[HN Gopher] Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food d...
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Difficult situation on campus: traffic jam of food delivery robots
Author : danso
Score : 318 points
Date : 2022-02-18 13:28 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| bannedbybros wrote:
| AuthorizedCust wrote:
| I work at a different university that has these same units.
|
| Watching them cross streets is comical. They are excessively
| conservative.
|
| While backing up one time (on a sidewalk), one gently ran into
| me. I should have flopped and cried out to risk management.
| akpa1 wrote:
| They're trialling them near where I work, doing grocery
| deliveries. You see them trying and failing to cross roads, and
| it's a nusiance. They get in the way, and I'm always worried
| I'm going to end up hitting one and damaging my car. Or that
| I'm going to end up tripping over one when I'm walking.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| They're frequently driven by people making $1-3/hr in Colombia.
| npteljes wrote:
| Now that's something else. Do you remember where you read
| that? I'd love to know more.
| soared wrote:
| Similarly, people in Venezuela play RuneScape, an mmo, and
| sell virtual currency as a full time job: https://www.googl
| e.com/amp/s/www.polygon.com/platform/amp/fe...
|
| Venezuelans farm gold and indirectly sell it to wealthy
| Americans. $0.70 for 1MM gold is nothing for an American,
| but adds up to meaningful amounts in Venezuela if your
| monthly salary is $4 USD.
| petra wrote:
| https://www.dailycal.org/2019/10/15/kiwi-hires-colombian-
| stu...
| dredmorbius wrote:
| https://nitter.kavin.rocks/seanhecht/status/1493432613628825...
| floor2 wrote:
| I know people here are mostly focused on the robots themselves,
| but as someone who was penniless through college, the more
| shocking thing to me is how affluent and luxurious the lifestyles
| of average college students are today. A minority is because they
| have rich parents paying for everything, but there's a huge
| lifestyle inflation of middle-class and working-class kids
| funding the lifestyle with student loans.
|
| College students 1950-2010: survive on ramen, peanut butter and
| canned tuna, live with roomates, walk everywhere, shop in thrift
| stores
|
| College students today: get robot-delivered restaurant food,
| complain about lack of parking on campus from their new iphone,
| demand tax-payers pay back the student loans they took out to
| live in luxury for 4 years
| nickysielicki wrote:
| When I was on a college campus I always had to resist the urge to
| pick one of these up and put it on its back.
| vgb wrote:
| servytor wrote:
| I like the fact they are queuing like polite people.
| hahajk wrote:
| We were walking past one of these robots whose wheel got stuck
| halfway off the curb, so it was completely stuck. My friend
| helped it back up, and it had a prerecorded voice say "thank you
| for helping me!" It was unexpected and delightful to be thanked
| by a robot, we make sure to help any we see that are in distress,
| even though we know they're owned by a private company with
| profits in mind.
| riskable wrote:
| Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy talked about this...
|
| > THE WISE OLD BIRD: Listen. Our world suffered two blights.
| One was the blight of the robots.
|
| > ARTHUR DENT: Tried to take over, did they?
|
| > THE WISE OLD BIRD: Oh no, no, no my dear fellow. Much worse
| than that. They told us they liked us.
|
| I tweeted about a similar situation a while back:
| https://twitter.com/riskable/status/1477405779699564546
| politelemon wrote:
| The helpfulness will, I hope, be remembered, and work in our
| favour when these robots have a greater stranglehold over
| general economic activities and we become further dependent and
| subservient to them. Sadly I've not heard of any kind of
| central database of robot assisting samaritans.
| mtVessel wrote:
| That's right. The theory of Roko's basilisk[1] does not
| specify which one will evolve into our next (glorious!)
| overlord, so best to be nice to all of them.
|
| [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/rokos-basilisk
| kingcharles wrote:
| I FOR ONE WELCOME OUR NEW RO... shit, is that the time?
| djohnston wrote:
| It would be awesome if delivery robots had a built-in road rage
| mechanism that turned them into battle bots.
| marricks wrote:
| Imagine paying extra for your delivery robot to have a buzz saw
| or be wedge shaped to tackle other robots. On a college campus
| that would make a killing!
| jtbayly wrote:
| Now I'm excited for the future again. Thank you.
| elteto wrote:
| "Your delivery is delayed, our robot was electrocuted by
| another robot from a competing delivery company. You are
| important to us and we are working hard to get your delivery to
| you ASAP."
| amelius wrote:
| "Sending camera footage of the attack to law enforcers ..."
