Pros and Cons of Body Cameras from the Public and ... - pros and cons for body cameras
Required door maneuvering clearances can overlap ramp landings (it is advisable to locate the swing of doors outside ramp landings for greater safety).
Pedestrian rampslope
Built-up curb ramps are permitted, but they cannot project in parking spaces, access aisles, or vehicle traffic lanes. A top landing at least 36″ deep is required at all built-up curb ramps.
Police stand guard as demonstrators, marking the one-year anniversary of the shooting of Michael Brown, protest along West Florissant on August 10, 2015, in Ferguson, Missouri.
Taser has started to get into the business of making sense of its enormous archive of video footage by building an in-house “AI team.” In February, the company acquired a computer vision startup called Dextro and a computer vision team from Fossil Group Inc. Taser says the companies will allow agencies to automatically redact faces to protect privacy, extract important information, and detect emotions and objects — all without human intervention. This will free officers from the grunt work of manually writing reports and tagging videos, a Taser spokesperson wrote in an email. “Our prediction for the next few years is that the process of doing paperwork by hand will begin to disappear from the world of law enforcement, along with many other tedious manual tasks.” Analytics will also allow departments to observe historical patterns in behavior for officer training, the spokesperson added. “Police departments are now sitting on a vast trove of body-worn footage that gives them insight for the first time into which interactions with the public have been positive versus negative, and how individuals’ actions led to it.”
Detectable warnings are required on curb ramps at transit facilities covered by DOT’s Standards (facilities used by state and local governments to provide designated public transportation services, such as rail stations and bus stations). They are not required at non-transit facilities subject to DOJ’s Standards. DOT also requires detectable warnings on curb ramps in projects funded by the Federal Highway Administration. The Board has published new guidelines for the public rights-of-way that address requirements for detectable warnings at curb ramps and other transitions along public streets and sidewalks where hazards to people with vision impairments are greater.
Pedestrian rampdesign
Taser’s corporate ethos has long been inspired by cinematic science fiction. The company’s LinkedIn page describes its Seattle headquarters as “a mix of Star Wars, James Bond, Get Smart and Star Trek.” It even boasts eye scanners and sliding doors lifted from “Men in Black.”
Common use circulation paths must be accessible in work areas 1,000 sq. ft. or more in size. Ramps on these circulation paths must comply except that:
Christoph Musik, an expert in computer vision from the University of Vienna, has written extensively about the human assumptions built into such systems. Hunches are always subjective, he points out, unlike evaluating the proposition of whether or not an object is a cat. “It is extremely difficult to formulate universal laws of behavior or suspicious behavior, especially if we focus on everyday behavior on a micro level,” Musk wrote in an email. “‘Smart’ or ‘intelligent’ systems claiming to recognize suspicious behavior are not as objective or neutral as they [seem].”
Raised crossings, where provided, eliminate the need for curb ramps while serving to reduce traffic speeds. Consult local Standards for application requirements, including slope for vehicle traffic, height, and markings.
NYC DOTpedestrian rampSpecifications
Taser CEO Rick Smith discussed a similar vision in a recent FastCompany profile, explaining that real-time artificial intelligence technology could have aided the officer who killed Philando Castile, the 32-year-old African-American man driving with his girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter, by alerting him to the fact that Castile had a gun license and no violent criminal record.
Taser is collecting an unprecedented video archive of law enforcement encounters — and it wants to use AI and “deep learning” to predict criminal behavior.
Ramps and curb ramps are required along accessible routes to span changes in level greater than ½”. Elevators and, under certain specified conditions, platform lifts, can be used as an alternative. Portions of accessible routes with running slopes steeper than 5% also must be treated as ramps.
Under the ADA Standards, which apply primarily to facilities located on sites, detectable warnings are required at transit facilities (at curb ramps and along open drop-offs of rail station boarding platforms). Specifically, the curb ramp requirements apply only to public transportation facilities covered by DOT’s ADA Standards. Curb ramps at all other facilities are not required to have detectable warnings. New guidelines for public rights-of-ways issued by the Board will address detectable warnings on curb ramps and other transitions along public streets and sidewalks. In addition, DOT requires detectable warnings on curb ramps in projects funded by the Federal Highway Administration.
This is why artificial intelligence experts fear that the human decisions that shape the way the data is collected, labeled, and perceived might not just reinforce the racial biases of the criminal justice system, but automate them. Dextro’s deep learning system, for instance, learns to pick out objects, like stop signs, guns, and license plates, and to discern actions, like the difference between a jogger and a suspect fleeing the police.
