Dash - a new website to view and analyse dash cam videos

[Nigel]

A lot of police forces in the UK allow you to upload dashcam footage, apparently though GPS from a dash cam in not really worth anything in court.

Must be most police forces by now, and the GPS is useful since it quickly shows that an incident is worth further investigation and getting the experts to calculate an accurate speed from the video image.

Often only needs a very short clip to show the actual incident, for example this 2 seconds rear + 2 seconds front video uploaded to the police Operation Snap website:

Denzel Masawi of Sunningdale Drive in Rushden, was convicted at Wellingborough Magistrates’ Court on Monday, December 16, after pleading not guilty to driving in excess of a 30mph speed limit.

The 26-year-old was recorded on the cyclist’s camera as Masawi overtook him at a speed which was calculated at a minimum of 91.5mph on the A502 Bedford Road in Rushden on Wednesday, September 11 this year.

Masawi was disqualified from driving for six months and fined £592 by magistrates and was ordered to pay a surcharge to fund victim services of £59, and costs of £620.

From West Mercia Police:

Over the past year since the initiative was launched just under 3,000 reports have been submitted from the general public with approx. 42% of offenders receiving warning letters and a further 43% processed for prosecution.

Operation Snap develops further to reduce unacceptable behaviour on the roads

Thanks to a recent road safety initiative for the past year road users have had the opportunity to use their own digital footage from dashcams and other devices to help keep the roads safer.

www.westmercia.police.uk

 

[kamkar]

That first operation snap conviction video, made me think of a TV program here following driving instructors, so a punk kid was there to retake his license as he had been caught doing 140 km/h in a 80 Zone ( highway )
Even with the driving instructor and cameras there he was speeding doing 76 in a 60 zone.
Some people just are not capable of operating a car, and the sooner the world figure this out and stop those people the better.
I know the UK have a law to lock up repeat offenders for life, and so do we Danes but not repeat but rather extremely dangerous people.
I would like to see something like that for motorists, for instance displaying blatant disregard for traffic code multiple times = not allowed to ever again operate any form of motor vehicle.

 

[Nigel]

That first operation snap conviction video, made me think of a TV program here following driving instructors, so a punk kid was there to retake his license as he had been caught doing 140 km/h in a 80 Zone ( highway )
Even with the driving instructor and cameras there he was speeding doing 76 in a 60 zone.
Some people just are not capable of operating a car, and the sooner the world figure this out and stop those people the better.
I know the UK have a law to lock up repeat offenders for life, and so do we Danes but not repeat but rather extremely dangerous people.
I would like to see something like that for motorists, for instance displaying blatant disregard for traffic code multiple times = not allowed to ever again operate any form of motor vehicle.

We can't lock up repeat driving offenders for life, I think the maximum is 14 years if you kill someone, but we can and do ban people from driving for life. Doesn't take too much to get an 80 year ban: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/student-banned-roads-eighty-years-11217928

 

[kamkar]

no not locking them up, just banning them driving for life.
Far too expensive to pay for a lifetime "hotel" suite, though i do think i idiot driver, are probably also a idiot human.

The locking up repeat offenders are for "regular" crimes ( IPP sentence )

Imprisonment for public protection - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

So i would like to see a BFDFPP law here in Denmark Banned From Driving For Public Protection, ranging anywhere from 10 years minimum to lifetime.

 

[joe384]

We can't lock up repeat driving offenders for life, I think the maximum is 14 years if you kill someone, but we can and do ban people from driving for life. Doesn't take too much to get an 80 year ban: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/student-banned-roads-eighty-years-11217928

I seem to read quite a lot of news articles in the UK where a driver has been "spared jail" even though they have caused serious injury although this may just be a case of newspaper bias, picking up on these stories because they are more controversial.

I do think we need to be a lot stricter here in UK, perhaps mandatory retests after any driving ban and the same for high speed accidents as currently it's left for the courts to decide.

 

[edvision]

I have seen a lot of overspeeding, especially at night, in the previous area in lived in (East London). I am surprised video itself is enough evidence as it is not easy to determine speed from raw footage only.

