Source
r/drivingUK•
Freefall84

Community enforcement to improve driving standards

I think an incredibly effective way to improve driving standards on the roads, reduce accidents and generate revenue would be to allow the public to submit footage of bad driving which would (after a review) be used to fine the drivers, then this fine would be used to partially compensate the people who submitted the footage for their efforts.

Catching people using their phones? Easy, driver gets fined, person who submitted the footage gets paid, government gets paid, maybe 30% of the value of the fine. Driver speeding in stupid places or doing cuntish things putting other drivers at risk bang, fine for them, payday for me. I have a front and back dashcam, maybe 30% of other drivers have at least a front dashcam. The hardware for most people is already there.

I drive about 50 miles a day to and from work, not to mention the travelling about I do on a weekend. I probably on average in that 50 miles I see 10 people clearly on their phones, 10 people speeding or weaving through traffic, and another 10 people just generally driving like cunts, cutting people up, bullying their way into traffic and blocking junctions as well as literally dozens of people lane hogging. If I could submit my commute to work as a video and get paid for it, I don't even think I'd need a full time job.

You'd see people with dozens of cameras in their cars picking up every possible vehicles within eyeshot, the public would invest in the hardware themselves once the revenue starts coming in, apps would be developed to make submitting the footage as easy as possible. And almost overnight, people would stop being cunts on the roads.

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Posted Sep 9, 2023, 7:28 PM UTC

18
modmodt•

Already exists. https://nextbase.co.uk/national-dash-cam-safety-portal/

1
Freefall84OP•

Problem is it takes effort to submit stuff. If it's a clear cut case, such as someone using their phone it should be an instant fine and points, by compensating the people doing the uploads, anyone who wanted to make a bit of extra money would happily submit more and more stuff. Eventually an industry might be born from it.

1
JaffaCakeScoffer•

I wouldn’t be against it..

1
Lewinator56•

You can already do that. The problem with asking the public to submit everything is that people have very different perceptions about what is and what isn't safe driving. I don't think it's acceptable for someone to pootle along at 40 where it's safe to do 60 on an NSL road, should I submit that? No. At the same time, I got beeped overtaking a cyclist because I gave them loads of room and a car miles off in the other direction thought I was on the wrong side of the road for no reason because they couldn't see the cyclist - should that be submitted? No, but it would be. You just end up giving the police another task with going through loads of submitted footage, 99% of it just people thinking everyone driving faster than them, overtaking, driving differently to them is wrong. Driving like a cock != driving dangerously, bullying through traffic is a bellend thing to do, but it's not something someone should be fined for. There are enough cameras on the roads already, I don't want nosey busybodies with nothing better to do thinking they can get people fined for minor transgressions.

Encouraging submission for genuinely dangerous driving is fine, and that is already done. But incentivising it though payouts will just cause loads of useless submissions.

1
HelpDaren•

This.

I was driving to work yesterday evening (it was pretty dark already) on the A38, and a white van (oncoming traffic) overtook a tractor just before a bend. I olny seen him as I exited said bend, so as I entered the straight section, he was literally in front of me. Sharp brake, horn, swerve, collision avoided.

This, from my point of view, was his fault. You shouldn't overtake if it's not safe to do so, and overtaking just before a bend is dangerous as you can't see if someone is already in the bend on the oncoming traffic.

From his point of view, I drove through the bend too fast (it's a 50 road, I was doing 50), and wasn't considering my lack of visibility well enough to actually slow down in the bend (I drive on this road twice every day for a year now, I know every pothole on it, it made me too comfortable...).

If both of us would submit a footage, both of us would be right. I didn't slow down in the bend, which is lack of anticipation, and since I couldn't see what's on the other end of the bend, could be dangerous driving, and he did overtake a tractor just before a bend, which is - again -, lack of anticipation, and dangerous driving.

Should bot of us be fined for it, even tho we didn't collide, should they only fine him for dangerous driving, should they only fine me for dangerous driving, or should they just let it go as no accident actually took place?

This happens every day on every road a hundred times. If everyone would start to submit footages for the incentive, we'd cockblock the police within 2 hours as someone would have to go through tens of thousands of footages every single day.

And there are those who'd make a living out of it. Just imagine your everyday trashy neighbour hiding in their window with a shitty camera filming you swerving around something they planted on the road with zero visibility, and submitting the footage, saying it's dangerous driving, for that 30%, dozens of times a day. And you'd be fined over and over and over and over again.

1
Lewinator56•

The best thing when driving is to treat minor mistakes as nothing more, don't make an event out of them. If we ask everyone to make everything an event it's going to increase frustration on the roads. I don't want drivers going around doing what some cyclists do, purposely putting themselves in situations where they can manipulate drivers to do risky things, then submit the footage to the police (it happens).

1
HelpDaren•

Brake check is the most popular of it.

On of my colleague told me that if I get bored with my car (I drive a 16yo Zafira B that I love to its death), I just have to go to a certain road (not gonna tell which one), and brake check someone. Due to that one specific bend he was talking about, and the general traffic on it, it's an almost certain rear-end, I claim whiplash, insurance company pays, I get to stay home for a few weeks fully paid, and buy a new car. Apparently, he's done that several times and never got caught on his insurance fraud...
Now add that to the incentive he could receive if he submits the footage, especially if he claims he's off work for weeks because of the accident, so the other driver will be penalised more severly, I wouldn't be surprised at all if there would be thousands of rear-ends every day, just because of that...

He's the kind of guy who'd report anyone even for a fiver, because that's a fiver nonetheless he "earns".

I don't think the government should ever persuade every-day citizens to report on each other for money. That happened a few times in history, and never ended peacefully...

1
Richbutoftencrazy•

This is one of the reasons I don't like that app that has been developed that turns your smartphone into a speedcamera. The amount of moral busybodies who would hide in their houses filming the road from their front window where no one can see them, trying to get people done for driving at 31 or 32mph would be too much to bear. Especially if the police decide to do away with the discretionary speeding threshold and adopt a zero tolerance policy.

1
LondonCycling•

Most forces already do this. I believe all in England do at least.

With regards to financially incentivising the public to do it, no.

A bit of history goes some way here. Back in the 1700s, there basically was no police force. In London, on Bow Street (yes the one on the Monopoly board, it's now a dingy alleyway), the Bow Street Runners were established as basically the first recognised progressional police force. The runners were paid by the magistrates' court to bring in criminals, and were paid for their successes. They were a sort of evolution on the unofficial 'thief takers', who would often be hired by victims of crime to find criminals and offered a reward in return.

The issue with both of these groups were that they were basically private individuals choosing who to bring to justice. This causes problems - we had criminals offering to double how much they were going to be paid by the victims or the courts, you had criminals using them to understand how other criminal enterprises worked, you were basically saying to victims I'll look into this if you pay me, etc.

Now I may be reaching slightly to say that this sort of imbalance of justice and general wild west nature of payments and bribery and blackmail would really come to dashcam footage; but actually I don't think some of it is far off. If you witness a crash and the lawbreaker knows you'll get £100 for a submission, it's not unreal to imagine they might slyly offer you £200 to not submit it. We already have staged crashes for insurance, this also incentivises staged dangerous driving for dashcam submissions. Etc.

We do offer rewards for very high profile criminals when public support is truly needed to bring seriously violent or dangerous criminals to justice, but I think for "minor" (in relative terms I mean) crime, keeping financial incentives out of it is best.

1