> Surveillance is generally a net negative, but it's also bad when you see people speeding around schools, rolling through stop signs, and running red lights.

The fact that these cameras are already pervasive and the problem of bad drivers hasn't been solved anywhere doesn't give me a lot of hope that these cameras are the solution to that particular problem.

It seems like police can do a lot to increase enforcement without the need of these devices. We have evidence that they've been doing less traffic enforcement so maybe start there. Increasing our standards for driving tests (some of which were eliminated entirely over the first few years of the pandemic) would probably help. Automatically shutting off/disabling or limiting the use of cell phones (all of which come with sensors that can detect when you are going at speeds you'd expect while in cars) might help. Bringing physical buttons and dials back to cars instead of burying common functions in touchscreen menus might help.

There's a whole lot of places to look for solutions to safer roads before we have to resort to tracking everyone's movements at all times.

In the US, a traffic ticket is an indictment of a crime (says it on the ticket. I wish I didn't know that fact).

That means that you have a right to trial/appeal, and the accuser (the cop) needs to show up, if you request a trial.

Traffic cameras can't accuse you of a crime, so they are considered civil infractions (no points, but also means they are a bitch to appeal). They can issue realtime civil citations, though.

ALPRS can't do either. They are forensic tools; not enforcement tools.

I believe in the UK, a camera can convict you of a crime, so they can issue severe tickets. They wouldn't really be able to do that, in the US.

In my county (Suffolk, NY), they just stopped all the redlight cameras. I doubt they would do so for ALPRs.

Also, I think some ALPRs are private. There's a shopping center, not too far from here, that's in a relatively high-crime neighborhood. They have cameras and ALPRs, all over the parking lots.

> Automatically shutting off/disabling or limiting the use of cell phones (all of which come with sensors that can detect when you are going at speeds you'd expect while in cars) might help.

I can’t think of a way to implement this that wouldn’t ban passengers from using their phone while riding in a vehicle. Which could be even a bus or limousine.

The standards for evidince, processes for enforcement and court side of things are not set up for cheap enforcement of "that clearly ain't right" behavior. They're set up for revenue enforcement of easy to prove but not necessarily bad in abstract offenses.

Police can't substantially increase enforcement overall because that would just cause bad political optics, say nothing of stops that needlessly escalate to being newsworthy in a bad way. They'd necessarily issue a hundred petty bullshit tickets for every deserved ticket for legitimately bad behavior. It just wouldn't work. It would be like trying to plow a field with the ripper on the back of a bulldozer. It kinda looks similar but it's wrong for the job.

And all of this is based on the assumption that we're trying to enforce things that the broad public agrees need strict enforcement, not whatever the original comment wants.

They have done automated enforcement a few times and it always sucks because the systems don't use discretion.

Someone going 40 in a 30 and swerving around other cars gets treated the same as someone going 40 when the road is empty. Someone slowing to 1-2mph before safely rolling through a stop sign get the same ding as someone blowing through it at 30mph.

If AIs can somehow learn how to take all this footage and enforce the spirit of the law (citing dangerous driving) instead of the letter I will fully support it.

The answer is to take the human out of the equation, and have the computer drive. Comma.ai works well enough. Tesla is mostly there. Waymo works.

This! Things keep getting worse and worse, and we keep getting more surveillance. It's clearly not the answer!