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Speeding Ticket Robots — Laws As Algorithms
An anonymous reader writes "As the age of autonomous cars and drone surveillance draws nearer, it's reasonable to expect government to increasingly automate enforcement of traffic laws. We already deal with red light cameras, speed limit cameras, and special lane cameras. But they aren't widespread, and there are a host of problems with them. Now, Ars reports on a group of academics who are attempting to solve the problem of converting simple laws to machine-readable code. They found that when the human filter was removed from the system, results became unreasonable very quickly. For example, if you aren't shy about going 5 mph over the limit, you'll likely break the law dozens of times during an hour of city driving. On the freeway, you might break it continuously for an hour. But it's highly unlikely you'd get more than one ticket for either transgression. Not so with computers (PDF): 'An automated system, however, could maintain a continuous flow of samples based on driving behavior and thus issue tickets accordingly. This level of resolution is not possible in manual law enforcement. In our experiment, the programmers were faced with the choice of how to treat many continuous samples all showing speeding behavior. Should each instance of speeding (e.g. a single sample) be treated as a separate offense, or should all consecutive speeding samples be treated as a single offense? Should the duration of time exceeding the speed limit be considered in the severity of the offense?' One of the academics said, 'When you're talking about automated enforcement, all of the enforcement has to be put in before implementation of the law—you have to be able to predict different circumstances.'"
rather than risk a speeding ticket every clock cycle.
You got 1.5 billion tickets in the last second, because you went 1.1 MPH over the speed limit.
Yeah, that will go over real swell.
Especially since, much easier would be to add a routine to the smart cruise control to never exceed the speed limit to begin with.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Who would have thought we can break many laws every day and no one dies.
It's as if people actually thought no one was breaking that many laws every day. They believe the law is so just and amazing.
Computers show us how silly that is..... I broke a few laws driving home today I'm sure. Probably some code violations on this house right now.... but the world still spins.
The trick is to move away from other people, who only serve their own interests and happily monitor everything you do or complain when you act differently or make some noise. Moving away from close neighbors is the most relaxing thing I could imagine.
What could possibly go wrong with a large computer system continuously monitoring every American roadway?
sudo make me a sandwich
What the hell are they going to do when we're all in autonomous vehicles that always obey the speed limit and their revenue stream dries up?
(Actually, I don't even think we'll need speed limits once autonomous cars are commonplace -- at least, not on highways)
sig: sauer
You will fail.
This post ought to be tagged with what-could-possibly-go-wrong.
When you are sure of something, you probably are wrong (search for "Unskilled and Unaware of It").
The Constitution makes it pretty clear that laws and punishment shouldn't be discretely related. Laws (and algorithms) are written by humans and humans aren't infallible. There's always an exception. Case in point, look at the way sexual predator lists are being abused by over-exuberant prosecutors.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
And it's trivially easy to implement. You know how newer cars will beep if the seatbelt isn't engaged, and other examples of trying to correct driver behavior?
Society needs one of those to nag people who don't use turn signals. Make it so.
I will run red lights for 1 day and argue I should only get 1 ticket.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
It's the poorly defined "reckless driving" that should be ticketed and enforced... not the easily quantifiable speeding. Speeding doesn't cause accidents. It's the stupid folks who dunno how to drive.
Also, perhaps we need some progressive lanes ("fast" lane on highway has the same speed limit as the "slow" lane...?). Perhaps designate the -20mph for slow lane, and +20mph on the fast lane?
Should there be any doubt that city officials, their departments, their families, and pretty much anyone that bribes.... err, contributes to their campaigns will receive the transponder that causes the system to ignore that extra `15 MPH over the limit?
As a child, I remember a SeaQuest episode where they came back to Earth (I think), and were told by a robotic voice that they had been fined for exceeding the speed limit. I don't remember much of my childhood, but I remember being struck with terror by this. It left a lasting impression.
Our technologies and laws allow us to do lots of things.
We should perhaps ask instead, what kind of society we are making?
If we're making a miserable place that focuses on details of law-breaking more than the big factor, which is how safe/smart of a driver someone is, we're penalizing good behavior and encouraging people to live in a nit-picky miserable world.
We can make a horrible world, if we want; however, we might prefer not to.
I renovated a house not long ago where the late owner did a lot of work himself... poorly. Many of the outlets had their ground and neutral reversed. Sure, the world continues to spin and appliances will work when plugged into it. It could also kill a person quickly in certain situations.
I make a distinction about that being a good safety regulation imposed by law, versus speed limits where one driver can be safer over the speed limit than a less capable driver under the speed limit.
Would dictate that instead of trying to make a system which punishes, one should do a system which enforces. In other terms, automated highways where your cars are regulated and automated for the drive.
To me, that would be a much more worthwhile goal to strive for.
An automated system, however, could maintain a continuous flow of samples based on driving behavior and thus issue tickets accordingly.
An unanticipated consequence of an "always-on" mass surveillance system. "Big Brother is always watching."
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
TFA is so bad it's not even wrong.
"I'm surrounded by wrong people. They don't even know they're wrong."
Do not automate highway robbery.
Go back to the original rationale for this highway robbery -- ostensibly safety. Use computers to enhance safety by improving cars. Do not allow a horrid little man to sit in a room while robots collect checks for him. Make them do it the hard way.
THEIR PROCESS DOES NOT NEED TO BE MADE EFFICIENT. Engineers, stop selling your souls for money. Work instead to make these highway robbers obsolete.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
It's about time computers started issuing automated citations. I've still got no clue what to do with the seashells.