Predictions aside, the mere ability to trawl for evidence from body-worn camera footage also widens the range of “potentially suspicious persons” who can be contacted by law enforcement, according to Joh, the legal scholar of policing. “It’s a pretty radical expansion of the kind of discretion law enforcement has.” At such an indiscriminate scale, all kinds of insights and individuals get swept into an automated investigation process. “Once you’ve created a giant video database, it’s possible to search and re-search it, it’s not clear that there are any legal limits,” she said, since the Fourth Amendment focuses on the point of collection. “Generally speaking, there aren’t too many rules on what the police can do after they collect the information.”
Pedestrian rampNYC
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In 2010, Taser’s longtime vice president Steve Tuttle “proudly predicted” to GQ that once police can search a crowd for outstanding warrants using real-time face recognition, “every cop will be RoboCop.” Now Taser has announced that it will provide any police department in the nation with free body cameras, along with a year of free “data storage, training, and support.” The company’s goal is not just to corner the camera market, but to dramatically increase the video streaming into its servers.
Yet body-worn cameras show the police point of view by design; additionally, their footage will likely be labeled by officers, rather than civilians, meaning that systems could be taught to classify the behaviors of certain civilians as aggressive if such categorizations helped to support the officer’s narrative in a use of force encounter.
A landing at least 36″ long at the top of curb ramps provides room to approach or exit ramps and turn without encountering compound slopes of flared sides. Side flares are intended mainly to prevent tripping hazards. They are not designed to accommodate wheelchair maneuvering except in alterations where space constraints preclude a compliant top landing.
The Philadelphia school ordered teachers to “stay neutral” on Israel’s war on Gaza, but they helped students make pro-Palestine posters.
But while the complex associations of a deep learning system are opaque even to its programmers, the training labels for its datasets are human-generated. They can also be subject to bias. Many neural networks have already been found to reveal the geographical, racial, and socio-economic positions of their human trainers even as their complexity lends them an appearance of greater objectivity. Studies show that facial recognition neural nets trained on white faces, for instance, have trouble recognizing the faces of African-Americans.
Hamid Khan, lead organizer for the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, contends that feeding police information in real time about an individual’s prior records may only encourage more aggressive conduct with suspects. “We don’t have to go very far into deep learning,” he said, for evidence of this phenomena. “We just have to look at the numbers that already exist for suspicious activity reporting, which doesn’t even require [advanced] analytics.” He noted that when the LAPD’s Suspicious Activity Reporting program, which relied on analog human tips, was audited by the city’s inspector general, it determined that black women residents were being disproportionately flagged.
Recommendation: Perpendicular curb ramps are preferred over diagonal curb ramps. Unless the radius is large enough, it can be difficult to locate the clear space at the bottom of diagonal curb ramps that is outside active traffic lanes. The orientation also can mislead people with vision impairments who use curb slopes as a cue to crossings.
DOT’s ADA Standards apply to facilities used to provide “designated public transportation.” This includes transportation services state or local governments provide the general public on a regular and continuing basis by bus, rail, or other conveyance (excluding aircraft and public school transportation). DOT’s ADA Standards also apply to intercity and commuter rail stations. Curb ramp detectable warnings are required only at these facilities. Detectable warnings are required at rail station boarding platforms with open drop-offs at any transit facility, including private sector transit facilities subject to DOJ’s ADA Standards.
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Recommendation: Provide edge protection along the sides of built-up curb ramps to prevent tipping hazards. Otherwise, consider a wider ramp width (48″ minimum) so that maneuvering does not occur near drop-offs.
When civil liberties advocates discuss the dangers of new policing technologies, they often point to sci-fi films like “RoboCop” and “Minority Report” as cautionary tales. In “RoboCop,” a massive corporation purchases Detroit’s entire police department. After one of its officers gets fatally shot on duty, the company sees an opportunity to save on labor costs by reanimating the officer’s body with sleek weapons, predictive analytics, facial recognition, and the ability to record and transmit live video.
The report repeatedly compares Taser’s repurposing of its video data not just to pre-crime, but to the efforts of Wal-Mart, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, all of which scrape their respective user data to anticipate purchases, tailor text, monitor activities, and optimize search results. Taser’s AI unit is using the same cutting-edge technique as these major technology companies: deep learning.
