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This whole article is based on the presumption that the interiors of driverless taxis won't be recorded... and yet security cameras in Ubers already exist[0] (a

• ilaksh 9y ago
  Right and the other part is how do you know when the footage needs to be reviewed? Just add two buttons to the app "minor cleanliness issue" and "major cleanliness issue". Then someone remotely checks the footage. If it is confirmed then the previous passenger gets charged a cleaning fee. Majors cost more or could result in ban. Cleaning can be done by carwashes. Eventually you develop some clever covers and devices/stations that enable rapid cleaning.
  • btb 9y ago
    > how do you know when the footage needs to be reviewed? With all the computing power and vision AI available in such a vehicle, it seems like it would be possible to perform an automated interior scan of the cabin after each ride. Detecting cleanliness issues(and forgotten baggage).
    • maturz 9y ago
      Might be difficult to detect if someone peed though unless you can make the interior highlight it somehow. Maybe a moisture detector could be added but could be difficult to calibrate that for rainy days.
• gambiting 9y ago
  Interior of the local metro trains is recorded from every possible angle you can think of, yet almost every night they turn into garbage cans on wheels. The problem is always reviewing the footage, finding the culprit and making them pay. If an automated taxi comes back to the depot after 12 hours of driving and you find it in a messy state, are you just going to pay someone $50 to clean it, or are you going to spend time reviewing 12 hours of footage to find out who made the mess and then spend weeks trying to get the money back? Which of course creates a self-perpetuating problem, because if the behaviour is not punished, it will never be corrected and it will become "ok" to make a mess in an auto taxi(not vomit, but just leaving your rubbish behind).
  • EliRivers 9y ago
    or are you going to spend time reviewing 12 hours of footage to find out who made the mess and then spend weeks trying to get the money back? Fortunately, I can get that done for me at a cost of much, much less than 12 hours of my own time. I can farm it out overseas to somewhere with a large supply of very cheap labour. I wouldn't be surprised if sitting in front of a bank of a half-dozen taxi-interior replays running backwards at triple-speed (with the empty periods already taken out by some relatively simple processing) from a point at which the uncleanliness is visible was seen as a good job, compared to some other options available. Wouldn't be surprised if I could have that done for me at a cost of a few dollars a time; if I then charge the culprit a hundred bucks on their already registered credit card or taxi account for cleaning (fifty sounds too low), it becomes very economical for me.
    • gambiting 9y ago
      Ok, then the customer does a chargeback on their credit card insisting they didn't do the mess, and you have to sit down and actually watch the footage because you can't be certain if your $5/hour overseas firm did a good job or if they just selected a random passenger to get it done quicker. Inconveniently, they also did the chargeback at the last possible moment(say a month after) so you don't have the recording anymore. Or maybe the video is not that clear what happened. I mean, we have to deal with shitty customers all the time. 99% of the time it's just not worth pursing someone who broke something or just left a mess, even if theoretically I could hunt down proof that they did it. It almost always escalates to some multi-month situation that is not worth the effort.
      • kalleboo 9y ago
        Just take the Google approach: ban them from the app and don't have any phone support.
      • Johnythree 9y ago
        It gets reported, so you clean it, and flag the previous occupant. If someone becomes a multiple offender, you ban them. Simple.