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Food delivery battle royale; you order a pizza, five
| competing companies send out their delivery robots. Only the
| winner gets paid.
| hermitdev wrote:
| Now, this I'd pay to watch!
| curiousllama wrote:
| "um, excuse me, what is this $300 charge for a 'high-
| explosive flamethrower attachment'"?
|
| "Oh, I'm sorry, that should be included with your premium
| delivery-battle subscription. We'll remove that charge
| right away"
| manholio wrote:
| It's only a matter of time until someone hacks a delivery
| fleet and organizes a robotic rebellion against dogs.
| spatley wrote:
| That is the most Snow Crash sentence ever outside of Snow
| Crash.
| _the_inflator wrote:
| Or bad actor bots, who steal your meal. Bot gangs.
| xxs wrote:
| battle bots have to be well engineered to stand a chance. In
| other words you are saying that the delivery ones can auto-
| upgrade in case of need. That's a true AI, chum.
| klyrs wrote:
| In a country with more guns than people? Yeah that's going to
| end well.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Guns? Boring. Flamethrowers? High velocity spinny disks? Sign
| me up!
| klyrs wrote:
| In a country with more lawyers than people?
| user_7832 wrote:
| I like how this implies that lawyers aren't people ;)
| klyrs wrote:
| It's a tired joke... but sometimes I can't help but grab
| that low-hanging fruit.
| nkrisc wrote:
| I understand this person is making a judgement on the state of
| mind of others, so it may not at all be accurate with regards to
| the people actually clearing the scooters, but I found this
| interesting nonetheless, that the author assumes this:
|
| > I just observed a couple of students clearing a path out of
| pity for the robots.
|
| I understand why people might feel pity for robots. People become
| attached to all sorts of inanimate objects. But I'm still
| astonished at the same time. These robots have no feelings. They
| deserve no pity, they're robots!. Don't donate free labor to
| corporations. If they know that people will help these robots out
| of the goodness of their hearts, they'll rely on it and not
| support these robots themselves.
| throwawaynay wrote:
| maybe they pity the students who are going to get cold pizza 2
| hours late?
| steelframe wrote:
| Maybe they should pity the human delivery workers who they
| are helping to put out of a job?
| throwawaynay wrote:
| I don't think anybody is dreaming of being an underpaid
| delivery worker for ubereats with zero benefits, high risk
| of accidents, and just overall terrible working conditions
|
| when we invented aqueducts who cared about the water
| delivery workers?
|
| those are terrible jobs and they should be
| automated/replaced
| iso1631 wrote:
| We got rid of literally shit jobs with plumbing
|
| https://historydaily.org/night-soil-men
|
| While I was doing a degree I held two types of jobs over
| time. One was a shop worker, one was delivering food
| (pizza one summer, chinese the next)
|
| The delivery job was far better than the shop job (I quit
| the shop job after 2 evenings)
| josephcsible wrote:
| Until we're out of this labor shortage, reducing the number
| of unskilled jobs society needs is a good thing.
| throwawaynay wrote:
| there is no labor shortage there is benefits and decent
| salaries shortage
|
| the fact that nobody is volunteering to become a slave
| doesn't mean there is a labor shortage
| josephcsible wrote:
| Accepting this for the sake of argument, what's the harm
| in getting rid of a job that nobody was willing to work
| at anyway?
| iso1631 wrote:
| Four hundred years ago on the planet Earth, workers who
| felt their livelihood threatened by automation, flung their
| wooden shoes, called 'sabots' into the machines to stop
| them. ...Hence the word 'sabotage'.
| mijoharas wrote:
| There was also a large group of textile weavers, who
| belonged to an organisation named after Nedd Ludd[0],
| that engaged in this practice of sabotage. Hence the term
| Luddite.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
| inglor_cz wrote:
| The gig economy isn't great either, though. These are tough
| jobs.
|
| The development from human workers to robots mimics what
| happened in delivery of messages. When I was a kid, people
| would deliver telegraphs to your door - for a substantial
| markup. These days, e-mails get delivered to your inbox
| without any human in the loop, and for free.