On a separate note, I was wondering what small fleets/businesses (1-10 vehicles) used to analyse their dash cam videos. From discussion with just a handful there isn't really anything out there for them as fleet management solutions are not always affordable.

 

[DT MI]

...as it is not easy to determine speed from raw footage only.

Actually it's not as difficult as a lot of people imagine. Speed is nothing more than the time it takes to travel a given distance. If there are points in the video where the distance between them is known it's just a matter of knowing the frame rate of the video and counting the number of frames it takes for the vehicle to get from one point to the next.

Here's a post with an example: https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/threads/dome-dab202.17083/#post-222840

 

[Kicker0927]

Hello everyone and happy new year!

After getting a dash cam a few months back (Viofo A119 V3 - thanks for the recommendations!) and talking to some friends with dash cams, I felt there was a desire for a dash cam centric web platform. So I decided with some friends to build a web application to store, organise and analyse dash cam videos. We do not only show your videos, but also GPS, speed, and additional information extracted from video files.
The web app will be live in early February but in the meantime I wanted to share some screenshots and also learn more from this community on what is really needed for our product to be useful to you all.

Our product is simply called Dash and our landing page is available on: https://dash.envsion.io/ . You can register interest on the landing page and we will notify you once the application is live. In the meantime, I'd love to hear from you on what you think Dash should be. Feel free to respond to this thread or PM me.

https://flic.kr/p/2ibQ9Ut

Looking forward to your feedback!

Cheers,
Ed.

Just signed up! Can’t wait to see your platform!

 

[Nigel]

I am surprised video itself is enough evidence as it is not easy to determine speed from raw footage only.

Generally the police will not issue a fixed penalty speeding ticket just on the video evidence because it is "not easy", however if it is seriously and obviously over the speed limit they will take it to court and get an expert to analyse the video, then it is up to the court to decide. In the case above they have given a speed of "a minimum of 91.5mph", so obviously they can work it out with an accuracy no worse than 0.5mph. Easiest way for me to work it out is to count how many frames it takes him to travel from one dotted white line to the next white line, and give the high speed it will need several lines to get a reasonable accuracy. Since the white lines are at a fixed distance apart (defined in the regulations) and the frame clock on a dashcam is always very accurate, it is easy to get within a few mph. In the video above they may have used the length of the no parking box for the traffic lights, that can be seen clearly to measure to the nearest frame and is significantly longer than the painted lines they have next to all the radar speed cameras, and if that distance is accurate enough for a speed camera then it accurate enough for a speeding conviction.

 

[edvision]

Just signed up! Can’t wait to see your platform!

Awesome to have your support kicker0927! Can you tell me what dash cams you use how you plan to use Dash ? We're trying to find out more about use cases for our future users . How much data or how many minutes do you think is good enough for you on the platform?

Actually it's not as difficult as a lot of people imagine. Speed is nothing more than the time it takes to travel a given distance. If there are points in the video where the distance between them is known it's just a matter of knowing the frame rate of the video and counting the number of frames it takes for the vehicle to get from one point to the next.

Here's a post with an example: https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/threads/dome-dab202.17083/#post-222840

That's very useful to know. Maybe it's something we can provide if we don't have speed data .

no not locking them up, just banning them driving for life.
Far too expensive to pay for a lifetime "hotel" suite, though i do think i idiot driver, are probably also a idiot human.

The locking up repeat offenders are for "regular" crimes ( IPP sentence )

Imprisonment for public protection - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

So i would like to see a BFDFPP law here in Denmark Banned From Driving For Public Protection, ranging anywhere from 10 years minimum to lifetime.

Is there a lot of dangerous driving in Denmark kamkar1? I always thought you were more law abiding than in countries like UK, France, Italy, etc.

 

[edvision]

Generally the police will not issue a fixed penalty speeding ticket just on the video evidence because it is "not easy", however if it is seriously and obviously over the speed limit they will take it to court and get an expert to analyse the video, then it is up to the court to decide. In the case above they have given a speed of "a minimum of 91.5mph", so obviously they can work it out with an accuracy no worse than 0.5mph. Easiest way for me to work it out is to count how many frames it takes him to travel from one dotted white line to the next white line, and give the high speed it will need several lines to get a reasonable accuracy. Since the white lines are at a fixed distance apart (defined in the regulations) and the frame clock on a dashcam is always very accurate, it is easy to get within a few mph. In the video above they may have used the length of the no parking box for the traffic lights, that can be seen clearly to measure to the nearest frame and is significantly longer than the painted lines they have next to all the radar speed cameras, and if that distance is accurate enough for a speed camera then it accurate enough for a speeding conviction.

