6 ms·
The specific examples listed out in the article are egregious, causing real harm. The fire chief is right to be angry, if anything her response is too measured.
by rurp 3y ago
The specific examples listed out in the article are egregious, causing real harm. The fire chief is right to be angry, if anything her response is too measured.
From the article:
- Running through yellow emergency tape and ignoring warning signs to enter a street strewn with storm-damaged electrical wires, then driving past emergency vehicles with some of those wires snarled around rooftop lidar sensors.
- Twice blocking firehouse driveways, requiring another firehouse to dispatch an ambulance to a medical emergency.
- Sitting motionless on a one-way street and forcing a firetruck to back up and take another route to a blazing building.
- Pulling up behind a firetruck that was flashing its emergency lights and parking there, interfering with firefighters unloading ladders.
- Entering an active fire scene, then parking with one of its tires on top of a fire hose.
- bunga-bunga 3y agoThat list is almost funny, as if they’re already trying to kill us.
- ASalazarMX 3y agoIt would be funnier without the life endangerment, but it is funny regardless. Practical AI can be so smart and so clueless at the same time, it's like watching a kid grow up. I don't know if massive fines are the way to go, because they could cripple that technology, but firefighters should have free reign to shove those vehicles around when they misbehave, or some way to signal them to get the hell out of the way.
- c00lio 3y agoIf this were a human driver, at least half of those would loose you your driver's license. Why are there no such consequences for the companies?
- ryan93 3y agoYou won’t even lose your license for killing people or multiple DUIs
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoJust lose your license? If I did one of those, I might get sued. If I did more than one, I might wind up in jail. (What charge? Reckless endangerment, if nothing greater.)
- jeffbee 3y agoAre you joking? Name any jurisdiction in America where you can lose your license for parking in front of a firehouse. There are no points for that in California.
- c00lio 3y agoOK, then the US is a very strange place. I'm European, so forgive my ignorance in those matters, I thought things worked similarly over there.
- jeffbee 3y agoLOL no. Personally I look upon the Swiss "via sicura" regime wistfully. I want people who speed through central cities to go to jail and have their cars crushed.
- scruple 3y agoAs long as we can also jail the people who, for no fucking reason whatsoever, drive 15 mph slower than the rest of traffic, too.
- tom_ 3y agoIf the rest of traffic is driving 15 mph faster, clearly it isn't difficult to ignore the people driving slowly. So if anything, surely it's the people who want them imprisoned who should be punished. Their crime? Poor priority management.
- c00lio 3y agoYou won't immediately loose your license for speeding, even in Switzerland. Afaik it'll be expensive until 20km/h over, only after that will the really nasty things like criminal prosecution and car impound start (for first-time offenders, repeat offenders are punished more harshly).
- jeffbee 3y ago
- aidenn0 3y agoNone of those will lose you your license in California. I'm not sure how to lose your license in California, as I don't know of anyone personally who has lost their license. There was a case in the news where someone was exceeding the posted speed-limit by 150kph on an undivided highway (i.e. just a stripe between you and the traffic going the opposite direction) and got a 6 month suspension. I was on the jury for a case where the defendant was involved his third DUI, fled the scene of the accident, and still had his license.
- whartung 3y agoThere's that scene from a TV show where the fire fighters are at a fire, and a car is in front of the fire hydrant. One of the characters calls out "Car!" and they then proceed to smash the windows, and route the fire hose through the car and connect it to the fire hydrant. Throughout the course of the incident, the hydrant leaks and fills the cars interior with water. If only there was, perhaps, a similar effective, and cathartic response to these things.
- scruple 3y agoYeah, but imagine the car starts trying to drive away while the fire hose is attached to the fire hydrant. They'd have to disable the vehicle completely in this case, right?
- masklinn 3y agoThat’s pretty much SOP (there are videos on YouTube), however it still wastes time, and damages lines, and if the car parks on a line you have to waste time shifting the car itself.
- Gordonjcp 3y agohttps://lukas.com/en/ https://lukas.com/en/
- jimt1234 3y agoWhen I was a kid back in the late-70s, I saw a handful of firefighters and a few other burly dudes overturn a car that was blocking a hydrant near an active fire. They got the car bouncing, then completely turned it over onto its roof. Then, then sorta scooted it out of the way of the hydrant. It's one of my oldest memories, and it was awesome!
- Projectiboga 3y agoTime for Zero Tolerance, if one of these do it seize it, and levy the robotaxi company and whomever built it with Huge Fines. Not "oh that will just be another expense", make it that those fines pierce the corporate veil and get to the executives and the millionaire shareholders. And now that I think of it, if there are any passengers, arrest them. That way they can sue the RoboTaxi company too.
- koolba 3y agoCheaper and more effective to simply add some ram bars to the fire trucks.
- kotaKat 3y agoThey're already well capable of ramming vehicles with their current bumpers, they're just too scared to do it. Montreal has no qualms going for it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCT74Szg_sA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCT74Szg_sA
- EatingWithForks 3y agoI would hesitate to arrest passengers that can't override the taxi. There are knock-on effects that can't be remediated by suing a robo taxi company, such as loss of job, violation of parole, or simply not having any money to begin the suit to begin with. [I know that it's unlikely that someone wealthy enough to hire a robotaxi for a trip may not be wealthy enough to hire a lawyer, but you never know and it would be a supremely nasty edge case]
- Mordisquitos 3y agoI understand your point, but I can see the reasoning to arrest the passengers. In summary, the robotaxi company's business model and how its cars work is none of the emergency service's business. It's a car, in the way, with people in it. If an ostensibly normal car were to block an emergency response, would its occupants be off the hook if they all denied having driven the vehicle to its current location, and said they have no ability to move it out of the way? I doubt it. They would be at the very least charged with something. The same thing should go for alleged robotaxis—“But we don't control the car we're sitting inside of!”... not the city's problem. The car you were in was blocking an emergency response. Would this be unfair? Yes it would. Would this make people fearful of using robotaxis? Absolutely yes it would. And would that put economic pressure on the robotaxi operators to fix these issues as fast as possible? Damn right it would.
- choppaface 3y agoUber has been and continues to be just as egregious in SF. I’ve been hit by two Ubers, both when I was in the crosswalk, and one incident caused me a $500 loss. There are Uber Eats double-parkers who stand in queues all night long making key roads unsafe or impassible. I’ve been in an Uber where the driver was literally trying to brake-check and cause rear-enders and he wouldn’t let me get out until I opened the door while the car was in motion. I’ve messaged Uber support dozens of times and they of course do nothing. Uber is clearly a different problem, but a much bigger one in the macro.