>jumping in front of self driving cars etc just to f@#$ with them. Much more fun would be jumping in front of the beer truck while your buddies empty the thing

>jumping in front of self driving cars etc just to f@#$ with them. Much more fun would be jumping in front of the beer truck while your buddies empty the thing out the back. I would imagine crime would be a huge issue with these things. On a par with the ratio of car burglary smash and grab vs carjacking crime rates. I would imagine those things would have elaborate and easy to use nationwide systems to shut down in case of an accident or runaway vehicle, such that no matter what antennas were knocked off or radios burned out a fireman anywhere in the nation could just pull a lever... once the criminals learn, it'll be open season. Water softener salt delivery truck is probably safe, but the beer truck is in serious danger... Replacing licensed drivers with rentacops wouldn't necessarily save all that much money as rentacops aren't that much cheaper than drivers, and if the rentacop is sitting there doing nothing while the truck drives, some beancounter is going to demand they work, perhaps by driving the truck... Something that's interesting to think about is people who've never worked retail have some peculiar ideas. I worked retail as a student and got to know some delivery guys and they spent surprisingly little time driving. They'd go from the warehouse to the store to gas station to bar to restaurant wheeling around kegs and 6packs, stocking store shelves by hand, and selling to the businessmen. Data entry filling out little forms and receipts for each custom delivery, etc. Stopping them from driving would have about as much effect on their employment as the deployment of hand trucks to wheel around beer. It would make the job a little easier, but not much. Of course you could outsource the labor to the recipients, but then you go from 10 trucks and 10 drivers delivering to 100 sites, to 0 drivers and 100 reception clerks at each site to do the manual labor... Given two competitors the guy with the drivers will provide a better cheaper service than the high tech competitor, so ...