Got it. By the way you seem to know a lot about all this stuff Nigel! Thanks for educating me. Where could I find more of this type of information - how local councils, police, etc use dash cam footage?

 

[kamkar]

There are a lot of idiots in Danish traffic, but i can go some times on drives and not feel the urge to press the event button to save something.
You will often see kids of people coming from way south of EU, that display really bad driving, my friend who lived near one of our ghettos, leaving his place at the first intersection i have been very close to get T- boned by red light runners, and this happened several times.
The fabric of Danish society are falling apart as we see cultural decline, bot in regard to us purebred Danes, but not least the people from around the world, which politicians call cultural enrichment, but i will dare to say we get as much of the bad stuff as we get good stuff, and so it is not enrichment.
We Danes are no longer what we use to be, and sadly it is not in a better direction our society are moving,,,,,,,, but many will tell you the opposite, but they are IMO delusional.
2 out of 3 new political parties here are founded on a strong stand against these immigrant or refugee people,,,,,, and i must admit in the last election i voted for one of the 2 parties, and it was nice to be able to vote again, cuz i am not voting for any party that have put us in our current position.

It used to be bikers shooting up streets and blowing up stuff here, now it is gangs made up of the kids of immigrants and refugees that do that.

 

[jokiin]

there are plenty of youtube channels featuring 'bad drivers of (insert any country you like)' as people seem to think their country is the only one that has bad drivers, reality is every country has them

 

[Nigel]

Where could I find more of this type of information

FAQ Caught Speeding, Operation Snap, Operation Tutelage

gosafe.org

 

[Paul Iddon]

File sizes are getting bigger with the advent of true 4k.

 

[edvision]

File sizes are getting bigger with the advent of true 4k.

True. Do most people want to view their videos on the web in 4K though or would 1080P or 2K resolution be enough? On our end presumably we could do some computer vision on the original 4K video as it has much finer details but then present our insights on a subsampled video at a lower resolution to save bandwidth for the end user. They will still have the ability to download the original video.

 

[Nigel]

True. Do most people want to view their videos on the web in 4K though or would 1080P or 2K resolution be enough? On our end presumably we could do some computer vision on the original 4K video as it has much finer details but then present our insights on a subsampled video at a lower resolution to save bandwidth for the end user. They will still have the ability to download the original video.

Most people still have monitors less than 1080 resolution, so they do not need 4K streaming video, what they do need is a zoom function to zoom in on the action and number plates. Zoom is something they may not have on any of their devices so having it on a website would be a good reason to use the website. They will probably want to download the zoomed version.

 

[edvision]

Most people still have monitors less than 1080 resolution, so they do not need 4K streaming video, what they do need is a zoom function to zoom in on the action and number plates. Zoom is something they may not have on any of their devices so having it on a website would be a good reason to use the website. They will probably want to download the zoomed version.

Would that be zoom on still images or zoom while the video is being played? I presume if we could read the number plate then there may not be a need to zoom for this specific purpose, but possibly for other use cases.

 

[Nigel]

Would that be zoom on still images or zoom while the video is being played? I presume if we could read the number plate then there may not be a need to zoom for this specific purpose, but possibly for other use cases.

Sometimes you want to zoom in on the video to see the detail of what happened, who hit who, sometimes it is better to see the whole video but with a magnifying glass overlay to enlarge the number plates, preferably automatically positioned over the readable plates and with a proper text caption giving the AI interpretation of what it says.

 

[jokiin]

zooming a 4k file on a 1080p or lower monitor doesn't match the results you get with a 4k monitor, people that are buying 4k cameras though are more likely to have monitors to suit, if you're going for a picture in picture view along with mapping etc then all video is going to be compressed so some full screen/zoom options are going to be useful anyway