I wonder how well this will scale with time. I've certainly done things while driving that were reckless to varying degrees, I suspect most drivers have as well. How long until 50% of cars on the road have been tagged doing something reckless? Of course I can imagine a number of ways to handle this.
On a more broad note, I wonder how useful it really is to know that a specific vehicle acted recklessly sometime in the past. Seeing someone behaving poorly is good reason to avoid them on the roadway. However I also imagine a scenario where one driver did something to warrant an alert, and some time later every car on the roadway is trying to avoid that vehicle. Is there really any danger from that vehicle in the current situation?
What I would like to see is a map showing where the most incidents occur, and what type of incidents occur there. I assume most drivers genuinely set out intending to behave well, but do not for various reasons. Identifying locations where incidents happen would give civil engineers some valuable data about how their designs impact behavior, and would give police valuable information about where their presence would be useful.
I presume that the system would simply indicate the proportion of times that a vehicle is seen driving and performing a dodgy manoeuvre. If I'm seen on the roads 1,000 times and seen performing a dodgy lane change once (and I would like to apologise to the Mondeo driver on the A21 yesterday), that's the fact that should be recorded.
The thing is that there's not a 1:1 relationship between a "risky" maneuver and causing an accident. An example could be an F1 driver who takes curves at 20mph over the recommended speed in a sports car. Compare this mentally to a Prius driver who drives under the speed limit in the left lane. The Prius driver is "being safe" but causing a long line of tailgaters and people passing unsafely on the right, as well as agitating people and causing them to drive more aggressively. I doubt that the first few iterations of this system will take psychological effects on other drivers into account (if they ever consider that / have a profit motive to do so at all).
There is definitely a gradient of severity with "reckless" driving.
Have you ever driven full speed through a red light? Sat at a complete stop of a freeway in an attempt to merge in to traffic? Taken a U-turn on a freeway? There are things that don't cause an accident, but once a driver does, they should probably not be allowed behind the wheel for at least a year, some things possibly even a lifetime ban or some additional evaluation.
There is an interesting dichotomy because smart phone usage has really caused a big problem with distracted driving. Even Geico experienced an increase in claims last year, and I suspect this was why. When I watch traffic sometimes over 50% of drivers are looking at a phone screen rather than the road. At the same time, mobile sensors are enabling something which will end with roads being extremely safe and killing very small numbers of humans a year.
There is a lot of talk about privacy and freedom on the internet. Privacy and freedom on the road is dead in all dimensions. You won't be anonymous, you won't be able to take go somewhere when the police/authorities are looking for you, there may not even be private ownership of any vehicles in the US in 10-15 years.
On a more broad note, I wonder how useful it really is to know that a specific vehicle acted recklessly sometime in the past. Seeing someone behaving poorly is good reason to avoid them on the roadway. However I also imagine a scenario where one driver did something to warrant an alert, and some time later every car on the roadway is trying to avoid that vehicle. Is there really any danger from that vehicle in the current situation?
What I would like to see is a map showing where the most incidents occur, and what type of incidents occur there. I assume most drivers genuinely set out intending to behave well, but do not for various reasons. Identifying locations where incidents happen would give civil engineers some valuable data about how their designs impact behavior, and would give police valuable information about where their presence would be useful.