I am not a crackpot.
This is not at all true. It depends on the cop and where you are. I've seen cops pull over multiple vehicles simultaneously, all of which were traveling at the prevailing speed.
Code or be coded.
that's another good distinction.
I've heard of semi drivers getting multiple tickets on the same stretch of road for going the same speed, once for going too fast, once for going too slow (compared to the rest of the traffic flow). Speeding should be a judgement call, not a fixed thing. Being above the limit by 15% on a nice, dry, sunny summer day isn't as bad as being 15% above on a snowy/icey winter morning/evening. So long as you're not driving like an ass
... that an actual cop will PULL YOU OVER to issue a ticket. The speeding behavior stops, and the roads become safer, at least while your car is parked at the side of the road, and hopefully remain safer when you proceed, suitably chastised. The cop has a chance to ensure that you are not inebriated or otherwise unfit to drive before he allows you to proceed. If you choose to speed again and he catches you again, you get stopped and a second ticket is issued. Repeat as necessary.
Issuing tickets based purely on observation fail to stop the illegal behavior and do little to make the roads safer, until much much later, when the ticket catches up with you in the mail (assuming a ticket is enough to change your behavior).
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
I don't see why autonomous cars should have a legal speed limit at all. The whole reason to have one now is that drivers tend to drive outside the capability of their own or their vehicle's capacity and may cause injury to others. With an autonomous vehicle, the algorithms should have a very reasonable idea of the vehicle's capacity because the manufacturers will most likely be in some way liable for the vehicle's actions. So if you're in an autonomous Mercedes, why shouldn't you be doing 150 mph on the highway?
Sure, automate the detection, but the enforcement, IMHO, must be manual, i.e., a ticket must be issued in person by an officer of the law. Furthermore, that cop should only be able to charge you with one instance of each law broken, i.e. one speeding charge, one reckless charge, etc. I think that would strike a decent balance.
Of course, this won't actually happen since people are unwilling to pay reasonable taxes and police departments are forced to provide their own revenue somehow.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I've seen badly parked cars with hundreds of plastered-on tickets. Clearly people can behave mindlessly in exactly the same way. Besides, it is illegal to be *caught* speeding; the speeding itself is okay.
ng above the limit by 15% on a nice, dry, sunny summer day isn't as bad as being 15% above on a snowy/icey winter morning/evening.
Except, it's not safe to pull cars over in the rain or heavy traffic, so you only get speeding tickets when it's perfectly safe to speed. Sadly, I don't believe ticketing and safety have anything to do with each other any more. Personally, I'd love to see some ticketing for lack of turn signals, failure to yield and tail gating. Then again, I'd like to see the cops start obeying those laws.
That's not his point.
His point was exactly what he stated - that we all, individually, break many laws on a daily basis, often unknowingly, and no one dies as a result. The proportion of speeding offenses vs deaths caused by excessive speed is just icing on the cake.
Case in point: ever discuss a broadcasted sporting event in a public place, without express written consent of the sporting organization and broadcasting network? If you said 'yes,' then you've broken the law, even though it has harmed not a soul.
I'm pretty sure that's what AC was getting at.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The point to not ticketing for going 0.1 mph is that not everyone's speedometer is going to be perfectly calibrated....
I had a friend who got pulled over on the way to a store and ticketed for both speeding and obstructing traffic.
Basically, she was going over the limit, but not enough over the limit to not be impeding a block of cars behind her. I think she managed to get one of them thrown out but I don't remember all that well.
Code or be coded.
In Australia the current Australian Design Rules for vehicles say speedometers aren't allowed to under-read, so the police can book you if you are 1 km/h over the speed limit if they like. I don't know what tolerance they actually use, but driving at the speed limit is no problem here for other drivers.
The chapter in the book also talks about tipping, which seems like a form of corruption to me. "If you want to know how corrupt a given country is, you may not need a big police sting. You could just look at how regularly its citizens tip." However, it seems like "the norm" to people living in tipping countries and they often defend it (just like Australians often defend mandatory bicycle helmet laws).
One of the least corrupt countries in the world is Finland, where your traffic fine is proportional to your income.
need to be more precise, detailed and complete than those given to people. Who'd have thought it
Maybe a bit off topic, but...
I spoke with someone recently who expressed concern about algorithms relating to self-driving cars, not just laws. When start having computers written to decide who gets a fine, for instance, self-driving cars will have safety algorithms which, depending on how a crash goes, are likely to have to decide at some point who stays safe and who doesn't in an inevitable crash.
So, what are the limits of computer code in these situations?
-
You're getting sandwiched between two 18-wheelers. If you break, the car following will definitely run into you.
If you press the pedal to the medal, computer will say no. Fair?
Privacy is terrorism.
With drones doing the surveillance and now automated speeding tickets cops won't have anything to do but go after real criminals. You would think the police unions would be getting out ahead of this stuff and start fighting it asap.
The truly frightening thing about this article is that the authors apparently felt it was the job of the programmers to determine what the reasonable algorithmic interpretation of the law's intent was, thus again demonstrating how completely out of touch with reality many academics seem to be.
The legislative process is appallingly imperfect, to be sure, but at least it has the pretense of openness and consideration of constituent interests. That's where these decisions need to be made.
Fortunately, since legislators break these laws as much as the rest of us, we probably don't have too much to worry about. Think about all those electronic toll systems--they certainly know how fast you were going, on average, and an intuitive application of the mean value theorem will quickly show that you were speeding, but we rarely if ever get tickets from those systems.
