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from the queue-the-lawyer-jokes-in-3-2-1 dept.
A chatbot-"ai"-lawyer keeps filing appeals against parking tickets and similar minor offenses. The author claims it has defeated an estimated 375,000 parking tickets by now -- defeated or appealed? Is every appeal a sure win with this bot-created-paperwork? Do people even contact lawyers to fight parking tickets? Isn't the lawyer fee almost always going to be higher than the fine? Sure, it might be about the good fight and standing up for what is right, etc. but still.
After reading the story I'm still unsure what the actual AI part of the chatbot is, it seems to just be one big decision-tree. But I guess that doesn't get as much press as claiming you have invented a lawyer-AI.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/12/15960080/chatbot-ai-legal-donotpay-us-uk
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday July 13 2017, @06:40PM (2 children)
Yeah, here's the problem. 'Drive like an idiot' is a little less than perfectly rigorous in definition. And in a bureaucracy any ambiguity can and will be defined just as far in their favor as possible, and then after that they start eroding the boundaries of the possible.
Also I don't think they refrain from taking the license out of any concern for the bad driver. It's because putting the bad drivers back on the road maximizes their income. They want the bad drivers to go to work and make money to pay their budget. Strict enforcement would be much less profitable than selective enforcement is.
"IF you raise the number of cameras because you have to make for a predicted income shortfall, AND put illogical road rules around the cameras/cops to trap people, I agree with your characterization"
Both are done. There have even been cases where they were caught timing lights to produce more tickets (which means they were deliberately making the road less safe in order to increase revenue, think about it.)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday July 13 2017, @07:13PM (1 child)
> 'Drive like an idiot' is a little less than perfectly rigorous in definition. And in a bureaucracy any ambiguity can and will be defined just as far
> in their favor as possible, and then after that they start eroding the boundaries of the possible.
I was intentionally being vague to avoid nitpicks. In reality, you get "don't drive over 40MPH in front of the elementary school", which few would logically argue against, yet many still do once logic is replaced by a steering wheel.
You seem, like too many dwellers of this site, to always treat these kind of decisions as people who do not exist as human beings subjected to the rules. While DC is special, I'm pretty sure the city hall employees and mayor's friends in nowhereville, AL have to deal with speed limits and maybe even the one red light. Nefariously changing the rules to raise money by making everyone angry is a good Hollywood topic, but real humans are too fickle to participate in most grand conspiracies labelled "government".
> There have even been cases where they were caught timing lights to produce more tickets (which means they were
> deliberately making the road less safe in order to increase revenue, think about it.)
Did I just point out living in Chicago when they blanketed the place with red light cameras? Everyone was talking about the possibility of light timing tinkering.
I didn't get out of my way to time those lights before and after. One thing I can tell you: they didn't need to cheat to get base revenue (most cheating was bribes). I saw people getting flashed many times a week, and I don't recall ever thinking "that was too short". Pretty much all instances where I was in a good position to judge the action, the person could have stopped, even if they were above the speed limit to start with. And the tech worked well: I saw many people just beating the light not getting flashed, and people just a bit too late getting caught. They increased revenue by putting those everywhere to catch more people (they pay for themselves), they didn't even need cheating on the timing.
I don't like that the Chicago speed limits are reasonably set for snowstorm days, making speeding tickets absurdly easy to get, which compounds to people caught blowing red lights not exactly causing me to weep.
There is the problem that enforcing the lights with cameras (or the speed with radars) has been studied to cause accidents. But that points the problem to the rule being enforced.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday July 13 2017, @10:56PM
Actually that's one of the problems. There's absolutely no logical reason to think that 39mph is safe but 41mph is unsafe on the same bit of road at the same time. It just doesn't work that way. So what happens is that speed limits are selectively enforced. In many cases that works in favor of sanity (cops are unlikely to pull you for 1mph over, which is a good thing) but it also leads to abuses (out of state plates, beater car, THIS ONE we can pull over for 1mph and roust him if we want.)
Even the law, most places, acknowledges this. There's often verbiage about 'reasonable and prudent for the circumstances' and in many cases the judge can simply throw out speeding tickets where the speed is stipulated and agreed and over limit IF you present what he accepts as a good reason to have done so. And again, that seems almost like a sanity safety release valve, until you consider how it can wind up causing two people guilty of the same behavior to be treated so very differently.
As to the red light cameras, I don't know about Chicago specifically, but in many areas they've introduced them relatively well configured, then quietly changed things once they were accepted. But there have been cases where they've shortened the light sequence for greater revenue, and there are also a lot of complaints about the way right-on-red is handled. It's perfectly legal many places to make a right on red immediately after coming to a stop if the way is clear, yet doing so often results in a ticket being mailed anyway. It's then on you to contest it, with no accuser to confront. Hardly seems like something that a 'justice' system worth of the name would do, does it?
http://abc7chicago.com/news/wrong-on-red-red-light-cameras-rake-in-revenue-for-suburbs/2024820/ (right turns)
https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20170320/downtown/red-light-rules-change-as-city-relaxes-time-allowed-run-light (some timing issues)
The thing is, these things are added little by little, at a municipal level, with no consistency. They might be working reasonable in one town and not in the next. It's very hard to find out exactly how each one works and it's very hard to fight their accusations in court. Apply them consistently and openly, so everyone knows how they're working in each case and it can be debated openly and argued in court freely and they might be ok. But that's just not how it's being done.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?