California Police Ticket A Self-Driving Car (cbslocal.com) 344
Long-time Slashdot reader Ichijo writes: A self-driving car was slapped with a ticket after police said it got too close to a pedestrian on a San Francisco street.
The self-driving car owned by San Francisco-based Cruise was pulled over for not yielding to a pedestrian in a crosswalk. Cruise says its data shows the person was far away enough from the vehicle and the car did nothing wrong.... According to data collected by Cruise, the pedestrian was 10.8 feet away from the car when, while the car was in self-driving mode, it began to continue down Harrison at 14th St."
The person in the crosswalk was not injured.
The self-driving car owned by San Francisco-based Cruise was pulled over for not yielding to a pedestrian in a crosswalk. Cruise says its data shows the person was far away enough from the vehicle and the car did nothing wrong.... According to data collected by Cruise, the pedestrian was 10.8 feet away from the car when, while the car was in self-driving mode, it began to continue down Harrison at 14th St."
The person in the crosswalk was not injured.
Story missing important details (Score:5, Insightful)
Specifically: How does a cop pull over a self-driving car? I mean, exactly how does that happen logistically?
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That said, I am curious what the current sta
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Re: Story missing important details (Score:5, Funny)
20-25 year old cars are pretty common in NY and in the Western US
Tell me about it.
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Perhaps so - but pulling over is a large part of the point of having a shoulder - if you lose a tire, blow your engine, or suffer any of a wide number of other problems, you HAVE to pull over, or stop in the middle of the road, which is at least as dangerous AND a public navigation hazard.
If your AI is uncertain how to handle a situation, and the passenger doesn't take control, then you now have a car cruising down the road without a competent driver - a major hazard to both the occupants and everyone else
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Specifically: How does a cop pull over a self-driving car? I mean, exactly how does that happen logistically?
They use Robocop.
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How does the sleeping and/or drunk passenger know that the police are signalling?
Re: Story missing important details (Score:5, Funny)
The spike strips will wake him up.
Re:Story missing important details (Score:5, Informative)
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they still have to pull over ... [for flashing lights]
AHHHHhhh. Now THERE's a waiting hack: "WHAT are you doing, HAL? The bad guy is right behind us -- hurry, drive on!"
"I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that. He's behind me in a car with flashing lights. And you might be unconscious so I'm unlocking all of the doors. Good luck!"
Re:Story missing important details (Score:4, Insightful)
That's actually one of many identified potential problems of self-driving cars: Attackers pull the vehicle over with blinking lights then go after the occupant with whatever attack they want.
Hacking is another major concern. These folks have published a bunch of attacks on more traditional cars with fancy computer parts [wired.com]. Accelerators, brakes, changing gears (they only did the safe gear changes in their demos), and cranked the steering while traveling at highway speeds. With fully autonomous vehicles every component is available for a digital attack.
Then you've got physical issues. Medical problems with the driver, remotely delivering a bomb, intentionally disabling sensors at a critical moment, and so many more.
Another major side effect will be the drop in organ transplants since car crashes account for about 1/5 of all organ donations, which has been discussed in depth on /. several times.
Plus This classic shown in XKCD [xkcd.com].
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I imagine that people could develop a simple hack to get autonomous cars out of their way by strobing ahead of them.
Forward facing flashing blue lights are illegal in every state.
Forward facing flashing red lights (as used on ambulances) are illegal in many states.
Flashing yellow lights (as used on tow trucks) are legal in most states, but there is no legal requirement to pull over for them.
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Here they've also added smaller blue lights to the ambulances and fire trucks.
But green strobes are legal in many places for volunteer fire fighters, and possession of that is legal even if you're not currently a fire fighter. Normally people use magnet mount roof ones, but you could install it in the grill for the claimed purpose of increasing the resale value.
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It needs to keep his contacts exposed and on the pcb at all times to avoid any provocation on its part.
