This is not the full story, even before cars came into common use, society had to figure out how to manage pedestrians coexisting with horses and carriages on public roadways.
Eg. Check out the UK's Highway Act 1835 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Act_1835). It criminalized riding or driving a carriage on the footway (sidewalk) and made both pedestrians and drivers responsible for using due care to avoid collisions in the road.
This was a long-term societal shift to having dedicated infrastructure for both pedestrians and vehicles to avoid collisions, not some sort of sinister auto industry scheme.
As car ownership increased, it seems possible that norms would change a bit.
I think of it as a long term negotiation with society about what we are all willing to sacrifice for the conveniences of a new technology.
I don't think that negotiation ever ends, either. It just evolves with the tech. Robert Moses exuberantly covered New York City with highways during the mid 20th century. Each new bridge and highway he built induced demand for more cars. So, every road was clogged as soon as it opened. And his answer was always to build more roads.
Moses built a base of power that depended in part on revenue from toll booths. But, some of his projects were disastrous for communities and should not have ever happened. Because of his fixation on cars, and because of how he was benefitting from cars, he was unable to recognize that a city's transportation infrastructure must be balanced between different modes.
Personal cars are almost the least ideal form of transportation for a dense city and for intercity traffic. But once the power around a single technology becomes locked in, it can freeze the negotiation around it and the power structures can safely ignore any further resistance.
I frequent the UK. They literally put up BARRIERS around crossings to make it difficult for pedestrians to "jaywalk". I can hardly believe it!
Interesting note ... a 2017 review of 70 London sites where Transport for London removed railings found serious and fatal pedestrian injuries fell 53% in the three years afterwards compared with the three years before.
https://content.tfl.gov.uk/pedestrian-railings-removal-repor...
... jay driving was a thing first.
I would suspect safety had more to do with it than anything else. The closest I've ever personally come to hitting someone was because they jaywalked directly in front of my car, after walking between two parked vans so they were not visible until they strode right out in front of me. It was a near thing, but my reaction time is good and I am pretty attentive to what is in front of me. But physics is a harsh mistress, it is a dumb game to play.
We're not going to get rid of cars, much as some people think that would be a net improvement, so the sensible thing to do is make pedestrian crossings plentiful, obvious, and respected by both drivers and walkers. Public space is shared.
But go off about guillotines and cold lunches or whatever.
that's how you get people's attention to something, bring about public discourse, which can lead to political action
This would have been unthinkable 200 years ago, during a time we are trained to think of as much more barbaric than the present.
Quote from a lawyer in the article:
> Personal delivery devices must yield to other pedestrians and pedalcyclists in a pedestrian area
Sounds like the robot legally had to yield to her. If so, what lawful basis would the officer have had to make the order?
It's quite possible (and likely!) for you simultaneously to have an obligation to yield and the other party to have an obligation to not block.
That sounds like the robot tried to yield and she purposefully moved to counter that.
That would likely support a charge for obstructing traffic or disorderly conduct or something similar.
I suppose if the robot literally cannot path around someone standing still, it might be a valid excuse? But as soon as you're actively moving to block it, it is obviously obstruction.
Judges get to run off common sense, not programmer logic - the point of the law is that public paths ought to be usable by anyone for lawful purposes, and currently "delivery robot" is a lawful purpose.
But if she was doing the same thing to humans as she was to the robot, they couldn't move around her (assuming that means re-positioning herself every time they try to go around) - and I think most people would agree that arresting her would be a good thing.
So the next question is, are all users of the sidewalk (as long as they're using it roughly the same way, which is temporary and quick pass through) deserve to have the same rights as a human?
My previous comment doesn't seem to align with this one, but mostly because I'm mixed on this.
If I stand on a train track, do you think the police aren't allowed to ask me to move?
> In the aftermath of her arrest, Marvin has found out more about the legal infrastructure that protects robots. In 2020, the Pennsylvania legislature passed a law that classifies autonomous delivery robots — what the law calls “personal delivery devices” — as pedestrians, not vehicles. Democrats, along with labor unions and accessibility advocates, largely opposed the law on the basis that legalizing delivery robots could kill jobs and endanger children and pedestrians; Republicans touted it as an exciting technological advancement.
> The law means that a vehicle must yield to a delivery robot on crosswalks, just as it would to a person
Yes, we're going to quickly come to a head on the issue of robots on sidewalks, much like we have with e-scooters, or Google's ill-fated bikes.
The robots open a new possibility on an existing system (sidewalks), which is going to lead to problems from both sides until the legislature comes up with new rules. This is how free and democratic societies work.
In my old neighborhood they had a forward operating base in an empty lot along a moderately busy street, one with plenty of foot traffic on the sidewalks. People often use the lot to play with their dogs.
Every day a truck pulls up, taking up several public parking spots, and over the course of an hour, the driver unloads 20-30 delivery bots. Then the bots line themselves up in the grass just off the sidewalk. This acts as their home base while they wait for deliveries.
