I dislike this and it should go away.

Firstly, anything which normalises surveillance by citizens on citizens is a death spiral for society. On top of that the £14.99 for 1000 credits approach empowers only the lunatic classes of society who would consider that as a price worth paying to get people into trouble.

Secondly, I have problems with the accuracy claims here which are presented disingenuously. The measurement of vehicle wheelbase and the system clock and frame rate is seen as the reference with no mention of the issues with accurately measuring that nor issues like frame stalling and jitter.

Thirdly, this will create a lot of noise for law enforcement agencies which may mask other higher priority crimes.

Well now, this looks like it's just going to escalate roadrage interactions not decrease them. As if there's not enough tempers boiling over for very little reason, let's make an app to give busybodies even more to scream about.

Next can we get a lawn length measurement app?

As a cyclist, I see a lot of dangerous driving, and a lot of hypocrisy with regards to the law on the roads. Unfortunately, I'm seeing some of that hypocrisy in the comments here.

Here's a good example of the hypocrisy: A lot of drivers speed and will tell you that speeding is safe, even a victimless crime. To them the real problem are people like cyclists who run red lights. Yet I have watched probably hundreds of cyclists run red lights and few did so without first checking that the road was clear. Fact is, unless one is brazenly stupid, running red lights in practice is almost always safe. Note that I'm not saying someone should run red lights or that doing so is always safe! (I don't run reds.)

The problem with both speeding and running red lights is that the even though most of the time nothing bad will happen, I think people who do such things underestimate the chances that a bad thing will occur, and don't make a good cost-benefit analysis for that reason. Wishful thinking explains why both happen. The small amount of time saved from speeding or running red lights isn't worth the carnage in my view. And the amount of time saved from speeding is indeed small, particularly given how much time one spends at stoplights. As a cyclist I'd see a lot of drivers speed to the next stoplight... only for me to catch up with them so in practice they weren't going much faster than a cyclist. The bottleneck frequently is not speed when in motion. (Factor in time spent finding parking and the comparison to cyclist is frequently worse, as cyclists can usually park much closer.)

To be clear, I follow the law in my local jurisdiction to the letter. I have no patience for speeding drivers or cyclists who run red lights, for example. And in my experience the only people who don't like misbehavior on the road from any road users are cyclists, particularly the ones who wear hi-viz clothing.

Anyone creating a large database of license plates coupled with location and timestamp needs to be extremely careful. That kind of data at scale can be used for all kinds of privacy abuses and needs to have rigorous checks and balances.

Using just that data you can often determine occupation, religion (what church/synagogue/etc. do you park at), potential medical issues (do you regularly drive to a specialist?), Do you have a drug or alcohol problem (Drive as well as a whole host of other PII, including networs off associates.

Police make broad, sweeping requests with subpoenas. (And there are plenty of other abuses that come outside of law enforcement and the state) How equipped are you to deal with the practical and ethical ramifications of you succeed?

I'm a cyclist who often rides with a helmet camera due to misbehavior from drivers, including speeding. Does the app only allow one to measure speeds in video recorded in the app, or could I upload a short clip of an offending vehicle from a separate camera?

In the past I've measured speed by manually counting how many frames it takes a vehicle to pass landmarks, but this can be time consuming.

Fair chunk of discussion earlier this week on a submission discussing the app¹.

¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30906561

FYI, this is not legal in Switzerland and most likely Germany. Your footage will not be accepted by the police or authorities and you may have the person depicted in the footage go after you for violating their privacy.

Capturing speeders and red light runners is the job of the state.

Red light cameras are very expensive in Switzerland because they need to be certified to be accurate.

One of the development team here - if anybody tries it and has feedback it would be very welcome!

They should market this to the nosy busy-bodies on NextDoor.

Can anybody explain why they would install an app like this? What ever happened to people minding their own business?

I dream of a world where either speed limits are removed entirely or speed limits are enforced so well and penalized so strongly that no-one attempts to speed.

Speed limits are this weird thing where the rule is de facto strict (most driving manuals will say that drivers need to drive at or slightly below the speed limit), but de jure a recommendation (as most will drive at the speed they feel most comfortable in the situation at hand).

Law enforcement agencies _could_ install more speed traps and automated speed checkers, but any politician advocating for that will be run out of their city (despite it enforcing a law that's already in place).

Law enforcement agencies _could also_ spend more resources on prosecuting and catching speeders, but there are n-many more important things they could be doing with their staff, many agencies are strapped for funds, and many courts are backlogged to the ages with pending cases.

Law enforcement agencies _could also also_ make speed detectors highly illegal and revoke the licenses of anyone that has one on their dash or in their person, but see above as to why that hasn't happened.

