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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
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.
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.
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
... and get railroaded, then have some hefty court costs lumped on top of the already excessive fine (as a punishment for exercising your rights), not to mention the time missed from work to go down to the courthouse and fight it...
Sorry, hard for me to believe there are still people out there who buy the whole "right to defend yourself" lie...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
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.
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."
Less sweepingly, I propose that all traffic fines be pooled on a state level and distributed by population proportion - this will be easier to get passed, but will prevent shitty little townships from funding themselves entirely through farming their nearby interstate highway for tickets.
The fact that enforcing traffic law is wildly profitable means that the system is naturally and automatically corrupt and attracts corrupt people to run it. When you uncouple the action from the reward, bad behaviour tends to stop.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.