New app lets you scan a license plate and send a message to driver

http://news.yahoo.com/gm-app-brings-license-plate-readers-masses-13...

GM reportedly developing a new smart phone app:

License plate readers are already a controversial technology when in the hands of police departments, but General Motors is trying to figure out how to put such a device into the hands of consumers. Yes, that’s right. The brains at GM’s research and development facility in China have developed an app that would allow people to scan license plates with their smart phones and contact the drivers with a direct message.

According to Computer World, the DiDi Plate app is still in its development phase, and it uses the built-in camera of an Android phone to scan nearby license plates. Once the plate number is scanned, the user is then able to send a text message to the vehicle’s owner – regardless of whether or not he or she has signed up for this app.

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Permalink Reply by T.C. O'Rourke on June 22, 2014 at 10:38pm

Sweet, I can hardly wait.

Permalink Reply by Heather on June 23, 2014 at 3:41am

Mmm, I have a lot of privacy concerns about this. And I suspect a lot of other people will too.

Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on June 23, 2014 at 3:54am

Mixed bag. I like the idea of being able to send a message, but depending on how it's handled, I wonder about the privacy aspect of it.

Permalink Reply by Jared on June 23, 2014 at 4:19am

I think this is in China.  Not sure if this would be legal here.

Permalink Reply by Heather on June 23, 2014 at 5:25am

Well, for instance, I can imagine women getting unwanted messages a la "Hey baby" or much worse.  So more of a potential harassment issue.

Permalink Reply by S on June 23, 2014 at 5:45am

This might work in China, but unless the company is getting access to DMV data (which is unlikely), I doubt this is going to be showing up anytime soon in the US or other countries.

Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on June 23, 2014 at 6:45am

Hence my "depending on how it's handled" comment above.

h' 1.0 said:

If they aren't giving out your personal or contact information, I'm not sure where "privacy" comes in.

 
Heather said:

Mmm, I have a lot of privacy concerns about this. And I suspect a lot of other people will too.

Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on June 23, 2014 at 6:45am

Unfortunately, I could easily see that happening.

Heather said:

Well, for instance, I can imagine women getting unwanted messages a la "Hey baby" or much worse.  So more of a potential harassment issue.

Permalink Reply by Justin W. Siddons on June 23, 2014 at 7:17am

Perhaps an app where you could flag cars as potentially dangerous and drivers with high numbers would be held in a higher risk bracket as a result and fined as such once police officers caught them breaking the law. Drivers could reset or reduce their high numbers by taking driving classes or completing a set number of community service. 

Permalink Reply by Rich S on June 23, 2014 at 7:25am

That's a slippery slope. People could flag cars for any reason such as they think you're going too slow or are stopping for pedestrians in crosswalks and just say the opposite. Or they don't like the color of your car. Or they could get a bunch of their friends together to flag someone they didn't like. That's a huge opening for abuse unless you want to start bringing all those flaggers into court to testify under oath as to what they saw.  

Justin W. Siddons said:

Perhaps an app where you could flag cars as potentially dangerous and drivers with high numbers would be held in a higher risk bracket as a result and fined as such once police officers caught them breaking the law. Drivers could reset or reduce their high numbers by taking driving classes or completing a set number of community service. 

Permalink Reply by Justin W. Siddons on June 23, 2014 at 7:56am

It has the potential to be abused but you could help alleviate such things with some smart logic.

You would have to limit the flags any one user can give to the same person. The system would have to use proximity for flagging (tracked by satellite) so that if a group of people were attempting to abuse one driver they would all have to be presently driving near that driver hopefully making group abuse more difficult.

These high risk bracket drivers would be backed by logic based on location/time/users to determine what is a real offense and what isn't. Once launched the data alone would help perfect this logic ten-fold. Ultimately the flagged number is just a score based on this logic, the user isn't directly penalized for any one particular flag or group of flags. It's a classification system that is built to provide a risk reputation that could have ramifications once a driver breaks the law, i.e. the penalty for speeding might be higher as a result of being considered a high risk driver.

The real risk for abuse to me does not come from the users flagging but the decided governing body who runs the system. Not to mention how secure the registration system and app must be to work efficiently. As well sweeping acceptance from the government itself. 

Permalink Reply by Nançois on June 23, 2014 at 8:26am

What is the advantage of this? I send lots of messages to people, both verbal and non-verbal, when I don't like their driving and nothing positive ever seems to come from it. I can't imagine these "exchanges" going any better when conducted via text.

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