I myself could be convinced that photo-radar, speed strips, red-light cameras and even "robots" are acceptable for use on public roads if money could be eliminated from the equation. It is simply not fair to expect legislators to set reasonable limits based on science and statistics when money is involved.
On that note, I've always wondered why no one has proposed destruction of ticket revenue as a clean solution to the problem.
If every last cent collected from fines was required to be destroyed, legislators would be freed from the burden of conflicted interest. They could focus clearly on policy objectives, without the question of profit clouding their judgment. Police would be freed up to do their jobs (which of course includes patrolling and traffic law enforcement, but based strictly on safety, not quotas).
As another bonus, destruction of ticket revenue would benefit everyone not fined by ever-so-slightly deflating the currency.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Rage Against the Machine!!!
just think if traffic monitoring robots started issuing tickets for every slightest infraction, i bet many angry people would start destroying them with a good whack with a hammer, or paintball guns on the cameras and sensors
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
In addition, the traffic laws themselves may have a tolerance built-in. For example, in Pennsylvania, the law mandates a 10-mph tolerance under most circumstances, and no court can accept a ticket for less than that over the limit.
And in Australia, you DO get fined for going 5mph over the limit. That's 8km/h... worth a couple of hundred dollars in most .au states. I've driven extensively in the USA and in Australia, and in my experience the .au cops are already much like a computer - they will fine you for the most minor infringement on a clear dry day, and get very hostile if you try to reason with them.
In the US however, some headroom is allowed over the speed limit, in particular, I've found, in snowy states in summer. It's almost like the cops recognise that the speed limit is too high for bad weather, but conversely too low for a clear day. it's almost like the cops _think_ instead of mindlessly raising revenue ;-)
Of course, this is anecdotal, and in my ten years of driving there are less than 10 data points (as I don't make a habit of speeding, in any country!) so YMMV.
sustainable living
It's perfectly possible to get a ticket for both of those things simultaneously. Many states have left lane pass/move over laws that say that drivers need to move to the right and leave the left lane open. Yes, even for speeders. If she was doing 70 in a 65 in the left lane, and cars were zooming around and trying to pass her on the right, that is a very unsafe situation created simply by her poor driving skills.
While true, as a percentage of cars on the road, population, or miles traveled, its been going down. Which I only know because those have mostly all gone up over the years and the raw number of deaths hasn't really changed.
Thing is, its not just about whether or not some people die. "Any at all" is a terrible standard for any system that has to deal with 300 million people, or even fractions of it. A better thing to think about is the point of diminishing returns.
A while back I, and some people had a good chucle about a policy enacted at a local university. The policy was "no having sex in view of anyone else".
At the time someone pointed out that this rule is just about perfect, as long as you don't have active enforcement. The thing is, the University doesn't give a fuck whether you have sex with someone in front of others, they just don't want to have to deal with it when people complain. So, now when a dispute in the dorms arrives, they have a guideline to use to settle the matter.
In the end it works because...if your roomate doesn't care, and you have sex in front of them, then no harm no foul.
I think this is mostly how traffic laws are. We have them, but we break them all the time in subtle ways that don't matter. The thing is, the law is an attempt at a set of rules to keep people safe, but, they are far more strict than real drivers actually need for the most part. However, that was ok when they were mostly not enforced.... and only enforced when they were the subject of serious safety compromises. (and if serious enough, perhaps they should be immediately flagged for a more direct intervention)
Frankly, I think we hit the point of diminishing returns on traffic enforcement (if we assume those "returns" are not just income from tickets, but actual safety) several rounds of putting police on the streets ago. So automating it more, while it will make sense from a cost standpoint, will likely not benefit anything but the public coffers.
Now, if I had to redesign the system, I might automate capture of potential incidents for safety review. Then have an independent body (with no financial stake in outcomes, total firewall) to review, and call a hearing to discuss the incident with the driver. However, the standard should be based on actual safety considerations rather than simple technical tests.
Also, all fines collected from driving infractions should go directly to grant money to fund research projects in travel safety including automated vehicles and automated infrastructure. Never to anyone involved in anything that would create even the slightest wiff of conflict of interest.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Automated law enforcement is almost universally a terrible idea. Its the kind of thing an eager-beaver engineer without much real world exposure would come up with. Either that, or a fascist.
The world runs on slack. Not just laws, but pretty much every human interaction requires slack at some point. Slack is the lubricant that makes society work. Without slack the machinery of society will freeze up and burn out.
On the other side of the spectrum, too much slack and the wheels just spin without getting any traction. We need the right amount of slack - fortunately there is usually lots of meta-slack in determining what is the right amount of slack.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Traffic enforcement should be crowd-sourced, with reputation-based ranking like the Slashdot moderation system. If there's no one documenting a traffic violation, there's no problem. The more people are in the vicinity to documenting it, the more expensive it gets for the violator. Reputation management to maximize honesty. The system will be fine-tuned as it gains more participants.
It's easy if you state the problem correctly: how to reach the income level the local municipality expects from the speeding tickets, while minimizing the number of tickets (processing fees) and potential court challenges.
Most speeding limits should really just be guidelines used only to help corroborate an unsafe driving charge but not the only evidence required (and therefore not enforced automatically). The exception is those "yellow" limits they have on mountain turns. Those are the speed limits actually connected with safety as opposed to political or revenue reasons. But in those cases the laws of physics are the laws that matter and if you end up driving off the side of the mountain due to speeding, it's your own damn fault.
If we are all in autonomous vehicles, why do we need traffic laws?
Who would have thought we can break many laws every day and no one dies.