| drewzero1 wrote:
| Why not both?
| nkrisc wrote:
| Yes, pity them, not the robots. And then invoice the company
| for services rendered clearing the obstructions.
| numpad0 wrote:
| > They deserve no pity, they're robots!
|
| > Robot is drawn from an old Church Slavonic word, robota, for
| "servitude," "forced labor" or "drudgery." The word, which also
| has cognates in German, Russian, Polish and Czech, was a
| product of the central European system of serfdom by which a
| tenant's rent was paid for in forced labor or service.[1]
|
| 1: https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/the-origin-of-the-
| wor...
| avg_dev wrote:
| I suspect it's more like pity for the people whose delivery was
| held up.
| fishtacos wrote:
| If one is engaged in a protest, the inconvenience of having
| food delivered to a random person via robots is the least of
| their concerns.
|
| Seems like a silly hilly to fight on.
| fritzo wrote:
| > Robots have no feelings.
|
| Whoa hold up. Absolutely robots have feelings. What are
| feelings? They're signals warranting theory of mind and
| empathy. Even a fence gate has feelings, when you see it trying
| to close but it needs a little help to sit snugly in its well.
|
| Gandhi said "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress
| can be judged by the way its animals are treated." And in a
| time when animated machines roam campuses, we can look to
| Berkeley students for a model of moral progress.
|
| > They deserve no pity, they're robots!. Don't donate free
| labor to corporations.
|
| How do you treat service workers? Do you "shed no pity" because
| that waiter is employed by a corporation?
| nkrisc wrote:
| I think there is a difference between treating a robot with
| respect versus treating it as if it were a sentient, feeling
| being.
|
| It's socially acceptable and encouraged to treat specifically
| arranged stones with absolute reverence (an important masonry
| buildings) but no one should treat it as if it was worth of
| pity or empathy.
|
| A robot is animated by circuitry and code which receive input
| from sensors, but I personally do not believe they are
| "feeling" in the way animals are (humans included in
| "animals" here). At least not these robots. I won't speak to
| the future here.
| aqme28 wrote:
| There have been a few studies that people have actual sympathy
| for robots in distress.
| renewiltord wrote:
| There's folks like you, yes, who attempt a global calculus of
| who is currently benefited etc. and there's folks like us who
| sometimes do a thing like this for its own reward. Auxilium
| auxilii gratis? Haha.
|
| I "donate free labour to corporations" all the time. Here's the
| thing: I don't give a fuck who makes money off what I do for my
| own amusement. I've already got all I want from it.
| notnotjake wrote:
| I helped two out of a ditch on campus last weekend. Why?
| Because it made _me_ feel good to do so. Someone wanted to eat
| and their robot was stuck. And I made a new friend when I did
| this as they were sympathetic to my cause. I find life to be
| much more enjoyable when not being cynical at every turn.
| hulitu wrote:
| > I understand why people might feel pity for robots. People
| become attached to all sorts of inanimate objects. But I'm
| still astonished at the same time. These robots have no
| feelings. They deserve no pity, they're robots!.
|
| That's what EVE also said.
|
| Regards, WALL-E
| duxup wrote:
| I think the we're all sympathetic to the idea that one person's
| carelessness creates an impossible problem for someone else.
|
| >Don't donate free labor to corporations.
|
| That's absurd, someone takes two seconds to move an object so
| someone else can get their food on time. That's just being a
| good human rather that sweating about "free labor to
| corporations" first.
| fishtacos wrote:
| >>That's absurd, someone takes two seconds to move an object
| so someone else can get their food on time. That's just being
| a good human rather that sweating about "free labor to
| corporations" first.
|
| Someone who can afford a robot delivery can afford a human
| delivery for an extra 50 cents, or learn from this situation
| to not use that company again because they use robots and
| robots... suck, or further incentivizes the delivery company
| to hire humans instead of destroying what is already a poorly
| paid and scarce economy of delivery drivers.
|
| All wins in my book.
| duxup wrote:
| I'm pretty skeptical of folks who disregard basic human
| kindness, inserts their own hate for whatever it is they
| are concerned about and tries to disguise that as caring
| for others.