Recommendation: Providing the least possible slope below the 1:12 (8.33%) maximum offers better usability for a wider range of users. Specifying a running slope of 7.5% maximum and a cross slope of 1.5% maximum for exterior ramps will accommodate most irregularities or variances due to construction methods or materials according to a study sponsored by the Board ("Dimensional Tolerances in Construction and for Surface Accessibility" by David Kent Ballast.)
Edge protection along ramp runs and landings keep wheelchair casters and crutch tips on the surface and can be provided by curbs, barriers, or extended surfaces.
Because the algorithms for these systems are often not disclosed, a judge would have no way of evaluating the likelihood of a false match when presented with investigative evidence about a suspect’s crime. Civil liberties experts find this especially disconcerting given the fact that machine learning systems make probabilistic, rather than binary, judgments. Amazon mistakenly predicting that you desire more toilet paper has vastly different implications for individual liberty than a private technology company’s cloud mistakenly telling an officer, with indefinite certainty, to react lethally to a seemingly aggressive suspect.
Pedestrian rampticket
Notational tips for users of screen reading software follow. In this document ″ indicates inches and ′ indicates feet. Some images are paired with visually hidden notes. These annotations are prefaced with begin and end image notes.
Where detectable warnings are required (or provided anyway) they must meet specifications for size, spacing, and contrast. These detailed criteria provide a distinctive texture intended to have a uniform meaning in alerting persons to the approach to vehicular areas (as well as drop-offs along rail station platforms).
Deep learning works by teaching computers to recognize patterns. The system is not given if-then rules; instead, it’s asked to infer associations from the large batches of data. Whereas a rule-based algorithm learns that a “cat equals two ears, narrow body, and a tail, but isn’t a rat” — and incrementally makes progress as it’s given increasingly specific rules — a deep learning system ingests a training set of hundreds of thousands of images that have been labeled as cats, lynxes, wolves, and so on. Layers of “neural networks” mimic the structure of a human brain to strengthen or weaken associations based on each correct association. But exactly how the deep learning system ultimately grasps the essence of a cat is not known; as with the juridical system for obscenity, it just knows it when it sees it.
“Body cameras are really just a story about private influence on public policing,” Joh said. “Whoever captures the audience first wins. And Taser is capturing the entire market. They get to shape the language that we use, they get to set the agenda, they get to say ‘this is possible’ and therefore the police can do it.”
Handrails on assembly area ramps can be discontinuous and lack extensions to allow access to seating and to permit crossovers within aisles. (§505.3, §505.10)
In assembly areas, aisle ramps required to be accessible are exempt from some handrail requirements. Aisle ramps (or portions of them) adjacent to seating that are not part of a required accessible route to accessible seating or to other accessible elements do not have to comply with any ramp or handrail requirements.
Intermediate landings between runs must be at least 60″ wide clear and 60″ long clear where ramps change direction (any change from linear). Handrails, edge protection, vertical posts and other elements cannot obstruct or overlap the minimum 60″ by 60″ clearance. The 12″ minimum handrail extensions required at the top and bottom of ramp runs must be in the same direction of the run, but they can turn or wrap where handrails are continuous at the inside turn of dogleg or switchback ramps.
If curb ramps are placed diagonally at an intersection, it is important that clear space 48″ long minimum is available at the bottom that is outside active vehicle traffic lanes and is located within marked crossings, where provided. A segment of curb at least 24″ long beyond flares must be provided on both sides of curb ramps with side flares within marked crossings. This curb segment provides an orienting cue at crossings for people with vision impairments.
Curb ramps can have returned sides, but a top landing is required under all conditions to allow maneuvering to and from the run.
Pedestrian rampdimensions
In alterations where sufficient landing space is not available, side flares must be provided and cannot slope more than 1:12 to facilitate wheelchair maneuvering. Parallel curb ramps (page 12) provide an alternative in such conditions.
“The ‘RoboCop’ narrative,” said Marcus Womack, an executive vice president for software and services, “doesn’t align with our mission and is a poor example of how technology can impact policing. In particular, we are not using AI technology to make decisions for officers. We see the real impact being that this technology will make police officers more human.”
Overall, the report sells departments on how Taser will leverage its cloud of data “to anticipate criminal activity” and “predict future events.” “Imagine,” the report tells officers, that “you can find out if someone has a criminal record instantly — or be notified if someone’s demeanor has changed and may now be a threat.” While a tool like emotion detection is more marketing hype than imminent reality, such goals reveal the ambitions of Taser’s long-term blueprint.
Taser responded that it believes body camera “video represents an important step closer to what happened at an event.” When asked about racially disparate policing practices, the spokesperson said that the “huge gain in information fidelity and transparency in video (versus text) is something that we believe can identify such bias.”
