9 ms·

Don't forget what happens when people find out they can abuse driverless vehicles. Cutting them off, getting closer to them, slowing down in front of them, etc.

Don't forget what happens when people find out they can abuse driverless vehicles. Cutting them off, getting closer to them, slowing down in front of them, etc. God knows what commuters will do to them in the Boston area.

bluGill 9y ago
Don't forget that the driverless vehicle will have tracking. Expect to get a ticket complete with video if you do things like that. If you are costing the trucking company money they might be willing to send people to court against you as well (taking you to court might not be worth it, but the teach people a lesson aspect might make it worth it anyway)
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  Issuing that traffic ticket would not be a good long-term PR move for any organization that needs to work with the public (like the police). Trucks getting cut off is the norm in many areas. Punishing people for normal is generally not smart.
  - wernercd 9y ago
    Punishing people for "normal" has a way of discouraging "normal" and changing it into "not as normal".
walshemj 9y ago
And going across boarders I could see people smugglers hiring hackers to slow down the vehicles so that there clients could board the trucks. Drug smugglers are another group that could use this and how would a cop stop an autonomous vehicle to search it they would have to have a back door which could be abused
- vkou 9y ago
  Autonomous trucks will be searched just like non-autonomous ones at borders. Outside of national borders, smuggling felonious quantities of hard drugs from state to state is already trivial.
  - dogecoinbase 9y ago
    Smuggling is trivial currently, but not without risking incarceration or death. Once the contraband can be ferried by an autonomous vehicle without risk to the operator, the incentives will change dramatically.
    - mentat 9y ago
      Has been done between Mexico and California already. Aside from that, many of the drivers aren't really given a choice, so the risk is irrelevant.
    - vkou 9y ago
      Tag the vehicle, follow it, arrest everyone who comes to pick the drugs up.
- devrandomguy 9y ago
  Stopping a safe, automated vehicle would be trivial. Just dress up as a road worker, and hold up a stop sign. Do it above a manhole cover, and you have easy access to the bottom of the vehicle. A remote human supervisor might not even notice what was going on.
  - khalilravanna 9y ago
    Admittedly it seems just as trivial to mitigate with some more sensors e.g. weight sensors to detect the load being modified while stopped, cameras to detect aberrant movement inside the cab, etc.
    - kcanini 9y ago
      Let the arms race begin!
  - arbuge 9y ago
    This seems like a vulnerability for human-operated vehicles also.
  - cakedoggie 9y ago
    I think you have been watching too much ocean's eleven. This would be trivial to fix with a sensor on the bottom. > Ok, but what if the refugees were lowered by a helicop... Sensor on the roof. Sensor on the side. Sensor everywhere.
  - dx034 9y ago
    And what would currently happen? Killing the road worker? No, every truck would stop and you could operate in the driver's blind spot. Autonomous vehicles won't have blind spots so that the operator can identify the theft much faster.
paganel 9y ago
> Cutting them off, getting closer to them, slowing down in front of them, etc. My brother is a lorry driver who frequently crosses the Turkish - Bulgarian border with his truck (as in once every 2 weeks). Once or twice he caught refugees (or whatever you want to call them) trying to get inside his trailer by cutting through the thick textile material that covers it, while he was awaiting at the border. You generally do not whant people mixing with your industrial equipment while the truck drives at 90-100 km/h. In other cases it happened to him that other people had stolen diesel gas from his tank while he was asleep during the mandatory break (this happened somewhere in Western Europe, I forget where). And leaving aside all this, assuming that bad people won't suddenly stop stealing and generally doing bad stuff to unattended expensive material (like trucks and the things that the trucks carry), being a truck driver you're also doing lots, and lots of bureaucracy work. I once shared the cabin with him as a passenger during one of his routes, while we passed two European borders. The amount of paperwork he had to fill in was mind-blogging, I half-jokingly told him that his job looks more like a clerk-job than being an actual driver. Now, lots of clerk jobs have already been automated, I know that, but it mostly happened in the private sector, inside private companies doing business with other private companies. But once your clerk-like job involves having to do business with several State-like entities things become a lot more complicated, with legislation changing once every 6 months, being very diverse from State to State etc. What I'm trying to say is that theoretically the self-driving problem looks achievable for trucks, but once you get into the messy details things become a lot more complicated.
- kafkaesq 9y ago
  You generally do not want people mixing with your industrial equipment while the truck drives at 90-100 km/h. He should let them ride with him in the cab up front, then. It's the human thing to do - and in another universe (or if this universe were configured only slightly differently) they could be his own family, after all.
  - toomanybeersies 9y ago
    Regardless of anybodies sympathies for refugees, this is simply not going to achieve anything. They are not going to let you cross the border with a cab filled with refugees/asylum seekers/undocumented immigrants.
wcummings 9y ago
I live in (ok, ok, near) Boston and I constantly fantasize about this. I don't commute by car I look forward to riding my bike 5mph in front of driverless cars, at least if they don't run me over... I also have to imagine they will be a ripe target for vandalism, especially if operators don't aggressively remove graffiti.
- wernercd 9y ago
  "ripe target for vandalism" And they'll also be surrounded by camera's and hard drives. I would imagine that the sensors that can see through fog could also get more detail than the average CCV camera - meaning that even with a mask, you're going to get a lot of detail on vandals or road hazards (aka: You going 5mph in front of one)
- smileysteve 9y ago
  > I also have to imagine they will be a ripe target for vandalism Is a lone driver with a tire iron, mag-lite, or billy club really the deterrent to this? Especially, the stereotypical obese early 50s driver?
- dx034 9y ago
  Vandalism already happens to cars. As are cyclists who go 5mph in front of a car (on a road where it cannot overtake you) to take revenge on a driver they don't like. None of that will change and that's not dependent on drivers.
smileysteve 9y ago
> Cutting them off, getting closer to them, slowing down in front of them, etc Car drivers already take advantage of trucks leaving a safe distance or their slow acceleration in traffic.