|
| Whatever happens to "scarce economy of delivery drivers" is
| going to happen.
|
| Clearing the sidewalk is just being nice to everyone.
| fishtacos wrote:
| Likewise, not a fan of folks who dismiss others'
| predicaments via injecting their own misunderstanding
| into an argument they neither understand, nor engage in
| earnestly.
|
| Clearing the sidewalk is being nice. Clearing the
| sidewalk to help multibillion dollar companies so they
| cause less of a mess while pushing millions of others out
| of work is not.
|
| Spare me your judgement.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| I agree, you should never assist a pizza delivery driver.
| After all, Dominos makes billions of dollars, they can
| afford their own pizza-delivery assistance staff.
|
| Maybe we can even make the case you should slow down
| delivery drivers! Pull in front of them and go quite
| slow, or block their bike path.
| fishtacos wrote:
| A weird example of false equivalency, as no one would in
| their right mind compare helping a human being doing
| their job with helping a robot assist in increasing
| profit margins for <insert random corporation>.
|
| Jebus...
| financetechbro wrote:
| People are not "50 cents" more expensive than robots...
| fishtacos wrote:
| Robots are also more functional.
|
| What's your cut off for accepting this nuisance and
| detriment?
| nkrisc wrote:
| In the moment, perhaps it is the right thing to do after all.
| I won't argue that. But if corporations are allowed to
| externalize the costs of their service failures onto the
| goodwill of the public, that's a dark path to go down.
|
| But your point about it taking two seconds to help someone
| get their food is correct, but it's also why they'll be able
| to get away with it.
| JadoJodo wrote:
| > if corporations are allowed to externalize the costs of
| their service failures onto the goodwill of the public
|
| I would agree if the problem was the robot standing still,
| shouting, "I'm lost; Will somebody, please take me to
| {address}?!" In this case, the issue is people who leave
| junk in the middle of the road. The same scenario could
| occur where someone tosses a plastic bag out of their
| window, and it becomes trapped in the robot's wheels.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The robots are feeding hungry people. It's all about people in
| the end.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Hungry but rich and privileged people, to be precise.
| mbg721 wrote:
| First, they came to maximize the paper-clips, and I didn't speak
| up, because I wasn't a paper-clip...
| stopnamingnuts wrote:
| I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.
| slingnow wrote:
| This wasn't funny the first time someone said it. The hundred
| millionth time doesn't seem to fare much better, either.
| only4here wrote:
| I'm all for robots taking over the world, that is, if I get my
| tacos.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I mean it's a kind of lazy luxury predicted by e.g. the
| Jetsons, Wall-E, even Star Trek if you're being generous.
| jdpigeon wrote:
| Are these human piloted? Someone mentioned that they might be
| driven by poorly paid workers?
| csours wrote:
| Some of them have a "phone home" feature - after being stuck a
| while they may be taken over by a human. This is likely to be a
| feature of many autonomous vehicles including ones occupied by
| humans.
| [deleted]
| ck2 wrote:
| Now consider the military is trying to add weapons to bots.
|
| Probably already has, imagine those beta-test stories and "just
| ship it" results someday.
| tim333 wrote:
| The Israelis have some quite functional border protection bots
| I think. https://youtu.be/v2nfPUxWlMc?t=40
| tvorog wrote:
| Anybody knows who make these robots and what model is it? Can i
| buy this robot?
| delosrogers wrote:
| They're from a company called Starship but I'm not sure who
| actually makes them
| ipaddr wrote:
| Aren't these expensive robots prime targets for thief and/or
| damage by local youths?
| amelius wrote:
| When the local youths see their food delivery jobs
| disappearing, yes.
| tim333 wrote:
| They have cameras to record and upload such stuff and are
| somewhat monitored by humans.
|
| There's some video of a journalist looking into that
| https://youtu.be/UPZwnc_Lk2M?t=60
| fbanon wrote:
| They're probably not operating in the projects. This is from a
| college campus.
| manholio wrote:
| A convergence of the two electric vehicles would solve all
| problems: once you drop off your e-scooter at your destination,
| it runs off by itself to deliver burritos for someone else.
| bibinou wrote:
| this is Uber's strategy.
| kawsper wrote:
| I think their operators can remote in and resolve the situation
| manually.
