[ben_w]

Even with that, I do mind.

Just as two trivial examples, even though neither affects me personally:

The estimated number of heroin users in the UK exceeds the total prison population. The number of class-A drug users in the UK is estimated to be so high that if they actually followed the minimum sentencing guidelines for possession, it would cause a catastrophic economic disaster both from all the people no longer working and also all of the people who suddenly had to build new prisons to hold them. I'm not interested in drugs (and I don't live in the UK, but I assume the UK isn't abnormal in this regard).

Another example is road traffic law. Even just speeding offences, I think you probably catch everyone who actually drives in the UK, often enough that after a month the only people left allowed to drive would be people like me who don't even own a car.

The entire legal system has to be radically changed with far less punishments for almost everything if you have perfect, or even 30% of the way to perfect, surveillance.

[egorfine]

> Another example is road traffic law. Even just speeding offences, I think you probably catch everyone who actually drives in the UK, often enough that after a month the only people left allowed to drive would be people like me who don't even own a car.

You don't have to strip the driving licenses. You should impose a fine and not an extremely painful one for starters.

And then probably within less than a year the whole population will drive properly.

I think I'm in favor of indiscriminately fining everyone speeding at every camera, but I realize there is no privacy-preserving way to do it today thus I will be against it.

(I'm a driver and car lover who is never speeding)

[ben_w]

That's covered by "system has to be radically changed". UK driving licences give you room for 12 "penalty points" worth of mistakes before you risk being banned from the road, of which speeding costs you at least 3: https://www.gov.uk/penalty-points-endorsements/endorsement-c...

[Angostura]

Indeed. 4 strikes and you are out seems fine to me (as a UK driver). You can also opt to take a speed awareness course in leu of the points, I believe

[ben_w]

4 strikes today with current speed enforcement is fine; 4 strikes in a hypothetical where 100% of infractions are caught, I aver will catch (almost) everyone who actually drives within a month.

[ralferoo]

Where I live almost every main road now has average speed cameras, leaving only the small residential streets without, and they are generally short enough that few people are speeding anyway. In general I approve, especially in residential areas, although the surrounding area has gone through a process of downgrading speed limits for no obvious reason, such that it seems their only intent is to annoy drivers so that they want to stop driving. Almost all the country roads in the county I live adjacent to were downgraded from national speed limit to 50mph about 10 years ago. It didn't seem to be anything to do with safety, just seemingly out of spite. I heard rumours that they were also trialing drones to spot offenders (and presumably with sufficiently good cameras to read the plate from up high). Recently, many residential places have dropped from 30mph to 20mph pretty uniformly, again seeming nothing to do with safety as it's entire suburbs (but not all suburbs in the city), even on long straight roads with excellent visibility that would have been safe with limits above the original 30. Doing 20 on these seems completely unnecessary and it's hard to see it as anything other than a revenue generation tactic.

[tln]

If notice of the infractions is a envelope delivered days later and sitting on on end table for a week, typical drivers are going to rack up 4 strikes before seeing the first one!

Perfect enforcement has to come with immediate feedback

[ben_w]

Agreed.

You may be amused/horrified to know that the UK police managed to send me a speeding ticket letter for a car I'd sold 6 months before the offence.

I only owned the car for a week, to sell on behalf of my partner who had moved abroad.

[iso1631]

I remember a case from decades ago when someone went from clean license to a ban within 3 miles

[NewsaHackO]

I think what he is trying to say though is that people will start to drive slower, especially if they need to drive to function/get to their job.

[bubblewand]

I dunno. We got car insurance once that had a "put this spy device in your car for a couple weeks for a lower rate" deal and I felt like I was driving a lot less-safely when I was constantly worried about looking like I was driving safely.

Like, to pick an example that's specifically speed-limit related, if more people really tried hard to do 25MPH (the marked speed limit on many of them) or under for the entire length of an interstate off-ramp, I think we'd be spending more money on brake pads and there'd be a lot more cars getting rear-ended. Sticking to that speed the entire length is silly and not very safe, and things work just fine without people doing that. Tons of other edge cases like that where you're technically breaking some law or another for a little while, but things work way better if you do. Plus practically every one of these laws has some kind of judgement-call clause that applies to modify it, and I don't want the people making those judgement calls to know that if they do what seems right to them in the moment, there's a very high likelihood they'll be hassled for it.