That's a pretty good indicator that the law in question shouldn't be a law at all. I welcome these kinds of automated systems with perfect enforcement. If perfect enforcement of the law creates problems, it's a bad law. Repeal it.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
According to your calculations, laws are unnecessary as the problem is self correcting.
I make a distinction about that being a good safety regulation imposed by law, versus speed limits where one driver can be safer over the speed limit than a less capable driver under the speed limit.
There are no less capable drivers. I mean seriously, just ask any driver. They are all more capable than average, and therefore it's safe for them to flout the rules of the road, speed laws, you-name-it, because they feel safe, and really, when have feelings ever let anyone down as a means of perfectly objective self-assessment?
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
One thing people need to learn about technology:
Just because you *can* do something, doesn't mean you should.
One thing that seems to be missed is that in some (Most? All?) jurisdictions, the law dictates that he speed limit be set to something like 90% of the roads average traffic speed. Absolute enforcement would end up with these roads having their speeds creep down to 0.
It also depends on what the police officers are doing at the time. If they are on traffic patrol, they will be more likely to pull you over than if they are transporting a prisoner...
It's more about driver intoxication level and the number of other vehicles on the road. 600 cars going 50 MPH on a one-mile stretch of 4-lane freeway is extremely dangerous. 60 cars going 80 MPH on that same mile of freeway is must less dangerous.
The trouble is with making laws that can represent the danger inherent in widely varying situations. So we end with laws that make sense some of the time (at best) but have no rationale for existence at other times. For example, who cares if you run a red light at a rural intersection instead of waiting 2 minutes for the light to cycle when there are no other cars? The police will definitely ticket you if they see it, but there's nothing unsafe about stopping, looking both ways, and then proceeding if there is no cross traffic.
Interestingly, people breaking traffic laws are rarely dangerous, but the cops pulling people over almost always is. I was driving home recently, going about 5-10 over. Car ahead of me was doing maybe 2-3 MPH faster, pretty much the flow of traffic. Out of nowhere, an officer swoops in from behind me, easily going 10-20 MPH faster than I, slams on his breaks, moves into my lane, cutting me off, and pulls the poor soul over. Ridiculous. Never mind the cops who hold up traffic on busy streets for little or no reason; seems like I see that daily around here. Safety, my ass.
Easily corrected by requiring all drivers to register their cell phones; they'll just send you a text message whenever you are detected speeding.
I've seen studies that show beneficial effects of speed limit reductions, and since tickets are one of the main reasons people follow the speed limit (or within 5-10mph of it), it follows that speed tickets to have a benefit. It's just that the benefit is hard to observe because it comes from everyone driving slower out of fear of getting a ticket.
I agree that it makes no sense to focus on speeding rather than these other behaviors. The most ridiculous thing I see is people tailgating rather than using the carpool lane. Why should using a carpool lane illegally be a worse offense than tailgating?
You're going to see vigilante justice in the form of wrecking the cameras taking place.
And there were studies that showed reducing the speed limit to 55 caused more accidents in certain parts of the country and that raising them back to 65 and higher didn't cause an increase.
"you have to be able to predict different circumstances." Yeah, as we increase the fines a lot we have to know when the citizens will mount an insurrection against the government.
It has to do with impact energy which is based on the square of the velocity. And no, the units only matter in that they must remain consistent. Just like the formula for the area of a circle is pi times the square of the radius. The formula doesn't change just because I measure the radius in feet, you measure it in millimeters and Johnny measures it in football fields. The perceived scale or range of values changes but the formula doesn't.
We need speeding laws to be set at reasonable values and then enforced to the letter. The core issue in this whole conundrum is simply that we are cultivating a culture where virtually everyone is afraid to see a policeman. That's messed up.
The level of danger placed upon other road users should determine the level of offending.
"Raise the speed limit, and the norm tends to shift; driving the speed limit starts to seem hazardous."
That is the most quoted falsehood in this subject area I've seen. Numerous studies show that 85% of drivers instinctively "know" the safe speed for any stretch of road they drive repeatedly. The general recommendation (form the actual engineering standpoint) for establishing the speed limit on a new road is to not post a speed limit and do a study to determine the 85th percentile speed and use that as the basis for setting the speed limit. Wisconsin law seems to require the police to recalibrate that 85th percentile every few years and aren't allowed to write tickets if the study for that area is out-of-date.
Obviously some factors such as schools also need to be considered but the reality is that the majority of ordinary people do actually know how to manage themselves in a safe and responsible manner.
Well now I think we have a plausible reason why Europe has mass public transit. Not the "better for the earth" or "more efficient" or any of that other stuff European's like to snub their noses at American's about. The fact is they make the penalties so harsh that to actually drive would be detrimental one's livelihood. There is no way I'm paying 200K for a speeding ticket for 12mph over. 18 days in jail for speeding is indeed a cruel punishment, I guess that's why we banned that in our Constitution. If I lived in those places you mentioned, I'd be on the train all the time simply because it's dumb to do otherwise. And see I'm what people here on /. would call a bleeding heart liberal and always thought Scandanvia would be awesome to move to just to avoid the rednecks I live amongst now. When you post things like you did however, it makes me start doubting that "dream"
In California, the "Maximum speed law" states that the maximum speed you can drive is no faster "than is safe". This means you can be ticketed for driving at the posted speed limit if it is (subjectively) not safe under the current conditions (i.e. weather, traffic, etc).
Theoretically it also means that driving OVER the posted speed might not be ticketable; I had a driver's ed instructor who claimed that he had gotten a speeding ticket thrown out by arguing in traffic court that he was driving safely, even though over the posted limit; YMMV.
