcement because when misused it fundamentally and profoundly undermines civil society. The State defines profoundly unjust new "crimes", and then sets everyone watching everyone, in return for pay, to accuse each other - and this in the "mass deportation", and "due process not necessary" environment now brought into being by Donald.

Kbelicius 1y ago
This line of reasoning makes no sense. It's a slippery slope fallacy. > An obvious thought is that it will come to be used by ICE to incentivize civilians to report on "illegal immigrants", as defined by Donald. How would this program lead to that? If this didn't exist why wouldn't it be possible for ICE to make something similar for reporting "illegal immigrants"? > In Nazi Germany, Anne Frank was betrayed, revealed to the Gestapo, sent to a concentration camp and died there, because two Dutch brothers accepted the incentive provided by the Nazi party, the reward for doing so, to hand in Jews. Again, besides using money as a incentive what is the relevance here? Are you saying that using money as incentive is inherently bad? > You do not use civilians for law enforcement because when misused it fundamentally and profoundly undermines civil society. Everything can be misused. Are you saying that we shouldn't do anything about anything? Do you think that laws and rules would stop the likes of Hitler?
chillenb23 1y ago
However, in this case, the idlers are the Nazi's killing people's lungs, and the citizens are accepting the incentive provided by the people to catch the killers?

nandomrumber 1y ago

To make these even easily more malicious than it obviously already can be: Why don’t you add another AI step that makes any parked commercial vehicle look and sound as those it is idling.

sneak 1y ago

Now we need one for police abuse.

lan321 1y ago

[flagged]

Kbelicius 1y ago
This is becoming a cliche here on HN, to call laws and lawmakers stupid after reading a headline. > I don't idle for fun, I do it to reduce wear and tear. And this law isn't there for fun either. > I'm also sure normies will recognise when a commercial vehicle is idling to maintain cargo cooling, to maintain hydraulics, etc... Everybody is stupid but me!!!!! How tireing. Idling is allowed for running a piece of equipment.
- lan321 1y ago
  > Everybody is stupid but me!!!!! How tireing. Idling is allowed for running a piece of equipment. No. More so, along the lines of, random people should not be given financial incentives to regulate things they don't understand, especially not without a long checklist. A 2,01m video covers only the most basic thing. > And this law isn't there for fun either. Yeah, it's driven by the hippies who made OEMs write in manuals that you should immediately go after starting your car or bike. Scrape the cylinders real good while they're bone dry..
  - Kbelicius 1y ago
    > random people should not be given financial incentives to regulate things they don't understand They aren't regulating...
    - lan321 1y ago
      Yes they are. The summons part is essentially what happens when a cop issues you a ticket.. > What happens after I submit my complaint? > Where DEP issues the summons, you will be informed of the summons number and hearing date. You may need to be available in person or by phone to testify. If the summons is upheld, the respondent must pay the penalty in order for you to receive payment for your complaint, You should submit your request for payment to OATH. If the summons is dismissed, you are not entitled to any payment. So any random can waste your time severely at no cost to themselves, and you have to prove you were idling legally unless it's a refrigeration truck: > If you submit a complaint regarding a refrigeration truck, you must document that the engine that moves the vehicle was on and was not being used to run the refrigeration unit. Where I severely doubt they know which license plates belong to refrigeration trucks to begin with, so you'll likely still have to waste time. It leads to a hearing date with you on the hook for up to 18000$ the first time and them risking nothing after investing 5 minutes to get in that joyful situation. The more I read about it, the more it seems like a great scam, though. Film trucks, make them appear to be running for a couple of tokens and drown your competition in fines. Once a day on some trial will likely be enough even.

waffletower 1y ago

While a deeply problematic solution which pits citizens against each other, idling is also deeply problematic and awareness of the toxicity of internal combustion engines (ICE) needs to grow. While hardly a massive feedback loop, it is at least a bit tragic to see the growth of ICE idling during heatwaves encouraged in part by global warming and also the growth of smart phone usage in cars.

RENOKJHNVHBH 1y ago

GCC

rangestransform 1y ago

Why not use AI for actual good and make a dashcam app that generates a live map of where police are at all times

mannicken 1y ago

Just for clarification, I'm not making a phone of any kind, nor do I really feel strongly about this subject. I really kind of wish YC had an option to remove my own comments. For some reason, I always thought you could remove your own comment. This is probably off-topic for this one, but I feel like enforcing this permanence of speech onto people doesn't make for a good metaphor for normal friendly discussion. I'll write a blog post on it maybe.