5 ms·
During the height of Critical Mass, bicyclists would surround minivans and keep them from leaving. Drivers don't know what to do because if they push too hard
by dekhn 3y ago
During the height of Critical Mass, bicyclists would surround minivans and keep them from leaving. Drivers don't know what to do because if they push too hard they'll knock over and injure a cyclist. I don't expect self-driving cars to deal any better with cones, or any hostile action towards a car.
- Vecr 3y agoThat's an ambush, are the self defense laws there that bad?
- dekhn 3y agoUhhh... if you're surrounding by multiple layers of cyclists and try to drive your way out hitting a few cyclists, the cyclists are going to swarm your car and kill you. To be fair, I think this only happened a few times and it was caused by a small number of bad players, while the majority of Critical Mass participants were ethically (if somewhat inconveniently) demonstrating their collective power.
- sroussey 3y agoWhat happens when you cross an autonomous car and stand-your-ground gun laws? Through in some citizens united where a corporation is a person, and you might have cars that fight back... 8)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dghlsakjg 3y agoI've participated and watched critical mass any number of times. I've never seen cyclists target cars randomly. The only time you will be surrounded in a minivan is if you try to drive through the cyclists, or otherwise act aggressively or unsafely. Critical mass is a protest movement. If you drive your vehicle into the middle of a protest against vehicles in a way that puts people in danger, don't be surprised when people react defensively. > Drivers don't know what to do because if they push too hard they'll knock over and injure a cyclist. They should do nothing. You cannot knock over a cyclist in a stationary car.
- dmix 3y agoThe two critical mass's I participated in blocking traffic was limited to everyone passing through an intersection and then continuing on. Annoying for drivers no doubt but never as egregious as locking someone in specifically for an extended amount of time. The riders tend to move pretty quickly so it was at most a few minutes and never swarming vehicles to a standstill.
- dekhn 3y agoThe situtations I'm describing (covered in the press at the time) were not defensive- they were actively offensive. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflicts_involving_Critical_Mass#San_Francisco,_California,_US https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflicts_involving_Critical_M... Swarming a car and preventing it from moving- sure, the safest thing for the car to do is stop driving, but... I don't think that's really a good defense of confrontational bikers.
- kelnos 3y agoI kinda think a vehicle being surrounded by people on bicycles is a much different situation than someone putting a traffic cone on the hood. I think you're actually disproving your own point: a human driver would immediately know what to do if someone put a cone on their hood. But both a human driver and AV would have a similarly difficult time when faced with a bunch of cyclists surrounding them.
- Imnimo 3y agoYou don't expect a human can figure out what to do if there is a cone on their hood?