[SAI_Peregrinus]

I've never seen an interstate off-ramp in the US with a 25MPH speed limit (white sign). I've seen 25MPH advisories (yellow sign), but those aren't a legal limit. Advisory signs are the maximum safe speed for the worst possible conditions (road covered in ice).

I otherwise agree.

[FireBeyond]

Interstate, no, and actual speed limit, no, but the one I always think of is this, on US 101, near Steamboat Island in Olympia where you come off a 60mph two lane state highway to an off-ramp that is 430' long and has an advisory 10mph speed for a very unforgiving 90/180 degree turn (160' diameter circle) - with the ability to rear-end people joining the highway if you miss the first part of the turn or the ability to t-bone people if you miss the second. ChatGPT describes the braking required as being at the high end of moderate, almost hard braking, for a sustained 9 seconds to slow sufficiently to make the turn, assuming you start braking the moment you are in the exit lane (and there's no advanced warning, just a single "10mph" yellow sign as you enter that lane): https://imgur.com/a/uns86kp

[egorfine]

I have to kind of agree with you on all points here.

[nine_k]

If speeding is not something that happens constantly, then a radar could detect the instances of speeding, and only turn on a camera when a speeding car is nearby. This would keep the majority of passing cars from being recorded, and would record the fewer cars the fewer drivers would be speeding.

[jen20]

This is exactly how non-AI assisted speed cameras [1] have worked for almost four decades. You don’t even need video for it.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatso

[CamperBob2]

If speeding is not something that happens constantly, then a radar could detect the instances of speeding

And if it is, which it generally is, it means the speed limits are not set appropriately. But that point always seems to be overlooked.

[jdechko]

How long until the AI estimates how fast you were going based on the time you were tagged at 2 cameras? The system says travel between these cameras should take 3 minutes. You made it in 2:45. No review, just a ticket in the mail.

[dghlsakjg]

That's how it actually works in some places (https://www.carwow.co.uk/blog/average-speed-cameras-how-do-t...). You don't need AI because we already know that distance = speed * time. We can calculate to a high degree of certainty - with high school math - that you had to have 1. been speeding or 2. bent space time if you cover the distance between them in too short of time.

[AlotOfReading]

Several months later, the state changes the speed limit on the street without changing the ticket check. Some time after, traffic authorities add a bypass road or a fast lane to deal with the new traffic problems and forget to update the timings. Then it's reported that a rural municipality set timing thresholds just below the speed limit to cover budgetary shortfalls.

Eventually the camera manufacturers offer "easy setup" systems that dynamically adjust based on actual journey times. This works fine until the first office holiday, when the routine congestion is gone.

[vel0city]

If their clocks are actually synchronized and can show that in court then unless you've got a warp drive and can bend space time it can be pretty definitive that one was speeding between those two points. Especially if you're on something like a toll road which utilizes transponders for billing. I'm almost surprised this isn't already done in those situations.

You don't even need AI for this. Its pretty basic.

It is similar to how air enforced speed limits are done. They just paint two lines on the highway. A plane overhead times your car between the lines.

[clickety_clack]

The point he’s making that people violate the letter of the law in many, many small ways, and to prosecute people for all of them would be a crippling burden on both individuals and the economy.

[mapt]

One obvious response is that if 100% enforcement of laws is causing social problems, maybe you just have bad laws and need to change them.

[speleding]

I'm going to argue the other side: in Chinese cities like Chongqing they've seen a drastic reduction in crime after blanketing the city with cameras and monitoring technology.

Whole categories of crime disappeared. Women and elderly feel safe to walk the streets at night. No one locks their bike anymore in Chongqing.

I care about privacy, but I think we should be smart enough to work out a way to get some of those benefits without going full 1984. For example by having surveillance that can only be queried by an AI with very strong guard rails.

Admittedly, I live in a country with very strong democratic institutions, and I trust we would take action the moment something gets abused or surveillance overreaches. I would probably feel differently living elsewhere.

[fc417fc802]

> I trust we would take action the moment something gets abused or surveillance overreaches.

The thing about turnkey authoritarian solutions is that once something happens it's likely too late to take action. However there are often alternative solutions that physically constrain the system such that substantial abuse is impossible without time consuming and expensive physical modifications. The traditional speed cameras in the UK for example.

