The smartphone app that allows public to submit evidence of speeding drivers: will it actually work?

Its then down to the police force to decide what to do with it

Unfortunately, that's almost always going to be nothing. Of course, I don't know yet that this close pass at over 50 mph by Clio PE69 OOC is going to be yet another 'not in the public interest', but I'm pretty sure

eburtthebike wrote:

This sounds promising, but it will take probably years to get approval and loophole lawyers will be rubbing their hands with glee.

you only need HO if you want a couple of advantages, namely introducing the evidence 

It's different from a speed camera. It's calculating the speed from a video clip - IE the time taken to cover a certain distance. This can be independently verified if it was taken to court.
The trouble is that I'd like to think that if I caught/filmed a driver traveling at a speed significantly above the speed limit this would result in a prosecution regardless of whether I had the app. You can do the maths done by the app manually if you wanted. The truth is it won't. So why would anyone think that the app will be a game changer.
I think if I downloaded the app and submitted footage I would be even more disappointed with police attitudes to road safety than I am already.

In theory yes it shouldn't need the app, unfortunately or predictably, it's a complete lottery whether your local police force pursue those as routine.

The app, or the report it produces might become a game changer in that it very clearly documents the data & cause for submission, which might result in the police accepting more reports in that way.

Regardless of technology, it is not up to the public, the police or the CPS,  as to whether this is acceptable; it is up to the courts. It would require a test case in the higher courts before you would get it accepted generally accepted. Therefore the CPS and the police are not going to be interested - not because they don't care, but because they have been beaten up in court so many times. Take mobile phones, the law was not fit for purpose, so you have blatant use of phones where the police don't pursue because of the loopholes - though I never understood why they didn't simpoy use the ham sandwich approach of driving without due care.

In addition, as soon as I see someone throwing AI into the sales pitch, I've switched off because either:

1) it is true AI and therefore nobody really knows how it works and are going to struggle to sell it to a court as a reliable and replicatable system.

2) It is not AI, just simple maths, but the maths isn't really simple as you need to show that the camera is still, what angle the car is moving relative to the camera (is it very far away or at a 45 degree angle?).

Anyway, the point is not that we believe the calculations are good enough, it is that a jury or magistrate believe the calculations are good enough after Mr Loophole has filled their heads with doubt. And even if it wins in one case, the varied circumstances of use mean that the next case could be thrown out because Mr Loophole comes up with a new set of doubts. The police won't take a video to court except in serious circumstances as they would need an expert witness to prove the veracity of the case.

But yes, I submitted a video of a car obviously doing around 50mph in a 30mph, and the response was that the speed could not be verified.

As yet ? Probably nothing because they've never had this before .   How this app. will gain access to ANPR data isn't mentioned though I know you've to be legally authorised . Interesting .  What would insurers do with such clips? Their underwriting experience as far as illegal and inappropriate road behaviour goes is based on actual convictions and accidents experienced . They all realise that many if not most motorists break the law on speeding now and again , and underwriting-wise they generally don't get overly excited for basic low end speeding . In terms of filmed inappropriate driving , again as long as an accident doesn't occur there's little incentive to get involved unless it's patently wildly reckless . Jings, this could become like the film Minority Report .   All that said I can see a great use in road safety campaigning by giving better quality evidence for putting in speed limits or police intervention especially say at school crossings , traffic light running (where there's no red light camera) cycle misuse , general speeding thru rural limits and probably more . So many cars now are laden with digital technology ( gps, Speedo, radar type device for distance maintaining etc) , it can surely only be time before a 'black box' type device with cameras can or must be installed.   If we get driverless cars , there'll be cameras of sorts too.    

It doesn't "gain access to ANPR data", it "uses ANPR to look up vehicle make, model and year." This is publicly available from the DVLA. Can be used interactively via the gov.uk website (https://vehicleenquiry.service.gov.uk/) or be embedded into to applications via API (https://developer-portal.driver-vehicle-licensing.api.gov.uk/#dvla-api-d...).

So in summary, the app locates and reads the plate in the image (ANPR = automatic number plate recognition), and does a lookup against DVLA data to acquire the vehicle details. 

It gains ,acquires, gets - is all the same. I'm fully acquainted with the public available data such as Ask MID etc  , wasn't aware you could get access via the ANPR system , things move on and I'm happily retired and cycling.  Vehicle details in full rather than just the reg.no. Is a good idea given the amt. of false plates that seem about . Thanks for the update . 

Aberdeencyclist wrote:

It gains ,acquires, gets - is all the same.

I think the point is that it doesn't need to gain, acquire, or get access to any other system. It can have its own implementation of ANPR (which is basically just to say that it identifies the area of the numberplate and performs optical character recognition on it to determine the characters). There isn't a single, monolithic 'ANPR system' that it needs to use.

mdavidford wrote:

I think the point is that it doesn't need to gain, acquire, or get access to any other system. It can have its own implementation of ANPR (which is basically just to say that it identifies the area of the numberplate and performs optical character recognition on it to determine the characters).

optical character recognition (OCR) is a solved problem since most corporates don't want to actually process Invoices by hand where an application can recognise the text and be trained to know where the key data are on each suppliers documents. The AI comes in on the training to reduce the initial effort and accept new supplier or changed formats.

Number plates are a significantly easier problem given the standards that apply, though some transformation for perspective is a possible AI use case.

We weren't talking about AI, though - we were talking about the ANPR aspect. This is just plate detection and OCR which, as you say, there are plenty of solutions for - you just need to implement one of them. The point was that you don't need to seek privileged access to some official system.

From the description given, it sounds as though the primary use for AI that's being suggested is in determining what part of the image is a wheel and where it's centre is.

Yep, which is basic machine learning. (spot a wheel) And is easily verifiable