Effectively this means that a cop could ticket you at ANY speed, and argue that it was unsafe. My experience is that in normal traffic, the "up to 10mpg over" rule is the norm, at least on the freeways/highways.
I know that at least in some areas, they can ticket you once per calendar day for certain parking offenses. I knew a cop who worked the late shift; whatever parking ticket he was writing at 11:59pm, he'd stay by the car, and write them another at 12:01am.
If a human tickets you, you'll know right away. If you are speeding, get pulled over, ticketed and then continue speeding, you'll get ticketed next time as well. If it's the same police officer, other things may happen as well. And hopefully people who get pulled over, do not re-offend straight away.
With automated systems you don't know until much later. Typically days or weeks.
I don't think I'd have a problem with robots giving me tickets as long as it were robots who'd then have to come and arrest me in case I don't pay the said tickets. Or it were robots that would pull me over for driving with tickets on my record. But if it is other human being who now take orders from computers based on decisions made by computers, it's over. As long as technology is used to observe, we are civilized. But the moment technology becomes a substitute for judgement (a uniquely human faculty), we lose the ability to face our accusers. It is IMPOSSIBLE (provably so... mathematically provably) to predict all future scenarios. Almost by definition, if it is the technology that makes the decisions, then the burden of proof is shifted to the accused... the moment we lose our responsibility for judgement, as humans, is the moment we lose civilization.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
The idea of using algorithms should be applied to the speed limit itself.
The concept of fixed limits is outdated given modern tech and borderline ludicrous on most roads.
An empty freeway that could safely permit speeds of 100 mph (in a modern vehicle,
with an experienced driver), whereas the exact same stretch of road might need a
limit of 25 mph on a snowy day or in a rainstorm (40), fog (20-50) etc.
Why not tie the "limit" to realistic parameters and then ding anyone breaking the variable speed ceiling displayed by the vehicle (or linked to the cruise control)?
I have often seen drivers on highways going at dangerous speeds in awful conditions,
but nonetheless technically "legal"; we need to drop this one speed fits all circumstances bs.
The other idiocy built into this study is blind and literal interpretation of law.
That may be convenient for the profit seeking highway robbers (you know what I mean),
but even in America that level of ass-hattery is fairly rare (but mindless legal stuff is happening much too often)
It's really disturbing to see the massive disconnect between this kind of academic study and any kind of reality.
Ok... academic faculty dweebs, here are some real world algorithms you should go figure out:
a. How to implement speed algorithms for safe but variable limits
b A study that shows the de-facto algorithm in use for cop pay and grade review cycles as related to ticketing stats (gotta be a function in there somewheres).
c. Develop for the FBI an algorithm that alerts the district attorney of "municipal highway robbery" scams, on the vast stretches of "permanent construction" zones, where no one ever really works but lots of tickets happen near monthly quota time...
There is no god; get over it already! Never exchange a walk on part in the war, for a lead role in a cage.
But that's not really my point. When we are all passengers in self piloting vehicles, it woud be silly to automate everything but the speed. And rather than just say "The Maximum speed is XX miles per hour, nothing goes faster". More than likely you'll be driving at all manner of different speeds, depending on traffic, road conditions, rain or snow. Some times you might be going 80 mph, some times a lot less.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The reason why police forces go with these things is to raise revenue. Nobody in the history of the world has installed an automated speed trap or red light camera (which really exist to detect the lack of full stop while making right turns) to improve public safety. Law enforcement does the same thing by hanging out on cash crop hills with nothing around but ridiculously low speed limits at the bottom while totally ignoring things like oh I don't know school zones. It is not about safety it is about raking in violations.
Sometimes these things actually reduce safety as the city and or private companies administering these things get more money with more violations. There have been very famous instances where yellow lights have been tweeked to *produce* more violators leading to increased numbers of rear end accidents.
What ultimatly happens enough people get PO'd local officials feel political pressure enough where this shit gets pulled or drastically changed or enough people don't care where the political cost is not high enough for anyone to care.
At the end of the day the algorithm problem is not solved in law it is solved by asking the question what can you reasonably get away with. This may not even be the case at first but eventually it will happen as budget constrained local governments see $$$ in production of violations. It essentially becomes a tax..a form particularly corrosive to public trust.
current speed limits are set low, but enforced occasionally, with "tolerance". This keeps us from getting an autobahn mentality and keeps the speed limit from becoming a joke. The reality is that most limits are set a bit low so "everyone speeds". Most folks who get caught feel bad and recall the conversation with the cop. Photo enforcement changes the parameters. Suddenly, this low limit is being enforced by machines. No one will raise the limits until too many "normal drivers" (see...everyone speeds) get tickets. The fact most limits in the US are set to a 1950's car and that the camera proponents have a god like reverence for "the speed limit" are not mentioned. Bad engineering (non 85th percentile speed limits, short yellow intervals in intersections) now become profit opportunities....with money from car drivers, who have some money....and are "bad people" in some quarters..... No wonder some governments want to line our roads with these gadgets...free money forever, and all you need is poorly set speed limits and badly engineered intersections.
Honestly, I have to agree with this. Let the technology usher in a world of continual, absolute enforcement. It's going to happen anyway. That technological capability isn't going to magically disappear. Banning it because it's not the same model as our old model of real, human police officers pulling us over is no better than insisting on buggy whips and flagmen for automobiles. There'll be consequences, yes. Maybe we'll stop speeding, maybe the speed limits will go up, maybe our robot cars will simply not speed and we won't give a shit, or they'll change the laws to be more lenient on speeders. Some adjustment is bound to happen. Fighting technological progress because it's inconvenient in the context of what we're used to is a stupid way to approach things.