Cameras, AI integrated at the edge, software that can't be updated remotely, the full stack publicly audited, that only output video data when a suspected violent crime is flagged. Something like that might work. I'm not optimistic such a solution would see much support though.

You'd also probably want a policy put in place in advance to quickly pull them down if certain criteria are met. But again, I'm not optimistic about the prospects.

[speleding]

Well I agree, and my hopes aren't very high of this actually happening. Our politicians tend to be clueless with anything tech related, their opinions calibrated by what they saw in Hollywood movies, where anything tech related always turns into "black mirror". (By contrast, allegedly over half the Chinese politburo has an engineering degree of some kind).

But we could start small, with just one neighborhood, a pilot project where the kinks get worked out and slowly scaled up. Getting permission for a small scale pilot shouldn't be impossible.

[NetMageSCW]

So you want to slippery slope your way into Nazi Germany?

[speleding]

Everybody made that exact same "slippery slope to Nazi Germany" argument when euthanasia was legalized here. That was decades ago. There have been several attempts to broaden or narrow the scope of those laws and the democratic institutions did just what they were designed to do, making changes judiciously.

If you are worried about the slippery slope, then you are really worried that democracy does not work as intended. (And depending on where you live that may be a very reasonable worry). By the way, Nazi Germany was not really a surveillance state, perhaps you are thinking of East Germany?

[fc417fc802]

> If you are worried about the slippery slope, then you are really worried that democracy does not work as intended.

Not really. That's a well established failure mode. People's perceptions can gradually shift as they become accustomed to the new way of doing things.

Personally I'd be less concerned about a slippery slope and more concerned about abrupt changes in policy. All infrastructure should be designed with the worst case scenario in mind. It's naive to assume that things will never get worse suddenly or that we will have plenty of warning or even a meaningful opportunity to react.

[rpdillon]

There's no way to deploy a system like the one you're describing without being abused for authoritarian overreach. It's simply a matter of time, and once it is deployed for authoritarian overreach, the only way back will be paid for in blood.

[KaiserPro]

> Even just speeding offences, I think you probably catch everyone who actually drives in the UK,

So we have a fucktonne of speed cameras allover the place: https://www.speedcameramap.co.uk/ (you need to zoom in there are so fucking many)

But we have less redlight cameras than the US. we also have hatching cameras (yellow hatched boxes mean no stopping, usually at junctions) we also have bus lane cameras, where if you drive in a buslane you get a fine.

For the Speed cameras, they are normally put there based on evidence of road deaths linked to speeding. I dont like speed cameras, but they do serve a purpose.

When you get a speeding ticket, if its your first offence, you can take a speed awareness course, and you won't get points on your license. otherwise its three points and a £100 fine. The points age out after 3 years. the maximum you can normally get is 12 points on your license.

Its only in extreme cases do you get a ban, or license revoked.

The reason why people are still able to drive are numerous:

1) its been a gradual evolution.

2) we have fairly robust training for drivers (theory, comprehensive real world test)

3) Evidence based placement. Its not like they just shove these things where poor people live (or in the US where the city has zoned living for people with more melanin than others). If there are higher than average road crashes, the road is re-made to make it safer, speed limits dropped, traffic calming put in place, then speed cameras.

4) You are expected to follow the traffic rules

5) the traffic rules are actually pretty sensible.

[fc417fc802]

> we also have hatching cameras (yellow hatched boxes mean no stopping, usually at junctions)

Weirdly I've never encountered these in the US (only red light cameras) and do we ever need them. I'm generally opposed to government associated cameras due to concerns about turnkey authoritarianism but if we have to have cameras at intersections they could at least curb the awful self centered behavior.

[pclmulqdq]

Most states ban speed cameras and many ban red light cameras as 4th amendment violations. You cannot face your accuser when your accuser is a robot. As a result, speed camera tickets have always used some legal sleight-of-hand to nail you into confessing, and this has become unpalatable.

If we raised speed limits (almost) across the board to the actual safe limits of modern cars, I think a lot more people would be ok with speed cameras. There would still be a constitutional problem, however.

[saalweachter]

What are "the actual safe limits of modern cars"?

