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Comment by mLuby | Hacker News Reader

> This eliminates the need for possible high-speed chases, worries about police jurisdiction issues, and any concerns about danger on the roads.

I thought high-speed chases were often about getting a dangerous driver off the road. And by definition since it's high speed it's probably dangerous. GPS darts wouldn't do anything about that, you'd need some sci-fi EMP/hacker darts.

> "The reality is that everyone runs from the police nowadays," said Oak Brook police Chief Brian Strockis.

Well yeah—trust cuts both ways.

> "[Police can] get up next to the vehicle in an undercover car, roll down the window and tag that vehicle without the bad guy even knowing."

These GPS darts must transmit to be useful, so that signal should be detectable. Just another box for criminals to have next to a police scanner and radar trap detector.

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> I thought high-speed chases were often about getting a dangerous driver off the road.

Generally you need to prove that a particular person was driving the vehicle and that can be hard if you find the vehicle at its registered address 3 days later -- "You can't prove it was me driving". It's a lot easier to charge the driver if you remove them from the drivers seat.

However, it's very commonly accepted that police chasing dangerous drivers causes the criminal to drive beyond their abilities and often get into accidents that are fatal to both the criminal and bystanders.

Many jurisdictions have rules/guidelines spelling out when to abort a chase in the interests of public safety.

This GPS dart would allow them to tail the car from a distance beyond visual range so that the driver doesn't drive nearly as insanely, increasing their chances of reaching their destination in one piece, but still allow police to be close behind so that they can prove who was driving.

So what we need is a dart with suction legs, a camera and an AI, which crawls over the outside of the car to the windshield and takes pictures of the driver :-)

The GPS device paired with a loitering drone or helicopter carrying a sensor pod, streaming a video stream that can play bird's eye video backwards and forwards, should be sufficient to track a suspect. DARPA was doing this with ARGUS in 2013 with a few hundred cellphone camera sensors bolted together; I would assume the state of the art has advanced in a decade. The saying used to be, "you can't outrun Motorola." The new hotness is likely "you can't outrun the surveillance tech stack."

https://www.wired.com/story/cities-curb-surveillance-baltimo...

https://www.csoonline.com/article/2223941/darpa-s-unblinking...

https://web.archive.org/web/20130204062029/https://www.darpa...

https://web.archive.org/web/20130226141653/http://www.darpa....

Why do you even need the tracker dart if you have a military drone overhead? Unless they pull some Baby Driver shenanigans in a tunnel, it should be easy to track a car. Might not work well in a few major cities (where they likely have camera nets anyway).

Perhaps a high speed drone could do this. The trick would be to deploy something like this safely. That said, I'm not looking forward to the day where drones and AI are part of the standard kit used by police forces. The ability to cheaply surveil people clandestinely as they go about their business does not sound like a future to look forward to.

Even then you have the right to face your accuser in the US. IANAL but I think that you can't call an AI in for cross, nor a robot. Probably depends heavily on jurisdiction though.

Not to worry, skynet is already working on something better..

I asked ChatGPT if that was true, and he denied it.

He very confidently denied it.

"He" doesn't know anything that wasn't in the training data.

I made a joke.

indeed you did.

It seems like a drone with a high quality camera would be useful, as well.

How cynical. Let’s just do away with all possible improvements to the system because there might be a counter to them.

The happy reality is that the majority of criminals probably isn’t prepared to deal with all of these tools.

Some people like to think of criminals as evil geniuses. The reality is that the vast majority of non-financial criminals are barely educated dumbasses and that’s how they got there in the first place.

I think a vanishingly small number of criminals have police scanners and radar detectors in this day and age. Especially since police have largely moved over to encrypted trunked radios.

Not to mention that possessing a police scanner while committing a crime is a crime itself.

> I thought high-speed chases were often about getting a dangerous driver off the road.

Not all high speed chases are initiated due to reckless driving. Police can lookup vehicles by plate and see if the registered owner has any warrants. Police can just be searching for someone with a known warrant. And plenty of people commit some initial crime and then simply flee in the vehicle.

> Well yeah—trust cuts both ways.

Ironically, I suspect this has more to do with departments more recently terminating chases by policy when the original want isn't a serious crime and where a chase might put other drivers at undue risk.

> Just another box for criminals to have next to a police scanner and radar trap detector.

In a Hollywood movie, perhaps. In reality, most people who are chased by the police do not have these items in their car nor are they planning to engage in some high tech getaway as part of their premeditated crime.

The thing that really calls into question their utility is they offer nothing in identifying the actual driver of the vehicle when the dart was attached. So, you may be able to find an abandoned vehicle, but even if you do and you're fairly sure the registered driver was operating it, you're going to need to do the same detective work as before to determine that beyond a reasonable doubt.

> I thought high-speed chases were often about getting a dangerous driver off the road.

It isn't though, at least here in Germany. Criminals routinely 'bomb' (for the lack of a better word) ATMs here in Germany, and speed off in Sportscars over the border so that the police can't catch up in time. I think the idea of firing GPS modules on their vehicles might be a genius idea, because the authorities clearly can't catch up in time.

This is a daily occurrence, and it seems like police forces have no power over it.

> I thought high-speed chases were often about getting a dangerous driver off the road

High speed chases create dangerous driving.

Unless the reason you're pulling someone over in the first place is 'The guy is was driving like he's in a high-speed chase, before we turned on the sirens', the safest thing for the public is to just not chase. It's not worth killing a bystander over.

A 'Don't chase unless the public is actively and acutely in immediate danger' is generally the best policy.

>Unless the reason you're pulling someone over in the first place is 'The guy is was driving like he's in a high-speed chase, before we turned on the sirens', the safest thing for the public is to just not chase. It's not worth killing a bystander over.

Which happens way too frequently, even when the police aren't chasing anybody[0].

Reducing the number of high-speed chases will likely save lives. I'm all for it.

[0] https://gothamist.com/news/nypd-car-struck-and-killed-52-yea...

> getting a dangerous driver off the road [...] you'd need some sci-fi EMP/hacker darts

I've been wondering about how cops might get autonomous vehicles to pull over. I predict that some day the vehicles will be required to be outfitted with a way for a tailing cop to command them accordingly (could simply be a camera watching for flashing lights -- it doesn't need to be complicated or novel) and the vehicle's software would comply. Hopefully that doesn't creep into non-autonomous vehicles.

I think that’s different. When the crime in itself is a dangerous driver then a high speed chase might be the lesser evil given the situation.

But most high speed chases are the result of a criminal trying to escape being captured for a different crime.

But even if it’s a high speed chase involving a dangerous driver, a GPS tag would still be useful. You’re probably much better off having only 1 dangerous driver on the road than 1 dangerous driver + several cop cars also driving at high speeds chasing them.

To your first point, yes it does potentially eliminate the need for high speed chases.

A chase occurs to ensure that the car won't get away. With a GPS tag, it reduces the need for a police car to engage in a high speed pursuit. Where it increases the risk of an accident.

a lot more people die because of high speed chases than are saved. We're talking about chasing people who committed minor infractions. I know if I was a young black man I would get nervous every time I saw blue lights given their history of cops killing black men just to do it.

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