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If automated vehicles become popular, I predict new crimes will be added in addition to jaywalking. Cyclists may be restricted and anything else that confuses

If automated vehicles become popular, I predict new crimes will be added in addition to jaywalking. Cyclists may be restricted and anything else that confuses AI drivers. If certain intersections or sections of road consistently confuse AI drivers, automakers will lobby for ways to change these roadways. I suspect calls for AI regulation by people like Elon Musk are really attempts at regulatory capture to make automated vehicles possible and dominated by the first market entrants.

DiThi 9y ago
> Cyclists may be restricted and anything else that confuses AI drivers. I don't think that will ever happen. It may even be the opposite: AI will drive in a way it will always be able to stop if there's a possibility that there's someone behind some obstacle that may jump to the road at any moment. Worst case scenario, beacons become mandatory. Cheap and anonymous beacons you have to carry when you're near a road. Smart phones may include such functionality.
- mieseratte 9y ago
  I cannot imagine mandatory tracking devices, anonymous or not, ever being mandatory in the United States. That would never fly.
  - jrowley 9y ago
    Maybe not mandatory but otherwise you’re liable so your insurance company requires it.
    - macintux 9y ago
      Insurance companies mandating pedestrians carry a beacon? That's even less likely.
      - freeflight 9y ago
        They don't need to mandate it, at least not at first. They can just incentivize it the right way and people will willingly jump on board. "Install this app on your phone to make traffic lights recognize you when you approach them, for a timely shift to green light" "Install this app to collect pedestrian-points, exchange points for prices and discounts!" "Get a better insurance tier for installing this app which tracks your fitness. Do your daily 10.000 steps for a free <whatever>!" Once enough people jump on board, and it's generally accepted as being "normal because everybody uses it", then you can mandate it and the few people left who resist can easily be branded as "paranoid tinfoil-hat people" to marginalize their opposition.
        macintux 9y ago
        If you're relying on a smartphone to host a beacon, isn't that already a solved problem? Smartphones are radio transceivers, I would imagine any anonymous beacon technology wouldn't be noticeably louder than what smartphones are already emitting.
    - gamblor956 9y ago
      Several states already have laws preventing that requirement. In those states, location-tracking must be opt-in, and must offer an economic benefit to the policyholder.
      - notyourday 9y ago
        Silly rabbit. We jack up the price without a location tracking and offer a 10k incentive to do location tracking. No location tracking = new policy price Location tracking = new policy price - 10K. New policy price = old policy price + 10k
        gamblor956 9y ago
        Any insurer which raises rates to pay for this would quickly lose most of its business unless they're (a) the only insurer in the state or (b) convince the rest of the insurers in-state to collude on pricing. The first isn't the case of any state with respect to auto insurance, and the second is a state and federal felony punishable by many years in jail for any executive stupid enough to participate. And that's assuming they can get away with the rate increases in the first place. States like CA have insurance commissioners empowered to review and reject rate increases.
        woahdudebro 9y ago
        >the second is a state and federal felony punishable by many years in jail for any executive stupid enough to participate. Not true for insurance companies, they are exempt from antitrust law under the McCarran-Ferguson Act. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarran–Ferguson_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarran–Ferguson_Act
        notyourday 9y ago
        You do know that progressive has been doing it for a few years, right? With that little device that you can plug into your car to lower the rates?
  - 5555624 9y ago
    While I agree, car manufacturers are already monitoring and storing this data. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2018/01/15/big-brother-on-wheels-why-your-car-company-may-know-more-about-you-than-your-spouse/?utm_term=.24eae6c93318 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2018/01/1...) If the find they can sell it, they will.
  - geofft 9y ago
    This is the same United States where just about everyone already carries a tracking device by choice, where lots of people have installed 24/7 network-connected microphones in their homes, and where everyone believes you need ID to fly. This is the same United States where a common political argument is that of course ID should be required to vote because ID is required for everything else, and citizens should just carry ID. This is the same US where a special police force arrests and detains citizens and forces them to prove that they're actually citizens. It's been a long while since we actually objected to the "papers, please" world. After all, these beacons are not mandatory - they're only needed if you want to use the roads as a pedestrian or cyclist. If you don't, you can drive your car like any real (read: non-poor) American, or use a taxi or bus. Pedestrians already aren't permitted on highways, what's so different about restricting pedestrians on surface streets? And if you don't carry the beacon, that's not illegal, it's just your fault if you get hit by a car. It's not the government forcing you to carry it, it's algorithms and corporations, which makes it okay, right? If these beacons are produced by the free market, why should government regulation step in and stifle innovation?