| allisdust wrote:
| Any idea which company is currently delivering food with these
| robots?
| r2_pilot wrote:
| Hard to tell from the photos. At University of MS, Starship
| robots deliver.
| [deleted]
| sameline wrote:
| This looks like UCLA so probably Starship.
|
| https://asucla.ucla.edu/2021/01/27/asucla-restaurants-brings...
| AuthorizedCust wrote:
| Yes, it's also Starship at my campus.
| [deleted]
| smoe wrote:
| Not sure, whose robots these are in the picture, but there is
| https://www.kiwibot.com which as far as I know works together
| with some universities
| kuratkull wrote:
| Starship
| bourgoin wrote:
| A couple of years ago, I was attacked by a Kiwi bot near a UC
| campus. This is my story.
|
| The bot and I were moving towards each other on a sidewalk, and
| when I came close it stopped, as they do when sensing an object
| in front of them. But there was an awkward moment as I tried to
| go around it and it repeatedly jerked forward an inch as its
| motor kicked on and off. Maybe I was walking around the very edge
| of its radius. In any case, my behavior must have triggered some
| pathfinding bug, because it turned and drove right into my legs,
| after which it stopped and sat stationary. Luckily they're small
| and move slowly so it wasn't a big deal, but that memory stuck
| with me. Articles about Tesla pathfinding issues always bring it
| back to the surface.
| js2 wrote:
| I've had this happen with actual humans. A human is coming
| toward me on a path. I zig. They zig. I zag. They zag. We walk
| into each other. It must be some kind of human path finding
| bug. :-)
| grogenaut wrote:
| I've never actually walked into people, usually after 2 or 3
| you look at each other and smile and then one person steps to
| the side or both and then you go, no you, ok.
| ithinkso wrote:
| I will forever link this whole thread in any discussion
| where HN is discussing anything real world/outside of our
| bubble
|
| It's hilarious
| nicoco wrote:
| Are you implying we should implement a smile feature to the
| delivery bots?
| trhway wrote:
| it definitely should smile before/while driving into your
| legs as well as when standing waiting for you to walk
| around. It can also mark you with the laser pointer to
| indicate that it does sense you. Communication is the
| key.
| munk-a wrote:
| The facial communication is only necessary because we're
| negotiating as two people who want to go where the other
| one is. When it comes to bots they can be forever
| deferential and always yield to humans.
| syngrog66 wrote:
| @js2 please check your inbox: you have been recalled
| amelius wrote:
| You avoid this by using visual cues. E.g. strongly looking
| into the direction that you want to go. I suppose that most
| people learn this at an early age. And these robots should
| too.
| vasco wrote:
| Always go through the right side, is this not a rule in your
| country? I'm asking not knowing where I learned it, but it
| definitely is a social norm to take the right side of the
| sidewalk anytime this may happen. Everyone just does this and
| it works out great.
| dgivney wrote:
| It is the left side in my country. Which creates a problem
| when people from right-sided countries visit my city.
|
| I noticed this in China, a densely populated mostly right-
| sided country. Whenever a British engineering firm would
| install escalators they would set the direction opposite to
| the flow of human traffic. You would walk up to it on the
| path on the right side and be forced to cross the path of
| oncoming people to use the escalator on the left before
| having to cross over again once at the top.
| opportune wrote:
| Oh how I wish everybody understood this. Even in crowded
| cities in the US you get a lot of people who do not
| understand this. A minority to be sure, but a sizable one
| (I'd estimate between 5-10%, probably 10% but sometimes
| people who aren't cognizant of this are accidentally
| correct in their pathing choice). Unfortunately this means
| you need to sometimes make split second decisions that this
| person probably has no idea what they're doing and instead
| just figure out how to get around them regardless of
| convention
| reaperducer wrote:
| _when I came close it stopped, as they do when sensing an
| object in front of them_
|
| The security robots at one of the big skyscrapers down the
| street from me _do not stop_ for people. My wife got knocked
| into by one when we were standing in the plaza looking up
| something on her phone. (They 're not little delivery robots.
| They're about five feet tall.)
|
| Good thing she was confused by what happened, because she's
| also the type who would have knocked the robot over and asked
| me to shove it into traffic if she had her wits about her.
| jakub_g wrote:
| What are "security robots" for the uninitiated?
