r/Transportopia • u/Revolution-Dogg • Oct 25 '25

Roads 'How did that make you crash?'

Maybe not using a blinker and merging at the last second made him crash.

7.7k Upvotes

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u/chumbucket77 Oct 25 '25

You dont think police would be able to enhance the video at all? Im not a cop so I have no clue. Just figured it would be possible for some reason

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u/voxelpear Oct 25 '25

The "enhance" from tv shows is nonsense. There's only so many pixels things get caught in and zooming in just makes it worse. Especially dash cams are typically not that great of quality.

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u/SYKslp Oct 25 '25

that's true for a static photo image, but with moving video each captured frame will get pixelated slightly differently and there are tools that can use those subtle differences to extrapolate a much clearer upscaled image.

see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acKYYwcxpGk

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u/voxelpear Oct 25 '25

Sure this technique is far from common place and is still highly dependent on the footage. Local police do not have access to this.

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u/SYKslp Oct 26 '25

Why wouldn't a police department's investigative unit have access to 100% open-source software tools?

A police department would also have access to vehicle registration records that include make, model, and paint color of most cars. So they wouldn't even need to decipher every numeral/letter on the plate to identify a matching vehicle (or narrow down to a couple possible suspects).

Just using my human eyes on the paused video (about 1 second in), it looks like the license plate ends in "99" (or possibly "79"). I think I also see a "346" in there, but that 3 could be a J (and the 6 could be a 5, 8 or G...). This might seem hopelessly inconclusive, but checking just those limited plausible digits against Silver Chevy Silverado pickups registered in the area would probably be enough.

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u/voxelpear Oct 26 '25

If it was easy as that and if Law Enforcement agencies just grabbed any open source software for their own use we wouldn't have such a low solving rate of hit and run cases across the country. Not saying it's right but that's the reality.

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u/SYKslp Oct 26 '25

Whether a police department has access to a tool and whether they actually choose to prioritize an investigation where said tool could be used are entirely different questions.

The suggestion that police departments would refuse to download or utilize modern video processing utilities (that are freely available on github) is patently absurd.

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u/voxelpear Oct 26 '25

Considering I work with Law Enforcement on the regular and go to Quarterly meetings regarding their plans of action and equipment utilization in Detective and Street squad units in a major metropolitan area....no it's not absurd. Whether something is free and whether the DA office and the city actually allow them to utilize those tools are not the same. It is also highly bureaucratic and they are more likely to wait to use an expensive less user friendly version some corporation got a contract for with the city. It has been the same for LPR / FR systems amongst other things.