Every camera company is a bad company.

Your company? I could live with such as your stating…

 

On my current job in the criminal justice system, I'm almost constantly on camera. This might sound hypocritical, but I don't mind the camera if I know it's almost always used on known criminals. My superiors may pull up camera footage if I report a violation from an inmate, and there is an argument as to whether or not guilt can be established. They will also pull up footage on me, but since I only have the potential to make a couple mistakes a minute, as opposed to a trucker—who can be "gotcha'd" for arguably dozens of things per minute, I don't mind that either. It's a bit less like shooting fish in a barrel. I would approve of your approach if it remained like that, but the temptation will always be to increase surveillance.

I work in a world where there are so many rules that it's impossible to enforce even a reasonable fraction of the violations that happen. We would never have enough high-security areas to put violators in if I enforced every rule. Our hearings would become overwhelmed with backlogs of cases lasting far longer than most inmates' sentences. It just isn't practical to enforce a statuatory system to the letter. An officer must use judgement on which rules to enforce and excuse probably 98 percent of violations. This is also done in part because people sitting in ivory towers love to make rules, but they don't have any vision of a system where those rules can be practically and equally enforced to any good end.

This is quite similar to what trucking is going through right now. And it will not go away. Idealists who pretend like it's even possible to enforce a high percentage of the tens of thousands of laws and policies truckers have to follow will have terrible shortages of truck drivers, and until human judgement returns as the primary means of enforcement, we'll have to rely on promises of automated trucking that I seriously doubt will ever solve these problems either.

We may possibly get driverless trucks to comply more to regulations, however since regulations and policies are created by humans too, we'll find that the automation will actually reveal more flaws in the processes of making the regulations. Such as the profit motive, when driverless trucks cannot be fined. Also, new compliance problems will come up to replace the old ones—such as finding any number of people who are willing to sit around a chain-up area and chain-up a driverless trucks for snow if they aren't at least driving them. And service calls for things like unjamming stuck tandems will cost a lot more than simply having a driver that carries a hammer. This stuff happens quite frequently, actually, and will skyrocket the cost of driverless trucking past what idealists that are merely concened with "selling" the idea at this time have ever visulalized. That is, after a successful trial period (all done with brand-new equipment, of course) passes the honeymoon phase.

 

We had a meeting a few months ago with the risk mitigation officer from our insurer who invariably brought it up. The moment he started in on his spill advocating for driver-facing cameras the company President cut him off and said "we've been through this before, we're not interested in going down that path."

He still brings it up every year. Insurance companies can't help themselves.

 

People, and organizations made out of people, are incapable of stopping doing things that they perceive...work. They will continue doing any such things usually well past any point of diminishing returns. This has been shown through many studies of behavioral psychology, including original studies done by Skinner with pigeons, that have since then been done with humans. The idea that operant conditioning (especially variable conditioning) applies to groups and organizations may be unique and can be challenged, but as long as humans are rewarded and punished by their roles in these organizations, I don't see why not.
The average person intuitively does a lot of stuff based on principles as a means to counter intrusions into their values and actions. People who hold power, and people who are otherwise oblivious to one person's unique situations usually oppose these principles.

Again, we humans will always do what we think has in the past given us positive results.
A person that puts some money in a slot machine and wins a jackpot fairly soon after beginning his gambling career will lose a lot more money than the original win—over time. It would have been better for them to lose at first. That win will cost them dearly in the way it programs their mind.

Likewise, any degree of success companies perceive they get out of technology being used against humans will result in more and more technology being used to oppress humans in the future. The real problem is that all that is needed in the perception that the tech is doing good. Companies selling technology, marketing, media, governmental funding, and other sources of funding and research unite against the individual and provide lobsided arguments and research promotion to create perceptions that the technology is a boon to driving. All have motives for their biases. Things will get a lot worse before they get better. The trucking industry "thinks" the cameras are saving lives. This thought is reinforced by focusing on a narrow view of what the cameras are actually doing. But the industry is actually affected by a broad view of what they are doing. I've explained this elsewhere—particularly in the discussions of how they run good drivers out of the industry in order to make their use look more effective when it mostly applies to bad drivers now.