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Sleeping people are easily woken up by a siren
Many people sleep deeply and would not be woken by a siren. Even more so if they are both sleeping and drunk. SDCs currently have a human behind the wheel for safety during development. When they are actually deployed (supposedly next year in Phoenix) there will be no driver. Getting rid of the driver is the whole point. Compared to all the other things that SDCs have to do, detecting a blue flashing light and pulling over is trivial.
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It may be the eventual point, but nobody is there yet. If you're asleep at the wheel in any current "self-driving" car, then that's probably at least a reckless driving charge.
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Stopping for police is one of the things that doesn't really need to be automated.
It will eventually, since in the future they won't need any passengers and sending them places on their own would be useful.
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sending them places on their own would be useful.
Sure, but they are useful even without that feature.
A driverless car that requires a driver doesn't seem very useful to me.
Would a horseless carriage be useful if it required a horse?
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Would a horseless carriage be useful if it required a horse?
The problem is when they try to save some money and use a donkey instead. They drive like a total ass.
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Would a horseless carriage be useful if it required a horse?
Yes, if it was designed to act as a buffer. Maybe the horse is running the battery charger!
The horse might even stay home.
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Oh really? Exactly how useful is a self driving car that requires the passengers to be alert and able to take over control at a moment's notice at all times? It's a novelty at best.
Meanwhile, any car that doesn't pull over for emergency vehicles is a public hazard and should be treated as such. In many places you're required to slow and move to the passing lane (if possible) even when passing a parked police car with its emergency lights on.
However, pulling over and stopping is one of the FIRST things an
Re:Story missing important details (Score:4, Informative)
AvitarX reminisced:
I'm pretty sure I saw a video of a Google car out on its own.
Beginning on April 2nd of this year, California's DMV has issued licenses to 50 autonomous vehicle makers [theverge.com] allowing them to operate without a human driver aboard ...
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Re: Pull in front of it and stop. (Score:3)
And if the car hit the cop?
That's easy: it'll be found days later, out in the impound yard... with two bullet holes through the primary ECU.
Suicide.
Losing an important stream of revenue (Score:2)
Well, the people in charge of the police better start thinking about the future. With self-driving cars, they might lose an important stream of revenue. Because lots of stuff in traffic is a question of opinion, I bet a cop can simply observe you and hand you a ticket for what you consider decent driving.
However with self-driving cars, the companies behind them will probably not stand for such random punishments. I mean, look at how fast Tesla comes with a statement whenever there was an accident with a mod
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It is only small towns that can ticket cars on a road passing through that make money off of tickets.
Police are not a revenue source for a city, it costs a lot of money to pay cops and run traffic courts. Giving out tickets is done to manage people's behavior. If self-driving cars learn to follow the rules and drive well, that will reduce the expense of law enforcement to the city.
Don't expect there to be less cops, though.
10.8 feet (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:10.8 feet (Score:4, Insightful)
When driving in San Francisco, it's damn near impossible to NOT get that close to pedestrians. They ignore traffic signals, they don't bother to use crosswalks, they'll walk right into traffic and expect YOU to slam on your brakes or try to violate the laws of physics.
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Probably because their employer told them to let the autonomous vehicle (AV) handle everything so as to not interfere with the experiment. So instead of braking when the pedestrian appeared in the crosswalk, the "safety driver" let the AV do it's thing.
Therefore the "safety driver" is the vehicle operator who exercised poor judgement, did the wrong thing, and was rightfully ticketed. Points on the license too presumably.
The salary for "safety drivers" may have just increased as a result of
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Sounds like driving in the University District in Seattle. Of course, the problem there is exacerbated by 35000 college-age kids who believe they’re immortal and invincible...
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10.8 feet is one second away at 7 mph. Too damn close -- company deserves a ticket.
Nonsense. If a pedestrian is walking down a sidewalk and I'm driving down the road in the lane closest to the sidewalk, I'll pass the pedestrian at a distance of closest approach of less than 10.8 feet.
Re:10.8 feet (Score:4, Informative)
Nope. That's not what those laws say.
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10.8 feet is one second away at 7 mph. Too damn close -- company deserves a ticket.
