Driver Ticketed for No Insurance Just Because Flock (YC 2017) Said She Didn't

HHotGarbage about 2 hours ago 20 commentsRead Article on techdirt.com

DE version is available. Content is displayed in original English for accuracy.

⚡ Community Insights

Discussion Sentiment

25% Positive

Analyzed from 699 words in the discussion.

Discussion (20 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

ourmandave•about 1 hour ago

This is 100% cop's fault.

She presented a current insurance coverage card to the officer and he still ticketed her because Flock said she wasn't covered.

What would have happened if she showed the current coverage using the insurance app on her phone?

cgearhart•about 1 hour ago

This has been going on for awhile. There was a fella that got flagged by facial recognition in a casino. He was hauled back by security and arrested by the police for trespassing. Even though he gave police his license. They thought it was more likely a fake id than than the “99% match” from the software was wrong. And no accountability afterwards; no change in policy or training.

octol•about 1 hour ago

This reminds me of the opening scene of Back to the Future when the robotic arm dumps more dog food in to an already overflowing bowl. Can we coin this sort of technological outcome “feeding Einstein”?

inerte•about 1 hour ago

Oh so Flock doesn't just record / monitor stuff, but while doing so, it proactively tells the police a car worth stopping is on the street? How did the cop know how to stop the car?

schainks•about 1 hour ago

This is infuriating.

A modern police department should actively discipline officers that are too lazy to run the necessary checks to prove the human's paperwork is legit, especially when they have a computer that can do it for them right in front of them!

Cities adding ALPRs should also be holding the ALPR company financially liable for _every single mistake_ these systems make.

ourmandave•about 1 hour ago

He didn't need to run any check. She showed him a current insurance coverage card and he ignored it.

I don't even want to blame Flock for this level of incompetence.

wat10000•about 1 hour ago

There a frightening lack of accountability all the way up the chain. The officer doesn’t care because their bosses don’t hold them accountable. The chief doesn’t hold the bosses accountable for that. The local government doesn’t hold the chief accountable. And ultimately the voters don’t hold the local government accountable.

brg•43 minutes ago

It’s worse than that. In every jurisdiction, the police department is a revenue generating organization. Overtime, beats, and promotions are rewarded to the officers who pull in the most revenue from tickets and citations. You can check this for yourself. Officer of the year in many jurisdictions are those who have the highest parking tickets written, the most DUI arrests and impounds, or the most traffic citations. In general are not those with the most convictions, public service records, or positive feedback from the community. The accountability the organization and their reporting chain has is to revenue, not to the law.

schainks•about 1 hour ago

A literal bozo explosion going on in some cities / law enforcement organizations, and the _lowest_ layer has been handed Big Brother tech and told, "Just do what the computer tells you to do".

So, voters have to ban this tech or get a bill passed that makes the company responsible financially for screw ups. Is there a third option?

ToucanLoucan•about 1 hour ago

You can continue that all the way up to the President, a 37-felony convict.

It feels like every new innovation in our society now is just a new way to diffuse responsibility.

wat10000•7 minutes ago

In theory, the highest and last level of accountability is the voters. The system isn't perfect, but it's still democratic enough that this sort of thing couldn't happen without the approval or at least indifference of a big chunk of voters.

schainks•about 1 hour ago

Well, the US is the most litigious country on earth, so that tracks.

ViktorRay•about 1 hour ago

Here’s an interesting quote from Paul Graham about Flock. Paul Graham co-founded Y Combinator and created Hacker News. Since Flock was at a Y Combinator batch, Paul Graham provided valuable advice to them and makes money from them.

Quote in the link below:

https://x.com/paulg/status/1493719302725197825

righthand•about 1 hour ago

Gee…I wonder why no one likes cops? They’re all like the scarecrow: “If I only had a brain…”

RunSet•about 1 hour ago

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/you_can_beat_the_rap,_but_you...

rolph•about 1 hour ago

so laterally, this is an exploitation vector, that allows manipulation of LEO perception, and engineering of an encounter. just wait until someone scales it up.

matroxmemories•about 1 hour ago

I find that hard to believe. I know several people that drive trucks and motorcycles with fake registration stickers from their other cars, and without insurance, and never been flagged by flock remotely or even alerting an office that’s behind them.

mhb•about 1 hour ago

You find this one example hard to believe because you have several sort of counterexamples? Weak.

BeetleB•33 minutes ago

I know several people who drive above the speed limit and never get pulled over/ticketed for it. Therefore I don't believe any claims about people being ticketed for speeding. It just doesn't happen.

schainks•about 1 hour ago

"I know people flouting the law in front of ALPRs, why aren't they getting caught?"

That still means these systems of humans working with machines are broken, does it not?

aetch•about 1 hour ago

Those aren’t counter examples, that shows that flock is useless

matroxmemories•about 1 hour ago

It shows that what we’ve been told, that flock does not do active policing of basic moving violation type infractions, is probably correct since I know people driving/riding with invalid reg and no insurance for years in the heavily monitored SF Bay Area.

jamiek88•about 1 hour ago

All you’ve done here is show further that flock fucks up - which makes your ‘hard to believe’ pretty hard to believe.