5 ms·

What's the difference between using a manned aircraft and an unmanned aircraft to do speed enforcement?

confluence 13y ago
Scale and cost. You can't have hundreds of thousands of manned aircraft watching everything - it's too expensive. You can have drones do it though. Especially if their cameras work like the recent ARGUS demonstration (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5273000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5273000).
- freejack 13y ago
  Modern unmanned aerial vehicles like the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 and the General Atomics MQ-1 cost in the millions. Cessna and helicopters do not. Granted there are cheaper UAV out there, and generally its unlikely they could carry a payload sufficient for the level of surveillance necessary for traffic enforcement. BTW - my intention isn't to advocate for drones, just to question the rationale of making a distinction between manned and unmanned surveillance, when in fact it might make more sense worrying about being aerial surveillance more generally.
  - confluence 13y ago
    You could jury rig as Cessna in an afternoon. The high costs of defense UAVs are almost wholly due to defense contracting rent seeking and a severe lack of competition. Drones do not cost what you think they cost. People are expensive. Robots aren't.
  - speedyrev 13y ago
    Local law enforcement doesn't need million dollar drones or a sizable payload. There are already many small cheap drones available for local use. All that is really needed is a functioning camera.
    - freejack 13y ago
      My point is that they don't need drones for aerial enforcement. Its been going on for years and in some ways, the "do it with a drone" element is a bit of a red herring. The very real question that needs to be considered is whether or not law enforcement should be doing aerial enforcement at all. How they do it is less interesting to me than the question of whether or not they should.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    "Granted there are cheaper UAV out there" In other news, there are smaller ships than the Queen Mary 2... "Generally its unlikely they could carry a payload sufficient for the level of surveillance necessary for traffic enforcement." Having been nailed with a speeding ticket from a Cessna: All they need is a camera with someone watching it that can say "blue car, coming from half a mile away". You don't even need radar or any sort of speed tracking, you just time the car between to landmarks (the same way that local police do it in states that only allow state police to use radar guns). The type of drones your local hackerspace whips up for fun on a weekend are damn near sufficient.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- jack-r-abbit 13y ago
  Kind of funny when you think about it. We all love to complain about how inefficient the government is... and then we love to complain about how efficient they try to be.
  - roc 13y ago
    It's not about the efficiency itself. It's about the constitutional questions that were punted, back when inefficiency made them implausible and thus unnecessary to consider. So it's not the increased efficiency itself, it's that the efficiency has put the problems we tried to ignore directly in front of us. And thus we can't sit back and allow "logical extension of the old system" as justification for allowing it, because, again, the old system was only allowed because the scale necessary for abuse was implausible at the time.
  - saraid216 13y ago
    The government is the enemy. A lot of people couldn't properly live with themselves if they ceased to believe this. There would be a libertarian-shaped hole in their hearts.
  - noarchy 13y ago
    It appears that they excel at bad things (fining us, taxing us, conducting wars, etc).
  - __--__ 13y ago
    That's because in this case and many other cases, "efficient" is another way to say "completely bypass the legal system." People want the government to make itself more efficient, not completely bypass the civil protections we have in place.
    - freehunter 13y ago
      A drone giving a ticket in exactly the same manner as a cop giving a ticket is not really bypassing the legal system. As long as you're able to contest it, it's exactly the same.
- MartinCron 13y ago
  Any freedom that you feel you enjoy based on solely on scale and cost is a tentative one at best.
- chrischen 13y ago
  Cameras have got to be cheaper than drones though, although cameras are easier to avoid.
nexox 13y ago
In California, it doesn't matter, since it's already illegal to give speeding tickets from a manned airplane (even though they still have plenty of signs to warn you that they might do just that.)

Scale and cost. You can't have hundreds of thousands of manned aircraft watching everything - it's too expensive. You can have drones do it though. Especially if their cameras work like the recent ARGUS demonstration (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5273000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5273000).

freejack 13y ago
Modern unmanned aerial vehicles like the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 and the General Atomics MQ-1 cost in the millions. Cessna and helicopters do not. Granted there are cheaper UAV out there, and generally its unlikely they could carry a payload sufficient for the level of surveillance necessary for traffic enforcement. BTW - my intention isn't to advocate for drones, just to question the rationale of making a distinction between manned and unmanned surveillance, when in fact it might make more sense worrying about being aerial surveillance more generally.
- confluence 13y ago
  You could jury rig as Cessna in an afternoon. The high costs of defense UAVs are almost wholly due to defense contracting rent seeking and a severe lack of competition. Drones do not cost what you think they cost. People are expensive. Robots aren't.
- speedyrev 13y ago
  Local law enforcement doesn't need million dollar drones or a sizable payload. There are already many small cheap drones available for local use. All that is really needed is a functioning camera.
  - freejack 13y ago
    My point is that they don't need drones for aerial enforcement. Its been going on for years and in some ways, the "do it with a drone" element is a bit of a red herring. The very real question that needs to be considered is whether or not law enforcement should be doing aerial enforcement at all. How they do it is less interesting to me than the question of whether or not they should.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  "Granted there are cheaper UAV out there" In other news, there are smaller ships than the Queen Mary 2... "Generally its unlikely they could carry a payload sufficient for the level of surveillance necessary for traffic enforcement." Having been nailed with a speeding ticket from a Cessna: All they need is a camera with someone watching it that can say "blue car, coming from half a mile away". You don't even need radar or any sort of speed tracking, you just time the car between to landmarks (the same way that local police do it in states that only allow state police to use radar guns). The type of drones your local hackerspace whips up for fun on a weekend are damn near sufficient.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
jack-r-abbit 13y ago
Kind of funny when you think about it. We all love to complain about how inefficient the government is... and then we love to complain about how efficient they try to be.
- roc 13y ago
  It's not about the efficiency itself. It's about the constitutional questions that were punted, back when inefficiency made them implausible and thus unnecessary to consider. So it's not the increased efficiency itself, it's that the efficiency has put the problems we tried to ignore directly in front of us. And thus we can't sit back and allow "logical extension of the old system" as justification for allowing it, because, again, the old system was only allowed because the scale necessary for abuse was implausible at the time.
- saraid216 13y ago
  The government is the enemy. A lot of people couldn't properly live with themselves if they ceased to believe this. There would be a libertarian-shaped hole in their hearts.
- noarchy 13y ago
  It appears that they excel at bad things (fining us, taxing us, conducting wars, etc).
- __--__ 13y ago
  That's because in this case and many other cases, "efficient" is another way to say "completely bypass the legal system." People want the government to make itself more efficient, not completely bypass the civil protections we have in place.
  - freehunter 13y ago
    A drone giving a ticket in exactly the same manner as a cop giving a ticket is not really bypassing the legal system. As long as you're able to contest it, it's exactly the same.
MartinCron 13y ago
Any freedom that you feel you enjoy based on solely on scale and cost is a tentative one at best.
chrischen 13y ago
Cameras have got to be cheaper than drones though, although cameras are easier to avoid.

nexox 13y ago

In California, it doesn't matter, since it's already illegal to give speeding tickets from a manned airplane (even though they still have plenty of signs to warn you that they might do just that.)