The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is updating vehicle standards to make it easier and faster for driverless cars to deploy on public roads. It’s currently tweaking eight rules, including those requiring car parts that driverless cars don’t really need: brake pedals, windshield wipers, and rearview mirrors. But for now, years-old standards remain in place.
Beyond private companies using tax dollars to manage their special regulatory environment, privatize and monetize public roads, and test their unfinished and unregulated products on citizens, I expect these to be fully-equipped roving surveillance and oppression machines:
Each car can be covertly equipped with a suite of LPR or facial recognition cameras, sensors, and signals intelligence equipment.
Autonomous cars can patrol and surveil large areas to gather intelligence while acting as innocuous taxis.
Journalists, brown people, or pregnant woman making the mistake of entering one of these could simply be recognized and driven to a “detention” center for arrest.
Vehicles can autonomously work in tandem to hunt down and assault other vehicles, or serve as transport for domestic military operations, or blockade roads.
Service can be selectively denied to certain areas or social groups to curtail and manage movement during protests or events.
I mean, just use your imagination as to how an authoritarian federal government could collude with a Fascist tech CEO to leverage a large autonomous robo-taxi fleet set upon the population:
This has always been my problem with the future of self-driving cars too, and of course several people have argued with me that I’m stupid.
I don’t trust any corporations now and I don’t trust that the government will always be benevolent - if you’re in the US, it already isn’t, at least mine is still fairly sensible, but that could change easily too.
One of the biggest problems is that self-driving cars either are, or one day will be safer than human drivers. Which of course is a great thing! But then there will be a push to ban manual driving. First we’ll get I, robot, where manual driving is frowned upon. It’ll happen step by step.
Also: a fast means of transport for me and my family that doesn’t stop working when comms go down and isn’t restricted to a specific route, is what keeps me feeling much safer living <200 km from the Russian border. Buses or trains need to wait till they get enough people on to fill them, otherwise it’s inefficient. Self-driving cars likely won’t go anywhere. Bicycles and feet are great for day to day life in a livable city, but they don’t let me cross 4 national borders in 16 hours.
I expect these to be fully-equipped roving surveillance and oppression machines:
Each car can be covertly equipped with a suite of LPR or facial recognition cameras, sensors, and signals intelligence equipment.
Autonomous cars can patrol and surveil large areas to gather intelligence while acting as innocuous taxis.
Journalists, brown people, or pregnant woman making the mistake of entering one of these could simply be recognized and driven to a “detention” center for arrest.
Vehicles can autonomously work in tandem to hunt down and assault other vehicles, or serve as transport for domestic military operations, or blockade roads.
Service can be selectively denied to certain areas or social groups to curtail and manage movement during protests or events.
I mean, just use your imagination as to how an authoritarian federal government could collude with a Fascist tech CEO to leverage a large autonomous robo-taxi fleet set upon the population
Whoa, that’s scary, but you probably right
It feels like we’re heading for the bad part of Manna faster and faster. If you haven’t read Manna, do yourself that service and spend 45 minutes read it. It used to be free on the authors website, but, the website was removed, when the author died, but it’s easy to find
Beyond private companies using tax dollars to manage their special regulatory environment, privatize and monetize public roads, and test their unfinished and unregulated products on citizens, I expect these to be fully-equipped roving surveillance and oppression machines:
Each car can be covertly equipped with a suite of LPR or facial recognition cameras, sensors, and signals intelligence equipment.
Autonomous cars can patrol and surveil large areas to gather intelligence while acting as innocuous taxis.
Journalists, brown people, or pregnant woman making the mistake of entering one of these could simply be recognized and driven to a “detention” center for arrest.
Vehicles can autonomously work in tandem to hunt down and assault other vehicles, or serve as transport for domestic military operations, or blockade roads.
Service can be selectively denied to certain areas or social groups to curtail and manage movement during protests or events.
I mean, just use your imagination as to how an authoritarian federal government could collude with a Fascist tech CEO to leverage a large autonomous robo-taxi fleet set upon the population:
This has always been my problem with the future of self-driving cars too, and of course several people have argued with me that I’m stupid.
I don’t trust any corporations now and I don’t trust that the government will always be benevolent - if you’re in the US, it already isn’t, at least mine is still fairly sensible, but that could change easily too.
One of the biggest problems is that self-driving cars either are, or one day will be safer than human drivers. Which of course is a great thing! But then there will be a push to ban manual driving. First we’ll get I, robot, where manual driving is frowned upon. It’ll happen step by step.
Also: a fast means of transport for me and my family that doesn’t stop working when comms go down and isn’t restricted to a specific route, is what keeps me feeling much safer living <200 km from the Russian border. Buses or trains need to wait till they get enough people on to fill them, otherwise it’s inefficient. Self-driving cars likely won’t go anywhere. Bicycles and feet are great for day to day life in a livable city, but they don’t let me cross 4 national borders in 16 hours.
“Does this thing run on gasoline‽‽ Gas explodes, you know!!!”
Always wished that the cop had told the doctor that was specifically how it worked.
Whoa, that’s scary, but you probably right
It feels like we’re heading for the bad part of Manna faster and faster. If you haven’t read Manna, do yourself that service and spend 45 minutes read it. It used to be free on the authors website, but, the website was removed, when the author died, but it’s easy to find
I love and hate your comment.
Thanks for pointing out couple more nightmares to come and stay! :)