It looks like there may be an app available soon that can be used to record evidence of bad driving and speeding and then submit it straight to the police from within the app: https://www.visordown.com/news/general/speed-camera-mobile-phone-app-dashcamuk

 

Whilst I understand the premise and that it would be good for bad drivers to be held accountable for their driving, I worry that it could just descend into a bit of a farce, with slightly petty drivers submitting footage of anyone who happens to annoy them in some way but hasn't actually broken the law. Or ranting at people who they think are driving at 71 on the motorway.

 

Or am I underestimating the character of the good old British driver...?! 😜

What concerns me is what are the Police going to do with (likely) all the videos sent to them, I suspect most of them will just sit in an inbox due to lack of resources to check them - which means the ones that are worthy of warning/prosecution will get lost in the mass of those sent in by someone annoyed by someone else doing something perfectly legal.

 

Seems like it's a good idea but only IF properly resourced, which given the cutbacks on Police spending isn't going to happen IMHO.

ii i was designing it id be thinking submissions might get initial scanning by an AI trained to detect offenses within a certain set of learned parameters. these would then be flagged for human verification and action.

or, it will be outsourced to a massive warehouse full of cheap labour (perhaps asylum seekers who have been flown to rwanda ... ooo political....) to look at, filter and flag for follow up.

10 minutes ago, mac11irl said:

ii i was designing it id be thinking submissions might get initial scanning by an AI trained to detect offenses within a certain set of learned parameters. these would then be flagged for human verification and action.

or, it will be outsourced to a massive warehouse full of cheap labour (perhaps asylum seekers who have been flown to rwanda ... ooo political....) to look at, filter and flag for follow up.

The UK Government, and even more so the NHS, does not have a great history of designing decent IT systems - so I won't be holding my breath for this to happen!

6 hours ago, PetrolDave said:

The UK Government, and even more so the NHS, does not have a great history of designing decent IT systems - so I won't be holding my breath for this to happen!

 

This may well come over as being defensive, but I worked for 20+ years in IT for a UK Govt department - and it's not only their systems that don't have a good track record. Many my peers in private industry had, by their own admission, dreadful systems, and in the case of one energy supplier a director told me couldn't believe how bad their systems were.

It is just the case that if its a Govt system then it hits the headlines.

 

BTW - the system I wrote was fantastic 😏

 

Anyway, back on topic; my local Police had a web site through which dashcam footage could be uploaded - alas every time I went to use it, it was down. @PetrolDave may well have a point....

Edited 23 March, 20233 yr by SteveTheElder

I'm leaning heavily toward the Farce side of this concept.

 

Firstly, as if the Police don't already have enough to do, we now want to offload to them every single minor instance of someone doing something that someone else 'thinks' is not only illegal, but worthy of a full Police intervention and prosecution??!!

"Hello 999, which service do you require? .......yes...... right...... OK, well, I'm afraid I don't have any officers free to stop your assault right now, luv. They're all out chasing down some maniac who was doing 33 in a 30. We might have a slot in about two weeks, if we get the dashcam footage processed in time. Would that be alright? ...... hello?...... Hello, are you still there, Luv?"

 

Secondly, we already have more than enough unqualified bell-ends deliberately setting incidents up so they can "Audit" the Police, for no reason other than getting likes on their YouTube channels. We don't need to encourage this sort of mentality.

 

7 hours ago, Ttaskmaster said:

I'm leaning heavily toward the Farce side of this concept.

 

Firstly, as if the Police don't already have enough to do, we now want to offload to them every single minor instance of someone doing something that someone else 'thinks' is not only illegal, but worthy of a full Police intervention and prosecution??!!

"Hello 999, which service do you require? .......yes...... right...... OK, well, I'm afraid I don't have any officers free to stop your assault right now, luv. They're all out chasing down some maniac who was doing 33 in a 30. We might have a slot in about two weeks, if we get the dashcam footage processed in time. Would that be alright? ...... hello?...... Hello, are you still there, Luv?"

 

Secondly, we already have more than enough unqualified bell-ends deliberately setting incidents up so they can "Audit" the Police, for no reason other than getting likes on their YouTube channels. We don't need to encourage this sort of mentality.

 

 

OK Mr Cynic. How about 85mph down the hard shoulder of a congested three lane motorway in a builders van, as recorded on my dashcam?

 

Nobody in their right mind would send in a dashcam footage of 33 in a 30 limit.

18 hours ago, SteveTheElder said:

 

OK Mr Cynic. How about 85mph down the hard shoulder of a congested three lane motorway in a builders van, as recorded on my dashcam?