Data from various states raising their limits over the last few decades is that every 5MPH increase in state speed limits brings with it an 8.5% increase in traffic fatalities on freeways. With the 70MPH speed limit common for freeways through most of the US, we're already up 25% on road fatalities over the 55MPH that was chosen for gas mileage during the oil crisis.

For cities, pedestrians struck at 25MPH are already at a 10% chance of death, which reaches 50% at 40MPH.

[pclmulqdq]

Nobody goes 70 mph on freeways. They go 80 mph on that road because it's the speed of traffic. If you declared a "speed limit reset" and raised the speed limit to 80 mph, people won't be going 90 mph. They will be going the speed limit.

[iso1631]

In the UK 80-90 was quite normal 25 years ago, and off peak you'd find the outside lane of the M40 doing over 90 a fair amount

It's not today as there's far more traffic. It's rare to have the opportunity outside of a few areas (south of Bristol on the M5, north of Kendal on the M6 etc). When I first learned to drive I'd do M62 to M5 in well under an hour, today it's about 20 minutes longer.

[saalweachter]

So "the actual safe limits of modern cars" just means "the speed everyone is currently driving"?

[vel0city]

> You cannot face your accuser when your accuser is a robot

I don't really get this take though. If one contests the ticket, have it go to a manual review where someone looks at the tape and confirms the calibration history of the equipment, and boom now that person can be the official "accuser".

If its the argument that they might not have been the one actually driving the vehicle, just make the laws relate to the registered owner of the vehicle is ultimately responsible for the safe operation of the vehicle. If the owner wants to try and prove it wasn't them, they can deflect that in court and prove it was actually their friend or whoever.

If we had a CCTV of a murder happening we wouldn't just go "well that's just a robot not a real person making the recording, guess we need to toss that video!" I don't understand how we take that kind of position when it comes to moving violations.

Also FWIW the 4th Amendment has nothing about facing your accuser. Its the sixth amendment that talks about "...to be confronted with the witnesses against him".

[p_ing]

Other states deal with it by making it a civil infraction, not a moving violation, bypassing the 4th amendment issue.

[ben_w]

> So we have a fucktonne of speed cameras allover the place: https://www.speedcameramap.co.uk/ (you need to zoom in there are so fucking many)

Doesn't seem that many compared to what I was describing. At the scale of a country, "a lot" != "a high %".

Your point 3 is the biggest divergence between them.

Point 5 is only kinda true, the failure mode is weird: there's good reasons why the speed limit isn't enforced until you're significantly over it, but that in turn means it has to be set lower than physics and reaction times dictate, which in turn means people push back against them. 20 zones knowing people will do 25, chosen because if they were 30 zones people would do 35 and 35 is too fast, that kind of thing.

People who know that, let themselves go a bit over the limit; but a bit over means they get caught some of the time because of the same small occasional variations that are the reason why the speed limit isn't enforced at x+1 mph in the first place.

[fc417fc802]

I was a bit unclear. I agree, I don't want the government using AI to identify all violations of the law. That sounds like a very straightforward dystopia.

What I don't mind is private companies using AI analysis to support their security guards. I object to any sharing of the data with third parties though. It should be illegal for the data to leave their internal network and it should be illegal to retain it for more than a few days.

I don't care if grocery store loss prevention has eyes on every aisle. My concern is data warehousing and subsequent misuse.

[naasking]

> The entire legal system has to be radically changed with far less punishments for almost everything if you have perfect, or even 30% of the way to perfect, surveillance.

Prosecutorial discretion means they can just collect evidence and choose not to charge you unless they want to leverage you for something. This already happens, but universal surveillance means it can literally happen to anybody, because everybody breaks the law in some way due to how many laws we have.

Discretion is the real problem I think. It seems extreme, but maybe discretion should be eliminated: if you commit a crime you will be charged. This will at first result in way too much prosecution, which will lead to protests and hopefully repealing laws and we'd end up in a better place where the law is understandable and predictable by mortals.

[Thorrez]

Speeding is a special case, because it's unclear what the lawmakers, road designers, and police intend. When the speed limit is 65 mph, do they actually intend for everyone to go no faster? I don't think so. I think the lawmakers, if driving in traffic, want people to go a bit faster. Same with the police. And I think the road designers design the roads knowing most people will speed.

