Game changing smartphone app gathers evidence of speeding
transportxtra.comI’m surprised governments haven’t already made an official app to “democratize” traffic enforcement.
- take a video of someone double parking: fine
- take a video of someone idling their car too long: fine
Once it gets a critical mass (I’d estimate a relatively small usage around 15%) I’d imagine traffic law breaking will go away for the most part.
The inability to know when you might be recorded and consequently fined would lead most to simply stop doing it.
The only other necessary thing would be to increase fines to be more in line with the ability to pay to be a useful deterrent.
Add in a kickback of say 30% to those who report once fine is collected and you’ve just created a highly motivated, distributed and invisible traffic law enforcement apparatus.
There are some technical challenges to be solved, though.
It’s because a big part of its citizens (like me) considers that a form of vigilantism and I will absolutely not support anything like that.
How is taking a picture of an illegal parked car and sending it to the police any different than calling the police? And why would you call it vigilantism?
Until before the second to last paragraph, I'm fully with you on this idea. Especially when using the bike it's very frustrating that there is no (ideally low-friction) way to report people parking on bike lanes.
But I think that something like the 30% kick-back will result in a massive increase of people who will somehow construct issues artificially, just to make more money. IMHO it should be plenty to just provide a simple way to report actual annoyances.
A few days ago there's this report about citizens reporting idling trucks in NY: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/19/nyregion/clean-air-idle-c...
Like in Nazi Germany or like Communist East Germany?
It's not admissible as evidence so pointless really.
Police equipment is certified as calibrated regularly to prove its accurate. Your phone footage could be anything and no AI is going to change that.
Of late I have started carrying my phone with video recording already activated on my weekend walks due to the actions of a few motorists, especially down narrow roads where there is barely room for a car and pedestrian to pass safely.
Seeing a car approach at an unreasonable speed I hold up my phone and, miraculously, the car suddenly slows down and makes room for me to pass. Quite impressive really.
>Seeing a car approach at an unreasonable speed I hold up my phone and, miraculously, the car suddenly slows down and makes room for me to pass. Quite impressive really.
I think that would work the same even if you have not video recording activated, i.e. holding up any coloured rectangle would work as well, the case you need the video is only when it doesn't work.
I may just try the coloured rectangle idea, could be interesting if I am challenged - which has already happened once with the phone.
Not coloured, but handy (and both waterproof and shockproof, guaranteed, no batteries/charger) just in case:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NoPhone
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nophone-usa/the-new-and...
(I think the company went out of business recently, though)
You must be fun at parties.
If you bring your car to a party and drive at speed towards me expecting me to leap over a wall to avoid being hit, yes I am. Otherwise, not so much.
I wonder if this is going to result in a Cobra Effect but with deepfakes instead.