Police in England installed an AI camera system along a major road. It caught almost 300 drivers breaking the law in its first 3 days.
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The AI system, designed by tech company Acusensus, takes photos of passing vehicles and flags those with potential offenses.

Police in England installed an AI camera system along a major road. It caught almost 300 drivers in its first 3 days.::An AI camera system installed along a major road in England caught 300 offenses in its first 3 days.There were 180 seat belt offenses and 117 mobile phone

  • the_sisko@startrek.websiteEnglish
    291·
    1 year ago

    I literally watched cops driving while on their phone everyday after it was made illegal. Nothing was done, Nothing changed, they hand out tickets while breaking the same rules.

    I mean yeah, fuck the police :) Seems like we’re in agreement here.

    Might kill someone is a precrime, a issue with these tickets in this case is that without the AI camera nothing would have been seen (literally victimless). If someone crashes into anything while on their phone the chances it will be used in prosecution is low.

    Using your fucking phone while driving is the crime. This isn’t some “thought police” situation. Put the phone away, and you won’t get the ticket. It’s that simple. We don’t need to wait for a person to mow down a pedestrian in order to punish them for driving irresponsibly.

    In the same spirit, if a person gets drunk and drives home, and they don’t kill somebody – well that’s a crime and they should be punished for it.

    And if you can’t handle driving responsibly, then the privilege of driving on public roads should be revoked.

    I don’t think texting while driving is a good idea, like not wearing a seatbelt. However this is offloading a lot to AI, distracted driving is not well defined and considering the nuances I don’t want to leave any part to AI. Here is an example: eating a bowl of soup while operating a vehicle would be distracted right? What if the soup was in a cup? What if the soup was made of coffee beans?

    This is such a weird ad absurdum argument. Nobody is telling some ML system “make a judgment call on whether the coffee bean soup is a distraction.” The system is identifying people violating a cut-and-dried law: using their phone while driving, or not wearing a seatbelt. Assuming it can do it in an unbiased way (which is a huge if, to be fair), then there’s no slippery slope here.

    For what it’s worth, I do worry about ML system bias, and I do think the seatbelt enforcement is a bit silly: I personally don’t mind if a person makes a decision that will only impact their own safety. I care about the irresponsible decisions that people make affecting my safety, and I’d be glad for some unbiased enforcement of the traffic rules that protect us all.

      • stephen01king@lemmy.zipEnglish
        64·
        1 year ago

        Police cameras are not police. And the laws being enforced is also not police. Supporting them while not supporting the police force misuse of power is not a contradiction like you are implying.

    • M0oP0o@mander.xyzEnglish
      412·
      1 year ago

      The issue is this has no way to judge context, someone playing music on their phone though the car audio (super common now) tapping the phone to ignore a call is just as much a crime as texting a novel to an ex. And you are kidding yourself if you think almost every person driving for a living is not at some level forced to use their phone by their company (I was). This is just more AI solutions looking for a problem, I would much rather have someone pulled over when driving erratically then the person getting an automated ticket 3 weeks after mowing down a pedestrian.

      • the_sisko@startrek.websiteEnglish
        152·
        1 year ago

        someone playing music on their phone though the car audio (super common now) tapping the phone to ignore a call is just as much a crime as texting a novel to an ex.

        They are all crimes. Set up your music before you go, or use voice command. Ignore the call with voice command or just let it go to voicemail. Lol. It’s not hard.

        And you are kidding yourself if you think almost every person driving for a living is not at some level forced to use their phone by their company (I was)

        This is a great of the strength of this system: this company will find its drivers and vehicles getting ticketed a lot, and they’ll have to come up with a way to allow drivers to do their jobs without interacting with their phones will moving at high speeds.

        I would much rather have someone pulled over when driving erratically then the person getting an automated ticket 3 weeks after mowing down a pedestrian.

        The camera doesn’t magically remove traffic enforcement humans from the road. They can still pull over the obviously drunk/erratic driver.

        • M0oP0o@mander.xyzEnglish
          28·
          1 year ago

          I am saying there is a difference between say looking at your phone and using your phone, both are crimes but both are not the same.

          The companies just say “don’t break the law” then give you shit if you don’t update a ticket in 10 min (only can be done on a phone and the job requires driving 3 hours to the next place). They don’t care if you get a ticket, it does not come off their bottom line.

          They don’t pull over people that are hard tickets, I see it way to often. They don’t pull people over when someone calls saying they are drunk.

          This is just another excuse for the police to do even less but still make quota, and on top of that you are trusting a system that can not figure out how many fingers a human has on average.

          • Lmaydev@programming.devEnglish
            111·
            1 year ago

            There isn’t really a difference. Both are incredibly distracting and dangerous. It’s why both are illegal.

      • cynar@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        I do a LOT of driving. I consider phone use a bain. The law over here is you can only interact with 1 finger. This works quite well. If you need to hold your phone, you’re over focused on it. I can tap a few buttons, if required, and use voice control for most functions.

        Anyone interacting with their phone enough to be caught by this is a danger to other road users. The solutions are so trivial that anyone not using them is being actively reckless, of the same level as drink driving.