Toyota Patents Car Camera To Narc Out Other Drivers

Unmanned traffic cameras are a dicey subject. As spirited drivers, we think they're a little like cheating for the police. If a driver exceeded the speed limit or rolled a red light, and nothing terrible occurred, and an officer wasn't around to see it, did it really happen? Does it even matter? There are a bunch of pros and cons to those static cameras, but now Toyota wants us to tattle on each other from our vehicles.

CarBuzz has discovered a patent from the Japanese brand describing a system where its car would have cameras, specifically for recording driving infractions and sending them out to a server, where we'd assume, they would be looked over by law enforcement.

The abstract describes (and pardon the patent-speak), "The traffic violation vehicle identification system includes a first vehicle and a server. The first vehicle is configured to generate a first picture by photographing a traffic light in a travel direction of the first vehicle and an oncoming vehicle or a crossing vehicle at an intersection."

It will then "send violation vehicle information including characteristic information about a traffic violation vehicle performing a traffic violation and a first sending picture, to the server, when the first vehicle detects the traffic violation vehicle in the first picture, the first sending picture being at least a part of the first picture including an evidence picture of the traffic violation, the characteristic information being extracted from the first picture."

Basically, it'll take a picture of you running a red light.