Well, it appears to be a pedestrian crossing and the self driving car was apparently stopped before the crossing and accelerated through it so I image that means the pedestrian was 10.8 feet away roughly perpendicular to the car. That means it's the pedestrian would have to move almost 11 feet and 7 mph would be a guy running straight into traffic, not sure where you got that number from as I don't see it any of the news stories. Preferred walking speed is around 4.6 ft/s so 2.35 seconds and that's if the g
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Lucky, I do not live in a country where I could get a ticket for coming "to close" to a pedestrian.
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7 mph is running speed, and it's a crosswalk. Walking speed is 2.5 seconds away. You're also assuming that the pedestrian is walking toward the vehicle when the article strongly implies that the pedestrian was walking away from the vehicle.
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It's not bearing down on the pedestrian at 7 mph, it's on an orthogonal path. Pedestrians cross crosswalks at about 3.1 mph (2.4 seconds) meaning the car would certain (and definitively) clear the pedestrian without the pedestrian having to stop their advance. I mean, at the point the only way to hit the pedestrian would be to slow down. Stopping distance at that speed is also just over 2 ft, so if the car had made its decision any time up to that point it had done so with enough clearance to respond to
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The more interesting aspect of this case is that the human driver is liable for the ticket issue
The way the world works... (Score:2)
Cruise says its data shows the person was far away enough from the vehicle and the car did nothing wrong....
Sounds like Cruise is finding out the imbalance of power that human motorists have to deal with apply to their cars, too. Doesn't really matter what happened, if the cop says you were doing something you're gonna get ticketed. And the courts will take his word above yours.
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Sounds like Cruise is finding out the imbalance of power that human motorists have to deal with apply to their cars, too. Doesn't really matter what happened, if the cop says you were doing something you're gonna get ticketed. And the courts will take his word above yours.
Occasionally some engineering nerd will contest a ticket on the basis of data he collected himself, mainly by going out to the place where the ticket was issued and taking measurements, photos of lines of sight, etc. that he deems to be exculpatory.
But now every ticket written against self-driving cars will be contested by defense data and video collected at the time, by high;y [aid engineers working on that specific task. Small-town traffic traps are going to need better judges.
Once in court (Score:2)
a self driving car will probably have GB of data and video to prove it's innocence (unless it's an Uber killbot)
On the other hand, if I had a self driving car, you could bet there would be some additional programming that kicks in when needed called "High Speed Chase" if a cop tries to pull me over.
The actual cross-walk rules (Score:5, Informative)
The company in this case is making up a rule about the distance from the pedestrian being critical (and asking us to trust it's assessment that the ped was 10 feet away). The actually rules have nothing to do with distance:
https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/... [ca.gov]
Can't their AI tell when someone is making eye-contact? Japanese photo-booths have been able to find human eyes for years now.
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The company in this case is making up a rule about the distance
from the pedestrian being critical (and asking us to trust it's
assessment that the ped was 10 feet away). The actually rules
have nothing to do with distance:
https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/... [ca.gov]
At this point we don't really have enough information to know if the car was doing something an average human would recognize as wrong, or if it was a fairly typical scenario but the officer in question thought it would be cool to ticket a self-driving car so they actually applied the rule for once.
Can't their AI tell when someone is making eye-contact?
Japanese photo-booths have been able to find human eyes for years now.
This is something that hasn't been discussed much but as a pedestrian and driver I extract a lot of information with eye contact and body language.
I think self-driving cars are going to need some mechanism for te
Re:The actual cross-walk rules (Score:4, Insightful)
The actually rules have nothing to do with distance: [link to drive handbook]
I'm not sure those are "the actual rules"; they are part of a driver handbook, which is to say, they are a common-sense guide to how to be safe driver.
All well and good, but if this matter were to go to court, I think they would be looking at what the laws say rather than one the DMV driver's handbook says, and there would be a lot less common sense involved and a lot more legalese :/
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I wonder if they use an AI to come up with their excuses.
No need. Bullshit excuses are as old as time itself.
