"a new feature called “Dashcam” that, as the name suggests, records video (and audio, optionally) while you are driving. If your phone is mounted in the right spot, the recording should provide helpful information in the event of an accident or other unexpected situation."
A perfect way to collect information about your driving habits and vehicle. Insurance companies, auto sales and maintenance companies, and others would love to find new customers this way.
I read that you get a nontrivial discount on your car insurance in Russia if you have a dashcam. So basically everyone there has one, which is why it seems like all the dashcam videos on the internet take place in Russia.
I think that sort of system makes sense. We shouldn't require dashcam, but any policy which reduces expensive he-said-she-said litigation in our society should be encouraged.
I suspect we'd find a pleasant second-order benefit as well: humans might simply drive better if they know they're being recorded. We know that interactions with the police are much less likely to escalate to the point of violence when both parties are recording each other, and I imagine the same principle could apply to our roads.
Insurance companies already offer you “discounts” (or pretend to) if you install their pervasive tracking dongle. How they use that data is NOT to the consumers benefit. When I was in school, an insurance company (idk which one but it’s in Cleveland area) pitched us to work for them on this system. They laughed to us about all the fools who give them data. They bill you more if you travel through intersections with lights (every intersection has a risk score), take left turns on your way home from work, etc. - they had some insane amount of data. If they shared the safety data with everyone then I’d be more ok with it. I wish I could ask Apple/Google maps to route me “safely”.
I was going to refuse my spy dongle, but they offered a >80% discount. Everyone has a price, but I wish the government disincentivized this behavior.
They're pretty ubiquitous here in Hong Kong too. As much for protection against scams than actual accidents (i.e. other vehicles and pedestrians falsely claiming you hit them).
>I suspect we'd find a pleasant second-order benefit as well: humans might simply drive better if they know they're being recorded.
Everyone should be free to choose if they have a car that automatically generates tons of evidence against themselves that the cops just have to seize.
It's bad enough with eCall and the trend to insurances requiring recording blackboxes (or modern cars doing that all on their own), but dashcams? I can already see police demanding laws allowing them to force you to hand them over access to the footage at a roadside traffic stop and them running AI scans on it to see if you ran a stop sign or red light or if you were speeding.
Where there's feeding troughs of data, the pigs will always come to demand being fed (a rough translation of the German saying "Wenn man den Trog hat, kommen die Schweine von ganz alleine").
Why is surveillance a requirement? Local recordings would have virtually no downsides unless the intention is to evade responsibility for traffic collisions.
I do actually have a dashcam built into my personal vehicle. I have mixed feelings about it, but overall I think the benefits outweigh the risks.
that said, the risks are not to be taken lightly. even if the recording is only stored locally, it can be seized by authorities or subpoenaed later. you can't guarantee it will only be used to settle minor traffic disputes.
like I said, I'm (mostly) happy to make that decision for myself. but having the government require people to collect evidence against themselves is a hard no from me.
Driving on public roads is a privilege, not a right, which is why it's legal for them to institutes requirements like "must have insurance" or "must have a driver's license".
Better driver training and education is what should be required first. Seeing people on the road makes me think most people don't know about the physics of tailgating or speeding.
When I grew up in Germany it was the ADAC driver training, a half day of driving on a long and wide patch of road almost like an airport apron, and doing different manoeuvres and exercises that made me a much much more humble (and slow) driver.
> Better driver training and education is what should be required first. Seeing people on the road makes me think most people don't know about the physics of tailgating or speeding
You can train people all you want but a great many still aren't going to understand the physics of driving and use that to drive more safely.
Driving is for most people an activity imbued with primal feelings and behaviors. Otherwise we'd all be driving small nimble cars in a way that maintained a large safety margin.
In reality our reptilian brains want to be in the biggest vehicle that we can do that we survive the crash, while speeding or tailgating to satisfy whatever need or anxiety that services.
America chose to build itself around cars, which makes it politically untenable to put any non-trivial gate in front of driving, which is why you can pass a half hour "test" once at 16 and be set for life, even as you approach dementia. It's even worse now, because even if we succeed at making automobiles not a necessity for average life, a huge subset of the american population believes they are a core part of their identity.
Car companies already advertise new models as fully Googlyfied (as if that is a good thing) so when informed people lament that a large part of the population are basically convenience seeking, gullible imbeciles its not far from the truth.
That such an important aspect of our lives as privacy would come to be trampled so easily is just mind boggling.
Wisdom of the crowds my a*. The only way you can prevent organized corporate abuse is to have very empowered and savvy regulators that somehow truly work for the interests of the many.
A highly non-trivial catch-22 given that in a democracy they can only draw legitimacy for their actions by appealing to the same inane and manipulated multitudes.
Now they can collect not just yours, but also other people's license plate movements and facial recognition. It's great producing eyes for Google everywhere - which is why the Ring was worth a billion $ for Amazon.
Just found out that my Pixel 7 has, so deeply hidden I don't find it again easily, a check box limiting / allowing access to car data. I didn't turn it on...
Well, there is a long weekend coming up, maybe if I find time despite the huge home project backlog to install CalxyOS, I hate it that I cannot trust my phone to not spy on me and my activities despite everything being turned of. After all, some settings changed after various app updates.
(I know this doesn't really help you now, but) If you install your self-representing operating system as part of setting up a new phone, then you don't end up in a situation where it's some huge disruptive undertaking. Also doing so within the purchase return period assures that your phone can definitely be unlocked, rather than finding out otherwise when it's too late.
Since the main reason not to use grapheneOS is that it only supports Pixels and you already have one, you might also consider it. Install feels almost suspiciously easy coming from the likes of cyanogenmod.
>Install feels almost suspiciously easy coming from the likes of cyanogenmod.
this is a great teaser statement
I miss the days of having to open 9 xda threads to figure out how to install some ROM. That whole scene seems to have died off as Android puts up more walls to increase reliance on locked down services
There is plenty navigation/maps<->insurance or police-detection<->insurance cooperation here in Poland. It analyzes your driving and offers discounts based on that.
There is also plenty of dedicated dashcam apps and functions in map apps so I'm curious why this Pixel addon brings attention.
A perfect way to collect information about your driving habits and vehicle. Insurance companies, auto sales and maintenance companies, and others would love to find new customers this way.