    - mieseratte 9y ago
      I'm going to assume this is a good-faith argument and not a "bury them in BS" reply: > This is the same United States where just about everyone already carries a tracking device by choice. Sure, that's a very reasonable counter-point, however not everyone does. > where lots of people have installed 24/7 network-connected microphones in their homes Plenty of folks find asking a wiretap for pancake recipes fine, and there are plenty that balk at the thought. This Christmas my sister bought everyone Amazon's cute little NSA Listening Post™ - was fun how quickly the look of disgust crossed their face when I explained that every conversation would be recorded and store in Amazon's data centers... and probably a few three-letter agencies. > and where everyone believes you need ID to fly. This is the same United States where a common political argument is that of course ID should be required to vote because ID is required for everything else, and citizens should just carry ID. This is the same US where a special police force arrests and detains citizens and forces them to prove that they're actually citizens. It's been a long while since we actually objected to the "papers, please" world. There is an insanely large leap between having an ID for a few specific purposes and being mandated to carry a homing beacon. > they're only needed if you want to use the roads as a pedestrian or cyclist. The post I replied to did not state "to use the roads" - it stated general use of mandatory beacons. You're moving the goalposts. > And if you don't carry the beacon, that's not illegal, it's just your fault if you get hit by a car. It's not the government forcing you to carry it, it's algorithms and corporations, which makes it okay, right? If these beacons are produced by the free market, why should government regulation step in and stifle innovation? If the AppleMobile hits me because I don't carry an iPhone, you can best believe they will be sued into oblivion. Remember, this is litigious America! The Evangelical community would surely denounce a mandatory tracking device as the work of the Antichrist, and I would love to watch politicians shit on that high-turnout demographic.
  - DiThi 9y ago
    Everybody misinterpreted what I've intended. SHORT RANGE BEACONS. Enough to be "seen" by car AI through obstacles. Here's the imaginary conversation between car and beacon: - "Is someone behind that parked van?" - "Yes" - "Who?" - "Mind your own business, just slow down in case I decide to jump to the road, ok?"
    - jstanley 9y ago
      If the beacons don't identify their carrier, you could very easily troll AI cars by leaving unmanned beacons lying around.
      - DiThi 9y ago
        Good point... Well, that seems easy to police: Have one car patrolling for beacons not attached to what appears to be a person or bike. The only consequence of such troll beacons are cars slowing down on that point, that's all.
  - upvotinglurker 9y ago
    Would a beacon have to be a personally associated tracking device? I can imagine carrying a device that just broadcasts a generic "cyclist here, moving this speed and direction" signal, without identifying or being registered to me (bought with cash)
deleted 9y ago
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Tiktaalik 9y ago
Absolutely. I see this here on hacker news with people excited about the notion of doing away with stop lights so that AI traffic can flow easily. People are completely ignoring the existence of pedestrians and cyclists. It would not be surprising to see a new crime of "hindering an autonomous automobile" be lobbied for.
- whatshisface 9y ago
  It's only a matter of time before some stupid kids start jumping in the way of self-driving cars to make them brake hard. That's when we'll see the anti-pedestrian regulations appear, by my estimation.
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    That's a good point. I can totally see how as a kid I would have tried to mess with self driving cars.
    - intrasight 9y ago
      We messed with human-driven cars to great amusement (to us) when we were teens.
  - kbenson 9y ago
    To be fair, regulations put in place because kids are jumping in front of cars could be anti-pedestrian, but it could also just be anti-fucking-idiot if drafted well.
  - btbuildem 9y ago
    Not just kids - it's a perfect way to carjack someone.
    - sigstoat 9y ago
      carjacking vehicles with constant internet connections and GPS's doesn't strike me as an extremely profitable maneuver. the whole "car detects obstacle in an untrafficed area, stops, door is opened, passenger gets out, passenger gets back in, changes destination to a place not proximate to anywhere they've ever been before" process also sounds like the sort of thing that would justifiably raise a bit of a red flag. maybe not an automated call to 911, but it should probably dump all records to the cloud and trigger a call from an onstar operator or similar.
MaxBarraclough 9y ago
> If certain intersections or sections of road consistently confuse AI drivers, automakers will lobby for ways to change these roadways. I doubt that attitude will ever catch on. Maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but it seems to me that there's a healthy suspicion about AI drivers. So far at least, the attitude taken by, well, everyone, is that AI drivers are untrustworthy until proven trustworthy. If AI drivers can't cope with the various challenges of real driving, then the AI drivers are to blame, not the external factors. If they work well, AI drivers will be permitted to drive. If they do not, they will not be permitted to drive. At no point will they get to dictate what other road-users may do. Our Ludditism will see to that.
