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Show HN: Report idling vehicles in NYC (and get a cut of the fines) with AI

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194 points rafram | 1 comments | 22 Jun 25 17:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.209s | source

New York City has this cool program that lets anyone report idling commercial vehicles and get a large cut of the fines [1]. It's been in the news recently [2].

I've filed a few reports, and I found the process frustrating and error-prone. The forms are fiddly, there's way too much information that needs to be copied down from the video by hand, you have to use a third-party app to take a timestamped video and a different app to compress it before uploading, and approximately none of it can be done on your phone — the device you probably used to record your video in the first place.

I built Idle Reporter to make filing complaints into a five-minute process that you can do entirely from your phone.

Idle Reporter uses AI to automatically extract all the required information and screenshots from the video and fill out the form for you. It compresses your video, adds the required screenshots, and uploads the whole thing to DEP. All you have to do is log in, give it a final check, and submit.

The AI features cost me money to run, so I put those behind a subscription ($5.99/month, which can pay for itself after a single report). There's a one-week free trial so you can test it out. All the other features — including a fully-featured timestamp camera, which other apps charge for, and an editor for filling out the forms manually and submitting in a single step — will be free forever, as a service to the community.

The app is iOS-only for now — part of this was an exercise in learning SwiftUI in my spare time.

Check it out on the App Store and let me know what you think!

[1]: https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/environment/idling-citizens-air...

[2]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-city-idling-law-report...

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casenmgreen ◴[23 Jun 25 07:08 UTC] No.44353214[source]▶
It seems to me this is probing behaviour.

It is a low-risk, initial probe, to test the bounds of what currently is considered normal.

If it fails - it it is rejected - it was not controversial (parking fines) and so the cost is low.

If it succeeds, the boundary of normal has been moved, and then civilian reporting of crimes for money will be extended to other crimes.

Given USA now has authoritarian Government of Donald, this is obviously and incredibly bad.

An obvious thought is that it will come to be used by ICE to incentivize civilians to report on "illegal immigrants", as defined by Donald.

In Nazi Germany, Anne Frank was betrayed, revealed to the Gestapo, sent to a concentration camp and died there, because two Dutch brothers accepted the incentive provided by the Nazi party, the reward for doing so, to hand in Jews.

You do not use civilians for law enforcement because when misused it fundamentally and profoundly undermines civil society.

The State defines profoundly unjust new "crimes", and then sets everyone watching everyone, in return for pay, to accuse each other - and this in the "mass deportation", and "due process not necessary" environment now brought into being by Donald.

replies(2): >>44355532 #>>44396120 #
1. chillenb23 ◴[27 Jun 25 12:05 UTC] No.44396120[source]▶
However, in this case, the idlers are the Nazi's killing people's lungs, and the citizens are accepting the incentive provided by the people to catch the killers?