www.nytimes.com: In India, Using Facebook to Catch Scofflaw Drivers

[Thiebear]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/technology/02traffic.html?_r=2&ref=global-home

NEW DELHI — This city is famous for its snarled traffic and infamous for its unruly drivers — aggressive rule-breakers who barrel through red lights, ignore crosswalks and veer into bicycle or bus lanes to find open routes.

A photo posted to Facebook showed a man riding a motorcycle without a helmet.

Now, the city’s overburdened traffic police officers have enlisted an unexpected weapon in the fight against dangerous driving: Facebook.

The traffic police started a Facebook page two months ago, and almost immediately residents became digital informants, posting photos of their fellow drivers violating traffic laws. As of Sunday more than 17,000 people had become fans of the page and posted almost 3,000 photographs and dozens of videos.

The online rap sheet was impressive. There are photos of people on motorcycles without helmets, cars stopped in crosswalks, drivers on cellphones, drivers in the middle of illegal turns and improperly parked vehicles.

Using the pictures, the Delhi Traffic Police have issued 665 tickets, using the license plate numbers shown in the photos to track vehicle owners, said the city’s joint commissioner of traffic, Satyendra Garg.

Despite some concerns about privacy, and the authenticity of the photos, the public’s response has been overwhelmingly positive, he said.

Mr. Garg said the Facebook page never told people to take pictures of lawless drivers. “We wanted a forum where people could express their views and suggest changes,” he said Friday.

With just 5,000 traffic officers in this city of 12 million people, the social networking site is filling a useful role, he said. “Traffic police can’t be present everywhere, but rules are always being broken,” Mr. Garg said. “If people want to report it, we welcome it. A violation is a violation.”

more at link

One kid with photoshop or paint.exe will cause 113,879 tickets to be issued within the first year.

[fwo40]

Having been to Delhi recently, I don't know how it's possible to drive there and NOT break a few laws. You seriously either wouldn't be able to move or you'd cause several accidents. I don't think police there need the "extra" help catching someone, they could do it simply by being out on the street for about 30secs.

[hockeysc23]

I assume the photoshop concern would be if it happened here in the US? You could clearly show you don't have that vehicle with that license plate registered to you.

I'd be interested to see how it works.

[Thiebear]

I assume the photoshop concern would be if it happened here in the US? You could clearly show you don't have that vehicle with that license plate registered to you.

I'd be interested to see how it works.

So you only pay the 65$ court fee, vs. the ticket?

[Larry]

One problem I would see with such a plan is the image of a dangerous driver being hotly pursued by a half dozen Citizen Crusaders, all of whom are chasing the criminal while holding call phone cameras in one hand.

[Thiebear]

Larry: thats the 2%

We have 33,963 deaths on the road 2009:

We have 1,216 deaths in Afghanistan 10years? We quit it we hit 40k in ten years in a warzone..

Something has to be done to help

[Larry]

Just pointing out unintended consequences.

Somebody, a few years back, posted an article about the supposed spread of cell phone jammers, which prevent cell phones for working nearby. (The article claimed that one common user of such devices are hotels, which used to make a lot of money from gouging people for long distance calls, before hotel customers started using cell phones instead of the hotel phones.)

And ever since then, I've had this image of installing a jammer in my car, that runs whenever the car is running, to prevent the drivers around me from using their cell phones.

But then it occurs to me that if I did that, then instead of being surrounded by driving idiots holding cell phones to their ears, I'd be surrounded by driving idiots who are holding cell phones in front of their faces, yelling "Hello! Hello? Can you hear me?."

My jammer would actually make the drivers around me pay more attention to the stupid things.

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That said, though, I'll also admit that I've fantasized for some time about a law that would permit me to install a "cop cam" in my car, which would video record the cars around me, so that if there's an accident, I can pull out a video record of what the other driver was actually doing at the time of the accident.