- taneliv 9y ago
  When 80-90% of car driving population have switched over to AI driven cars, the focus of Ludditism probably shifts to something more emerging technology and the great majority of people will just nod their heads in unison with those lobbying automakers. It is not particularly difficult to imagine the general public swaying even to some opposite extreme, supported by some reasoning like "he probably did something wrong to get killed, the AI cars make very few mistakes."
  - MaxBarraclough 9y ago
    Interesting points. I suppose that's one possibility, but I'm more of an optimist.
yalph 9y ago
Why cant we get automated bicycles and get rid of the humans on bikes?
- visarga 9y ago
  You mean get rid of the handlebars?
- babygoat 9y ago
  LOL probably.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Pigo 9y ago
  When are we going to learn and just get rid of the humans?
Brakenshire 9y ago
We could end up with roads dedicated to cars being separated from roads dedicated to pedestrians or cyclists. You could imagine if a city was designed from scratch the vehicles could move around almost in tunnel-like back-alleys, with periodic embarkation points into pedestrianized open plazas and boulevards. If Musk's reduction in cost of tunnelling is more than just a pipe-dream, then you might be able to retrofit something like that into an existing city. But I agree that if autonomous cars come to pass, there will be a lot of pressure to go down the route you discuss.
- artpepper2 9y ago
  It's hard enough to get bike lines built, let alone a separate road system.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- asteli 9y ago
  This is the future of cities. Doing this would open the door for massive efficiency gains. Within these controlled "back-alleys," you could lay down metallic guides for the cars to glide down (dramatically reduced rolling friction losses), and couple vehicles moving in the same direction (dramatically reduced aerodynamic losses). Eventually you could electrify the whole thing so that cars wouldn't have to carry fuel while in the back-alley network . It needs a catchy name though. Back-alley is too harsh. Something that represents our aspirations for the cities of the future. I'm thinking "Metro."
  - Brakenshire 9y ago
    Hah, yes, I agree! But with a difference of point to point rather than line-based. Autonomous technology will probably mean a kind of union between private and public transport, and between road and metro rail.
  - tristor 9y ago
    I like that nobody caught on. But yes, that's basically a Metro system. The difference is that a Metro system doesn't allow divergence without transfer and it's a "mass transit" system. Autonomous vehicles provide an opportunity to blend controlled and uncontrolled transit paths, privacy, and the ability to diverge without transfer while increasing traffic efficiency, reducing the dangers of driving, and freeing up commuter time for other activities, just like mass transit.
neves 9y ago
When I think of crimes and AI drivers I always think of people using drugs or making sex in driverless taxis.
- nkoren 9y ago
  And then you remember that as part of the passenger safety case for driverless taxis, there will necessarily be cameras and microphones and the ability to lock the doors and redirect the taxi to the nearest hospital or police station, right? When we were building the Heathrow Pod[1] -- which is effectively an autonomous taxi system -- this was an objection that people raised all the time. In practice, it took approximately zero instances of bad passenger behaviour for people to catch onto the fact that the interior of an autonomous vehicle that can deliver you non-stop to airport security is really the last place on Earth that you'd want to engage in anti-social behaviour. 1: https://www.heathrow.com/transport-and-directions/heathrow-parking/heathrow-pod-parking-terminal-5 https://www.heathrow.com/transport-and-directions/heathrow-p...
  - YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
    So it will be illegal to have sex at the back of an autonomously driven car?
    - nkoren 9y ago
      Who said anything about illegal? Merely monetised. You'll be able to find the videos at www.lookwhohadsexinthebackofataxi.xxx.[1] 1: This does not reflect the views of any previous, current, or future employers, or indeed of myself when I'm being serious.
    - upvotinglurker 9y ago
      Presumably not if you own the car. Sex in public (including in buses, subways, etc.) is already illegal in many areas, and cab-company equivalents would presumably get to set their own rules as they do now.
phil21 9y ago
Yup. The first thing I think about wrt to driverless cars being adopted en-masse is how trivially easy it would be to DDoS them. Literally just stand in front of them and there will be nothing they can do. Once people get used to zero social repercussions (driverless cars will be empty probably 50% of the time en-route to pick someone up or go park themselves by my estimation) I imagine you will see things like certain folks simply crossing streets blindly comfortable in the fact that the cars will stop for them regardless of right of way. Many will disagree that this will happen, but I think many underestimate the antisocialness of folks when there are no consequences.

