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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.
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
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.
and if they don't pull you over to ticket you, how does it fix the problem? you are ticketed for speeding because someone somewhere has deemed that speed unsafe to yourself and/or others in that location. if you simply ticket, you didn't fix the problem. if you pull them over and ticket, then there is a good chance they will shy away from speeding for a little while.
I know people who've received multiple automated speeding tickets but they didn't get the first one for three days, then they got three more form the same location. Lesson learned, but potentially to late.
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.
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.
Just visit the UK, your favorite 1984 country.
Last time I visited (been a while though) they had automated cams on highways, capturing your license plate (with timestamp). At the next surveillance point, next cam recognizes your plate again.
If distance / (time2 - time1) exceeds speed limit, voila, ticket.
There are fewer illiterates than people who can't read.
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.
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
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.
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
Given that practically everybody breaks several laws a day, the only thing that keeps it from blowing up in our faces is the inefficiency. Every law effectively has a clause built-in that it has to bother someone badly enough to make them want to do something about it. Anything that allows for pushbutton law enforcement needs a counterbalance lest our legal system become progressively more draconian through unintended consequences.
Fines as revenue are a problem since they add an unwarranted incentive to their enforcement, especially fines that fund the enforcer rather than the general budget.
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.
Or because the cop in question needs a few more tickets issued to make his quota.
Or perhaps the area is a "speed trap".
If ALL speedlimits were based on safety requirements ONLY, there's not be all that much speeding. As witnessed by the fact that virtually everyone speeds, and yet the carnage level on the roads is mostly based on the alcohol content of the drivers. Or the features on their phones....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Yes but that system works spectacularly well - far better than radar traps - because you have to stick to the speed limit over long stretches of driving not at isolated points in the road. Also you do not have to worry about keeping your eye on the speedometer every second because if your speed creeps a little high you can easily compensate by driving a little slower. Finally the one effect I have noted on some really busy roads is that the flow of traffic is a lot smoother because now everyone is going just under the speed limit.
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.
Expect someone to chime in that "there are no quotas" ..
Of course there arent any official quotas.. but you can be damned sure if the officer gave 0 tickets out each month that he would be fired.. proving that there are in fact both acceptable and unacceptable levels of ticketing.. which are of course quotas.
"His name was James Damore."
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!
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.
The flipside is the extreme opposite - there's a stretch of road just outside Paris (A86, for those playing at home) - that is a tunnel of about 10km long. It's got a speed camera placed every 1 - 2KM (hidden, with infra-red flashes). Even though it's the same stretch of road, with an incredibly short distance between each camera, if you're doing 10km/h over the limit, you will end up with 6 tickets (at 80EU each) - AND have the points withdrawn.
That is to say, you can lose 500EU + your licence for the same offence?
What's next? Cameras every 20m? Where is the limit?
regardless if quotas exist or not, a human still pulled you over, a mailed ticket is simply a cash grab (potential future deterrent), it has no effect in the now.
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.
It's NTSB(National Traffic Safety Board) rules that the speed limit should be set to the 90th percentile - IE if the speed limit is set correctly, 90% of motorists on the road would not be speeding. 90% of average speed would have most motorists speeding. On the other hand, most jurisdictions round down rather than up like the NTSB recommends...
What safety studies have shown is that motorists will tend to select a more or less safe speed even if there are absolutely no speed limit signs, and some indications are that they're even more willing to slow down when conditions cause the posted speed to be unsafe, such as with ice, heavy rain, or blizzard.
I don't read AC A human right
What exactly is wrong with that? If you accidentally speed as a once off then 3 days shouldn't be an issue.
If you are speeding consistently then you really need to be taught what a law is and multiple speed tickets should hopefully accomplish that.
You shouldn't use speeding tickets to determine what you're going. You should look at your bloody speedo.
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.
Hmm... the state could securitize those tickets into a municipal bond and solve all their budget problems!
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
"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.
So demand 1.5 billion bench trials.
Problem solved.
But it will never happen. The government would go broke trying to buy postage to send you the tickets.
