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The very first time one of these things blocked emergency services, the whole project should have been shelved until that problem was absolutely fixed. But that didn’t happen.
If this is the incident you’re referring to, then:
Updated Wednesday June 14 2:10 p.m. EST - San Francisco Police have provided this statement to Jalopnik:
“The SFPD is aware of the social media video showing an autonomous vehicle stopped in the middle of a road during a recent shooting incident in San Francisco. The autonomous vehicle did not delay police, fire, or other emergency personnel with our arrival or departure from this scene. Furthermore, it did not interfere with our investigation into the shooting incident.
Also, if the lives saved by autonomous cars are anywhere near as high as they’re supposed to be, isolated incidents are way more than worth it. Statements like “The very first time one of these things blocked emergency services, the whole project should have been shelved” are incredibly shortsighted and would result in orders of magnitude more deaths over time.
It’s an imaginative way to protest, but what exactly are they protestors opposing about self driving vehicles? I get there might be safety concerns about this new and somewhat unproven technology, but it’s not as if human drivers are wholly reliable either.
Ultimately self driving tech has to “hit the streets” at some point to get real world testing experience and feedback.
They’re not protesting self driving cars. And this has nothing at all to do with the reliability of human drivers. They’re protesting the way the development and testing of self driving cars has put corporate interests ahead of civic safety and community consent. The people in these test cities have become non-consenting test subjects in an experiment that clearly puts corporate profit ahead of safety. When new drugs “hit the streets” there are well regulated systems of test subject consent and safety accountability to get real world testing experience and feedback. Why should this auto industry experiment be exempt from experimental and scientific ethics?
They have done things like block EMS from responding to a mass shooting. People keep making this about the safety of humans vs. autonomous cars, but humans generally don’t block ambulances. Even if they’re big asshole drivers.
That makes these things a clear and present danger and they should not be on the streets.
honestly, the whole concept of self-driving cars is fundamentally stupid in the way they’re trying to build them here. if there are specific cities where they can go on specific roads, the simple answer would be to install a positional tracking system on those roads (just like lane markings, but for computers), along with some pedestrian safety features and the right interfaces to respond to emergency vehicles and such. that could have been built by a couple of undergrads from stanford like five years ago. but no, we have to use far more overengineered solutions, for… why exactly? to be able to sell the tech later to individuals who can’t just upgrade their whole city?