 

Nobody in their right mind would send in a dashcam footage of 33 in a 30 limit.

there are many people out there that are no where near sane in their thinking and will send in 10 videos a day of their real or imagined infractions. 
 

some of these apps require a paid subscription before they will submit anything. And as others have said unless they are recorded to a court submissable quality is useless plus plod won’t bother looking at 99% of them.

On 24/03/2023 at 21:04, SteveTheElder said:

 

OK Mr Cynic. How about 85mph down the hard shoulder of a congested three lane motorway in a builders van, as recorded on my dashcam?

 

Nobody in their right mind would send in a dashcam footage of 33 in a 30 limit.

As mentioned above, there are plenty of people not in their right minds, who will FLOOD Police inboxes with videos of even the most minor imagined slight or transgression.

Case in point, the incident where the Police were summoned to give a stern dressing-down to a three-year-old that had accidentally scratched someone's car.

 

Besides, 85mph isn't very fast. Most cops won't even stop you until you breach 90, and even then I see plenty others driving well over a ton on a daily basis.

Cutting up, cutting in, overtaking cyclists too close, going the wrong way down a one-way street, parking in disabled bays or parent bays, the list of possibilities is so endless, it'd be a full-time job for even the most dedicated busybody....

Can see where you’re coming from. It’s a shame that the minority over zealous reporters clog the system when there are genuinely dangerous situations which need to be reported and otherwise would go unseen (such as the example I mentioned, the 85mph was on the hard shoulder of a congested motorway). Whilst high speeds are not in themselves dangerous it’s all about context and behaviour of the driver that can make it dangerous, and likely as not when something goes wrong its innocent folk that injured.

23 hours ago, SteveTheElder said:

Can see where you’re coming from. It’s a shame that the minority over zealous reporters clog the system when there are genuinely dangerous situations which need to be reported and otherwise would go unseen (such as the example I mentioned, the 85mph was on the hard shoulder of a congested motorway). Whilst high speeds are not in themselves dangerous it’s all about context and behaviour of the driver that can make it dangerous, and likely as not when something goes wrong its innocent folk that injured.

While this is true, it's also a daily occurrence which would still need court-quality evidence to even try prosecuting, and based on TikTok and eBay photos, a lot of people don't know enough about using a camera.

More importantly, the app would lead to people using camera-phones while driving. I don't believe that needs to be expanded upon....?

 

Another worry is that apps like this will encourange other people to get over-zealous in their self-policing attitudes. In theory this isn't a bad thing, but almost none of them (nor anyone else) is really equipped and trained to know and enforce the law.

As is, you'll find plenty of drivers who will deliberately block lanes to prevent someone from going a few MPH and passing the line of traffic. Others love to hassle cyclists for not quite being exactly in the right section of the road.

 

This is just a road app, mind, but I can see other apps coming out for other things too.

The idea that you can have some app on your phone, stick it in someone's face while they bend a rule, and expect The Police to just deal with it thereafter is not one to be encouraged... Also, people don't like being called on their bad behaviour by those who aren't empowered to do so - At best, it'd end in confrontation and a good kicking for said caller.

However, if the law were to change it might be a different story, but alas I can't see them letting us do such things.

I reckon we’re broadly in agreement that there is too much poor driving on the roads and too much aggressive behaviour by drivers, as well as over zealous, self righteous self-enforcers. And yes, mobile apps are not the way to go.

 

If the amateur video footage is do poor I don’t understand why it is that police forces invite submissions. For example https://www.hampshire.police.uk/police-forces/hampshire-constabulary/areas/hants-snap/hantsnap/

Perhaps dash cam footage is more suitable evidence.

On 28/03/2023 at 22:48, SteveTheElder said:

If the amateur video footage is do poor I don’t understand why it is that police forces invite submissions. For example https://www.hampshire.police.uk/police-forces/hampshire-constabulary/areas/hants-snap/hantsnap/

 

They do it for the few submissions that will actually be usable and worth prosecuting.

 

"Where action is proportionate and there is sufficient evidence to successfully prosecute the case at Court, the incident will most likely be dealt with via the fixed penalty system".

There will be some people with 4k resolution recordings, that happen to catch an indisputably clear image of both the registration and the face of the driver... But in order to get that, they'll have to sift through the mountains of blurry crap shot in the pouring rain at night that shows only a bit of the scene, in which some driver went slightly over the white line due to a misjudged manoeuvre and, while he flashed the Hazards of Forgiveness, still deserves to be banged up for life due to his negligence.

I may sound like I'm exaggerating, but we watched a bunch of YouTube compilations showing "Britian's WORST Drivers" last night... and there was barely anything you'd not get on a normal commute or trip down the shops. Certainly nothing that would even incur a FPN, yet these were the "WORST" that the Highway Coderatti could manage.....

Given how many of these are on YouTube, I can only imagine the volumes of such that would flow through the app!!