Amid increasing racial tensions in the U.S., which has been largely caused by police brutality, Amazon has launched a new device which aims to protect drivers during interactions with officers.
Business Insider reports that with the $200 Ring Car Cam, which features an app called Traffic Stop, drivers only need to say "Alexa, I'm being pulled over."
The dual-camera dashcam, which is connected to Amazon's Alexa voice assistant, records the traffic stop after being prompted. It then alerts designated contacts and saves the recording to the Cloud.
"Traffic stops can be a time when having video is important, so that everyone remains on their best behavior," Ring's Head of Mobile Products, Nathan Ackerman, told Roadshow. "So, we developed a feature to support that."
Ackerman said the developers are still working through some of the ins and outs of exactly when the emergency contacts get notified and whether they will be able to view the livestream or if the footage will be available afterwards.
"The most important thing in these situations is to make sure that you have the video and so we'll be streaming the video from the Car Cam to the Cloud in real time," the Ring engineer told Roadshow. "For us, the key part of this is that key people are notified when a traffic event happens and they'll be able to get access to the video shortly."
Amazon's latest device comes after the company was recently criticized for developing a map which allows law enforcement to get an extremely close look at specific locations of Ring customers. The feature has now been removed, but the public still has some concerns about privacy when using Ring.
Sen. Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, said that there are gaping holes in Ring's privacy policies and the governance of its law enforcement partnerships.
"The more we learn about Ring, the clearer it becomes that this product poses serious privacy and civil liberty threats," Markey told CNET. "Information as sensitive as the street you live on should be kept private and secure."
Amazon's Traffic Stop feature comes several years after high-profile cases of police brutality which followed traffic stops like that of the 2016 killing of Philando Castile. The beloved school cafeteria worker was killed by Minnesota police officer Jeronimo Yanez during a traffic stop in 2016.
According to a study from Stanford University, which analyzed 93 million traffic stops across the country between the years of 2001 and 2017, Black drivers are 20% more likely to get pulled over than white drivers.
"Relative to their share of the residential population, we find that Black drivers are, on average, stopped more often than whites," the study concludes.
Stanford data scientist Amy Shoemaker said the data doesn't reveal anything new.
"In addition to the national picture, what we are also offering is clean public data to journalists, analysts and policy makers so they can use local context for their policies," Shoemaker told CNN.
Amazon's Traffic Stop tool resembles another similar device from iPhone, which features a Siri shortcut that automatically records police encounters. The Ring dashcam device also detects severe impacts, which can trigger the Emergency Crash Assistance and make an audio call to a response center. In addition, the camera protects the car when it's parked, recording video if the sensors detect unusual activities such as bumps or loud noises.
