Slashdot Mirror
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.
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'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.
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
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.
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.
>A population that informs on itself to the police stops being a civilization
What, so you should never call the police to report something? If you see a murder in progress you should just shrug and carry on? If you see someone walking into a busy area brandishing a knife aggressively then you should just carry on as if nothing happened? If you see someone get dragged into a van kicking and screaming which then drives off at high speed then you should do nothing?
If you wanted to argue against people reporting each other for comparatively minor things I might understand, but you're saying that people should never assist the police. Your argument is extreme to the point of idiocy. The idea that you can either tell the police nothing or end up in a dystopian police state is a false dichotomy.