DiThi 9y ago

> Cyclists may be restricted and anything else that confuses AI drivers. I don't think that will ever happen. It may even be the opposite: AI will drive in a way it will always be able to stop if there's a possibility that there's someone behind some obstacle that may jump to the road at any moment. Worst case scenario, beacons become mandatory. Cheap and anonymous beacons you have to carry when you're near a road. Smart phones may include such functionality.

mieseratte 9y ago
I cannot imagine mandatory tracking devices, anonymous or not, ever being mandatory in the United States. That would never fly.
- jrowley 9y ago
  Maybe not mandatory but otherwise you’re liable so your insurance company requires it.
  - macintux 9y ago
    Insurance companies mandating pedestrians carry a beacon? That's even less likely.
    - freeflight 9y ago
      They don't need to mandate it, at least not at first. They can just incentivize it the right way and people will willingly jump on board. "Install this app on your phone to make traffic lights recognize you when you approach them, for a timely shift to green light" "Install this app to collect pedestrian-points, exchange points for prices and discounts!" "Get a better insurance tier for installing this app which tracks your fitness. Do your daily 10.000 steps for a free <whatever>!" Once enough people jump on board, and it's generally accepted as being "normal because everybody uses it", then you can mandate it and the few people left who resist can easily be branded as "paranoid tinfoil-hat people" to marginalize their opposition.
      - macintux 9y ago
        If you're relying on a smartphone to host a beacon, isn't that already a solved problem? Smartphones are radio transceivers, I would imagine any anonymous beacon technology wouldn't be noticeably louder than what smartphones are already emitting.
  - gamblor956 9y ago
    Several states already have laws preventing that requirement. In those states, location-tracking must be opt-in, and must offer an economic benefit to the policyholder.
    - notyourday 9y ago
      Silly rabbit. We jack up the price without a location tracking and offer a 10k incentive to do location tracking. No location tracking = new policy price Location tracking = new policy price - 10K. New policy price = old policy price + 10k
      - gamblor956 9y ago
        Any insurer which raises rates to pay for this would quickly lose most of its business unless they're (a) the only insurer in the state or (b) convince the rest of the insurers in-state to collude on pricing. The first isn't the case of any state with respect to auto insurance, and the second is a state and federal felony punishable by many years in jail for any executive stupid enough to participate. And that's assuming they can get away with the rate increases in the first place. States like CA have insurance commissioners empowered to review and reject rate increases.
        woahdudebro 9y ago
        >the second is a state and federal felony punishable by many years in jail for any executive stupid enough to participate. Not true for insurance companies, they are exempt from antitrust law under the McCarran-Ferguson Act. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarran–Ferguson_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarran–Ferguson_Act
        notyourday 9y ago
        You do know that progressive has been doing it for a few years, right? With that little device that you can plug into your car to lower the rates?
- 5555624 9y ago
  While I agree, car manufacturers are already monitoring and storing this data. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2018/01/15/big-brother-on-wheels-why-your-car-company-may-know-more-about-you-than-your-spouse/?utm_term=.24eae6c93318 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2018/01/1...) If the find they can sell it, they will.
- geofft 9y ago
  This is the same United States where just about everyone already carries a tracking device by choice, where lots of people have installed 24/7 network-connected microphones in their homes, and where everyone believes you need ID to fly. This is the same United States where a common political argument is that of course ID should be required to vote because ID is required for everything else, and citizens should just carry ID. This is the same US where a special police force arrests and detains citizens and forces them to prove that they're actually citizens. It's been a long while since we actually objected to the "papers, please" world. After all, these beacons are not mandatory - they're only needed if you want to use the roads as a pedestrian or cyclist. If you don't, you can drive your car like any real (read: non-poor) American, or use a taxi or bus. Pedestrians already aren't permitted on highways, what's so different about restricting pedestrians on surface streets? And if you don't carry the beacon, that's not illegal, it's just your fault if you get hit by a car. It's not the government forcing you to carry it, it's algorithms and corporations, which makes it okay, right? If these beacons are produced by the free market, why should government regulation step in and stifle innovation?
  - mieseratte 9y ago
    I'm going to assume this is a good-faith argument and not a "bury them in BS" reply: > This is the same United States where just about everyone already carries a tracking device by choice. Sure, that's a very reasonable counter-point, however not everyone does. > where lots of people have installed 24/7 network-connected microphones in their homes Plenty of folks find asking a wiretap for pancake recipes fine, and there are plenty that balk at the thought. This Christmas my sister bought everyone Amazon's cute little NSA Listening Post™ - was fun how quickly the look of disgust crossed their face when I explained that every conversation would be recorded and store in Amazon's data centers... and probably a few three-letter agencies. > and where everyone believes you need ID to fly. This is the same United States where a common political argument is that of course ID should be required to vote because ID is required for everything else, and citizens should just carry ID. This is the same US where a special police force arrests and detains citizens and forces them to prove that they're actually citizens. It's been a long while since we actually objected to the "papers, please" world. There is an insanely large leap between having an ID for a few specific purposes and being mandated to carry a homing beacon. > they're only needed if you want to use the roads as a pedestrian or cyclist. The post I replied to did not state "to use the roads" - it stated general use of mandatory beacons. You're moving the goalposts. > And if you don't carry the beacon, that's not illegal, it's just your fault if you get hit by a car. It's not the government forcing you to carry it, it's algorithms and corporations, which makes it okay, right? If these beacons are produced by the free market, why should government regulation step in and stifle innovation? If the AppleMobile hits me because I don't carry an iPhone, you can best believe they will be sued into oblivion. Remember, this is litigious America! The Evangelical community would surely denounce a mandatory tracking device as the work of the Antichrist, and I would love to watch politicians shit on that high-turnout demographic.
- DiThi 9y ago
  Everybody misinterpreted what I've intended. SHORT RANGE BEACONS. Enough to be "seen" by car AI through obstacles. Here's the imaginary conversation between car and beacon: - "Is someone behind that parked van?" - "Yes" - "Who?" - "Mind your own business, just slow down in case I decide to jump to the road, ok?"
  - jstanley 9y ago
    If the beacons don't identify their carrier, you could very easily troll AI cars by leaving unmanned beacons lying around.
    - DiThi 9y ago
      Good point... Well, that seems easy to police: Have one car patrolling for beacons not attached to what appears to be a person or bike. The only consequence of such troll beacons are cars slowing down on that point, that's all.
- upvotinglurker 9y ago
  Would a beacon have to be a personally associated tracking device? I can imagine carrying a device that just broadcasts a generic "cyclist here, moving this speed and direction" signal, without identifying or being registered to me (bought with cash)

