Ford Patents Driverless Police Car That Ambushes Lawbreakers Using AI (washingtonpost.com)

Ford has developed a patent for a police car that issues tickets without even pulling you over. The same car could also use artificial intelligence to find good hiding spots to catch traffic violators (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source) and identify drivers by scanning license plates, tapping into surveillance cameras and wirelessly accessing government records. The Washington Post reports: The details may sound far-fetched, as if they belong in the science-fiction action flick "Demolition Man" or a new dystopian novel inspired by Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World," but these scenarios are grounded in a potential reality. They come from a patent developed by Ford and being reviewed by the U.S. government to create autonomous police cars. Ford's patent application was published this month. Although experts claim autonomous vehicles will make driving safer and more rule-bound, Ford argues in its application that in the future, traffic violations will never disappear entirely. "While autonomous vehicles can and will be programmed to obey traffic laws, a human driver can override that programming to control and operate the vehicle at any time," the patent's application says. "When a vehicle is under the control of a human driver there is a possibility of violation of traffic laws. Thus, there will still be a need to police traffic."

The patent application says that autonomous police vehicles don't necessarily replace the need for human police officers for catching traffic scofflaws. Some "routine tasks," such as issuing tickets for failure to stop at a stop sign, can be automated, the patent says, but other tasks that can't be automated will be left to people. The application, which was filed in July 2016 and includes elaborate diagrams depicting the autonomous police car interacting with its environment, says officers could be inside the vehicle at all times and reclaim control of the car when necessary. But the application also shows how an autonomous police vehicle could be able to carry out many tasks we associate with human officers.

Comments

This is just silly

[rsilvergun]

we don't need cars to do this. We can just set up cameras everywhere. The UK already does this in a lot of places. This is just somebody at Ford patenting something so they can say they got a patent.

Re:This is just silly

[Anonymous Coward]

we don't need cars to do this. We can just set up cameras everywhere. The UK already does this in a lot of places.

And yet, the UK still has lots of crime.

So instead of spending billions on cameras (and violating the privacy of millions of people), maybe we should focus on other crime reduction strategies.

Why do you even need the police car

[NeumannCons]

Your car could spy on you... and notify the police who could then issue the ticket for speeding, distracted driving, and all manner of things. It could even supply pictures/movies of you breaking the law.

Dystopian Big Brother future.

Expect the cars to get vandalized

[schwit1]

The article doesn't mention if they are fireproof and bulletproof. Cash register justice will provoke a violent and justifiable response.

Depends on what your goal is

[rsilvergun]

I can't speak for the UK, but in America a lot of our Crime reduction strategies are really just backhanded racial segregation. Our entire drug policy is. This is why black people are several times more likely to serve time for minor drug offenses and serve more time to boot. One way to keep people in their place is to have selectively enforced laws that let you target undesirables.