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Comment by rahimnathwani | Hacker News Reader

There is a position between yours and sho's.

Sure, if every federal crime were enforced through automatic fines, this could be a mess due to the complexity of the law.

But what's your objection to a fine for changing lanes without indicating?

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I had no objection to that fine. I had an objection to the an automatic mechanism to do it, or to perfectly enforce any law, no matter how trivial, Simply because these kinds of things don't happen in a vacuum; the mechanisms built toward these ends will not be limited to being used toward that one end. For example maybe there's cameras everywhere to enforce this law. But then there's cameras everywhere. I highly recommend that article I linked if you have not read.

Edit 1: I realized what you meant with your question so disregard the first sentence. Edit 2: Also, it's worth stating that it follows that these concerns are completely independent of the complexity of the law.

What if someone were to devise a mechanism to detect and prosecute people changing lanes without indicating, with the following properties?

- perfect accuracy (no FP; no FN)

- automated enforcement via a fine, without knowing the identity of the perpetrator (just assume it's possible; I know it's hard)

- no potential for the device or underlying technology to be used or repurposed for any other form of surveillance or enforcement

Would such a system (and automated enforcement) be OK?

No. It would only be ok if we rework the whole idea of law, base it not in tradition, but perfect rationality and objectiveness. Consider this: i change lanes at 2 a.m. on an empty road. There's no objective need to signal. I get fined for not signalling. I do 50 in a 30 zone (because there's a school nearby) at the same time. I get fined even though there's no objective reason for it. And these are simple examples, if we get to complex cases of, let's say, self defense, it opens up a major can of worms.

In your first example, you could just change your behaviour to signal even when you think no one is around (as I do).

Your second example (speeding) doesn't incur a fine because in this hypothetical example the automated enforcement is only used for signalling violations.

For your third example (self defence), maybe you are forced to change lanes without signalling. How often? Once per year? What if the fine were $2, and people like you had to pay it once per year, but people who persistently refuse to signal end up paying 1000s of $2 fines per year?

Seems like a reasonable trade-off.

In the first example, the idea is that the primary function of blinkers is to convey information. The law makes it mandatory to transmit that information with presumption that the information will be processed by human beings you are sharing the road with. If there are no humans around, the transmission of this information is meaningless and therefore should not be mandatory. If the road is used by autonomous vehicles which transmit information about their paths via radiowaves, signalling could be obsolete as well. The most important part in law is the underlying idea of the social agreement which is being enforced by it and reasonabless of the law (and enforcement).

My point is that by automating fine dispensaries, you are subversing the underlying idea itself (automatron can't know what or why is it enforcing) and reasonability.

What about unique circumstances? Say a child or an animal ran out in the road and you changed lanes to avoid them but didn't have time to signal. Or any one of a hundred of these unique but not uncommon situations.

Would there be a mechanism in place to remove your fines and points? Would that system be automated? Would it be susceptible to lying? How long would it take to get the record corrected? Would the effort cost more than the fine?

Just from a technical/automated point of view, removing the moral and societal aspects, the real world is currently just way to complex and ambiguous to automate things like this.

With perfect enforcement, the fine could be small enough (e.g. $2) to be insignificant for most of us (maybe I need to swerve around an animal once per year) but significant enough to deter persistent offenders (who would rack up $20 in fines per journey).

what about someone making $50 / day? Lets imagine you are making just enough to get by and now government wants to roll out an automatic way to take money from your account for minor infractions. How unhappy would you be?

Also on a side note: "...the fine could be small enough (e.g. $2) to be insignificant for most of us..." -> I once said something like that to someone and he pointed out that statements like that was very hurtful to hear, especially coming from someone who does not understand his financial struggles.

Maybe, but I expect such a thing is unrealistic enough to not really be worth spending energy discussing. In the same way that exploring "what if state actors were totally benevolent and always would be" wouldn't really be fruitful. I'm not even an anti-government person or whatever; it's just realpolitik.

> Would such a system (and automated enforcement) be OK?

Yes. But as you pointed out, `automated enforcement via a fine, without knowing the identity of the perpetrator` is hard.

And as others have pointed out, Point 1 and Point 3 are also difficult to accomplish.

Question for you is, are you okay for the government to roll out a mechanism to detect and prosecute people changing lanes without giving you any guarantee of respecting the 3 points you mentioned above?

If your answer is no, you are not okay with it, then we are all on the same side.

If your answer is yes, then you should read the article above by moxie (very interesting article)

We mostly agree.

I'd be happy to compromise a bit on point 1. I could accept a high (20%) false negative rate. If the fine were small enough then I'd be OK with a small number of false positives (as long as they're randomly distributed, not hammering one person who happens to live near a faulty camera).

I wouldn't want to compromise on point 2 or 3, particularly for this example (catching impolite drivers).

But what if the example were about a highly accurate system for detecting kidnappers or people traffickers or something? It seems harder for me to argue against enforcement on the grounds of privacy or slippery slope.

> what if the example were about a highly accurate system for detecting kidnappers or people traffickers or something?

That is always the argument for total surveillance state. In Singapore, crime rates are close to 0, but to be effective it means no privacy and everybody is monitored. I'm not okay with this.

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