I wish I would be alive long enough that our cars just drive for us, pathing algorithms will do a much better job and get us there faster and cheaper, no worry of speeding tickets, the cars can merge us faster and safer and more efficiently than we ever could anyway.
Hell, remove roads, how about a series of routed rail cars, if I didn't want to own one, I could just rent one, punch in the number of passengers and how much transport room I need for it, railcar shows up front in the house, load up, punch in the destination, go to sleep/do whatever.
Ahh future dreams, maybe for our kids/kids.
Shortly after converting all the laws to machine readable format, the machines will go on a killing spree and kill all humans. It's the only possible outcome.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
no auto drive cars that don't need the old limit system no more like a MAX speed for each area that is at least 60-70+ on highways no more of that 55 shit where next to no one does 55 and it can be unsafe to do 55 when others are doing 60-70.
SendBot, you'd need the 'Zonie modification of this here in La Jolla. In Southern California, we tend to see a lot of 'Zonie cars (escapees from Arizona, usually elderly) with the constant "left turn blinker engaged" option. The Zonie mod would have a steadily louder clicking that keeps getting louder and Louder and LOUder and LOUDER if the driver doesn't turn the clicker off.
in coming TXT is not free on all systems and some people block TXT as you pay for in coming Spam.
The build out of a system like that will a long time and there will need to be areas where it's only cars.
Utah added speed limits of 80 mph a few years ago with no increase in accident rate. Going 80 on a rural interstate is not appreciably more dangerous than going 55.
In Aus, unless you do something stupid like overtake a cop, a patrol car probably won't book you unless you're doing 5km/h or more over the limit.
Speed cameras, however will book for 1km/h over, and there are a lot of them. When they were introduced it was 10% + 3, but they have reduced it over time to zero tolerance.
On the plus side, as long as you keep to the left (we drive on the correct side of the road), you will never get a ticket for going too slow.
I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
This has long been a problem if you drive through different jurisdictions in one journey.
You get caught on five small towns' radars or speed cams between pee breaks. The tickets arrive in the post weeks later.
But the question of fairness is secondary to the finding of fact. To paraphrase an old criminal maxim: if you can't pay the fine, don't do the crime.
Actually I think you will find that football fields are a unit of area. Just like Olympic swimming pools are a unit of volume.
I have two VW Golf's here in Australia and both are set to report +6km/h at 110. I don't know how that scales at slower speeds. As a result I always set my cruise at 115 - 120 and have never been stopped by cops while on cruise, nor snapped by speed cameras. That goes for NSW, Queensland and the ACT.
The two times I have been snagged for speeding have been in little villages on country highways that suddenly go down from 100 to 60 or 50. Do 5km over the limit and they will have you.
It also varies by state. Victoria used to be the worst, even having helicopters for those open stretches of road.
This is flat out evil on several levels. When a majority of people ignore a law, that is a withdrawal of the delegated authority to make law, and in a democracy would void that law, irrespective of whether it is just or reasonable. Any government that attempts to enforce law in such a case has overstepped its authority.
What? I mean... what? Bit of a problem with your punctuation-to-word ratio, there.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I'd be careful about pronouncing code violations. Do remember that the work has only to adhere to the code in place at the time the work was done. Nobody expects you to upgrade your entire house to current codes merely because you're renovating one room. Sure, when you do renovate that room, whatever you modify and have sufficient access to will need to be brought up to current code.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
There are less capable drivers we are just poor judges of our abilities.
I've seen studies that show beneficial effects of speed limit reductions
There's an inifnite number of ridiculous things we could do that have a beneficial effect of one sort or another. The key is not to go overboard, you know. There's only so far a law for public land/road can go before it gets over the top.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Have you like actually computed anything with it before saying you don't get it?
Energy at 60mph is 4 times that of energy at 30mph (3600/900 = 4).
Energy at 96.6 km/h is 4 times that of energy at 48.3 km/h (9331.6/2332.9 = 4).
You're comparing relative energies. The value of the constant factor needed
to convert velocity squared to absolute kinetic energy does depend on the units used
for velocity, of course, but that constant doesn't come into play when you're comparing
two energies -- then you only need to use same units for velocity.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Vernor Vinge coined the term.
And we really don't want it.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
How about don't go 5 MPH over the limit? You really have to be impossibly stupid to not know that 5MPH faster than 70MPH over 10 miles saves you 34 seconds. If you're so concerned about being 34 seconds late for work, leave 34 seconds earlier. Speeding is about the drivers' attitude that the laws shouldn't apply to them because they're just so darn special. It has nothing to do with time. So yes, give them 12 tickets.
600 cars going 50 MPH on a one-mile stretch of 4-lane freeway is extremely dangerous. 60 cars going 80 MPH on that same mile of freeway is must less dangerous.
[citation needed]
In Atlanta, the speed limits are a fantasy (55mph on many freeways where the flow of traffic is 75mph). If they deploy those systems here, either speed limits will change, or there will be a revolt. Of course, knowing Georgia, they will deploy said systems to be managed by a private company that keeps half of the ticket fines.
The right to harass you daily and nightly, send you constant spam, threaten to send you to court, threaten to take all your stuff, possibly actually show up and *attempt* to take all your stuff, and basically make your life a living hell unless you either pay or sue them? That's how the legal system is supposed to work, right?