I want to follow the law. But when it comes to speeding, it's hard for me to follow the letter of the law, because all the parties involved in creating and enforcing the law don't want me to follow the letter of the law. So I instead follow the intent of the law, and speed up to 9mph. When Google Maps pops up a "police ahead" warning, I don't slow down at all, because I'm following the intent of the law, and that's what police around where I live enforce. If I'm driving in other areas of the country, I'm less certain what police want, so I'll be more likely to follow the letter of the law.

If there was automated strict enforcement of speeding, then it would be clear to me that the letter of the law is the intent, so I would gladly obey the letter of the law. There would certainly need to be a transition period with clear warnings that in the future, the letter of the law will be enforced, instead of the current status of something looser.

[tsimionescu]

> When the speed limit is 65 mph, do they actually intend for everyone to go no faster? I don't think so.

Where is this supposed ambiguity coming from?

[jrs235]

Some states follow Assumed Maximum Posted Speed (in certain places) and others are Absolute Maximum Posted Speed. It is not absolute in an Assumed Maximum Posted Speed state that driving faster than the posted speed is against the law and deserving of a fine, merely it is prima facie evidence that you were driving dangerously but can be challenged and overturned. For example, in Minnesota, outside of municipalities on highways (there may a few more qualifiers like posted speed is 55 mph or higher and might need to be a divided highway, I don't remember 100%) an officer can pull you over and issue you a ticket for merely driving faster than the posted speed limit. You can even admit you were driving faster (I don't recommend this). You can still challenge the ticket in court. If you can convince a judge that your speed was safe, the judge can let you off. If the weather is dry, temperature moderate, visibility great, no other people or vehicles around you, you were able to safely slow down, and (prima facie evidence) that you posed no risk as no one was injured by you driving faster. In Wisconsin though they are an Absolute Maximum Posted Speed state so if you are found to have been driving faster than the posted speed limit, that's enough to ensure you can be fined.

[FireBeyond]

In Washington state, the State Patrol has gone on the record multiple times and with the media saying their enforcement is based on "Under 10 over", i.e. they won't pull you over for doing 69 or less on the Interstate in a 60 zone, or 79 or less in a 70 (assuming speed is the only issue).

[Thorrez]

Are you asking (1) why I think what I think?

Or are you asking (2) how we wound up in this situation as a society?

(1) I think what I think for several reasons. Basically everyone speeds. Probabilistically that includes he very lawmakers writing the laws, the police, and the road designers. I've also read some articles talking about road design, and in it it's mentioned that the designers factor in that most people will speed if the road conditions are amenable. I've also seen police cars driving around without their lights on, passing people at higher than the speed limit, and when unable to pass, the appear annoyed to me.

(2) I think this situation arose in sort of a "normalization of deviance" manner. Police didn't want to be too strict, or didn't want to bother fighting tickets for people speeding only a little, so only gave tickets for people speeding a lot. Then over time many people realized that, and started speeding a little. More are and more people started speed just to fit in with the surrounding traffic, until eventually everyone was speeding. Peer pressure. I've heard driving the same speed as the surrounding traffic is generally safer than driving significantly slower (or faster). Once everyone is speeding, that includes lawmakers, road designers, and police. And they factor that in when they write laws, design roads, and enforce laws.

[cucumber3732842]

There were also fairly contiguous moral panics in the late 1960s (teenage boomers crashing muscle cars) 1970s (fuel use) and early 1980s (slightly older boomers driving drunk) that lead to the regulations being written far in excess of what there's popular support to enforce which is a huge contributor to why the enforcers and judiciary are essentially responsible for dialing it back to something that doesn't make the system look stupid.

[manarth]

    "it's unclear what the lawmakers, road designers, and police intend"

In many cases, there's a gap between the original intention and the current need.

Many speed limits and policies were established in an era of fewer cars, but also much less capable cars with fewer safety features - many speed limits were established before the adoption of ABS, stability control and airbags, and more recent innovations in lane-keeping and adaptive cruise control.

Modern cars may be capable of travelling at greater speeds with greater safety, but there's a more recent recognition of the increase in emissions pollution from increased speed. Speed-limits typically remain grandfathered in at their original value (which may have been set 30, 40, 50 years ago), regardless of the change in context.