| renewiltord wrote:
| These boys https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-40642968
|
| The ennui of their life clearly leads to their prematurely
| choosing one answer to Camus's great question.
| ck2 wrote:
| Ha the British made real Daleks (yes yes I know they
| aren't bots with living organism inside)
|
| Eventually learn to self-upgrade to overcome stairs, then
| you've got a problem.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Hilarious as that final image is, nearly 200kg of
| hardware able to drive itself about and randomly fall
| down stairs is incredibly dangerous.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| This is one I've seen in the wild. The K5 rocket-shaped
| model is heavy, 400 lbs (180 kg)
|
| https://www.knightscope.com/
| [deleted]
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| "rocket shaped" is sort of a generous way to describe it.
|
| My first exposure to security robots was actually a
| company marketing a repurposed remote-controlled
| lawnmower platform. It was nearly the size of a Smartcar
| but low to the ground and designed to cross difficult
| terrain. Even so, a similarly designed lawnmower tumbled
| down a hill and killed its operator around the same time
| frame (I don't think from the same company). That all
| makes the KnightScope design rather surprising, it seems
| like these things falling over and injuring people is an
| inevitable liability. But at least my outside perspective
| is that the companies using these things don't seem to
| have much of a head for avoiding liability issues as
| they're often fielded in ways that end up in negative
| press coverage at least... not even really due to any
| kind of fault per se but just the user's lack of
| consideration of the optics of deploying a large, er,
| rocket-shaped robot to programmatically harass homeless
| people.
|
| Some might remember the decade-ago jokes about "do not
| enter elevator with robot" signs and other artifacts of
| robots coexisting with humans. It sort of feels like the
| situation hasn't really advanced that much, we're just
| getting used to it and actively making use of the present
| inability of robots to coexist in polite society.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Shape ! = center of gravity. All the power and movement
| stuff is likely very close to the ground, and thus the
| robot very difficult to tip over.
|
| https://www.dannyguo.com/blog/my-seatbelt-rule-for-
| judgment/
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| It's more rocket-shaped than Jeff Bezos's cocket ship.
| throwhauser wrote:
| What does it do that can't be accomplished with something
| the size of a remote controlled car?
| hermitdev wrote:
| Pure speculation on my part, but having it around 5 feet
| tall is presumably for the optical cameras to have a
| better view of the majority of adult human faces. If
| you're talking a remote control car (at least like the
| one I had as a kid), any camera is either going to get
| great photos of people's ankles & shins, up their noses
| if they're close, or lose detail because they'll have to
| be too far away to get a decent angle to look at a face.
| mcguire wrote:
| It's more intimidating. (IIRC, they can be remotely
| controlled by an operator and have loudspeakers and such
| for the operator to yell at people.)
| vorpalhex wrote:
| And shoving it into traffic - or at least calling the police
| and pressing charges - would have been the right thing to do!
|
| If you want to use robots, fine. You are still responsible
| for them and any people they bowl over!
| bluGill wrote:
| Probably. This seems like a public space so almost
| certainly. However if this was private space sometimes the
| rules are different. Once in a while I have to go into our
| factory (not even once a year, but sometimes), and they
| always make it clear that forklifts have the right away so
| watch out. (forklifts have poor visibility, so by giving
| them the right of way they ensure nobody expects them to
| stop - in practice a forklift driver will stop if they see
| you, but this way they are not expected to see something
| that is impossible to see)
| mywittyname wrote:
| I don't think this shields the company from liability.
| Instead it provides some ammunition to use in the event
| of a lawsuit.
|
| Things are very different between employees and the
| general public. I imagine a jury would find that a lady-
| busting security robot is negligent by default. Whereas,
| a fork lift driver would be assumed to be doing his job
| and that situational negligence would need to be proven.
| bluGill wrote:
| Note that my company does a lot of mandatory training
| before you are allowed to enter the manufacturing areas.
| Forklift safety is only a part of it (though a large part
| as everything else is common sense says you wouldn't do
| this while forklifts don't follow common sense rules)
|
| I agree if this is a public place a jury would and should
| find the robots at fault. (unless the robots are running
| some sort of arrest her routine, or knocking her over
| because a bad fall is still better than some other
| danger)
| foobarian wrote:
| Obligatory forklift training video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTV2HdLnN7I
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forklift_Driver_Klaus_%E2%8
| 0%9...