Handrails are required on both sides of ramps with a rise greater than 6″. The Standards do not require lower handrails serving children except at ramps serving play areas, but include a recommended height (28″ maximum) and separation (9″ minimum) from the required handrail to minimize entrapment hazards.
Baltimore City Police Commissioner Kevin Davis, at podium, shows a sample of footage from a body camera worn by a police officer during a news conference at police headquarters on Dec. 21, 2015.
When questioned about the potential for predictive policing discussed in other interviews and advertised at several moments throughout the company’s 34-page report, a Taser spokesperson was more circumspect and said the company would only be using machine learning to improve “workflow” at this time. The spokesperson stated, contrary to the 2017 Taser technology report’s detailed speculations, that “Axon is not building predictive policing and will not make predictions on behalf of our customers. In addition, all Axon machine learning work is under the oversight of our AI Ethics Board that we are finalizing.”
Curb ramps must be oriented so that the grade break is perpendicular to the curb ramp run to ensure a smooth transition to streets, including at corners with a wide radius. The curb ramp opening can be aligned with the curb line (left) or more directionally oriented to the crosswalk (right).
The ADA Standards do not require that curb ramps have side flares, but limit the slope (1:10 maximum) where they are provided. Side flares are advisable where pedestrian traffic may cross runs to prevent tripping hazards. Side flares are essential in alterations when space for a top landing (36″ deep minimum) is not available; in this instance, side flares (1:12 maximum slope) are necessary to accommodate wheelchair maneuvering that will partially occur at flares in the absence of full landing space at the top unless a parallel-type curb ramp is provided.
When it comes to programs like stop and frisk in New York City or traffic violations in Ferguson, Missouri, courts have determined that decisions about who, what, and where to police can have a racially disparate impact. In her book “Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy,” Cathy O’Neil argues that unjust decisions are reinforced when they’re programmed into computer systems that make claims to objectivity. She discusses the example of PredPol, the controversial predictive policing software first used in Los Angeles in 2009. PredPol is careful to advertise the fact that it uses geographic, rather than demographic, inputs to predict where nuisance crimes like loitering will occur. But because such crimes are already over-policed in black neighborhoods, the data fed to the algorithm is already skewed. By then sending more police to the computer-generated “loitering hotspots,” the system reinforces what O’Neil calls a “pernicious feedback loop,” whereby it justifies the initial assumptions it was fed. Any crime-predicting algorithm, O’Neil emphasizes, has the power to bring into being the world it predicts.
Requirements for curb ramps apply to ramps that cut through curbs or are built up to them. New guidelines the Board is developing for public rights-of-way will further address curb ramps located along public streets and sidewalks, but they are not discussed in this guide. DOJ’s 2010 ADA Standards require curb ramps at newly constructed or altered streets, highways, and street-level pedestrian walkways to provide an accessible route for pedestrians at intersections (28 CFR 35.151(i)).
Or take the case of the criminal justice consulting firm Northpointe. A ProPublica investigation of Northpointe’s algorithm used to calculate the risk of recidivism was shown to be twice as likely to incorrectly decide black defendants were at a higher risk of committing future crimes. But while reporters were able to analyze the questionnaires used by the company, which disputed ProPublica’s findings, they were unable to analyze Northpointe’s proprietary software.
Level landings are required at the top and bottom of each run. Changes in level greater than 1:48 are not permitted at landings. Landings must be designed to prevent the accumulation of water.
Taser’s investments in artificial intelligence, she added, seem like a more “scientific-sounding version of broken windows policing.” The expectation of finding crime may influence what the officers end up finding.
Legal experts and surveillance watchdogs caution, however, that any company that automates recommendations about threat assessments and suspicions may transform policing tactics for the worse.
No, only a minimum (36″) is required between handrails. The Standards do not require center or intermediate handrails on wide ramps.
The height of runs is limited (30″ maximum), but there is no limit on the number of runs a ramp may have. Long ramps with many runs can be strenuous for people using manual wheelchairs. While intermediate landings offer resting points, they do not reduce the amount of effort that must be exerted to negotiate multiple runs.
Along runs and landings, the minimum clear width must be measured between the leading edge of handrails. This also applies to landings required to be at least 60″ by 60″ where ramps change directions so that the minimum landing area remains clear.