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Tiktaalik 9y ago

Absolutely. I see this here on hacker news with people excited about the notion of doing away with stop lights so that AI traffic can flow easily. People are completely ignoring the existence of pedestrians and cyclists. It would not be surprising to see a new crime of "hindering an autonomous automobile" be lobbied for.

whatshisface 9y ago
It's only a matter of time before some stupid kids start jumping in the way of self-driving cars to make them brake hard. That's when we'll see the anti-pedestrian regulations appear, by my estimation.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  That's a good point. I can totally see how as a kid I would have tried to mess with self driving cars.
  - intrasight 9y ago
    We messed with human-driven cars to great amusement (to us) when we were teens.
- kbenson 9y ago
  To be fair, regulations put in place because kids are jumping in front of cars could be anti-pedestrian, but it could also just be anti-fucking-idiot if drafted well.
- btbuildem 9y ago
  Not just kids - it's a perfect way to carjack someone.
  - sigstoat 9y ago
    carjacking vehicles with constant internet connections and GPS's doesn't strike me as an extremely profitable maneuver. the whole "car detects obstacle in an untrafficed area, stops, door is opened, passenger gets out, passenger gets back in, changes destination to a place not proximate to anywhere they've ever been before" process also sounds like the sort of thing that would justifiably raise a bit of a red flag. maybe not an automated call to 911, but it should probably dump all records to the cloud and trigger a call from an onstar operator or similar.

