Mapcident: A Platform for sharing raw video of incidents

mapcident_com

mapcident_com

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I've been working recently on an idea, it's community focused, but a business too. And it is, hopefully, of interest to the members of the forum.

Mapcident.com - Is a platform for sharing raw content of incidents. I think the members here will appreciate, there is a vast amount of video collected, and of that much will have value to someone else (insurance companies, public safety organizations, victims, local residents). However currently there isn't a place to share it which makes the information easy to find.

Take, for example, a situation where a driver ('The Driver') records an incident on his dashcam, but it is unsafe to stop, or help is already on hand and the driver is too busy to stop. Without contact details for the involved parties ('The Interested Parties'), the driver with footage has no easy/central way to pass the footage on. While popular video sharing websites may work, and social media can help, they are reliant some change that the interested parties and the driver using the same words/street names, even though places have many different names to different people, or that they are in the same social media circles.

Mapcident takes the approach that everything happens somewhere (yes I am a geographer). So, every piece of footage is tied to it's location (through location extraction or manual entry) and a time. With that, Mapcident plots the footage on the map, and now, the driver just has to upload his video, and the interested parties just have to zoom into the area they had an accident, and, if desired, set a saved search to receive e-mail alerts.

The current vision is that any non-private individual interested parties (anything for commercial use) will need buy a license to use the footage from the content creator, so I hope it may give some return to content creator, fund the site, and incentivize contributors.

This is my first post about it anywhere public, and I hope it might be of interest to some of you.

Thanks,
Henry

p.s: There really isn't much on there right now (because this is the first time I have made it public)! Contributions are extremely welcome and appreciated.
 
wish you luck, not a new idea though, roadshamer (2015), comroads (2018) , dash (2020) have each had similar functionality, the first two are dead already, dash is new and has some innovative features
 
Welcome to DCT Henry :)
The idea is sound and seems workable but those willing to share footage will usually stop and talk with the involved parties, or perhaps notify the Police that they have footage. Truth be known, same as with most people a lot of dashcammers will simply choose to not be involved. And unless it becomes a generally well-known resource, few people are going to be helped by it because they won't know about it. Sometimes the best-intentioned and great ideas are simply unworkable in the real world ;)

BUT if you try it, I think you'll find many good folks here willing to join in the video sharing part :cool: even if we can't help financially.

Phil
 
I have seen Comroads, Dash and another called dashcamshare.com, though had not heard of roadshamer. Dash is cool, I like what they're doing but I think it's quite different. I don't know much about roadshamer but one thing I am concious of is that I do want to avoid going down the route of a negatively focused site. It could be easy to end up as an almost 'underworld' site of the web, not something I am interested in.

When I set out on this I too thought am I just doing the same thing that others have done before? And the answer is, sort of. There is such a huge volume of footage being collected that is useful to other users if they can find it. But so much footage is lost in the noise of social media, never to be seen again. The location focus, and saved search notifications, should make it easier for the lay person to find the footage of interest/relevance. This combined with the, coming soon, marketplace will hopefully make it useful to both people with a need, and people with footage.

H
 
I dont think pointing out that what others do in traffic are dangerous is negative, but i will admit a lot of other people will not feel that way.
I can see that on my own youtube uploads, where negative comments are far more frequent and i have even picked up a couple of haters that now will thumbs down any video of mine, even if it is a video of a cute puppies.
But it seem like nowadays many people feel that if someone are to comment on their driving, he or she better be a police officer, CUZ anyone else better shut up CUZ it is not their business, though it very much is, as they are braking the law and so putting all other on or near the road in some degree of danger.
 
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It is different how people react.
For instance on this forum i regular report in spammers to the admin, but if one of the guys here posted something that offended me or the forum rules to my knowledge, i would PM the person first and say i think you made a mess and you should clean it up.
I know i would if i made a mess in here ( and i have done that a few times ) but really there are no reason to bother a admin, i am totally able to see my own mess most times, and i am surely not here to provoke or make other people angry.
And while i have become very conflict seeking, thats just in real life, on a forum like this i see no reason for conflict so i would rather delete a post of mine if someone feel i am jumping up and down on their toes.

But ! it is also not a secret i am not like most people :)
 
I completely agree, I think it's also great if the community, local government and others can identify danger spots, or trends in traffic behavior, or even trends of an individual. I think every town has that one driver who a lot of people have had a run in with.

I actually think by the nature of the word Incident, it is likely that there will be a lot of unfortunate incidents on Mapcident, but I hope the platform can focus on positive reasons for having it, i.e. improving safety, allowing people to see what happens where they live, supporting litigation, reporting, and entertaining where appropriate!
 
Actually right now there is talks here in Denmark about reforming the process of getting a license, it is clear the learn the rules by heart approach are not working.
Okay what ever they do is probably also not going to work, the only thing that work is stopping people that should not drive from driving, and personally if that necessitate cutting off one of their legs, well so be it.
Harsh i know, but there are people that dont give a damn if they have a license or not, if they want to drive they will drive, and as they have nothing to loose they will drive in a manner that please them, and thats most likely a manner that is dangerous to other people on the road.
These same people will probably also not care about things like insurance on their car.

Last week a police speed checkpoint captured some guy, that prompted him to drive home, take the plates off his car and put a sticker there that said Fu.. police, and then go back and speed back and forth in front of the manned speed trap.
His car is now confiscated and he is going to jail for some months, and have to pay a 4100 USD fine, apparently that was his level of stupid, and i am sure when he get out and have sold enough drugs to buy a new car, that is just what he is going to do even if he no longer have a license.

Some people should not be driving, some people should not be living or at least be around living people,,,,,, it is very sad, but it is even more sad to ignore this fact of life.
 
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can someone link me to "dash" the 2020 referenced one? I can't find it
 
Would you have some geographic area 'alert' function? Smartphone app?


City, neighborhood, intersection, etc.

I suspect most dash cam users are not interested, or the files would be recorded over before anyone looked for them.

Incorporating fixed security cameras at businesses and homes would help, also. I'm not sure enough people would be interested that you could end up with a usable network?
 
dash riposki said:
Would you have some geographic area 'alert' function? Smartphone app?
Click to expand...
Hi,

Sorry for the deadly slow reply!

Yes you can setup an area alert, it's on the main page, just zoom to where you want your alert and click "Get Notified" Take a look: mapcident.com

Not going for a smartphone app for now, the web version is pretty usable on mobile, including upload, so not necessary for now, but one day, for sure.
 
While I'm not saying it's a bad idea, it needs to be borne in mind that puting footage of incidents in to the public domain can adversely affect any pending or future legal proceedings, certainly that's how the majotity of UK police forces view it.
Once it's out there it can't be recalled.
 
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