Slope represents the proportion of vertical rise to horizontal length and is specified in the Standards as a ratio (e.g., 1:12). It also can be expressed as a percentage, pitch, or in degrees. The running slope is to be uniform along a run, although slight variations may occur with certain materials such as concrete. No other changes in level other than the running slope (1:12 maximum) and cross slope (1:48 maximum) are permitted. Variations in slope, such as grade breaks within runs, can disrupt wheelchair travel.
In the last update, the ADA Standards were revised to focus more clearly on facilities located on sites in recognition of separate criteria the Access Board is developing for public rights-of-ways. The public rights-of-way guidelines will address requirements for detectable warnings due to hazards to people with vision impairments along public streets and sidewalks. At facilities located on sites, various measures can help reduce hazards, including reduced traffic speeds, marked crossings with pedestrian right-of-way, and speed-bumps, and other optional traffic calming measures.
But the company took its sci-fi references to the next level in a little-publicized Law Enforcement Technology Report released earlier this year. In one of the interviews featured in the report, Arizona State University scientist George Poste explains that while artificially intelligent policing has yet to realize “the fully futuristic dimension of ‘RoboCop’ where you essentially have someone wearing an exoskeleton linked to advanced artificial intelligence capabilities,” or “the Tom Cruise ‘Minority Report’-level of cognitive prediction, … patterns of individual behavior will become increasingly informative in revealing the probability that an individual will act in a particular fashion.”
Taser isn’t the only company selling agencies on its powers of speculation. A spokesperson for the Russian company Ntechlab told me that its high-performing facial recognition algorithm is able to detect “abnormal and suspicious behavior of people in certain areas.” Several major face recognition companies have already been teaching their systems to detect anomalous behaviors in crowds. Earlier this year, IBM, which has spent over $14 billion on predictive policing, advertised that its Deep Learning Engine could pinpoint the location and identity of suspects in real time. And for the last several years, researchers funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency have been developing “automated suspicion algorithms” to predict and analyze behavior from videos, text, and online images. But as the market leader for video recording hardware, having relationships with an estimated 17,000 of the country’s 18,000 police departments, Taser’s research investments have an outsized influence on law enforcement tactics.
Although intended as a grim allegory of the pitfalls of relying on untested, proprietary algorithms to make lethal force decisions, “RoboCop” has long been taken by corporations as a roadmap. And no company has been better poised than Taser International, the world’s largest police body camera vendor, to turn the film’s ironic vision into an earnest reality.
The required landing at the top of curb ramps allows an accessible route to connect to the ramp opening. Side flares, where provided, are intended primarily to prevent tripping hazards, not to accommodate wheelchair maneuvering at ramps (except in alterations where sufficient landing space is unavailable). Side flare slopes cannot exceed 1:10 maximum (or 1:12 maximum in alterations where a top landing is unavailable).
Landings subject to wet conditions must be designed to prevent the accumulation of water. Landings are permitted slopes not steeper than 1:48 to allow for drainage.
This raw data fed into video analytics systems is itself captured and created by the police, said Elizabeth Joh, a law professor and policing expert at the University of California, Davis. “If you think about it,” she said, “some of the factors that algorithms use are products of human discretion. Crime reporting, contact cards, and arrest rates are not neutral. … You get analog facts transformed into unassailable, objective truths, and we have to be pretty skeptical about that.” Teaching the machine to look for “hoodies” may already be a reflection of human assumptions, not criminal propensity.
“Contributing to land theft and unlawful evictions of Palestinians in the West Bank would be a direct violation of the Supply Chain Act.”
A police officer wears a body camera during an anti-Trump protest in Cleveland, Ohio, near the Republican National Convention, July 18, 2016.
Ramp runs must have a clear width of 36″ minimum (measured between handrails where provided). The width of ramps that are part of a means of egress may further be determined by applicable life safety codes and requirements for minimum exit widths greater than 36″.
Nondisclosure agreements allow private companies like Taser to defend their proprietary computing systems from public scrutiny, Joh explained. “Typically we think we have oversight into what police can do,” said Joh. “Now we have third-party intermediary, they have a kind of privacy shield, they’re not subject to state public record laws, and they have departments sign contracts that they are going to keep this secret.”
Despite prominent civil rights groups highlighting the need for comprehensive policies, state and local level legislation has lagged in regulating who can access body-worn camera footage, how long it is stored, and who gets to see it. But the biggest impediment to making sure body-worn camera footage remains accountable might be the manufacturers themselves.
