Every camera company is a bad company.

Discussion in 'Report A BAD Trucking Company Here' started by Shackdaddy, Dec 24, 2021.

  1. any name you wish

    any name you wish Light Load Member

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    I have no problem with outward facing cameras that do not create a permanent record of what they see. I can't give legal advice merely off of a masters degree in law; there's a lawyer here that could better help you understand what you should do to avoid self-incrimination with an outward-facing camera. But I've read, and written up case memos for car accidents in which a driver with a continuous-loop dash camera did not stop the device from automatically recording over old footage, and the court did not assume that they had a legal duty to preserve the self-incriminating "evidence". As long as the driver did not actually actively destroy the footage, he had no legal obligation to take steps to preserve it.
    This, to me, seems like the best compromise. Many drivers put these kinds of devices in their personal cars. I've never heard of a car driver that has continuous footage of their driving sent to a police station, or anyone else that could be hostile to them, for archiving. In an accident, if the footage would be helpful to the driver, he could simply stop the camera and save it. If the opposing party has purchased and maintained a camera of their own, they could just use that. I don't like the idea of forced self-incrimination.
    The problem is that today, adverse parties are obsessed with putting data on the internet, or selling it. For example, marketing companies have been trying for years to make our refrigerators tell the stores when we're out of certain products, (Katherine Albrecht writes a bit about that in her work on spy chips) so they can nag at us to buy more. The permanently affixed internet communication most cars have, or are capable of, is being posed to be used to tax our driving by the mile, and Onstar has been caught before tracking and selling data about the movements of drivers who didn't have their service. I like being careful with tech, as it often starts out helping us, but over time it always tends to be hijacked by government and corporations into working against us.


    TRIGGERING THE DUTY TO PRESERVE EVIDENCE
    There is no general duty to preserve evidence before litigation is filed, threatened, or reasonably foreseeable, unless the duty is voluntarily assumed or imposed by a statute, regulation, contract, or another special circumstance. Absent notice of a governmental investigation,
    probable or pending litigation, or another source of a duty to preserve evidence, a company or individual generally has the right to dispose of its own property, including documents, electronically stored information, or tangible things, without liability.
    https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba-cms-dotorg/products/inv/book/214612/Chapter 1.pdf (page 7)

    These Devices May Be Spying On You (Even In Your Own Home)
    These Devices May Be Spying On You (Even In Your Own Home)

    WATCH OUT: OnStar Tracks Your Movements And Sells Them, Even If You Cancel Your Service*
    WATCH OUT: OnStar Tracks Your Movements And Sells Them, Even If You Cancel Your Service*
    *Note, pressure placed on Onstar has stopped this practice, but we still know that we're relying on their honesty and consistency to stick to this voluntary choice.
     
    Last edited: Jan 30, 2022
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  3. LtlAnonymous

    LtlAnonymous Road Train Member

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    Ah yes. Just like how turning off the location on your phone only stops YOU from tracking YOURSELF. lol
     
  4. any name you wish

    any name you wish Light Load Member

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    As I mentioned before, trucking accidents (including trucking related deaths) have risen since cameras have been placed in trucks, despite the camera vendors’ constant efforts to keep trucking companies focused on the increasing numbers of technical camera violations truckers are being cited for. How do we explain this?

    One argument would be to try to blame increasing cell phone usage (including texting). However, the data doesn’t cooperate very well with that theory for these reasons:

    Firstly, most car/auto deaths aren’t caused by the trucker anyway.

    Secondly, the data shows trucking deaths decreased the most (in the history of trucking) in the exact same period of time that cell phone usage increased the most in its own history of usage.

    Thirdly, the causes of many of the deaths can be partly attributed to things that cameras would not be useful to discover—like alcohol content in blood, use of drugs, or arguably the mental state of the driver.

    The fact is, by the time dash cameras were placed in trucks, everybody had already been using cell phones even for quite some time. And also, when the cameras were placed in trucks, we were at, at least a 50 year low in trucking deaths (you’d never hear that from anyone else because it’s not convenient to market camera services with that information).

    You can see the chart and statistics at this link.

    https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/large-trucks
     
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  5. Hotplate

    Hotplate Medium Load Member

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    Not sure about the correlation of this data. The reason companies put cameras in trucks is that insurance companies give them big breaks on premiums. Its extra savings for driver facing cameras. Insurance companies don't just hand out premium breaks like that without some sort of return back, so something in their data is telling them that cameras in fact do produce safer drivers.

    Some companies have removed or scaled back camera use because with the tight labor market, the cost of attracting/keeping drivers has overcome the savings benefits of the cameras.

    So if we were to get some sort of freight recession, we may see more companies opting in for driver cameras.
     
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  6. any name you wish

    any name you wish Light Load Member

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    Companies make mistakes all the time. That's why some of them go bankrupt. New Coke, for example. And governments make mistakes too. All the time. Basically, the larger the company (or government), the more oblivious to its mistakes it is. Also, mistakes are more the stock holders' problem. Or the taxpayers' in the cases of bailouts.