Yes, but it would save the post office. ;-)
Given the fact that you cant simply hire and fire police officers (they have to go through reveiw boards to be sacked and new cops take years of training) this is untrue.
What about your "fact" makes it untrue?
You seem to be suggesting that a cop whose duties include traffic enforcement would not get fired if they gave out 0 tickets month after month because of the magic of "review boards."
I don't think that you are thinking about this clearly, that perhaps you are biased in a way that prevents you from thinking frankly and honestly about this, because what you are claiming is obviously not true.
"His name was James Damore."
No, I'm certain you aren't thinking about this clearly.
The problem is, people who get speeding tickets dont want to take responsibility for their actions. In order to overcome their cognitive dissonance about this they continually create conspiracy theories that absolve them of their responsibility.
The speeder didn't get a ticket for speeding, it's revenue raising so no need to take responsibility. A speeder didn't get a ticket for speeding, they got a ticket so they get a 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.
What makes it untrue?
Police forces, especially in Australia have repeatedly said there is no quota. Yet the conspiracy exists. Not because they're lying but because people who habitually speed need to absolve themselves of responsibility when they get a ticket.
What you are claiming is obviously not true, just by using occams razor.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
The problem is, people who get speeding tickets dont want to take responsibility for their actions.
This has nothing to do with whether or not a cop gets fired for giving out 0 tickets month after month.
No, I'm certain you aren't thinking about this clearly.
yes, thats why its you that goes off on tangents in order to somehow ignore the fact that an cop that writes 0 tickets month after month will as a matter of fact be fired.
Police forces, especially in Australia have repeatedly said there is no quota.
No official quota, sure. You are now just saying what I already responded to in my first post. The fact that there is no official quota does not change the fact that an officer that gives out 0 tickets month after month they will be fired. If 0 is not acceptable, then there is in fact a quota. There is some number greater than 0 that must be given out.. thats exactly a quota, even if its not official.
You go on about conspiracy theories, yet the only person to mention any conspiracy is you. I am talking about basic pragmatic facts that everyone knows. Most factories also dont have official quotas either, yet employees that produce nothing day after day get fired. Programmers typically dont have quotas, but if they dont write any code day after day then they get fired too. A secretary that never files any paperwork gets fired. A grounds keeper that never mows the lawn gets fired.
These are basic facts and you really dont seem to be able to swallow them, because clearly you are so biased that you feel the need to change the subject, invoke conspiracy theories, and other such nonsense rather than admit that a traffic officer that writes 0 tickets month after month always gets fired. Always. Thats called a quota, with 0 being below it.
"His name was James Damore."
Speeding isn't that big of a cause of accidents,
No, Speeding is a big cause of fatalities.
People who try to defend speeding always try to mix up accidents with fatalities. The main cause of accidents is driver error, but at 60 KPH driver error gets you sent to the hospital. 75 KPH gets you sent to the morgue.
You get a lot of low speed impacts, but next to no fatalities. You get few high speed impacts but they almost always end with a fatality.
Picture it like this, the mob throws a man off a building, scientifically he died from hitting the ground so should the mobster's be acquitted?
BTW, it's not revenue raising because you know exactly what you have to do to avoid it. You choose not to, calling it "revenue raising" is just you trying to avoid taking responsibility for yourself.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Making everyone drive at a consistent speed does not cause tailbacks. Inconsistent speeds do. Which is why when you reach a lower speed you do get a tailback, but once everyone is traveling on that section it goes away.
Incidentally, you may notice that when driving at night, drivers will often brake briefly when entering a long stretch of straight road, due to all the tail lights they see. This can often have the effect of drastically slowing the traffic as it enters that final bend.
have no regard for other motorists
When all the motorists go at 20mph over the speed limit and it's a very busy metropolitan ring or diametral freeway, doing the speed limit would be showing no regard for other motorists. I've been to enough large U.S. cities where in-city interstate speed limits are ridiculous at 45 or 55mph, yet everyone is going around 70mph in fairly heavy traffic. You slow down and it's instant traffic jam.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.