bluGill 9y ago

Don't forget that the driverless vehicle will have tracking. Expect to get a ticket complete with video if you do things like that. If you are costing the trucking company money they might be willing to send people to court against you as well (taking you to court might not be worth it, but the teach people a lesson aspect might make it worth it anyway)

dsfyu404ed 9y ago
Issuing that traffic ticket would not be a good long-term PR move for any organization that needs to work with the public (like the police). Trucks getting cut off is the norm in many areas. Punishing people for normal is generally not smart.
- wernercd 9y ago
  Punishing people for "normal" has a way of discouraging "normal" and changing it into "not as normal".

walshemj 9y ago

And going across boarders I could see people smugglers hiring hackers to slow down the vehicles so that there clients could board the trucks. Drug smugglers are another group that could use this and how would a cop stop an autonomous vehicle to search it they would have to have a back door which could be abused

vkou 9y ago
Autonomous trucks will be searched just like non-autonomous ones at borders. Outside of national borders, smuggling felonious quantities of hard drugs from state to state is already trivial.
- dogecoinbase 9y ago
  Smuggling is trivial currently, but not without risking incarceration or death. Once the contraband can be ferried by an autonomous vehicle without risk to the operator, the incentives will change dramatically.
  - mentat 9y ago
    Has been done between Mexico and California already. Aside from that, many of the drivers aren't really given a choice, so the risk is irrelevant.
  - vkou 9y ago
    Tag the vehicle, follow it, arrest everyone who comes to pick the drugs up.
devrandomguy 9y ago
Stopping a safe, automated vehicle would be trivial. Just dress up as a road worker, and hold up a stop sign. Do it above a manhole cover, and you have easy access to the bottom of the vehicle. A remote human supervisor might not even notice what was going on.
- khalilravanna 9y ago
  Admittedly it seems just as trivial to mitigate with some more sensors e.g. weight sensors to detect the load being modified while stopped, cameras to detect aberrant movement inside the cab, etc.
  - kcanini 9y ago
    Let the arms race begin!
- arbuge 9y ago
  This seems like a vulnerability for human-operated vehicles also.
- cakedoggie 9y ago
  I think you have been watching too much ocean's eleven. This would be trivial to fix with a sensor on the bottom. > Ok, but what if the refugees were lowered by a helicop... Sensor on the roof. Sensor on the side. Sensor everywhere.
- dx034 9y ago
  And what would currently happen? Killing the road worker? No, every truck would stop and you could operate in the driver's blind spot. Autonomous vehicles won't have blind spots so that the operator can identify the theft much faster.