It’s possible the operators have a deal with whoever owns the land, but it seems more like they’re opportunistically exploiting any resources they can find in order to reduce costs. Which is pretty much in line with what I’d expect from a startup.
Either we let the sidewalk become a free for all or we don’t. I don’t think it’s fair to make exceptions for robots on wheels.
Why? You already demonstrated that we are able to acknowledge scooters and wheelchairs. That shows that exceptions can be made. They were made on some basis that is not all or nothing. Likewise we can review the basis here and decide that robots are not allowed or we can decide that robots are allowed.
It’s a collective space and how we collectively allocate it is useful to consider. I’d happily take wider sidewalks if it meant admitting robots for instance.
There’s no reason to believe this is a walk-or-nothing situation. In SF, for instance, children do not need the sidewalk to travel on their bikes but they are permitted to use it.
FWIW I think it is a big assumption on your part that the allowance of delivery robots is a show of “incompetence”. You may not like them but I think a lot of people find them nifty.
From the article it sounds like the Pennsylvania legislature has already considered the case of delivery robots specifically and decided that they should go on the sidewalk, though to what degree that reflects the popular will is unknown to me.
I just don’t like seeing people up in arms because someone says they don’t want a robot on the sidewalk and then the same people make yelling at skaters for doing the same thing. I guess it’s because the robots look cute and don’t need deodorant.
I see people on rented scooters/bikes on the sidewalk all the time. Society at large seems to absolutely accept this. (note that I'm commenting on the current state of affairs, not what I think ought be the case)
Robots owners got big bucks which means power. They need ROI, not sidewalks (also, guess do they use sidewalks or cars?).
Now the story is that the police came and protected an innocent robot by chaining up an old woman. That sure makes them seem like misanthropes.
I wonder why children haven't discovered a "block the robot" game yet and score points for the longest blockade. Maybe they aren't allowed to go outside in the US.
I'd like to extend this quote from Stephen Jay Gould:
>I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops [and driving cars to deliver burritos]
(This also ignores all the fun things about work culture in the USA, like healthcare being tied to your job.)
But I think we should also make deliberate choices to keep humans and human meaning in many things, even if they are less "efficient" by some chosen metric.
Automation and mechanization is desirable to the point that it serves core human wishes and desires-- and through some kind of global/social metric, not that it serve individual humans at the expense of everyone else.
I am saying that I would hate to automate away most joy or most things people find purposeful, even if it increases purpose or joy for some people.
We've already given up a lot of our social fabric recently with tech. I think it makes sense to be conscious and careful to not make it much worse.
It's my guess that delivery bots are a net add to well being.
And I agree it's not immediately obvious, but thinking a little more about second order effects before making a long term durable choice makes sense.
Tech's recent overall track record on impacts to quality of life is not great. And there's a lot of possible ways we can use advances that have different benefits and costs. Falling into them for the long term purely by accident isn't always avoidable, but it doesn't seem desirable.
i.e. it makes sense for society to make a conscious choice about how to trade off different interests for road users and sidewalk users, and to be willing to revise that choice based on experience rather than being stuck with inertia (while avoiding excessive churn and unpredictability).
Ludditism is not 'a disease', how dehumanizing. It's an expected response. If we did anything towards sharing the profits, it would not exist. If we answered the hard question of "how will a person survive if we permanently cut the number of all jobs in half?", it would not exist. Ludditism for the people being made irrelevant is stepping out of the oncoming train instead of proudly letting yourself be run over to take one for the team so maybe in a few decades' time some of the added value of new automation cancels out the job loss (how it was in the past - and that was when automated jobs still required loads of brand new workers).
There are certainly some VC-wannabes here too, but most people here realize they're closer to being ground up as biofuel for the delivery bots, than being delivery-bot owners. It's hard to go through the layoff-cycles of modern IT and not realize this.
Without the ability to own the things I build I never would have been motivated to build them, and without a career ladder I couldn't have worked my way up until I had the funds (and experience) needed to start my own venture.
everything in her home is made in china because big corps sent our manufacturing jobs overseas where they burn mountains of coal and pollute our environment, all for a higher profit margin. and our politicians say they've reduced their carbon emissions. win win
Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as incentivizing people to have children because accounting for socioeconomic changes (like birth control and affordability), it’s highly likely that industrial pollutants like heavy metals and endocrine disruptors like BPA are likely the main culprits when even developing countries are seeing low fertility.
It is very hard to disentangle plastic from our food and drink
I can’t see this going well short term. Long term, maybe.
But my point, as I also said in another related comment, is that I think we should vote more often, voting for people representing us is not enough. One size does not fit all.
Its not the robot you have less rights than, but the corporation. Cops' job is to do their bidding.
Well at that point you could probably just re-order (no big deal in the grand scheme of things, it's not a widespread issue), send another bot and have that bot just stare them down right?
I really don't get the need for police intervention here. It's the same way you win against an obstinate child in such a scenario. Patience. Who in this delivery company escalated like this? Why? Has this been worth the negative press over just "hey reorder the takeaway and send another bot"?