I live on a peaceful street. Except when Waze/Google/Apple decide that my street is the fastest route through town. When that happens, a continuous stream of unrecognizable cars blow past my house with little regard for its occupants.

I propose a screen that displays as much personal information about a driver as they drive down my street, inferred from their license plate / ISMI id / other available metadata. All the ingredients to discourage these drivers are present in the world:

- Capture license plates as they drive past. The cameras are cheap and a raspberry pi is more than powerful enough to run tesseract and opencv to grab license plates and feed them to a database.

- Link license plates to names. Parking garages/lots are photographing license plates and correlating them with the names on the credit cards used for payment. These are among the sleaziest businesses around and are eager to either sell their dataset or lose it in a breach.

- Lookup names and collect more information. Advertising data can be purchased for a fee with a simple API lookup. And most tax assessors permit a lookup by name. This is an important step if you want to exclude your neighbors from the next step…

- Display as much data as possible on a large e-ink display, visible to drivers. Fear and shame never go out of style!

This may not immediately reduce traffic, but drivers may become wary of following their GPS instructions if they have an powerfully negative emotional memory of my street.
-- Condiment, Oct 20 2021

Radar (Remi Gaillard) https://youtu.be/uvYxXBMqEOM
Guy wearing speed camera costume chases cars [sninctown, Oct 20 2021]

https://metro.co.uk...affic-jam-12178189/ [hippo, Oct 20 2021]

Here's a way to stop traffic https://www.youtube...watch?v=dM7olfip8u0
[Frankx, Oct 21 2021]

Google Maps http://googleblog.b...ing-in-traffic.html
...jamming, feasible? [Frankx, Oct 21 2021]

License plate scanners https://www.msn.com...od-apart/ar-AAPQcTp
[Voice, Oct 24 2021]

I'm not touching this one. Way too big-brotherish for me. I'm not down-voting mind you, but wow, there might be less invasive alternatives is all I'm saying.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 20 2021


I'm not clear about the nature of the disregard, [Condiment]. Are the drivers breaking the speed limit? Are they somehow driving more loudly or erratically than local drivers with recognizable cars? Please explain further what problem we are solving here.
-- pertinax, Oct 20 2021


1. Set up speed camera on front lawn
2. Get speed camera professionally calibrated
I think you see where I'm going with this
-- sninctown, Oct 20 2021


All you need to solve this is a wheelbarrow full of mobile phones:
1) Turn on all the phones and start up the Waze/Google/Apple mapping apps
2) Put all the phones in the wheelbarrow
3) Walk up and down your street at a slow walking pace
4) The mapping apps will interpret this as many cars moving very slowly on your street (because of heavy traffic or an obstruction) and will then divert cars away from your street.

Doing this with one phone would have an impact, but obviously not so much, but there's nothing to stop you pretending to be a very slow car stuck in traffic when you go out to walk the dog, meet your dealer, graffiti your neighbour's garage, or whatever else you regularly go outside for. See link for further detail on this.
-- hippo, Oct 20 2021


I lived on a dead end for many years, and then when they built houses past that people started driving up the hill which seemed like 50 miles an hour when the speed limit is 25. A couple years ago I bought a sign that said *please slow down.* We have cats and my house is very close to the road. The first year people actually seemed to drive past my house much slower. Last year someone stole the sign!
-- xandram, Oct 20 2021


//Last year someone stole the sign!// Trying to turn that into a positive, at least it shows someone was paying attention!
-- zen_tom, Oct 20 2021


And presumably they slowed down in order to steal the sign, which is a good thing
-- hippo, Oct 20 2021


// I'm not clear about the nature of the disregard //

None of the drivers are doing anything wrong here. It's a public street and they're entitled to drive on it. The complaint is that GPS apps are guiding drivers through residential streets that were intended for access to residences, and not as thoroughfares. So my neighbors and I lose use of the street (for sport, bikes), safety (for kids, cats), and quiet (for me) in exchange for a relatively small group of people shaving 2 minutes off of their commute.

