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Comment by elil17 | Hacker News Reader

I do understand the privacy arguments, but there are thousands of people are being killed by drivers every day (many of whom aren't even in cars, they're walking or biking). Enforcing traffic laws is one of the only tools for fixing this that can be implemented quickly (as opposed to better urban design and public transit, which are better solutions in many other ways).

I feel like their should be room to advocate for responsible use of systems like this and good oversight of police departments.

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In the UK, where this is happening, that's simply not true. There were 1695 road fatalities in 2022 total. That's very different from "thousands a day".

I do not believe it is desirable (or practically possible) to eliminate all risk of death or injury from life, and increasingly orwellian surveillance measures to clamp down on every misdeed and ill advised risk does not, I think, make for a happier or freer society.

The UK makes up less than 1% of the worlds population, so it does make sense that there are many more driving deaths globally than in the UK.

I can agree that complete safety is not practical or desirable.

But in our current society, simply walking down the street can get you killed by a driver. That is not freedom in my mind.

> That's very different from "thousands a day"

So you had us check. We hope it is now clear to you that you showed having misunderstood the poster: «thousands of people are being killed by drivers every day» does not imply "here".

But according to data,

( Road deaths over the long-term, 1900 to 2021 // Annual number of reported deaths resultant from any type of road accident. This includesvehicles, pedestrians and cyclists. - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/road-deaths-over-the-long... )

taking 2019 (just to be sure of having more data), you are partially right: apparently not even half-a-thousand per day. But hundreds per day.

Top by Country: China: 172 ; USA: 99 ; Russia: 47 ; Turkey: 15 ; Japan: 11 ; S.Korea: 9 ; France: 9 ; Italy: 9 ; Germany: 8 ; Mexico: 8 ; Poland: 8 ; Uzbekistan: 6 ; Chile: 5 ; Kazakhstan: 5 ; Romania: 5 ; UK: 5 ; Canada: 5 ; Spain: 5 ; Australia: 3 ; Azerbaijan: 2 ...

Conclusions from those numbers, that is another matter.

Putting an "AI" camera on a road in Cornwall, UK has no ability to affect how many people are killed on China's roads, and so it's deeply silly to use those numbers to try to justify doing so. There's far less invasive things that could be done to dramatically improve road safety in many of the countries you list.

Things like what? Traffic violence and risky behavior if a raising problem and it seems we don't have a solution for it despite many attemps. My view is that most of it comes from a small group of drivers. It's not "everyone speeds and uses their phone sometimes" but "there are people who speed recklessly and are on their phone most of the time". If you share my view then you want the camera in areas with the most traffic as the goal is to fish out and eliminate those dangerous drivers not punish sensible drivers who make mistakes sometimes.

Putting it on a major "safe" motorway is perfect. As you will have a chance to check most cars there. Being and to go at the speed limit where it seems safe (from inside the car anyway) to go faster is also the most important psychological trait for safe driving. Catching people who aren't up for that will improve safety in other places as well.

Never said I support the activity.

But let us keep the logic terse. There are dead because of X, and if some practice P reduces X there will be some advocacy to have it adopted around. The numbers are just relative so largely irrelevant to the advocates.

But it is best to have them right so the lower instances summoned by "Millions!" and "One per million!" - out of context if a cost-risk-benefit with quantifications in all parts is not fully construed - can be avoided.

>Last year there were 48 road deaths and 738 serious injuries on roads in the two counties.

Please let me know which of these deaths you are happy with.

Every camera system in my state (OH) has proven to be nothing more than a cash grab that mostly enriched the private entities that ran the cameras/administration.

They passed laws to allow it by crying safety; but then botched the entire deployment by being the greedy nepotistic politicians they are.

AI isn't suited to fix any of the underlying problems here.

[0]https://www.techdirt.com/tag/red-light-cameras/

If people are calling it a "cash grab," that means it's working in my opinion. Even a ticketing system contract was awarded in a corrupt manner (which is wrong of course - and the people involved in that should be prosecuted), every person who gets a ticket from one of those systems is someone who was going over the speed limit or running the red light and putting the lives of everyone around them in danger.

Not really. I got a ticket from a red light camera because I stopped literally inches past a thick white line that marks the end of the intersection. But this was at least three feet from the crosswalk. There was zero chance anyone could have been hurt my behavior.

The camera is not discerning in the slightest.

Fortunately the judge agreed and tossed my ticket, but I doubt many people go through the effort to contest them.

It's puzzling to me why police need to be involved at all, save for possibly some sort of statutory restriction that ought to be removed. What is it about police's training that makes them uniquely qualified to process these images to determine that there's cause for a citation to be issued? This and other automated street safety tools are very valuable for public safety. But there's no reason these programs couldn't be operated by the transportation department or some such, reducing a lot of the privacy concerns rightfully stoked by involving the police.

> It's puzzling to me why police need to be involved at all

The police: "the civil force of a state, responsible for the prevention and detection of crime and the maintenance of public order."

If you gave this task to "transportation department or some such" they become the police. They become the civil force of a state, responsible for the prevention and detection of this specific crime.

Except of course if you boot up a brand new police force just for this task they will bumble around and make all the mistakes while they lean how to you know police.

> a lot of the privacy concerns rightfully stoked by involving the police

What privacy concerns does this raise which are not already raised by the 11,000 other automatic number plate recognition cameras in operation in the UK?

Police are given a monopoly on physical violence deployed by the State. The key element here is cordoning off that monopoly on violence to apply to situations where it is most likely to be necessary. They are not the sole arbiters of conformance with law and regulation. Many, many agencies cite citizens for misuse of the resources they manage and for other violations. Do police handle violations of environmental regulations? Police do not have a monopoly on investigation, either. Many agencies can and do conduct investigations that compile evidence that later gets turned over to a DA or similar law enforcement agent for starting a criminal case, if one becomes warranted.

If you tried to hand this off to the transportation department, it'd probably end up under the British Transport Police. Six and two threes really.

The Police are already tooled up to issue traffic citations. Tooling up the BTP to do the same task would just mean more money, and end you at the same result, no?

> good oversight of police departments

Where I'm from, the police actively resist oversight, and have not responsibly used many of the systems they already possess.

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