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UK Launches National Dashcam Database For Snitching On Bad Drivers (cnet.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Drivers in England and Wales now have a direct line to police for ratting on their fellow motorists, thanks to a new national dash cam database. The National Dash Cam Safety Portal, run by UK dashcam manufacturer Nextbase, lets drivers upload footage from their dashcam to a single database and send it directly to police, the BBC reports. Drivers can choose their region of England or Wales and send footage of accidents or illegal behavior on the road directly to local police, as well as sending a witness statement that can then be used in court.
The fact that it doesn't include Scotland, or Northern Ireland doesn't really make it a 'UK National' service.
Admittedly, Scotland does have its own legal system, which may have subtly different procedures to follow.
Also terms and conditions of the service mean that NextBase is entitled to use your clips in their adverts, or possibly sending them on to those car crash tv shows.
11. Rights you license
11.1 When you upload or post content to our site (including, but without limitation dashcam videos), you grant to us a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, non-exclusive, sub-licensable, royalty-free and transferable licence to use, exploit, copy, store, disclose, reproduce, publish, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, perform and otherwise use that content for any purpose across any media including, but not limited to, promoting the site and its content, promoting our business, and promoting our products and services.
However, earlier on in the terms, it states that "Whilst you retain legal ownership of your rights in your content, you are required to grant us the license described in paragraph 11 (Rights you license)."
I'm not in the UK, but I'm all for ratting out drivers who have no concern for my or my family's safety. If I had access to such a facility, I don't believe I would be bothered to submit footage of everyday misdemeanours that all drivers make, but blatant reckless and life endangering driving should be reported and I'd be happy to assist in that.
It's not "the UK" and it's not a "national database" seemingly run by the Gov. or the police.
It is a private site, run by a private dashcam company, that just redirects you to the individual police force pace, (England and Wales only, so if it's Scotland or NI you're looking for then you're SOL).
They are nice-enough to state in their T&Cs that "You may be use [sic] the NDSP to upload footage from any dash cam, action camera, mobile phone or any other type of camera from any manufacturer."
I bloody well should think so, since they're just linking through to the cops own sites!
I'm not in the UK, but I'm all for ratting out drivers who have no concern for my or my family's safety.
If I had access to such a facility, I don't believe I would be bothered to submit footage of everyday misdemeanours that all drivers make, but blatant reckless and life endangering driving should be reported and I'd be happy to assist in that.
I have mixed opinions on this.
Yeah, sure, there have been times I wish a cop had been around to witness someone doing something egregiously bad. However, everyone has done something stupid whilst driving at some point. Everyone has done something illegal, either on purpose or by accident.
Never misread a sign? Gone the wrong way down a one way street - or driven at 70mph in a 60mph zone?
I guarantee what is going to happen here is every Spurs fan is going to start trying to catch Arsenal football players making a mistake whilst driving. United fans are going to try to catch and force Liverpool players into making mistakes. People are going to target their rivals, enemies, and people they don't like... and people will get caught making silly mistakes.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
You know, with the stupid shit I see on a daily basis while driving, I've begun thinking about buying a dashcam ... because if any of those idiots causes an accident I want some proof of their stupidity.
If citizens can send in "holy shit, look what this guy just did", then maybe the police can find the idiots responsible and ticket them (or charge them depending on what they've done).
I see an unbelievable amount of scary and dangerous stuff on the roads .. the ability to report that to the police seems natural.
I don't see this as a police state, but as a way for the information to be crowd-sourced because the police can't be everywhere.
Because when you see someone swoop across 4 lanes, cut 3 other drivers off, and then swoop back across two lanes because you have no idea where you're going ... someone is going to get killed if people drive like that.
Hell, open up the ability for me to take a picture of people talking on their cell phones and submit that. I can't tell you how many times I see people texting and driving -- I've even seen people with both thumbs on their fucking phone. I fail to see how a police officer can't stand at an intersection and just pick of dozens of people texting because they're so blatant about it.
Sorry, if you drive badly enough that someone wants to submit their dashcam footage to law enforcement, you deserve it.
The UK continuing in its steady descent toward a police state.
Uh, unlike a true police state, this system is voluntary.
This "police state", is whatever the citizens make it.
Back in the 80s he proposed that drivers get a dart a month. You can shoot that dart at an asshole driver. If a driver collects 3 or more darts they lose driving privileges for a month.
Simply brilliant
/ RIP funny man
Well, we can't have that. You must allow a minority of citizens to engage in any sort of dangerous driving so long as they are wise enough to avoid doing it in front of marked police. You also must ban other citizens from collecting evidence that might be used to punish an offender. Because police state...
Yep. Other citizens = secret police, traffic enforcement = arbitrary exercise of power, traffic court = star chamber acting in place of judicial organs exercising publicly known legal procedures.
It totally matches, by which I mean that you're simply butthurt that other users of the road can collect and now submit objective evidence of your asshattery so that you just might have to drive in a civilized manner.
How will you feel when someone uploads a carefully edited clip that makes it look like you are a bad driver, when in fact you were avoiding an accident with someone else?
As ever, the problem with vigilante justice is the lack of due process and fairness.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
>"Never misread a sign? Gone the wrong way down a one way street - or driven at 70mph in a 60mph zone?"
Yeah, I have mixed feelings too.
It is one thing to report someone with a hit-and-run, weaving in and out of traffic, driving drunk, riding on the wrong side of the road, going 40MPH over the speed limit, or backing up an exit ramp and such.... and quite another when it is an expired tag, not coming to an ABSOLUTE stop at a stop sign, or running a yellow light.
