It may be better to call the police on your cell phone. That way, you can get an immediate response, which is especially important if it's a drunk or enraged driver. It might be good to be able to report violations on line, but the police can't really penalize drivers for offenses based purely on the reports of citizens. The police have no way of knowing if you are honest or have good judgement.

If a police officer pulls you over and gives you a ticket, you have the right to contest it in court, including the right to demand that the officer appear in person to justify his actions. Would you want the same thing to happen with citizen reporters? Bear in mind it would be a cases one one citizen's word against the other's.

Personally, I have no problem with cameras watching public streets and roads. You can't have a right or expectation of privacy on public steets.

You can't have public surveillance while the laws being enforced make absolutely no sense and are detrimental to public safety. And unfortunately, this is the condition of traffic law in the united states.

With a decent set of traffic control laws and road planning, even the dangers of "risky" behavior are minimized.

Don't give up even a little of your rights for a promise of security. Soon you will have neither.

The erosion of our rights has been ongoing for some time. Lately the US government has decided it can open your mail whenever it wants. Ooooh! I feel safer now.

While there is likely no real expectation of privacy while you are driving I think there is an expectation that we are safe from vigilante justice, which is the ultimate end of "citizens on patrol". Best we don't let it get bigger than it is. (MADD already sits outside taverns calling in plates to the police but the police still have to catch up with the driver in the act.) I certainly don't want Auntie Shrew calling me in for speeding because she thinks 5 or 10 under the posted limit is more reasonable and gets scared when I pass her.

It should be harder to obtain a license. Require a knowledge of traffic theory, vehicle dynamics, and a display of aptitude as a driver which applies both of the aforementioned.

Most, if not all, people complaining about speeding would not have licenses.

Thanks for the feedback to the idea. Just to respond to some of the great points made, the idea was never to replace police, or to enable vigilante justice. It was to create more of a supplementary data point that could be aggregated with other official citations, or court hearings etc, that would help bring the 'wisdom of crowds' to a situation, where someone is a habitually dangerous or illegal driver, but who just has been lucky to date, not to demonstrate this in front of law enforcement. So rather that being one citizen;s word against another's, if 50 citizens were willing to over 50 recorded incidents, sign a statutory declaration that they did in fact see this person running a red, ploughing through a pedestrian crossing, parking in a handicapped zone, then this could be added to the case at hand. The idea was, since driving on public roads, comes with a great sense of social responsibility and sharing of a space with the general public, then perhaps the general public could share their personal, rather than just law enforcement's, observations on what happens in that public space.

I hate to even put this idea out there because I would probably one day get a ticket this way but here goes....

Traffic Satellites

The same way your car's GPS tells you to "Turn Left", it could also say, "You are receiving a speeding ticket." Link it with the traffic lights and it knows if the light was actually "yellow". Of course it couldn't monitor all traffic violations but think about how much time the police spend watching for speeding drivers alone. They could devote hundreds of hours to more serious crimes.