Stopped by the Cops

[Irata]

I wonder if the police foolishly get suspicious of anyone who accelerates away faster than them.

I see many drivers slow down when a police car is behind, even when they don't have to. Same with highways officers who drive on the motorway at 55mph, many drivers crawl by them at 56mph.

 

[just1sand0s]

Yep. If you lose connectivity, you will get lots of gaps in the recording. Easy to spot as the track will have long straight lines between points.

TeslaFi is completely blind the the section of route here in red that is within a tunnel. Certainly no way of proving to anyone what your driving style was in that area. You may also be able to pick out the slightly staggered route as at 60-70mph, you will only have been taking snapshots every mile or so.

View attachment 644875

I've not even got a car yet so can't confirm but I'd bet that's because theres no actual GPS satellites and therefore no location data for that section, rather than the mobile signal. I can't see Tesla pinging the data out continuously in realtime to their servers, especially in this country with it's mobile coverage. They must have some buffering system in there. You could I suppose work out the speed between those 2 points based on time. Wouldn't help with the dashcam though because it'll be too late.

I've written systems for trackers by the way so had to fix these problems myself!

 

[MrBadger]

I've not even got a car yet so can't confirm but I'd bet that's because theres no actual GPS satellites and therefore no location data for that section, rather than the mobile signal. I can't see Tesla pinging the data out continuously in realtime to their servers, especially in this country with it's mobile coverage. They must have some buffering system in there. You could I suppose work out the speed between those 2 points based on time. Wouldn't help with the dashcam though because it'll be too late.

I've written systems for trackers by the way so had to fix these problems myself!

It behaves in exactly the same way when there is GPS but no mobile signal. There is no evidence of any buffering going on, you can see this in the logs. In the case of the above, one poll resulted in a timeout, the second poll indicated that the car was offline.

TeslaFi etc simply ask the car for its status at a point in time, if it gets a timeout, it tries again in a minute or whatever the polling interval are. Its important to remember that these are not tracking systems, but unofficial systems that just happen to piggy back off the API that the app uses.

 

[just1sand0s]

Ah get you, so the third party server just polls the car and hopes for the best then. That would make sense. Looks like they are polling every 10-15 seconds though. That's pretty good. I wouldn't fancy relying on that if the car was stolen to be honest - it could get jammed quite easily.

Actually just looking at the unofficial API. You get loads of data from it, worth a play I think when I get the car.

I could even turn the heating up if you are doing something bad like speeding!

 

[Ben177]

TeslaFi etc simply ask the car for its status at a point in time, if it gets a timeout, it tries again in a minute or whatever the polling interval are. Its important to remember that these are not tracking systems, but unofficial systems that just happen to piggy back off the API that the app uses.

It used to work like that, but it now uses a 'streaming API' for these kind of things. The car sends a stream of 'events' to a central end point at Tesla. Services, such as TeslaFi, can subscribe to this stream of events. An event being a small packet of data containing car status, speed, location etc. Once an event has been broadcast, if it's not picked up by any subscriber, it's usually gone for good. Its a much more efficient way of transmitting rapidly changing data.

Other functions in the likes of TeslaFi use synchronous or asynchronous APIs where a request is made, and a response received. This is used for things like charge status.

Blank spots will either be due to no GPS signal in order to create the data in the first place, or events not being broadcast due to no mobile signal. There will be an amount of caching of the events in the car though, so some batches of events may get sent when the car regains connection.

See 'Streaming telemetry' here Introduction (Unofficial non-Tesla site)

(Qualifications: I work on global high performance integration architectures for a living. The above is a very rough description on what's happening.)

 

[MrBadger]

Its TeslaFi using the streaming API now? I know TeslaMate can, but I've seen no mention of TeslaFi doing so. Unless there is unrecorded data in addition to the polling that you cannot see in the raw logs, I would say that TeslaFi is not using the streaming API even when the car is driving.

Thanks for the link though - thought that they may have eventually updated it for the streaming info but alas it still seems to remain rather sketchy.

 

[Ben177]

Its TeslaFi using the streaming API now? I know TeslaMate can, but I've seen no mention of TeslaFi doing so. Unless there is unrecorded data in addition to the polling that you cannot see in the raw logs, I would say that TeslaFi is not using the streaming API even when the car is driving.

Just realised, it's TeslaMate I use, not TeslaFi . I knew I'd seen the streaming API described in the setup. You're undoubtedly right about TeslaFi.

 

[just1sand0s]

I got all excited for a second and the streaming page has "This page is empty". This is the way to do it though if you can. You just setup a web hook and wait for the data to come in. Streaming

 

[Jason71]

The 10%+2 was an ACPO guidelines for prosecution and not all chief police officers sign up to them. Wales especially seem to be a law unto themselves. Scotland also don't or didn't have the speed awareness course either which was often linked to the guidelines.