Tech will change along the way. First, St Louis has Variable-Speed-Limits. IMHO, VSL's should be everywhere. To entice truckers to drive at night, offer this: 8pm-8am 80mph. Second of course is that we will get cruise controls like this.. Eventually we will just use highways exclusively, turn on our google-cruise and sit back and surf. If you have something to do in a car, you don't mind getting somewhere 10 minutes later.
So the future will be full of drone-cars delivering pizzas, and drone-drivers surfing porn in private and no one speeding.
If fear of a fiery death doesn't reduce speed, does fear of getting a ticket really make a difference?
+2 or 3 on this one. There is a cop who works the drug enforcement area near Dickson on I40 in TN (Though I hesitate to call it drug enforcement as they hang out on the money side). I see him sometimes heading down to the interstate in his SUV, speeding, swerving in and out of traffic and tailgating. I really should get a dashcam.
Then again, there is the "move over" law which is badly signed, not indicating that it is supposed to be "if it is safe to do so". I've seen a couple of cars nearly taken out by other trucks and cars because of that one. Here's a hint, if it's that dangerous to be pulling people over, how about you don't do it unless they are actually endangering others? 2-3mph over prevailing speed on an empty stretch of road? It's just not worth it.
Drove last year on a good percentage of the autobahn system. I saw hundreds of variable speed limit signs-the autobahn has a lot of speed limits, but they are modulated in real time. I have no idea what level of intelligence the management system has, but this tourist saw that in Germany, speed limits were valuable information, not a marker for "how expensive will the ticket be as I run with traffic". If you are in a free speed zone and the limit goes to 130 kph, you slow down ... likewise when that drops to 100 kph....and around the corner is a hairpin curve.
That's the difference. In Germany I'd see a ticket as having a safety aspect, where as designed and executed in the US, it will just be another toll booth.
Most of the signs also have cameras, or at least look like they do.
Speeding tickets are useless and stupid. They are just another revenue stream for the government to randomly tax us on. They should just abolish all speeding tickets and only give tickets for reckless behavior; though to replace the revenue just issue random $100 dollar tax notices to people once a year, save me the pain of traffic school and the small talk with the officer. This study is insane though; soon they will give certain types of tickets based upon your profile for a crime they think you have probably committed; This is like the precogs in minority report. Though most of these tickets will probably be issued by a small law firm in Texas........
Yes, I should be looking at the speedometer, not at the road.
Yup it's stupid. Like most things now, it's only in place to collect revenue, not to enhance public safety, which I think might have been the vague intention of the law at some point. The police officers are pretty much only glorified tax collectors. Any real crimes they usually arrive after it's way too late for them to actually do anything.
Police forces, especially in Australia have repeatedly said there is no quota....No matter how much evidence against their conspiracy theory there is, because they cant admit responsibility for it they cant thing straight about it.
I can't speak for Australia, but in the US, quotas are common practice. Some places mask the quotas because they are controversial. There is a court case going on right now over the firing of several NYPD officers for not meeting their "Stop and frisk" quotas.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/20/nypd-stop-and-frisk-trial-quota-brass_n_2914795.html
One of the officers actually recorded the police chief stating the quota and chastising the officers who didn't meet them. There's been lots of cases like this over the years. Google News even indexed an article about a similar case back in 1985.
Not that this makes speeding right - but I just want to make sure you know this is really common practice in many places. It's no conspiracy theory.
Speeders once puled over and receive their tickets then are aware they just incurred a large debt and do not want to incur another so then the speeding stops. Officers pull over speeders based on their own judgement to a certain degree based on driving conditions... Slippery roads with heavy traffic and fog going 5 over can be multiple times worse than say someone going 15mph over on a highways with zero traffic and excellent driving conditions. So the question is if these systems are designed to bring in profits or increase safety???
Now we bring the discipline of the coder to the problem, and we really have a way to understand the rules. I love it!
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
If posted speed limits were set to produce maximum safety by finding the 85th percentile speed of free flowing traffic under good conditions and round the number to the nearest 5 mph interval, there would not be enough violations using a small grace for speedo error for the tickets to even pay the costs of the electronic monitoring systems, let alone produce the obscene profits that governments demand from speeding ticket robots. It is all a scam for money, not a safety program. See the science of the safest 85th percentile speed limits on our website. James C. Walker, Life Member-National Motorists Association, Executive Director-National Motorists Association Foundation
I saw one of these the other day and couldn't really think of too many differences outside of cost and effeciency from using a drone.
You know,. I could posit some snide remarks, denigrating your lack of intellect quite expertly... then I realized, "hey, this is just some ball-less AC; how is this stupid asshole worth my time?"
The answer is, of course, that you're not.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Case in point: ever discuss a broadcasted sporting event in a public place, without express written consent of the sporting organization and broadcasting network? If you said 'yes,' then you've broken the law, even though it has harmed not a soul.
No, you're not breaking the law. You're just breaking the imaginary law that the networks claim exists.
I don't disagree; technically, any law that violates the Constitution is also an imaginary law. Unfortunately, the system that props itself up on such illegitimate acts doesn't tend to take "Because it's un-fucking-Constitutional, that's why" as seriously as they should.
I never said it was smart or right, just pointing out the way things are (which is, in a word - fucked).
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Based on base rate plus chained CPI, you will be able to bribe the robot and or the automated magistrate. Just another algorithm...Proceeds go to Home for Orphan Robots.
" One of the least corrupt countries in the world is Finland, where your traffic fine is proportional to your income."
