MTA's A.I. bus cameras issue thousands of mistaken parking violations
So when George Han received a trio of violations in the mail for blocking the bus lane on East 79th Street, he scratched his head. He was certain he didn’t break New York City’s parking rules.
“At first I wasn’t worried, because I know the parking rules and these are legal spots,” he said. “It turns out that the tickets kept coming though. We are up to about ten now.”
It was not a human to issue the tickets for Han’s alleged infractions. It was a network of cameras powered by artificial intelligence, mounted on the windshields of MTA public buses.
And it turns out those A.I. cameras got it wrong. George Han had been parked legally, and he wasn’t the only one mistakenly ticketed.
The problem? According to the MTA, the smart cameras had not been programed to know they shouldn’t issue violations to vehicles parked in the legal alternate side zones that periodically interrupt the M79 lane. The cameras also failed to realize that both the M79 and Bx35 bus routes were still in the “warning” phase of a new enforcement pattern – which means even legitimate infractions should not have resulted in monetary penalties.
“One of the purposes of the warning phase for newly activated routes is to work out any issues before anyone is actually ticketed,” said Tim Minton, the MTA’s Communications Director. “In this situation, there were programming kinks, both in mapping of curb areas and the timing of warnings themselves — all of which have now been resolved.”