And lets not forget the capitol offence of Driving while English

 

[Avendit]

Was also pulled last week, end quarter push for the boys in blue or something? I was speeding, but you do when a giant X5 is 2ft from your back number with its headlights glaring at you.

Also got the 'driving like you stole it' and 'accelerated around the corner' chat. Just sat, nodded, corrected anything factually wrong (like the acceleration) and took the warning.

Totally forgot to click the dash cam button tho which I was totally kicking myself for. Couldn't believe I forgot it :-(

What was unclear was if they are sitting that close to you what they expect you to do? And I really doubt they would have been able to keep up had my p- actually need stolen . Luckily I managed to hold my tongue on that one!

 

[pdk42]

Off topic - but an LS8-18 (non Turbo).....and no it was not on the back at the time.

And thanks for all the other replies. I did look at the video to see how close behind me the police car was. Unfortunetly whilst I can see a car behind me the rear camera was a bit dirty (as often in Winter) and you can't identify the car. But I have got the whole discussion with the cops from the fender camera, but of course no sound.

Lovely glider the LS8. The one I have now is my second. I shared a non turbo version with another guy some years ago, but bought this turbo one a few years ago. Where do you fly? Portmoak?

 

[jdr93]

Was also pulled last week, end quarter push for the boys in blue or something? I was speeding, but you do when a giant X5 is 2ft from your back number with its headlights glaring at you.

Also got the 'driving like you stole it' and 'accelerated around the corner' chat. Just sat, nodded, corrected anything factually wrong (like the acceleration) and took the warning.

Totally forgot to click the dash cam button tho which I was totally kicking myself for. Couldn't believe I forgot it :-(

What was unclear was if they are sitting that close to you what they expect you to do? And I really doubt they would have been able to keep up had my p- actually need stolen . Luckily I managed to hold my tongue on that one!

a while ago was driving the speed limit in dark of night with a car so close i could barely see their headlight, though they lit up the cabin to a blinding degree. finally just pulled over to let the fool go by. turned out the fool was a state police officer. they wanted to know what the problem was. they got an earful about them being the problem and their needing to learn how to drive safely. i let them go on ahead of me.

 

[pgkevet]

As a youngster I got tailgated by an unmarked police car and foolishly accelerated to give the guy some room to overtake. It was a quiet sunday on a road with an overtaking lane and no traffic. I was 'done for the extra speed' and paid up. BUT if anything like that happened to me now I'd be making serious complaints about harrassment, aggressive police driving and their dangers and great that we can now support our position with video.
There are fair coppers out there. I was stopped for genuinely speeding one quiet night and let off on the grounds that I slowed to a single blue flash from 1/4 mile behind i.e I was aware and sober.

 

[Jason71]

Lovely glider the LS8. The one I have now is my second. I shared a non turbo version with another guy some years ago, but bought this turbo one a few years ago. Where do you fly? Portmoak?

Get a hanger!

 

[spooksman]

Would like the option to have the speed displayed on the video that is recorded to be honest - I would think that is fairly achievable.

As long as it's an option of course...

 

[Avendit]

Just drive in track mode all the time :-D

 

[Zakalwe]

They were on a fishing expedition, hoping that you'd react or that they'd spot something that they could pull you for 9nce they stopped you.
Be polite, say as little as possible and don't make it easy for prick coppers like these.

 

[GeorgeSymonds]

I'm in two minds about the harassment, if somebody is too close behind, speeding up is seldom going to solve the problem, they'll still be close behind just at higher speed, slowing down is the better tactic and they'll blast past. It doesn't feel right I agree but 30 years of driving has brought me around to that way of thinking. The police may appear to drive like idiots but I think they're looking for the ones that will get easily provoked into bad driving by others, if they can do it by driving too close then what would a driver do if they got carved up or something much worse?

We've also no idea what intelligence they're working on in the background, I know quite a few coppers, mostly retired now, and one told me about a job where they pulled every silver BMW 5 series travelling in approximate convoy with a white transit van in a rural area near me. He recon's there were probably only 10 trumped up stops over a 2 week period where nothing came of it before they hit the jackpot, and its still not pleasant when you're on the wrong side of one, but they're not going to stop you and ask if you've 4 guns and 100kg of crack in the boot, they'll be more subtle.

 

[Morhydro]

Lovely glider the LS8. The one I have now is my second. I shared a non turbo version with another guy some years ago, but bought this turbo one a few years ago. Where do you fly? Portmoak?

Milfield....come and visit us - car charging available!

 

[Morhydro]

Would like the option to have the speed displayed on the video that is recorded to be honest - I would think that is fairly achievable.

As long as it's an option of course...

I have written to Tesla and asked for this. They call the recording 'dashcam' but it does not store any useful data. The real dashcam in my other car has GPS position, Speed, Time of Day, Car Registration number all superimposed on the video. Much more useful for actual evidence than the Tesla data.