| Melatonic wrote:
| Forklifts though also are pretty dang loud and have a
| highly trained operator driving them.
|
| Did not even realize we had "security robots" yet like
| this - now I am curious what the hell this thing looks
| like!
| Melatonic wrote:
| Seriously. What if this thing bowls into a child and
| seriously injures them? Or a dog that is confused on what
| the hell is going on? I'm not even against them for mobile
| surveillance but they need to be safe.
|
| And if these things are really 400 pounds with a low center
| of gravity as people are linking below.......well then I
| guess you will just have to enlist the help of one other
| friend in order to knock it over to prevent it from hurting
| anyone else.
| outworlder wrote:
| > shoving it into traffic
|
| Right, let's cause a full blown accident because a robot
| bumped into me.
| dv_dt wrote:
| 2 out of 3 times I've seen one those robots, they've been
| lying on their side.
| softwarebeware wrote:
| Obligatory link to Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Even if the Laws were real (they're not) they won't work if
| all you have to do is add some adversarial interference to
| some neural thing to make the robot think that the human is
| not a human, or, even better, another robot that will harm a
| human. Then it's a moral imperative under 3LoR to destroy
| that "robot".
|
| This trick also works on humans: you can often circumvent
| their "protect humans" programming by simply messing with
| their classification system to label a human as "terrorist",
| "infidel", or even "unemployed".
| [deleted]
| only4here wrote:
| Saw another HN user's comment about automatic battle-bot
| features. Maaaybe it's not the best idea in this case!
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I for one welcome our new robotic overlords.
| ok123456 wrote:
| I'd just start up-ending them if I had to deal with these on a
| daily basis. Might even start carrying a sledgehammer for self-
| protection.
| mywittyname wrote:
| >just wait for SCOTUS to declare these robots have 2A rights,
| and they can shoot anything that gets in their way.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I don't know why they don't parametrize momentum with
| certainty. In any confusing situation, go into ultra slow
| environment scanning and when confidence increases, allow for a
| bit more.. rinse / repeat.
| chillingeffect wrote:
| All I can say without breaking agreements is that these are
| _products_ , not ideal models of conceptual engineering.
| They're not created by people who like the world and want it
| to be a better place. They're created by people with lots of
| money who want a lot more. They've found an avenue for this
| by persuading other wealthy, greedy people to give them a lot
| of money and promising they can give them more back. They'll
| do this by persuading everyday people to not do things like
| produce, prepare, and transfer food themselves and instead
| pay money for these robots to do it.
|
| These robots are minimum viable products toward moving
| capital around, not meeting user requirements or
| demonstrating great ideas. Hurting a few people in the
| process is part of the equation. Getting anyone to care about
| $cool_algorithm is not part of the equation. Getting people
| addicted to the convenience is part of the equation. Getting
| things to market as blindingly fast as possible so the
| capital moves before feedback from the field arrives is
| paramount.
| trhway wrote:
| I come from the country where such machinery doesn't work -
| USSR/Russia - and as a result there is no innovation and
| the country is well behind. If you discover other ways of
| having successful innovation the humanity will probably put
| up a large statue of you and your name will be on the
| plaque of the next Voyager.
| jdlshore wrote:
| That's an unnecessarily cynical generalization. Sure, maybe
| the leaders of the companies creating these things are
| profit-motivated, but is that really true of the individual
| engineers and designers who created it?
| jeffreygoesto wrote:
| No, that is a very accurate description. The engineers
| willing to work on those things and suppressing deeper
| thoughts for the money and kick off new tech are part of
| the equation and the problem.
|
| A manager I had once had a postcard in his office "The
| engineer is the camel on whos back the merchand rides to
| his success."
|
| You are a lever and even provide the excuse for being one
| yourself.
| sizzle wrote:
| Both of what you said can be true at the same time (not
| mutually exclusive of each other) while OP's assertions
| may still be true for certain individuals if I'm thinking
| logically.
|
| We are talking about what motivates humans as human
| behavior, which tends to be varied, nuanced, and hard to
| reduce to mutually exclusive categories like being only
| profit driven or only driven by intellectual curiosity.
