> “ - Pedestrians that engage in more illegal behaviours today are less likely to be in favour of the fine/infringement for bullying fully automated vehicles.”
Bullying? Seriously? How do you bully an inanimate object? My guess is that he’s using the verb “bully” as a proxy, because the autonomous car is supposedly carrying out the wishes of a human agent. In that case, blocking the car is thwarting the will of a human. But even that is very thin.
Machines should adapt to humans, not the other way around. Our common spaces have already been taken over my automobiles, made unsafe by them. Walking used to be the default mode of human transport, and now it’s an explicit second-class citizen to driving a car.
Adopting this frame where it’s possible to bully a robot leads us closer to blaming pedestrians when they’re killed by robots. We already do this with vehicles driven by humans — it’s been said for years that if you want to kill someone and get away with it, run over them with your car. What’s next? Justifiable automated homicide? “I’m sorry, officer, that pedestrian was making my robot feel unsafe. It was just protecting itself.”
Because it will likely be a chronic issue. And a car cannot even pretend to be aggressive - we all know a robo-car will just roll over and let you troll it.
Even today there are driverless vehicles on public streets. Not many, but more than last year. E.g., Tesla’s “Smart Summon [sic]” feature is supposed to fetch your car for you. So no, there isn’t always someone in the car.
The linked thread doesn’t mention humans one way or the other; it’s all about the cars. It’s reasonable — obvious, even — to assume that all driverless cars are the context, not just human-occupied ones.
Zero. Pedestrians rule. Walking is the default, so if intentionally blocking vehicles becomes a problem somewhere, we might do well to listen to those aggrieved. People and things are moved around in vehicles, some of those people may need that mobility and some of those things may be deemed necessary, and in general my feeling is that deference to those on foot (or self-powered in general, or equivalent, for those who need the assistance) is something to maintain for our collective well-being.
It's like you've never encountered idiots, drunks, or assholes. Civil disobedience is all well and good, but normalizing acting like an asshole makes for a shitty culture. Yes, intentionally blocking someone's car makes you an asshole, not an activist hero.
What percentage of the population behaves in the ways you seem concerned about? Each of those (idiocy, inebriation, and assholery) may have a variety of causes, and could be exacerbated, rather than fixed, with a fine. What are some proactive ways we could help travel routes be safer?
Selfdriving car owners should be fined for bothering pedestrians by endangering them with 2 ton steel boxes being controlled by overpriced random number generators.
Reading this made me wonder about a related question:
Once self-driving vehicles that actually follow the traffic laws become everyday (say >10% of city traffic), how will the perception change of human drivers change?
Driving a little faster than is really safe for nearby pedestriants is currently seen as normal, acceptable behavious, oozing through a traffic light after it's turned red for the driver ditto, parking illegally ditto, even where that obstructs pedestrians' field of vision.
I wonder whether human drivers who have seatbelts and airbags for themselves might suddenly be viewed much less tolerantly when they violate rules and risk other people's health of life, because self-driving vehicles are available for comparison in everyday life.
Any such fines are likely to be blunt instruments that end up blaming pedestrians for the failings of poor software.
For example, in many cities it's a common thing to walk directly at the path of a vehicle, but timed such that the vehicle will have passed by the time you get there. But if you try this in some other cities (eg Los Angeles), the driver is likely to slam on their brakes to stop and then wave for you to go in front of them, as if they're doing you some sort of favor.
Self driving cars are overly cautious, and I can imagine many will behave similarly. Add fines into the mix and then what, the pedestrian is supposed to pay for their having been interrupted?
Pedestrians can block normal cars too. If someone stands in the crosswalk a driver is basically unable to move forward. There's no circumstance where it is considered acceptable to hit a pedestrian, no matter how difficult the predestrian is being (unless you are some psychopath, like many GOP representatives are given the pro-vehicular-manslaughter laws they've proposed).
Or for a more familiar circumstance, parking lots involve a complex negotiation where pedestrians have complete priority. People figure it out, though it's not always easy. Pedestrians could cause trouble with regular drivers.
Less generously I could see fines being used to pressure or punish people who do not go out of their way to create an optimal environment for self-driving cars. People who loiter too close to the curb. Any traffic calming measure that might be misrecognized. Things that people who hang out on sidewalks do now, but also people who are seen as a nuisance (there being a significant overlap between those two already).
> There's no circumstance where it is considered acceptable to hit a pedestrian, no matter how difficult the predestrian is being…
Obviously drivers are not permitted to simply run into pedestrians either deliberately or negligently no matter how obnoxious their behavior might be, though it is understood that pedestrians are perfectly capable of unilaterally creating situations where a collision cannot reasonably be avoided. However, that does not mean pedestrians cannot also be at fault for intentionally obstructing traffic. Pedestrians have priority due to their fragility, and with that comes a responsibility not to abuse said priority to the detriment of other users of the roads.
Bullying? Seriously? How do you bully an inanimate object? My guess is that he’s using the verb “bully” as a proxy, because the autonomous car is supposedly carrying out the wishes of a human agent. In that case, blocking the car is thwarting the will of a human. But even that is very thin.
Machines should adapt to humans, not the other way around. Our common spaces have already been taken over my automobiles, made unsafe by them. Walking used to be the default mode of human transport, and now it’s an explicit second-class citizen to driving a car.
Adopting this frame where it’s possible to bully a robot leads us closer to blaming pedestrians when they’re killed by robots. We already do this with vehicles driven by humans — it’s been said for years that if you want to kill someone and get away with it, run over them with your car. What’s next? Justifiable automated homicide? “I’m sorry, officer, that pedestrian was making my robot feel unsafe. It was just protecting itself.”