It's got police force logos on it, which implies that they endorse it. If they don't then hopefully they will pay Nextbase a visit to sort that out.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Not sure if anyone actually wants to follow the cnet link in TFA, but it's broken. Here's a working one: https://www.cnet.com/uk/news/u...
Oh arse
The solution to the fact that everyone makes mistakes driving is not to let everyone get away with it. It's to reduce the fines to the point where people who rarely make mistakes can afford it but people who make them constantly can't afford it (this also really requires adjusting fines to the driver's income, but that's a different matter).
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They don't actually have to bother with that. China's doing this now, they've got an automated system where users can upload cell phone video of you breaking a law. So then they'll do things like go out on the highways and drive just above the lower speed limit, block traffic, weave around, and generally incite people to speed around them to "get out of the way of that maniac", who is of course filming you breaking the law.
The reason it's a problem there though is they get PAID for the snitching. There's really no reason for that, people that are truly upset by lawbreakers will be more than happy to upload a video that may get them a hand-slap and reduce future occurrences, they don't need a monetary reward. Paying people to report this sort of thing on the other hand, is just insanely stupid because it just encourages people to incite lawbreaking. So lets hope the UK doesn't Do The Stupid and think about paying people for these reports.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Just as people snitching on child abusers, robbers, rapists, violent thugs is bad! If people want to risk the life of others and behaving dangerously they should be able to without being being told on by stinking rats!
If this continues drunks can't safely drive home on the wrong side of the road anymore. Incredible.
Video editing and compositing is fantastic these days. All one needs is a database of make/model/year/color vehicles with videos of egregious driving and some Deep Fakes processing. Let's see how well the Sox do in the Series when their pitcher is pinched on a DUI.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
No, it doesn't get rid of bad laws at all because the law enforcers will investigate themselves and find that they did nothing wrong, plus it is very difficult to have a law repealed once it's been passed. In a strict sense, you're correct: if the enforcers got ticketed for breaking laws and couldn't get out of it, you'd see some action, but that ain't happening anywhere. For the photo/video thing, I would hope some forensic analysis went into it (editing of real images is not generally hard to detect unless someone's a freaking wizard at it and can reproduce the exact noise and artifacts and file specs and metadata with great accuracy) but laziness is also a hallmark of nearly every law enforcement organization due to constantly being understaffed and under-funded.
I see an unbelievable amount of scary and dangerous stuff on the roads .. the ability to report that to the police seems natural.
Agreed. If I saw somebody committing an assault or breaking into a building I'd snap something on my camera and call the police. It would feel ludicrous to let the incident go unreported because I'd be snitching on somebody and promoting a police state.
I come to a complete stop at stop signs and people often react badly. It throws the 'roll through' drivers off their rhythm.
What's your opinion on self-driving cars? Personally I can't wait, and a good part of the reason is the same concerns you have about reckless driving.
There is a better solution to 'occasional mistakes' operating in the UK. If you are caught, for instance, a few miles/hour over the limit you are given the option of doing a 1/2 day 'driver awareness' course that costs £70-£110. The benefit is that it is not a conviction so you avoid having points put on your license (get 12 & lose it). There is confusion as to if you need to tell your insurer - but you must if they ask. You are not given the choice if you have taken a course in the last 3 years or your 'mistake' was bad enough.
Do you have any idea how prosecution of driving offences works in the UK?
The police are regulated because they have been found do abuse traffic laws. The equipment they can use is regulated, the places they can operate are regulated, the way they can detect offences is regulated. And still there is abuse.
There is heavy pressure for you to settle the matter out of court. Pay your fine, go on an "awareness" course, don't fight it in court. If you do fight it, you need to pay for your own defence, and if you lose also the court fees.
Defending yourself can be very tricky. The courts are corrupt and tend to side with the police unless you have extremely powerful evidence of your innocence.
Examples of abuse include the misuse of speed guns and CCTV cameras positioned to give a misleading impression, e.g. due to perspective effects making vehicles appear closer than they really are.
And now they want to get the public in on an already very unfair and unbalanced system. No doubt they will produce some very clear cut, extreme examples to gain support. But I have do doubt that there will be a huge number of innocent people accused and railroaded by the system.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Any of you who lived in communist Poland or Ukraine will agree: A population that informs on itself to the police stops being a civilization and becomes simply a population, living in a culture of suspicion and fear, or passive aggressive seething anger.
Its starts with reporting bad behavior on the road.. it ends with people who express out loud in a pub their empathy for the peaceful majority of Muslims being dragged from their families in the middle of the night, and never seen again.
Who'se actually "safe" in that world? And please don't say the honest law abiding people with nothing to hide. That is naive and not supported by fact.
GDPR only applies to companies not individuals.
Wrong. Article 4 subsections 7 and 8 of GDPR:
(7) ‘controller’ means the natural or legal person, public authority, agency or other body which, alone or jointly with others, determines the purposes and means of the processing of personal data; where the purposes and means of such processing are determined by Union or Member State law, the controller or the specific criteria for its nomination may be provided for by Union or Member State law;
(8) ‘processor’ means a natural or legal person, public authority, agency or other body which processes personal data on behalf of the controller;
"Report that driver who cut you off. Fabulous prizes to be won!"
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
Watch out! Internet tough guy alert!
Well when the inciter is being paid 20RNB and the passer is being fined 750RNB, the state profits 730RNB, why would they want to close the gold mine?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.