L.A. Lawmakers Looking To Take Legal Action Against Google For Not Solving Long-Running City Traffic Problems

from the fix-our-stuff-or-we'll-fix-you dept

Hopefully nothing will come of this, but one should never underestimate the creativity of city attorneys presented with the opportunity to rack up billable hours.

Yet another Los Angeles city councilman has taken Waze to task for creating "dangerous conditions" in his district, and the politician is now "asking the City to review possible legal action."

[...]

In a new letter sent to the City Attorney’s Office, [Councilman David] Ryu formally asked Los Angeles’ top attorney to examine Waze’s behavior.

While Ryu said he supported "advances in technology," he decried Waze and its parent company, Google, for refusing "any responsibility for the traffic problems their app creates or the concerns of residents and City officials."

The city's government believes the traffic/mapping app has made Los Angeles' congestion worse. That the very body tasked with finding solutions to this omnipresent L.A. problem is looking to hold a private third party company responsible for its own shortcomings isn't surprising. If a third-party app can't create better traffic flow, what chance do city planners have? But beyond the buck-passing on congestion, the city may have a point about Waze making driving around Los Angeles a bit more hazardous.

For several months, it's been noted that Waze has been sending drivers careening down the steepest grade in the city -- Baxter Street. Drivers seeking routes around Glendale Ave. traffic choke points have been routed to a street with a 32% grade, increasing the number of accidents located there and generally resulting in barely-controlled mayhem. When any sort of precipitation falls from the sky, the city goes insane. Drivers bypassing Glendale are now hurtling down a steep, water-covered hill, compounding the problem.

It's become noticeable enough that the city government has approached Waze/Google in the recent past, asking for an algorithmic change to prevent drivers from being routed to Baxter. These efforts were met with a reasonable response from Google.

"Google Maps models the ever-changing real world by mapping for ground truth," the company said. "This means that our map reflects any measures taken by local agencies to protect their citizens—for example, blocking off a steep road, or implementing turn restrictions. Should the local agency decide to restrict Baxter Street, this change will be taken into account when routing drivers through the Los Angeles area."

The city finds this response -- one that says the city should do something about limiting access to Baxter Street if driving on it is inherently dangerous -- unreasonable. These are the words of Councilman Paul Krekorian.

"[Google has] not demonstrated any willingness to engage," he told Ars last week. "It goes to the heart of problems—that’s not [the] good corporate citizenship I expect."

Yes, but "engage" how? The city believes the algorithm can be rewritten to exclude Baxter Street from suggested routes without screwing things up elsewhere. Residents of Baxter Street want even more -- for it to be erased from Google's map.

This is nothing more than a city looking to offload problems of its own making. I suppose the addition of a cautionary note when rerouting to Baxter wouldn't be that much of a problem to implement, but that shouldn't even necessarily be something Google needs to handle. The Waze app allows drivers to add notes about streets, traffic, etc. so it's highly likely motorists are being warned about the steep grade but choosing to take their chances anyway.

I'm not sure where the city wants to go with this, but that hasn't stopped it from tasking its attorney from trying to find some way to punish Google for city's long-running congestion problems. Google isn't part of the city government, isn't asked to participate in city planning efforts, cannot control access to the city's streets, and has no way of forcing drivers to take only certain routes. This is all stuff only the city can address, and it's decided to make it someone else's problem.

Filed Under: blame, david ryu, google maps, los angeles, paul krekorian, traffic congestion, waze
Companies: google

Waze, LA Cops Bury The Hatchet, Figure Out A Way To Cooperatively Help People

from the look-what's-possible-when-you-stop-bitching dept

Earlier this year, we noted how traffic-monitoring app Waze had become public enemy number one among law enforcement. Police in a growing number of cities have been trying to argue that the service puts police officers at greater risk of crazed-stalker attack by allowing users to share and comment on speed trap locations. Of course what law enforcement was really concerned about was a reduction in speed trap income, and someone with a death wish certainly doesn't need an app to locate a police officer in a marked car parked alongside a major interstate. There's also that whole First Amendment thing.

Among those Waze critics was Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck, who not only claimed Waze made parked officers a greater target for crazies, but would aid criminal skullduggerists in planning their Grand Theft Auto-esque heists:

"Beck said Tuesday the app could be used by criminals to target police or to evade officers. "It is not always in the public’s best interest to know where police are operating," Beck said. "There is a criminal element," he said, "who are able to ply their trade and craft more effectively by knowing where police are."

If you're a criminal using frequently inconsistent, crowdsourced speed trap data as your lookout for your multi-million dollar heist, you're probably not going to be much of an actual threat. Interestingly though, Beck appears to have come to (at least some of) his senses with the news that Los Angeles law enforcement is now working with Google and Waze on a partnership that will involve sharing kidnapping and hit-and-run data with Waze users:

"Waze, an Israeli-made traffic and navigation app bought by Google in 2013, already provides updates on road closures via user contributions. The new partnership with the West Coast city’s government will see further alerts pop up over the next few months, showing ‘amber’ incidents including hit-and-run attacks and kidnappings. "This is going to be updated in real-time, every two minutes, giving motorists the information they need to […] get home for dinner in time," said Garcetti."

We get too few relatively happy endings (not that kidnappings and hit-and-runs are happy endings), but using LA's 1.3 million Waze users as a force for good certainly seems like a welcome turnaround. Of course, that may not stop Beck from simultaneously trying to get speed trap data pulled from the app (and there are still some cops trying to flood Waze with bogus data to make crowdsourcing less useful), but it's a good example of crowdsourcing being a positive agent for change -- and not some kind of destructive societal menace that needs curtailing for the greater good.

