The Self-Driving Cars Wearing a Cone of Shame
The Self-Driving Cars Wearing a Cone of Shame
"Coning" autonomous vehicles is part of a long tradition of tactical urbanism.
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?
There is a big difference between a self driving car that is monitored by a human and a car driving entirely on its own.
I wholeheartedly believe that electronic driver's aids can improve traffic safety (ESC, ABS etc.), but they need to aid the driver and not replace them.
I'd like to point to how aircraft pilots are using their autopilot and other electronic aids in that they give control of the airplane to the computer but continuously monitor the plane and make sure everything is working properly even though aircraft are much more straight forward to fly for a computer than cars are to drive.
I gotta disagree here. Our goal of we want cars to be around should be to replace ALL human drivers. Especially on highways. Cars can communicate with other cars, which would almost completely remove congestion and traffic from people who’ve never heard of zipper merging and people who refuse to let anyone in front of them ever because they need to save that three seconds.
People drive like assholes. Road rage incidents are not infrequent. People speed, drive drunk, cut people off, forget their exit and do incredibly stupid and dangerous things to get back instead of getting off on the next one, and overall should not be trusted piloting a 2,000 pound missile around other folks.
If every car was self driving, then safety on the road would skyrocket. Travel time would drop drastically. There would be no downsides (other than it won’t solve the US’s car-centric design). Am I saying we are ready? No.
I’m saying “they need to aid the driver and not replace them” is way off base. Idk what your commute is like, but I’d feel a million times safer if asshole A didnt drive around blaring his horn and brake checking me because I’m only going ten mph over the speed limit and not the 20 everyone else is, while asshole B is riding my ass trying to get me to speed up, leaving me 0 space to brake in an emergency.
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.
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.
And self driving cars don’t generally do that either? Humans have done this. Self driving cars have done this. If the ambulance and car were self driver, cross vehicle communication could prevent any car from refusing to follow the law and get over, improving EMS response times.
One example does not make generally. Self driving cars are not ready yet. But I don’t understand why anybody WOULDNT want safer, faster, more enjoyable commutes.
Humans are way less safe than self driving cars. Our biggest concern with self driving cars should be the absolute massive amount of data the car companies would be able to mine, and the fact that regulation in this country will obviously never be in place to protect us from that.
I'd probably kind of oppose to them on the grounds that I'd rather that money go into investing in pedestrian infrastructure, and not just yet another car to hog up the streets.
It might in the end. For example the end goal of Uber was self driving car development that would eventually replace all of the drivers, creating a network of inexpensive self driving taxis and shared rides reducing the amount of individual cars on the roads and especially basically completely remove the need for parking, as the car is always in use by someone.
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?
But the long run goal isn't to be able to run only in very specific, rich cities that are willing to completely retrofit a massive city to support these cars. Clearly they want to be able to eventually replace all and any car usage with self driving cars.
I think you may also be underestimating just how expensive it would be to install systems like that, especially since it has to be maintained too.
I don't remember where but I remember seeing something that literally just needed a bunch of RFID chips or something on the road, honestly just making a standard chip and then making them pay for it would work great. It's way safer and more reliable than current systems.
They actually do this on i80 near Tahoe to help snow plows find the lane. Assuming you could get municipal agreement to install such hardware in public roads, it would be a superior way to navigate, but it would lock you to that municipal jurisdiction and any other compatible installation in other jurisdictions. Using LiDAR and cameras means you do not have to rely on political buy-in everywhere your cars want to drive. This means that if the state says you can drive AV's, you don't also have to go one by one to each town and city to expand your driving area. Plus, not having to rely on physical that hardware ia going to be a lower bar to entry.
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