Then there are some pecularities such as the UK default of 60mph for a single-track road, but if you were to try that in many rural locations (think Cornwall, Scotland, Wales) you would likely find yourself upside-down in a ditch.

This post highlights the absurdity of some of the limits!

https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/1dng5z9/genuinely...

The UK NPCC (National Police Chief's Council) have a published policy where enforcement effectively starts at 10% +2mph over the speed-limit (whilst allowing officers to use individual discretion if they feel there are aggravating factors).

https://library.college.police.uk/docs/NPCC/Speed-enforcemen... [PDF]

[dredmorbius]

Counterpoint: with mobile devices, and increasingly, control and information features of automobiles themselves, distracted driving is increasingly a concern.

There's also the point that driving capabilities vary wildly by individual, and often decline drastically with age. Recent case-in-point, an elderly driver in San Francisco who killed a family of four (a mother, father and two daughters, waiting at a bus stop, not in the roadway at all), let off with a minimal sentence, raising much public furore:

<https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/sf-west-portal-cra...>

<https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/san-francisco-west...>

The driver was speeding (70 mph in a residential area), and possibly driving the wrong way on the street.

[criddell]

> Speed-limits typically remain grandfathered in at their original value

That depends on where you are. In Texas, state highway speed limits are determined though a traffic study[1]. The monitor traffic for a while, then set the limit to the 85th percentile.

People can use this to get out of speeding tickets. If you find that it's been a long time since a speed study was done on the road you were on, the judge might throw the ticket out.

There are some hard limits though. For example, the maximum speed limit that can be set on a road is 85 mph.

[1]: https://www.txdot.gov/safety/driving-laws/speed-limits/speed...

[mylifeandtimes]

In other words, 15% of people are ALWAYS speeding, by definition.

So with perfect enforcement (punish everyone over the threshold), how do you enable an 85th percentile rule?

[criddell]

> 15% of people are ALWAYS speeding, by definition

Not necessarily. If the data is heavily clustered around a single value, the percentile collapses to that number.

[jemmyw]

> UK default of 60mph for a single-track road, but if you were to try that in many rural locations (think Cornwall, Scotland, Wales) you would likely find yourself upside-down in a ditch.

The way the national limit is framed is more limit than road speed. It's interesting how we think of the limits as drivers: we get frustrated when other people go slower than the limit, we don't treat it as a limit, we treat it as the speed you should be traveling at.

I live fairly rural in New Zealand (UK expat) and even though you necessarily get a lot of speed variation on the roads around me, due to being winding, having farm traffic, sometimes narrow, you still get idiots who have to be going at the exact limit (or over) and tailgate 1m behind any vehicle in their way. Including trucks who can't really see them when they do that. I enjoy driving fast on those roads but I still don't understand the impatience.

[direwolf20]

The purpose of a system is what it does. In Australia, they want you to go 50. In the USA, they want a reason to fine you.

[Thorrez]

> In the USA, they want a reason to fine you.

In my area of the US, I don't think so. I'll go 9mph over the speed limit when I drive by a police car. I've never been pulled over.

In some other areas of the US, you're right, which is why I'm less likely to speed in other areas.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

I have a friend that was just fired from a job, driving 18-wheelers, because he was being monitored by an AI, and the AI malfunctioned, yelling at him for hours to put on his seat belt (it was on). He put a piece of tape over the speaker, and was fired for that.

One of the best, and most experienced big rig truckers in the area. They lost an invaluable employee, and he got another job in minutes (truckers are still a valuable commodity).

One of the things about computers, is that they can’t cut you (or themselves) slack.

[jacquesm]

Speed cameras are a source of income, they are not for enforcement or safety.

[ben_w]

My understanding is this varies wildly by jurisdiction.

But it doesn't matter to my point: assume it's just about income, put the cameras everywhere, how fast does it make driving unaffordable?

Same for anything with a fine, e.g. would littering fines be enough to replace taxation, but in a weird way that also puts the messiest subset of the population into life-long bankruptcy to pay those fines?

(Of course, current AI is nowhere near good enough for this, if it was those Amazon "AI-powered" "cashier-free" shops wouldn't have secretly been done by humans watching CCTV).

[ranger_danger]

Two things can be true at once