paganel 9y ago

> Cutting them off, getting closer to them, slowing down in front of them, etc. My brother is a lorry driver who frequently crosses the Turkish - Bulgarian border with his truck (as in once every 2 weeks). Once or twice he caught refugees (or whatever you want to call them) trying to get inside his trailer by cutting through the thick textile material that covers it, while he was awaiting at the border. You generally do not whant people mixing with your industrial equipment while the truck drives at 90-100 km/h. In other cases it happened to him that other people had stolen diesel gas from his tank while he was asleep during the mandatory break (this happened somewhere in Western Europe, I forget where). And leaving aside all this, assuming that bad people won't suddenly stop stealing and generally doing bad stuff to unattended expensive material (like trucks and the things that the trucks carry), being a truck driver you're also doing lots, and lots of bureaucracy work. I once shared the cabin with him as a passenger during one of his routes, while we passed two European borders. The amount of paperwork he had to fill in was mind-blogging, I half-jokingly told him that his job looks more like a clerk-job than being an actual driver. Now, lots of clerk jobs have already been automated, I know that, but it mostly happened in the private sector, inside private companies doing business with other private companies. But once your clerk-like job involves having to do business with several State-like entities things become a lot more complicated, with legislation changing once every 6 months, being very diverse from State to State etc. What I'm trying to say is that theoretically the self-driving problem looks achievable for trucks, but once you get into the messy details things become a lot more complicated.

kafkaesq 9y ago
You generally do not want people mixing with your industrial equipment while the truck drives at 90-100 km/h. He should let them ride with him in the cab up front, then. It's the human thing to do - and in another universe (or if this universe were configured only slightly differently) they could be his own family, after all.
- toomanybeersies 9y ago
  Regardless of anybodies sympathies for refugees, this is simply not going to achieve anything. They are not going to let you cross the border with a cab filled with refugees/asylum seekers/undocumented immigrants.

wcummings 9y ago

I live in (ok, ok, near) Boston and I constantly fantasize about this. I don't commute by car I look forward to riding my bike 5mph in front of driverless cars, at least if they don't run me over... I also have to imagine they will be a ripe target for vandalism, especially if operators don't aggressively remove graffiti.

wernercd 9y ago
"ripe target for vandalism" And they'll also be surrounded by camera's and hard drives. I would imagine that the sensors that can see through fog could also get more detail than the average CCV camera - meaning that even with a mask, you're going to get a lot of detail on vandals or road hazards (aka: You going 5mph in front of one)
smileysteve 9y ago
> I also have to imagine they will be a ripe target for vandalism Is a lone driver with a tire iron, mag-lite, or billy club really the deterrent to this? Especially, the stereotypical obese early 50s driver?
dx034 9y ago
Vandalism already happens to cars. As are cyclists who go 5mph in front of a car (on a road where it cannot overtake you) to take revenge on a driver they don't like. None of that will change and that's not dependent on drivers.

smileysteve 9y ago

> Cutting them off, getting closer to them, slowing down in front of them, etc Car drivers already take advantage of trucks leaving a safe distance or their slow acceleration in traffic.