Ask HN: Would downvoting rude drivers reduce rude behavior while driving? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Would downvoting rude drivers reduce rude behavior while driving?

11 pointsamichail16 comments

A convenient button could be available in your car for downvoting a driver via their license plate.

Drivers receiving lots of downvotes may be required to pay more for car insurance or maybe they would be given a fine.

In my opinion that system would not only be heavily abused as dave4420 mentioned, but monetary damages and verdicts invoked by fellow drivers would lead to road rage wars and people being followed to their place of residence or work. People are already divided and unhealthy. I think this would amplify those issues. Here [1] is a short film covering the best case scenario of what this might look like.

If the goal is safety then I believe that would require re-engineering all the roads so that people can not hurt anyone if they tried but that's a big topic in and of itself and ultimately too expensive for any governments to adopt. It's not a technical challenge.

Perhaps a less risky option may be to send Dash-Cam video footage to the highway patrol or police and let them sort it out if they feel that person is a big enough risk. That keeps law enforcement in the loop and keeps the reporting party out of it. This way it is not person-vs-person but person-vs-traffic court and thus if a person is fined that means a cop or a court agreed with you and you are no longer the judge, jury and executioner. Law enforcement could imply it was a road camera that caught them. The camera video footer should have GPS date/time, coordinates and speed.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJYaXy5mmA8 [video][15 mins]

You could have a delay (e.g., a month) until you find that you have been downvoted.

I think it would still be problematic. People would become enraged and start assuming anyone near them is the one affecting them and preemptively attacking others it happens here. Some may mitigate the threat by using fake or stolen plates or just risking having no plates at all and all the fun that results in. Wealthy people would not be impacted as they could replace their insurance with a surety bond. The equivalent mitigation here is the throw-away accounts people create.

Then you wouldn’t know why you’ve been downvoted, so you don’t know how to change your behavior

If HN/Reddit/etc are any guide, drivers will get downvoted for reasons unrelated to their driving (e.g. their bumper stickers, car brand, merely being ahead of you on the road, being the wrong ethnicity)

Behavior model (B=MAP) by B. J. Fogg may give you more ideas on how to improve the idea of downvoting drivers and persuade rude drivers to reduce negative behaviour.

In my opinion, as a driver, I will be more than depressed once received downvotes from random drivers around me. Rude driving from my observations is tightly related to emotional factors. Adding punishment in a form of down-voting will just add more tension. Would be better to have more motivation to drive carefully and more ability to achieve that. Basically, informative road signs and fake highway patrols give more ability, immediate response and motivation.

If you try to control any animal with punishment, you’ll get side effects like backlashes; aggression, avoidance, lying. Positive reinforcement is so much more effective

This research has been around for decades. Read some of it, and stop traumatizing everybody and their dog with punishments (soon: ai driven automated punishments)

I used to watch youtube channels where people post their videos that are supposed to record bad drivers. Many times I was under impression that person who was recording was actually law offenders, driving in aggresive way, and yet they were accusing others for being bad driver. I also was reading comments below such videos- everyone, literarly, has their own idea what 'good' or 'bad' driving is. Pepple can't evem agree about actual regulations, they interpret it in their own way... We have points system (probably it's the same in other parts of the world), it is not really promoting good driving in my opinion. There are many cases of people who lost their driving license because of points and were still driving (badly).

There is also a website where people post bad drivers by license plate (I sometimes search if I'm already there). People are using this place as vehicle to vent their emotions and insult each other...

I'd say it's hard to quantify what good/bad driving is? Maybe many drivers (me included) have ego problem?

Given the amount of anger I induce by driving the speed limit in the rightmost lane? No, I don't want this.

You assume people would use the system as designed. They'd have no incentive to do so. Don't like someone's ethnicity? Downvote. Don't like electric cars? Downvote.

That would be the overwhelming majority of votes, much like how car horns are overwhelmingly used for non-safety related honking.

Id like a system where people can submit dash cam footage of dangerous drivers or people doing illegal things, and if the person gets a ticket you get some percentage of the fine. Like what they did in NYC with people blocking bike lanes.

Watch any youtube channel where people post such videos. Many times poster is actually an offender...

Something like following distance cameras that give tickets for tailgating would probably be more effective. They would also directly reduce traffic conjestion as following too closely causes most traffic jams and slowdowns. Have never seen such a device, though

I would be ok with this if it was mandatory to be accompanied with footage and the footage was provided via a device that is cryptographically guaranteed to be from the device directly without modification

There's a lot of people that would be unphased. But I think society needs some defense layer for itself, even if it's ineffectual.

Random question, is there a URI for addressing license plates?

like china's social score?

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