We used to have fundamental (constitutional) rights that protected the people from zealous governments' ambitions. Unfortunately, the Constitution has not been able to keep up with modern corporate intrusions and technologies. It only applies to governments. North Korea is actually quite a good example of a country where the maxim, "If you don't have anything to hide, why are you afraid of being watched" leads a people. This is the big picture of runaway surveillance in its final stages. A people with no ambition, no soul, and no drive. But at least they have nothing to hide.

 

I have heard this time after time. IN 1990, CDLs came into this world and I heard, " o boy, only the best will be driving trucks and accidents rates will go down and down", didn't happen, did it? Then in 2004, FMSCA decided to change the HOS and we heard the same song and got the same results. Then 2017 a "cure all" came on the horizon, ELDs. Now we are going to see a miracle, accidents really will be almost non-existing, well as usual if anything, things got worse. Now, here comes the cameras, we are going to do something about all these drivers who are doing everything but driving and get them off the road. Now it is a different day, same #### . Insurance companies making electronic companies rich. We got radar monitors on each sides and out front. Some woman on the camera or ELD telling us we are getting too close and the lane departure warning keeps going off and on, but still trucks are in the woods, ditches and down embankments. But between the trucking companies and the FMCSA, they are determined to make truck drivers into "robots".

 

That's precisely correct. At the time the cameras were put in trucks, trucking deaths were at an all-time low. They've only gone up since then. That's the BIG PICTURE. It's inconvenient, so how you get around an inconvenient big picture is by cherry-picking elements of that picture for select results, expanding them to look big, then shrinking all the other parts to look small. You can do this if you control all the funds and logistics of research and media.

In the end, the argument almost always winds up boiling down to one or more of the following presumptions:

"Oppressing people leads to better results."
"Spying on, or mistrusting people leads to better results."
"Using force on people leads to better results."
"Unequal distribution of power between leaders and subjects leads to better results."
"Power over people is better than power of the people."

I would almost support some of these ideas to control bad drivers, except as I mentioned above, people (and organizations made of people) are completely incapable of reaching an optimum point in anything—and then just...stopping at that point. There will always be others with money and profit motives arguing that some other element of human dignity is in the way of the perfect world that they promise us.

We've also seen this in how technology is now going berserk putting internet connectivity on everything we have. Actually, I don't want my car connected to the internet. (Probably this is meant to eventually be used to tax us by the mile.) I don't even want a radio transmitter in it. You can't buy such a car anymore without some kind of connectivity; that's not even an option. If I wanted connectivity, I could just use my cell phone. But how long from now will they have a transmitter on my lawnmower, my microwave, my can opener, etc.? Don't laugh. How do they convince people that this crap is of any use to them and get them to support or not complain about it, anyway? It's a wonder that the person that invented the wheel didn't try to put wheels on someone's tuna fish sandwich. Enough reliance on tech to solve our problems, already.

 

I'm a pretty technical person. I have spent the last 2 years learning Linux, I run servers out of my house. The last thing I want is my day-to-day devices that I rely on connected to the internet or doing anything other than the function they are supposed to do, because any features you add to these devices are just further potential points of failure.

The real problem is that technology companies have gotten away from the Unix philosophy, where things are supposed to do one thing and do it well.

Why would I need my washing machine hooked up to the internet? I have to be at the device to load it. So...what have I gained? Lol

 

When the initial body cameras were rolled out for the police the union pushed hard to stop it, calling it an invasion of privacy. As the number of body cameras increased the cops themselves started pushing to get them on even more cops. They learned over time that for the most part they benefit the police. Nothing is 100% good or bad but if you generally play by the rules then you may find that a camera can be your friend. I think over the next decade or so not only will cameras be required by law inside the cab facing both the driver and the road but they will also mandate them on trailers to include a full 360% view. All of this will feed into a cloud storage of some kind and be required for the right to drive on the interstate and to get insured. This is the future we are heading toward regardless if we like it or not. We are going to see a large increase in cameras along public roads. All of which is going to make everything you do on the road public record.

 

Lots of benefits, how about monitoring for a leak, monitoring temp, being notified that the load is done, & being able to start the process on demand via your phone so that the load does not sit in the washer until you are actually home to unload it. Lots of potential benefits. None of them are massive but not all tech leads to a major leap. Most of them are incremental and overtime you just start to expect it. Air conditioning, power steering, & anti lock brakes are all examples of tech improvements that when each one came out many then current drivers thought it was silly and unneeded, pretty much ever car sold now has these.

 

All valid points, but also features I will never use, so they are just further points of breakage to me.