// a wheelbarrow full of mobile phones //

Brilliant! Wondering whether this could be achieved with phone simulators instead of the real thing.
-- Condiment, Oct 20 2021


Maybe they invented a high-speed-sign-stealer but decided not to post it on here for fear of giving away their identity or secrets
-- pocmloc, Oct 20 2021


I mean, I sympathize, but no. Road design can solve this. Narrow sections, especially at the entrance/exit to a road are a good solution. Not speed humps though. Dreadful inventions that increase pollution, wreck cars, cause subsidence and encourage a distasteful SUV/Sports car ratio.
-- bs0u0155, Oct 20 2021


I wonder in passing what's to stop some local transmitter from answering NMEA(?) GPS queries and tell them they're somewhere else?
-- 4and20, Oct 20 2021


Residents are not entitled to use the road for anything but driving on, and individual cars nor aggregate traffic are breaking noise regulations. Your concerns for child safety are no more valid than if you lived in a road designed for faster traffic. You have no case. But you may be able to get the street modified in some way that NO SPEEDBUMPS somewhat slows traffic.

As for the idea [-] for privacy but [+] for an original idea but [-] because I don't like the idea but [+] because your description made me smile. net []
-- Voice, Oct 20 2021


...unless you get away from living in a city.
I'm good with the little old guy seeing every passing car. Nothing new there.
I will be him soon enough so there's a bit of a bias I admit.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 21 2021


I think the traditional implementation of this idea is a heterogeneous array of dogs, all yelling "My street! My street! How dare you? This is an outrage!"
-- pertinax, Oct 21 2021


// a wheelbarrow full of mobile phones // is brilliant.

Yes, surely this can be implemented without an actual wheelbarrow full of actual mobile phones?

A bit of code that presents itself to Google Maps as a car going very slowly down the street in question. Multiplied a hundred-fold. Actually, this is wide open to abuse. Presumably it's trivially easy to remotely create a virtual traffic jam in any city at any time.

Hmm, d'ya think Google Maps is robust against that kind of thing?

[+] for the original idea
-- Frankx, Oct 21 2021


[Frankx] I'm not sure it would be that easy to emulate, but I could be wrong. The message is generated in-app so you'd need that message format, and then your fake GPS coordinates and fake IMEI numbers to identify your fake handsets.
-- hippo, Oct 21 2021


Hmm. maybe you're right [Hippo]. Shame though, fun idea.

Also [sninctown], Remi Gaillard is brilliant! Reminds me of Dom Joly/Trigger Happy TV
-- Frankx, Oct 21 2021


//you should have no expectation of privacy in public spaces.//

//this is no...moral principle//

Choose one: Is it something that should not be or is it not a moral principle?
-- Voice, Oct 21 2021


[scad] - does the emulator generate a fake IMEI number to make it look like every emulator is running on a separate handset?
-- hippo, Oct 22 2021


//does the emulator generate a fake IMEI number to make it look like every emulator is running on a separate handset?//

I'm invested in this now. I like the idea of spinning up a bunch of fake phones in VMs and selectively feeding them info to really mess up the marketing algorithms. A lot more efficient than me just deliberately tapping the opposite answers on Youtube pop ups.
-- bs0u0155, Oct 22 2021


So if I do the same thing on my street I can convince Google that the path past my store is a great route!
-- Voice, Oct 22 2021


//you have no privacy when you're in public. To believe otherwise is a mistake//

I do, in fact, have a small measure of privacy in public. The fact that it is permitted to record me doesn't make constant recording a reality. Simply saying "you can be recorded and that's that" is declaring total defeat (or victory depending on your side) where that defeat doesn't exist. Courts have upheld fourth amendment rights in the case of cars. There's an expectation that you won't be filmed in a public toilet. It's illegal to follow someone with a camera every time they walk outside. Aside from these legal limits to invasion of privacy there are social expectations. It's not illegal to dig into a database about passing people but it's rude, even offensive.

Furthermore by declaring simply that privacy is dead you're taking a crack (a deliberate one possibly) at the social norms which uphold these remaining vestiges of privacy in public and the laws based on those norms.
-- Voice, Oct 23 2021


// I'm invested in this now.//

[bs0u0155], May as well, spoof the phones driving up and down [Condiment]'s street while clicking that marketing.
-- wjt, Oct 24 2021



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