Published By: KAIST, 04/10/2017

>> View the Article <<

Summary

Professor Uichin Lee and a research team at KAIST have developed and tested an app called Mobile Roadwatch. Mobile Roadwatch is a crowdsourced app that helps drivers record traffic violations with their phones and report them to the police. Professor Lee and his team aim to provide a safer way to capture and report traffic violations while operating a vehicle, in hopes that the reports will improve public safety.

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of Article: 14

Extended Discussion Questions

• (Depending on grade level) As a driver/Imagining yourself as a driver in a couple years, how seriously do you take the rules of the road? Why? How would the possibility of having your driving recorded affect your driving habits?
• How might citizen participation in the traffic citation system with Mobile Roadwatch help enforce safer driving habits?
• Could Mobile Roadwatch promote any bad driving habits? How?
• What are some privacy issues that video recording of the road may cause for the driver (accused of) committing the traffic violation?
  • What are some privacy issues the person reporting the violation may face?
  • What are some privacy issues bystanders or other drivers near the location of the recorded violation may face?
  • Are there ways any of these privacy issues could be prevented or mitigated?
• The article notes that Korea’s “Looking for a Witness” traffic violation app received over 500,000 reports in a year and a half.
  • What issues could come from having so much information from crowdsourced traffic violation reporting?
  • How could that flood of information be dealt with to avoid information overload?
• Could issues arise from exaggerated, mistaken, or falsified traffic violation reports?
  • How do you think existing prejudices in society might affect which violations are reported?
  • How could those issues be mitigated?
• Imagine you are in court fighting a small traffic citation, and the police officer introduces a video recording of a past unrelated violation you weren’t ever cited for. How could this affect your chances of dismissing the citation?

Relating This Story to the CSP Curriculum Framework

Global Impact Learning Objectives:

• LO 7.1.2 Explain how people participate in a problem-solving process that scales.
• LO 7.3.1 Analyze the beneficial and harmful effects of computing.
• LO 7.4.1 Explain the connections between computing and real-world contexts, including economic, social, and cultural contexts.

Global Impact Essential Knowledge:

• EK 7.1.2A Distributed solutions must scale to solve some problems.
• EK 7.1.2F Crowdsourcing offers new models for collaboration, such as connecting people with jobs and businesses with funding.
• EK 7.1.2G The move from desktop computers to a proliferation of always-on mobile computers is leading to new applications.
• EK 7.3.1A Innovations enabled by computing raise legal and ethical concerns.
• EK 7.3.1G Privacy and security concerns arise in the development and use of computational systems and artifacts.
• EK 7.3.1J Technology enables the collection, use, and exploitation of information about, by, and for individuals, groups, and institutions.

Banner Image: “Network Visualization – Violet – Offset Crop“, derivative work by ICSI. New license: CC BY-SA 4.0. Based on “Social Network Analysis Visualization” by Martin Grandjean. Original license: CC BY-SA 3.0.