MaxBarraclough 9y ago

> If certain intersections or sections of road consistently confuse AI drivers, automakers will lobby for ways to change these roadways. I doubt that attitude will ever catch on. Maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but it seems to me that there's a healthy suspicion about AI drivers. So far at least, the attitude taken by, well, everyone, is that AI drivers are untrustworthy until proven trustworthy. If AI drivers can't cope with the various challenges of real driving, then the AI drivers are to blame, not the external factors. If they work well, AI drivers will be permitted to drive. If they do not, they will not be permitted to drive. At no point will they get to dictate what other road-users may do. Our Ludditism will see to that.

taneliv 9y ago
When 80-90% of car driving population have switched over to AI driven cars, the focus of Ludditism probably shifts to something more emerging technology and the great majority of people will just nod their heads in unison with those lobbying automakers. It is not particularly difficult to imagine the general public swaying even to some opposite extreme, supported by some reasoning like "he probably did something wrong to get killed, the AI cars make very few mistakes."
- MaxBarraclough 9y ago
  Interesting points. I suppose that's one possibility, but I'm more of an optimist.

yalph 9y ago

Why cant we get automated bicycles and get rid of the humans on bikes?

visarga 9y ago
You mean get rid of the handlebars?
babygoat 9y ago
LOL probably.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Pigo 9y ago
When are we going to learn and just get rid of the humans?

Brakenshire 9y ago

We could end up with roads dedicated to cars being separated from roads dedicated to pedestrians or cyclists. You could imagine if a city was designed from scratch the vehicles could move around almost in tunnel-like back-alleys, with periodic embarkation points into pedestrianized open plazas and boulevards. If Musk's reduction in cost of tunnelling is more than just a pipe-dream, then you might be able to retrofit something like that into an existing city. But I agree that if autonomous cars come to pass, there will be a lot of pressure to go down the route you discuss.

artpepper2 9y ago
It's hard enough to get bike lines built, let alone a separate road system.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
asteli 9y ago
This is the future of cities. Doing this would open the door for massive efficiency gains. Within these controlled "back-alleys," you could lay down metallic guides for the cars to glide down (dramatically reduced rolling friction losses), and couple vehicles moving in the same direction (dramatically reduced aerodynamic losses). Eventually you could electrify the whole thing so that cars wouldn't have to carry fuel while in the back-alley network . It needs a catchy name though. Back-alley is too harsh. Something that represents our aspirations for the cities of the future. I'm thinking "Metro."
- Brakenshire 9y ago
  Hah, yes, I agree! But with a difference of point to point rather than line-based. Autonomous technology will probably mean a kind of union between private and public transport, and between road and metro rail.
- tristor 9y ago
  I like that nobody caught on. But yes, that's basically a Metro system. The difference is that a Metro system doesn't allow divergence without transfer and it's a "mass transit" system. Autonomous vehicles provide an opportunity to blend controlled and uncontrolled transit paths, privacy, and the ability to diverge without transfer while increasing traffic efficiency, reducing the dangers of driving, and freeing up commuter time for other activities, just like mass transit.

neves 9y ago

When I think of crimes and AI drivers I always think of people using drugs or making sex in driverless taxis.

nkoren 9y ago
And then you remember that as part of the passenger safety case for driverless taxis, there will necessarily be cameras and microphones and the ability to lock the doors and redirect the taxi to the nearest hospital or police station, right? When we were building the Heathrow Pod[1] -- which is effectively an autonomous taxi system -- this was an objection that people raised all the time. In practice, it took approximately zero instances of bad passenger behaviour for people to catch onto the fact that the interior of an autonomous vehicle that can deliver you non-stop to airport security is really the last place on Earth that you'd want to engage in anti-social behaviour. 1: https://www.heathrow.com/transport-and-directions/heathrow-parking/heathrow-pod-parking-terminal-5 https://www.heathrow.com/transport-and-directions/heathrow-p...
- YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
  So it will be illegal to have sex at the back of an autonomously driven car?
  - nkoren 9y ago
    Who said anything about illegal? Merely monetised. You'll be able to find the videos at www.lookwhohadsexinthebackofataxi.xxx.[1] 1: This does not reflect the views of any previous, current, or future employers, or indeed of myself when I'm being serious.
  - upvotinglurker 9y ago
    Presumably not if you own the car. Sex in public (including in buses, subways, etc.) is already illegal in many areas, and cab-company equivalents would presumably get to set their own rules as they do now.

phil21 9y ago

Yup. The first thing I think about wrt to driverless cars being adopted en-masse is how trivially easy it would be to DDoS them. Literally just stand in front of them and there will be nothing they can do. Once people get used to zero social repercussions (driverless cars will be empty probably 50% of the time en-route to pick someone up or go park themselves by my estimation) I imagine you will see things like certain folks simply crossing streets blindly comfortable in the fact that the cars will stop for them regardless of right of way. Many will disagree that this will happen, but I think many underestimate the antisocialness of folks when there are no consequences.