As privately owned policing tactics become increasingly black-boxed, citizens will have no recourse to uncover how they ended up on their city’s list of suspicious persons or the logic guiding an algorithm’s decisions. In “RoboCop,” for instance, a secret rule prohibits the robot from arresting any of the owner-corporation’s board members.
With an estimated one-third of departments using body cameras, police officers have been generating millions of hours of video footage. Taser stores terabytes of such video on Evidence.com, in private servers, operated by Microsoft, to which police agencies must continuously subscribe for a monthly fee. Data from these recordings is rarely analyzed for investigative purposes, though, and Taser — which recently rebranded itself as a technology company and renamed itself “Axon” — is hoping to change that.
Surface requirements and clearances facilitate a power grip along the length of handrails. Handrails can have circular or non-circular cross-sections, but must have rounded edges. The gripping surface and adjacent surfaces must be free of abrasive or sharp elements.
The problem with any suspicious activity reporting, automated or not, is that suspicion always lies in the eye of the beholder. As The Intercept reported in February, the Transportation Security Administration’s own research showed that the agency’s program to detect suspicious behavior in travelers was unscientific, unreliable, and dependent on racial stereotypes.
A previously undisclosed email and new documents show the Project Nimbus deal isn’t covered by Google’s general terms of service.
“Everyone refers to ‘Minority Report’ … about how they use facial recognition and iris recognition,” said Ron Kirk, director of the West Virginia Intelligence Fusion Center, which uses both technologies, in an interview with Vocativ. “I actually think that that is the way of the future.”
Curb ramps can be oriented parallel to sidewalks. This design provides an option where limited space precludes a top landing. A level landing 48″ long minimum (60″ preferred) accommodates maneuvering between runs and right-angle turns to connecting routes, such as parking access aisles and crossings.
In an interview in Taser’s future of policing report, a senior data architect at Microsoft envisions a future in which officers receive alerts when “an individual has a known criminal record, or propensity to violence. Even if [the suspect] has not yet adopted a threatening posture, it heightens the overall threshold of awareness.”
Extensions are not required for continuous handrails along switchback or dogleg ramps or at aisle ramps serving seating in assembly areas. In alterations where the required extension would project hazardously into circulation paths, they can turn, be shorter, or avoided. Otherwise, handrail extensions must be in same direction as the ramp run.
Ramps without level landings at changes in direction typically will not meet the Standards due to resulting compound slopes. This includes most circular or curved ramps, unless the radius is large enough so that the cross slope is compliant and compound slopes are avoided. Otherwise, the curvature and slope result in uneven surfaces that makes wheelchair maneuvering difficult because not all wheels rest evenly on the surface.
Recommendation: To prevent tripping hazards, curb ramps with returned sides should be used only where foot traffic across ramps is prevented or discouraged.
As video analytics and machine vision have made rapid gains in recent years, the future long dreaded by privacy experts and celebrated by technology companies is quickly approaching. No longer is the question whether artificial intelligence will transform the legal and lethal limits of policing, but how and for whose profits.
“We’ve got all of this law enforcement information with these videos, which is one of the richest treasure troves you could imagine for machine learning,” Taser CEO Rick Smith told PoliceOne in an interview about the company’s AI acquisitions. “Imagine having one person in your agency who would watch every single one of your videos — and remember everything they saw — and then be able to process that and give you the insight into what crimes you could solve, what problems you could deal with. Now, that’s obviously a little further out, but based on what we’re seeing in the artificial intelligence space, that could be within five to seven years.”
No, the Standards limit the rise of each run (30″ maximum), but not the overall length of ramps comprised of multiple runs. Since the usability of ramps decreases with length, considerably long ramp systems should be avoided where possible. (Ramps in play areas are limited to a 12″ maximum rise).
All required ramps and curb ramps must be permanent and installed at the time of construction or alteration with few exceptions. Ramps can be provided after construction only to provide access to raised work stations in courtrooms (sufficient space must be provided in design to facilitate installation). Only ramps serving temporary structures can be temporary or portable.
Curb ramps at marked crossings must be wholly contained within the crosswalk, excluding side flares. The Standards do not require crossings to be marked or address how they are to be marked, but public street crossings are addressed by the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) for Streets and Highways.
But looking to the past is just the beginning: Taser is betting that its artificial intelligence tools might be useful not just to determine what happened, but to anticipate what might happen in the future.
A 48″ minimum long separation is necessary between curb ramps so that people using wheelchairs can clear one ramp before negotiating the next. Level cut-throughs provide an effective alternative, especially at narrow islands that will not accommodate opposing curb ramps with a 48″ separation.