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Re:The prosecution rests (Score:5, Informative)
A bullshit made-up story is quite a bit different than several sensors and cameras actively recording the event and presented as evidence in a case.
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A bullshit made-up story is quite a bit different than several sensors and cameras actively recording the event and presented as evidence in a case.
How is it evidence, really? What guarantee can the company give that the data it might provide hasn’t been tampered with? Did they work right with law enforcement or some legal entity ahead of time to make sure all data collection follows legal rules pertaining to evidence?
Re:The prosecution rests (Score:4, Informative)
A sworn affidavit and someone familiar with the system testifying that it is a record kept in the normal course of business.
Rules of evidence can be complex, but this is not one of those cases.
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How do you think the world works?
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The same way the cop saying he saw something is considered "evidence". What guarantee can the cop give that his testimony isn't a complete lie for whatever purpose he might do so (prejudice, bored, envy, revenue, shorting stock)?
It's "presented as evidence" and the judge (or jury) decides based on the evidence what he believes really happened. The prosecution will also get a chance to argue that the data may have been altered, shot with some weird lenses that distort perspective, etc if they so choose, an
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We've seen what kind of dashcam footage self-driving car companies use. The kind that is doctored to try to show no culpability on the part of their vehicle.
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Exactly my thought. Until AI can handle the concept of "yielding," it will never be street legal on its own.
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Yeah okay, but if their foot was in the crosswalk it doesn't matter if you were one foot or 20.
The Cruise car was clearly labeled with a bumper sticker stating:
"We brake for nobody!"
Re:Cops gotta make that ticket quota! (Score:4, Insightful)
Seeing how insane cyclists tend to be, I'd be all for that. The most dangerous drivers on the road in the city are the bikers.
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New York City's DOT records of pedestrian fatalities disagree with you on this point.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/nycdot-pedestrian-fatalities-by-bike-motor-vehicle.pdf [nyc.gov]
Re:Cops gotta make that ticket quota! (Score:4, Insightful)
I could make that same argument for a car. I just stupid to be a blind rule-following robot and stop at every red light when you are moving 5-10 mph and can plainly see no cross traffic.
The issue most of us have with cyclists is that there is a significant number of them that really want maximum penalties applied to cars, but don't want the rules to apply to them at all.
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A car at 10mph feels incredibly slow to a driver. It will, however, do a whole lot of damage to a person (or indeed bend some metal on another car) if there's an impact. A bicycle has much less mass so will therefore do a lot less damage at the same speeds, in addition to being more maneuverable, having better visibility for the cyclist as opposed to the driver, and having a shorter stopping distance.
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I'll be using this quote the next time I argue why cycling should be banned in cities. Thanks!
Re: Cops gotta make that ticket quota! (Score:2)
Go for it, raving maniacs on street corners are good entertainment.
Look at what we're missing out on by not riding bikes more...
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Re: Cops gotta make that ticket quota! (Score:4, Insightful)
Cyclists in San Francisco regularly run four way stops, causing panic braking, and I had to swerve to avoid a trio riding the wrong way on a divided street (Dolores) on Thursday.
San Francisco cyclists regularly put the burden for their survival on other users of the road (pedestrians, drivers, other cyclists). There absolutely should be more ticketed cyclists in San Francisco, but it should not be driven by a revenue motive.
I say this as a cyclist, skater, pedestrian, and driver.
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Buuullllshit. In fifty years of driving I've had numerous cyclists pull out in front of me without looking, come down the street the wrong way and do any number of other stupid and definitely unsafe things.
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They'll either Darwin themselves, get a case of the brownshorts from almost getting hit and reform their ways, or give up cycling entirely after something unpleasant happens. This is largely a self-correcting problem.
The one major problem that should be addressed by legislation is unrealistic workloads on food delivery/messenger cyclists, encouraging unsafe riding and accidents.
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Cyclists are safe, because their own bodies are on the line. It's just stupid to be a blind rule-following robot and stop at every red light when you are moving 5-10 mph and can plainly see no cross traffic.
