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this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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These folks are awesome, and they're on Mastodon!
https://sfba.social/@safestreetrebel
I read the article but I'm still not completely sure what the protestors' objective is. They don't like cameras and think cars are bad?
Sure you read the article? Maybe you disagree with their objections, but the article lays them out:
You're right, I had glossed over that part. The first point seems like an issue, the second and third just seem like normal life in the US. Most roads here are made for cars, and people should already expect that if you're in public you can or will be recorded, as recording in public is a first amendment right, and everyone already has a camera in their pocket.
Turns out not everyone wants life to be that way in the US, hence, protestors.
Presumably then the protestors have already given up their pocket cameras and make no use of the road network?
Imo, that's a silly false equivalence. Personally-controlled cameras in the pocket aren't the same as being routinely surveilled by law enforcement, and there are often no viable alternatives for transport in the US, given the existing infrastructure, which is a big part of the reason people are upset.
Can you give a better source than the original article that the cars are being used as surveillance for law enforcement? The original article had this to say:
To me that seems very biased. I found another article that seems a little more nuanced (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-29/self-driving-car-video-from-waymo-cruise-give-police-crime-evidence?leadSource=uverify%20wall).
It says that police need a warrant to access footage, just like any other cctv you might find at a brick and mortar business, which are also filming you at every street corner 24/7.
Back to your other point - people are free to be upset at our car based society. I just think it's arbitrary to take it out on driverless cars when it's our entire society they seem to have a problem with. They're free to protest however they see fit, my opinion is still that it seems hypocritical.
So, you may not be aware, but these days Police are in the habit of dodging the legal requirement for a warrant to obtain similar data:
I don't have more information on this particular company's dealings with law enforcement, but I certainly think it's reasonable to be concerned.
I also think most cars can't be stopped dead with a traffic cone, so these protesters are highlighting the unpredictable and sometimes dangerous behavior of these vehicles in mixed traffic. While I'm sure the folks involved would like to see steps taken to address cars and transport infrastructure more generally, it's hard to see why you would call this 'hypocritical'.
I see your point, if the company is ok with handing data without a warrant, then they might as well be a surveillance company for the police. That may or may not be the case for these companies at the moment, but there's nothing stopping them from changing their mind tomorrow.
This is another fair point, and I think you're right that it does highlight a deficiency in these vehicles.
I think self driving tech has a lot of potential to save lives in the future if it can perform better on the road than humans. But I do agree with you now that maybe it's good that the protestors are highlighting some of the glaring issues that are popping up along the way.
Self driving cars have the potential of killing even more people.
Sure! Let's see how these automatic cars drive when there is fog, or snow, or rain, during the night...you know all these cases that no AI ever trained for. Because when was the last time a CAPTCHA tried you with images with snow, or fog, or night, or rain? Never. I will never allow a self driving car on the road, I will vote against it at every opportunity.
How is a self driving car different from a robot? So you want to release robots in the city and maybe they will kill some of us? Not okay. We have enough problem, ban it.
The problem is the car itself, we need smaller cities and to rely less on cars. We don't have the resources anyway to keep the cars model running.
Humans die in car crashes all the time. It's one of the leading causes of premature death. If a self driving car is proven to have a statistically lower rate of accidents than a human, then that's enough for me. A microprocessor can make much quicker decisions than a human, it's just a matter of giving it the right information (cameras, lidar, radar).
Source for that. Are you talking for your country?
https://ourworldindata.org/exports/death-rates-road-accidents_v25_850x600.svg
https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/05/Causes-of-death-in-USA-vs.-media-coverage.png
You take your chance in your country, not in mine. I refuse to be a statistic. Also cars kill trough cancer, by the pollution they emit through their construction, usage and elimination. See cancer in the figures above. These cancer don't popup for no reason.
Your microprocessor was fooled by a traffic cone, see the picture of the article. I won't let this robot decide the cause of my death.