Thus, we get our current system, where people break the law by default, harass folks (like me) who want to drive at the speed limit, openly advocate for cheat devices to prevent getting caught (Waze's police scanning feature; radar detectors; etc.) and then slow to a crawl whenever they see a police offer who is usually already busy ticketing someone.

A solution like this that is cheap, works anywhere in most situations, and auto-tickets (or auto-revokes) people when caught would be awesome.

What would also be awesome is if we just removed speed limits entirely. If people are going to break the law by default, then maybe it's a bad law.

I live next to an eight-lane highway that's dead straight for tens of miles that has a 60-mph speed limit set on it . It used to be 75-mph, but Houston lowered speed limits across the city to tackle their horrible smog problem. I would love to drive this at 85-mph, since we have an electric car that's zero emissions, but if I do that, that's points on my license, a driver's responsibility fee, and mandated defensive driver training. That doesn't stop the oodles of people that go this fast anyway, but it stops me, since my time is valuable and I'd rather spend the money on other things. I know that removing the speed limit increases the chance of a chucklehead driving their car at 160-mph, but those people would drive insanely fast anyway!

Near me, someone was worried about speeding cars on a particular road and their complaint got a device installed that measured the time between cars driving over two spaced sensors.

This collective data was then used to guide decisions on whether speed bumps or other enforcement measures were required.

Feels like something this app could possibly do too if a spare tablet or phone could be left in position for a while.

At least here in the US, police don't really care about minor speeding. I don't see them pursuing the crime just because someone provides a video. The legalities of issuing the ticket without validating driver identity vary from state to state, but in many states it's not feasible.

I'd try it but it isn't compatible with my phone, which is an up to date Pixel. Maybe region locked?

Who is going to tell them speed limits are set artificially low to generate revenue from fines?

Speedcam? More like Snitchcam.

There's a lot of other problems with everyone else's attitude in this thread.

There's an awful lot of fundamental attribution error. "Everyone else gets into accidents because they're morons, I'm a safe driver so I can handle speeding".

One problem is that you're not likely to have an accident when you're driving at your best, you're likely to have an accident when you're driving at your worst. So its more likely when you're going through a messy breakup or divorce or stress at the job, haven't had enough sleep, etc. That shitty driver may very well be you on a bad day (and this may be one of the worst times of your life that you've had for a decade.

The next problem is that even if you're a good driver and you're not otherwise at fault the speed limits are there to limit the damage when other people fuck up and get into accidents with you. If someone turns left in front of you without right of way and causes a collision, both of you will do better if you're not traveling that fast.

Similarly those kinds of situations can be caused by speeding because the human optical system is very crappy at judging closing velocity and things like that. Your car doesn't have a bubble over it displaying its current speed like this was some kind of video game. And other road users are allowed to make assumptions that your rate of speed is reasonable for the road and conditions. The people who drive fast and road rage about getting cut off are often creating that problem themselves.

And then if you're excusing speed limits, what else are you excusing? Do you not come to complete stops at stop signs when you don't see anyone there? Do you always signal even when you don't think anyone is around to see it? Do you come to a stop before the pedestrian crosswalk? Do you tailgate? Do you have the mistaken and backwards belief that traffic goes faster when people tailgate? Do you feel that you need to tailgate in order to avoid being "cut off" and that this has any measurable effect on the time when you get to your destination?

If you think speeding doesn't matter you probably believe some or all of these which means that the bad driver who shouldn't speed so they don't cause accidents may really be you.

So yeah the point of speed limits isn't necessarily about your or your mad skillz and fancy traction control in your expensive car, its about limiting the kinetic energy if someone else makes a mistake around you.

Speed absolutely matters because all of us make mistakes, and mistakes shouldn't be a death penalty for anyone. If you think your $200k car gives you the right to drive 15 mph over the limit in residential neighborhoods, and some dumbass kid who runs out in the road deserves to die for it, then you might be a sociopath.

And really GIVEN how horribly irresponsible everyone attitudes in this thread are around speeding, that makes me quite okay that we're going down this path towards decentralized surveillance. You all don't even recognize that there's any kind of a problem with velocity and kinetic energy. I sort of don't care if your rights and privacy get invaded at this point because a lot of you in this thread are pretty awful.

If we can't reach an agreement to be responsible and think about the welfare of others, then bring on the decentralized nanny state where we're all tattling on each other I guess.

This is seriously terrible. Gross

If someone ever admits to me that they have this app installed. They will not hear another word from me. I can't risk them hearing the words I say and reporting them to the government.

If I ever get a speeding ticket sourced from this app. I will be challenging it to the maximum using as much court time as I can. I will also be joining politics with the goal of making possession of this app a crime.

Weak little people love stuff like this -- it gives them power they could never hope to have to interfere with the lives of better people who they live in envy of.