Filed Under: amber alerts, data, la, lapd, traffic information, waze
Companies: google, waze

Miami Cops Flood Waze With Bogus Speed Trap Data, Don't Understand How Crowd Sourcing Works

from the you-think-you're-being-clever dept

We've been discussing how law enforcement organizations have started ramping up their war on the Google-owned, traffic info crowdsourcing app, Waze, in the belief that it's hindering local revenue generation. More specifically, they've been trying to stop the app and its users from reporting police speed trap locations, going so far as to make the absurd argument that the app allows citizens to become police "stalkers." Of course as noted previously, these officers are usually in plain sight and obviously marked, meaning if you really had an insane hankering to annoy a cop you can certainly do it without an app. It's also worth reminding officers that Waze users are simply having a perfectly legal conversation (just like flashing headlights or even holding up signs is legal), at least for now.

With the "mean old citizens are stalking us" defense apparently not working so well, some law enforcement agencies are turning to another, more clever (or so they think) solution: pollute Waze's data with false police speed trap locations. Officers in Miami have apparently taken to downloading the Waze app themselves just so they can flood the app with inaccurate data:

"Hundreds of officers in the Miami area have downloaded the app, which lets users provide real-time traffic information and identify areas where police are conducting speed enforcement. The local NBC affiliate says the officers are flooding Waze with false information on their activity in an attempt to make the app's information less useful to drivers. Disclosing the location of police officers "puts us at risk, puts the public at risk, because it's going to cause more deadly encounters between law enforcement and suspects," Sgt. Javier Ortiz, president of the Miami Fraternal Order of Police, tells the news outlet."

This was apparently something some Los Angeles homeowners tried as well late last year, when they reported false congestion to the app in the hopes of lessening local traffic load. Of course the very nature of crowd-sourced apps like this involves repeated false reports and unreliable users being weeded out not only by the system itself, but by more trustworthy reports from reliable Waze users with higher scores. Even if this dumb idea worked, and all Miami Waze users were confused into thinking speed traps were everywhere, wouldn't they drive slower and ruin revenue generation (what this is really about) anyway?

All the Miami police force is doing is wasting time and taxpayer money in a war on perfectly legal conversation. In fact, you could argue they're doing something worse by eroding their own safety. As it stands the Waze app isn't specifically singling out speed traps -- it allows users to mark any police location. As in, it allows users to mark any emergency vehicle at the side of the road for any reason, notifying Waze users that they should slow down. If this was truly about public safety and not revenue generation, you'd think this would at least be part of the conversation.

Still, law enforcement associations are increasing pressure on politicians (like Chuck Schumer), and Google's shown at least some flexibility on this. For me personally, it's all kind of a moot point anyway. I drove from New York to Seattle and back again last summer and found that police move positions so frequently, Waze probably indicated an accurate speed trap location around a third of the time anyway. Still, you'd hate to see any app made less useful just because it hurts a police department's ability to turn public protection into a major revenue stream.

Filed Under: crowdsourcing, fake data, miami, police, waze
Companies: google, waze

Law Enforcement Wants Google To Cripple Waze Because It Lets The Mean Old Public 'Stalk' Police Officers

from the I-can-see-you-parked-right-there dept

If you've tinkered with Waze at all you know the app allows users to post road conditions, lane closures, police locations, and other pertinent driving hazards with a heavy emphasis on the gamification of that information (i.e., you get points for reporting accurate information). I generally find the feature to be marginally useful if not annoying. Police move positions so quickly I find that crowdsourcing isn't particularly effective. As such, I generally just stick to my long-standing practice of flirting with a speed that's around six to seven miles over the speed limit (I know, I'm an absolute wild man).

Eager to protect a revenue generator, law enforcement has long wanted speed trap warning disabled in the app, though as we've noted, warning others of speed traps (whether that's flashing your lights or otherwise) is effectively protected speech. With previous arguments not working so well, the latest claim by the law enforcement community is that Waze is dangerous for police because it effectively facilitates stalking of officers. Or at least that's the argument being pushed forth by the National Sheriffs Association in their quest to make Waze much less useful to motorists:

"Sheriff Mike Brown of Bedford County, Virginia, said the police-reporting feature, which he called the "police stalker,'' presents a danger to law enforcement. "The police community needs to coordinate an effort to have the owner, Google, act like the responsible corporate citizen they have always been and remove this feature from the application even before any litigation or statutory action,'' said Brown, who also serves as the chairman of the National Sheriffs Association technology committee."

Of course, the police officers being "stalked" are parked in obvious line of sight on public motorways, and if a mentally-unstable person did want to cause problems, it's not too hard to find an opportunity. At the same time, the citizens using the app are simply having a perfectly-legal conversation. Combined with the fact that the quoted officers can't be bothered to cite a single instance where this sort of technology has ever been a problem in this regard, that's a pretty feeble justification for crippling an application by any measure. Regardless, it appears Google has already been making concessions; when it started porting Waze data into Google Maps earlier this year, police reporting data was notably absent.

Whatever, just as long as we're not talking about how much Waze location data gets shared with the law enforcement and intelligence communities, right?

Filed Under: free speech, google maps, gps, information, law enforcement, navigation, police, stalking, waze
Companies: google, waze