    What I find problematic with your argument is that it fails to look at the issue in a competitive sense. It views the issue as if there was only one company concerned.
    Take advertising, for example. Is advertising done for the best interest of the consumer or the product line? Probably most of it isn't. But when one company begins advertising with a new media, they might temporarily achieve market superiority, but then the other companies eventually follow suit, and get their sales back. The consumer loses, because corporate overhead is increased by one additional redundant marketing cost and more nuisance in their lifestyle (e.g. spam), while the quality of the product remains the same. Yes, a company will do what's in its own best interest, but that doesn't mean that it's being done in the best interest of society.
    In fact, the outlawing of TV commercials has only benefited the industry of tobacco companies for this reason. Of course you wouldn't know, because the money they saved on advertising now goes to taxes. But the playing field remains level—and at a lower cost.

    Monopolies (such as no significant camera-free place to work) are also not good for the consumer. We're seeing this in big tech right now. Reducing effective freedom of speech

    The point is, that when companies do what's pragmatic in their particular situations, those actions aren't necessarily pragmatic for the employee, the customer, or even the competition. In fact, depending on how foresighted they are, their actions might only be good for themselves in the short, not the long-run, since people don't live forever and some might not care even that much about the future of their company or society (e.g pollution problems, excess exploitation of non-renewable resources). Corporations are not people.

    Finally, the cameras were put in place based on a speculation, before any studies were even available to make any educated decisions.

    In the words of Adam Smith, “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
     
    Last edited: Jan 30, 2022
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  7. Skunk_Truck_2590

    Skunk_Truck_2590 Road Train Member

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    So you mean to tell me, companies actually put inward facing cameras in their trucks to intentionally catch drivers in the wrong so when something happens, their insurance premiums go up? Hmm. I thought they were to help keep the insurance premiums down. Then again if you're not doing things you shouldn't be doing like playing with your phone or reaching for things and other distractions then technically you should have nothing to worry about. I don't like the fact that those cameras face into the sleeper so they could mount them on the passenger side facing the driver but you still have a curtain you can close. I'm not for the inward facing cameras but I'm not against them either because I don't do things I know I'm not supposed to be doing.

    Might as well suck it up and get used to it or find another career because the FMCSA is looking to make it mandatory in ALL trucks just like ELD's. Hell, rumor has it Schneider is fixing to implement a pilot program to equipt a number of their trucks with breathalyzers. New here but nothing new in third world countries as they have ben using breathalyzers for some time now.
     
  8. Shackdaddy

    Shackdaddy Medium Load Member

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    I have sucked it up and found another career as you put it. And your post is complete nonsensical dribble. Looks like your post was written by one of those truck company safety managers who they recruited from Burger King.

    The same ole ‘Duhhhh if you’re not doing anything wrong what’s the problem with the cameras’

    We’ve covered that. If you get in a wreck they’ll go through the video and find any way they can to blame you. It could be something like you reaching for your water bottle or changing the radio station.

    But yeah I’ve left your glorious profession. Enjoy your driver facing cams and microphones and sensors.
     
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  9. any name you wish

    any name you wish Light Load Member

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    I left the post for a while to stop dominating it and allow others to speak.

    What I see in the former poster's remark is that he remains focused on the little picture and oblivious to the gestalt effect of cameras.

    The meaning of my last large posting apparently didn't hit with him despite my constant emphasizing of how divide and conquer tactics can change behaviors of individual companies. This is a constant problem in many areas including social psychology, business ethics, politics, and environmental protection. Basically, companies (and people) thinking as individuals will behave in ways completely contrary to the way they would think as groups.

    Insurance companies do a lot to deteriorate the quality of life in America, as do marketing corporations. I'm not supposed to say that, but then I'm not influenced by money in that way. And while it's true that insurance companies in a gestalt or holistic sense are concerned with risk, individuals within the companies are not—particularly. This includes individuals that make policies and mandates on customers. This is sometimes referred to as corruption.

    The poster would have you think that every individual in every organization (e.g. in America) is automatically rational, unselfish, and more concerned with the well-being of the business than anything else (including themselves). In this case, an insurance company would never have anyone within its ranks that could ever be bribed, get kickbacks, promotions, or other benefits, for a dubious but not counterintuitive practice such as placing cameras in trucks. In reality, as I said before, CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PEOPLE. The company is a dead, abstract concept—a tool by which individuals within it do what's expedient to their own PERSONAL goals. Thus, the people in the marketing and legal departments of an insurance company will more likely make decisions that get them a vacation in Tahiti than add a few cents to stockholders' dividends.

    To unravel this into practical terms and examples, I can point to several cases where traffic citation cameras have resulted in mass corruption. If you live in Chicago, you already know about this. They actually had to ban their traffic citation camera program because of multiple cases of governmental corruption where, despite any arguments that the cameras did or didn't reduce accidents, city officials as individuals took bribes, kickbacks and, vacations to install more and more cameras. The link below points not to the only case, but to one of many in the Chicago area alone, where one individual within the city government saw fit to break laws and place his duty to himself over his duty to the organization (the city) of which he was obliged to promote the best interest of. I can literally point to dozens of examples of this:
    City insider given 10 years in prison for red light cameras scandal
     
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  10. kidz bop

    kidz bop Medium Load Member

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    what if i wanna practice driving with my chin. is that a someting a company would get me into trouble for?
     
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  11. Lonesome

    Lonesome Mr. Sarcasm

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    No....it's all good.....
     
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