+10
And pedestrians will be cited for stepping off the curb too soon. Other pedestrians will be cited for not clearing the intersection promptly. Goodness help the old lady with a walker. It has wheels so falls under the purvue of traffic enforcement.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
600 cars going 50 MPH on a one-mile stretch of 4-lane freeway is extremely dangerous. 60 cars going 80 MPH on that same mile of freeway is must less dangerous.
[citation needed]
Break out your calculator. .007 sec * 60 mi/hr = .215 * 60 mi/hr * 5280 ft/mi / 3600 sec/hr = 18.2 feet. .215 * 80 mi/hr * 5280 ft/mi / 3600 sec/hr = 25.2 feet
600 cars/ 4 lanes/ 60mph:
typical length of a car: 20 feet
# of feet of highway (counting all 4 lanes) = 5280 * 4 = 21,120 feet
# of cars = 600
feet of lane per car = 21120 / 600 = 35.2 ft/car
typical distance between cars = 15.2 feet
Median human reaction time: about 215 ms. (http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime/stats.php) in near-ideal conditions
Distance travelled in this time =
So under ideal conditions, you would just become able to start responding to an emergency at the location of the car in front of you about when you arrive at that position. Now your car can begin to respond to your control.
Now consider the same calculation at 60 cars per mile and 80 mph:
typical distance between cars = 152 feet.
Distance traveled in this time =
A typical person is still 127 feet from the back of the next car when he or she can start to respond to any event. There is a lot more space in adjacent lanes, so he/she can respond by changing lanes with a small chance of hitting another car, or can respond by slowing down without likely causing an accident.
The speed limits are lower because they expect people to go faster. Sometimes it is VERY intentional for revenue purposes. So if they can enforce the law like that, they must raise the limits to what they should be. Top speed on Route 95 should be 120. Some places out west - unlimited. No more dumbasses in the left lane either. Either move out of the way or get a ticket. If you get hit from behind, it's your fault. While we're at it, do away with bullshit lawsuits.
Okay, I don't think you get what '90th percentile' means. If you measure a set of cars, and you get a speed map like this:
10%: 25 mph, 20%: 35, 30%: 45, 40%: 55
The 90th percentile would be 55 mph, even though that's the same as the 100th percentile. Plus, NTSB standard is to measure during clear weather, basically optimal conditions. If there's construction or an accident that slows traffic down, it's not considered standard and speed readings during that period are thrown out.
If everyone is maxing out at 54.5, the only way to put 10% back in the speeding category is to lower the speed limit.
The 90% standard is because about 10% of drivers on the road today are speeding idiots. If things change that drastically, they'll change the standards. Again: NTSB standard is to take the 90th percentile, which in this case is 54.5, even though that's the max speed driven on the road, then round UP to 55. The situation is stable. Consider that the 90th percentile would have to drop below 50 for the speed limit to drop. Indeed, in addition to this the NTSB has a number of statistical analysis tools that allow them to figure out the 90th percentile without even measuring, figure out what it'd be even before construction starts. You'd have to rewrite those as well to cause your spiral. Not to mention that many roads are measured once a decade, if that, due to the statistical tools.
Of course, part of the problem right now is that many traffic boards set the speed limits below NTSB standards, one minor way is rounding down rather than up.
On an side note, I suspect that by the time we see a less than 1% human controlled vehicle count, human controlled cars on public roads will be all but outlawed.
Of course. I figure the 1%'ers will be special cases - police, fire, and ambulance. The occasional human driver of a classic car, but said driver will have to pass TOUGH tests to stay on the road.
I don't read AC A human right
I hope you elaborate.
It seems to me that despite our technology, society is directionless, people are miserable under the surface, we're not really achieving anything and discontent is spreading.
The problem with speed scameras is that they really are not about safety. A wise man once said. "measure what is important, not what is easy to measure". It is easy to measure speed, that doesn't mean that micro managing this is a good idea. It is not. Speed scamera side is not interested in safety (beyond the talking points). They don't care if you are guilty or innocent. http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/40/4009.asp don't care if they make mistakes, unless it makes the press like this one out of Baltimore. http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2012-12-14/news/bs-md-speed-camera-error-rate-20121214_1_camera-tickets-camera-contractor-xerox-state don't even care if you are not speeding. http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/news/the_18mph_taxi_driver_clocked_doing_50mph_by_misfiring_speed_camera_1_1831308 They will even issue a ticket on speeding at 0 mph! http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2012-12-12/news/bs-md-speed-camera-stopped-car-20121212_1_potential-citation-xerox-state-camera-ticket Heck, they have gotten to the point of not just 1 km/h tickets http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/32/3266.asp Quote: Vehicle owners have begun to protest after receiving 45 euro (US $58) tickets for driving as little as 61 km/h (38 MPH) in a 60 zone -- just 1 km/h or sixth-tenths of a mile-per-hour over the limit. The camera in question is positioned just a few yards away from a sign that lowers the limit on the road from 90 km/h (56 MPH) to 60, Varese Notizie reported. Vendors have in Europe now citing for driving UNDER the speed limit. http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/35/3523.asp The speed scamera are a tax. On those who say "big" deal, so they go "after" those "car" drivers, REALIZE that this style of enforcement will creep outside of cars. Already there have been speed scamera tickets to bike riders. http://www.banthecams.org/Speed-Camera-News/poland-naked-speed-camera-protester-fined-315-bike-riders-in-poland-are-cited-by-speed-scameras.html Scameras are about petty enforcement to make dollars, NOT safety. Safety is pulling over a dangerous driver, not sending a bill weeks later to benefit a private company. www.motorists.org www.banthecams.org camerafraud on Facebook.