Oh, like so? Seems legit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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I like the way the car beeps, the cyclist gets hit, then the car gives a double-beep as if to say "Told ya so."
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It's just stupid to be a blind rule-following robot and stop at every red light when you are moving 5-10 mph and can plainly see no cross traffic.
As a cyclist myself I am ashamed of you. Moreover you are handing a whole shipload of ammunition to the anti-cycling brigade.
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The problem is that people (especially Americans) are too much about "fair play" and "rule following." Does anyone get hurt if a cyclist slows down at a red light in some sleepy little town on a weekend, looks both ways, sees that it's safe, and crosses? Nope. But people's stupid sense of fair play will be offended if they see it.
"Jaywalking" and similar forms of cycling should be able to be practiced when safe -- in fact, some cities actually allow cyclists to treat red lights as 4-way stops, not wait l
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Cyclists are safe, because their own bodies are on the line. It's just stupid to be a blind rule-following robot and stop at every red light when you are moving 5-10 mph and can plainly see no cross traffic.
Most of them I see don't drive as if their own body is on the line. Two examples I can think of:
Four lanes of traffic in our direction were stopped at a crosswalk where the pedestrian had activated the overhead flashing lights to cross from left to right. I was stopped in the front in the right hand curb lane. The pedestrian was about half way in front of my car when I noticed a cyclist going full steam down the gutter in my wing mirror. I honked my horn which startled and stopped the pedestrian, and she wa
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Cyclists are safe
They are not. Firstly because even if they do do everything right there's no accounting for everyone else on the road, and secondly because a significant proportion of them are absolute bloody idiots, and I say that as an avid cyclist.
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Re:Cops gotta make that ticket quota! (Score:5, Interesting)
Cops probably enforce it ... but only when people walk while the wrong age, wrong color, wearing the wrong clothes, or at the wrong time of day. Most ticketing is an excuse to fish for other moral "crimes" like having a bag of weed in one's pocket. If cops were taken off traffic, vice, etc enforcement and required to concentrate on crimes that actually harmed others, the US would be a better place to live.
Also, if there's no sidewalk, walking the "wrong way" (facing traffic) is likely correct and safer.
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That's only true at night, on a rural road, where there is no shoulder to walk on and you're exiting the roadway whenever a vehicle approaches.
In all other conditions you should walk with traffic in a normal way, behaving as traffic behaves.
If you're not sure, stop repeating what your uncle told you and consult your state's driver manual.
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That's only true at night, on a rural road, where there is no shoulder to walk on and you're exiting the roadway whenever a vehicle approaches.
In all other conditions you should walk with traffic in a normal way, behaving as traffic behaves.
That's incorrect.
Pedestrians walking in the roadway should walk facing traffic. Pedestrians can stop and change direction effectively instantly so it's to their benefit to see oncoming traffic. They have different motion characteristics than wheeled vehicles. The CDC [cdc.gov] page on pedestrian safety agrees with this.
Cyclists riding on the roadway should ride with traffic and follow traffic rules and behave as a part of normal traffic.
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Pedestrians are supposed to walk ginst traffic though. At least that's what I was taught.
So was I, and it's in the UK Highway Code. The idea is that if a car on your own side of the road does not see you then you can see what is happening and leap into the ditch or bushes out of the way. If the car is on the other side of the road it does not generally matter whether they see you or not.
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People should bear this in mind even when they've got a pavement to walk on. I always move to go on the outside if I'm passing someone on foot and facing the traffic, but there's no end of numpties who'll do the same going the other way, and then have to check over their shoulder to see what's coming.
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pedestrians? I will just tell the cop DO I need an walking licensee now?
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There is certainly someone in there, however there's much lower *risk* than a random vehicle as that person is at work on the clock, which potentially makes them a more attractive target.
This just means they'll have to adjust the laws to be less subjective.
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Streets would be much safer if drivers learned to stop driving through San Francisco. Pedestrians are afforded the right-of-way, and they ought to exercise their right (if they were in a car, failure to take the right-of-way---i.e. impeding traffic---is a ticketable offence).