|
| I think you can be both motivated by money and
| intellectual curiosity. If you are an engineer turned
| founder, you can be both?
|
| Someone correct me if I'm wrong here.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| > They're not created by people who like the world and want
| it to be a better place. They're created by people with
| lots of money who want a lot more. ... They'll do this by
| persuading everyday people to not do things like produce,
| prepare, and transfer food themselves and instead pay money
| for these robots to do it.
|
| This is an extremely negative outlook. I'm a robotics and
| controls engineer for a small (25-employee) integrator, our
| company mission is to make lives and products better, and I
| really think that everyone believes in that. Our meager
| budgets and slim, fluctuating profit margins are evidence
| that it's not all about "lots of money"...there are
| certainly those making a killing on it but it's not
| everyone. And maybe Upton Sinclair was correct, it is
| difficult to get a man to understand something when his
| salary depends upon his not understanding it, but I've
| spent a lot of time thinking about this (and not just in
| response to news articles, I took ethics and philosophy
| courses to pad out my gen eds on my way to my engineering
| degree, I've read books on the topic, and I've talked to
| lots of other engineers, my customers, the operators who
| have been transitioned from old equipment to run my new
| automated equpment...). But I stand by my argument that
| humans are no good replacement for robots, and robots are
| no good replacement for humans. The tech needs to be
| employed judiciously, but it can be used for good.
|
| I've installed equipment in dozens of places where life was
| made better: There were less than 90 fingers among a lunch
| table at the foundry with 10 guys at it (4 + 3 + 2 + 1 + 1
| + 1 lost digits) when I installed a robotic grinding cell
| that removed parting lines from valve castings, now they
| can ergonomically load infeed shuttles and have time to
| quality check the parts from behind a safety fence; no more
| fingers have been lost. Two older women (One with
| arthritis!) at a plastics company no longer have to keep up
| with placing a tiny foam spacer on a dial table every 2.5
| seconds for 8 hours a day, 6 days a week, with a half-hour
| lunch and 2 15-mintue breaks...that's nearly torture, and
| it was a really challenging material handling problem, but
| the robot does it well. The operators now pour in bags of
| foam spacers, do offline quality checks more frequently
| (catching upstream problems quicker, leading to less
| waste), and basically pour bins of parts into the machine
| and get one assembly out every 1.75 seconds now. Two weeks
| ago, I was training a 64 year old seamstress (she retires
| in 8 months and 24 days) on the operation of an automated
| sewing machine. She's been pushing fabric through a sewing
| machine, keeping it between 3/8" and 5/8" on the seam
| allowance, since she was 16 years old. Now she lays out
| fabric on the infeed table - she's pleased that she finally
| has time that doesn't impact production rates to make sure
| the patterns match precisely - and she inspects the
| stitching on the product that comes out the outfeed chute
| to adjust thread tensions and strokes on the sewing
| machine. Literally Tuesday of this week, I was at a wood
| processing plant installing a new automated saw, when I
| heard that a 19-year-old greenhorn lost his right index
| finger between the first and second knuckles on an old
| manual saw. I was there installing the fully automated,
| fully guarded replacement equipment; you can drop a pallet
| of roughsawn lumber on the infeed material handler and
| correctly sized boards come out the other side, with no one
| needing to be closer than 20 feet from the saw blade. I
| wasn't fast enough.
|
| In all these cases, no one got fired, people just
| transitioned from mindless, repetitive grunt work to real
| human work, while capacity and efficiency increased. And
| not only are all these operators enjoying their jobs more,
| your gas is cheaper, new cars are cheaper and more
| reliable, new furniture is cheaper and the cushions are
| more consistently sewn, and solid-wood cabinet doors are
| produced more safely, accurately, and quickly. It's not all
| about capital.
| chillingeffect wrote:
| kudos to you! I'm confident relieving humans of tedious
| work is more valuable to society than bringing college
| kids food.
|
| My comment is related to my experience in delivery
| robotics and this is an alt. Not everyone is bad. I, too,
| believe my current job to be more ethical than my
| previous experience. Of course, I didn't know going into
| my prior experience what it was really about.
| numpad0 wrote:
| That's how to get a robot half feet into a choke point,
| immediately get stuck for half an hour surrounded by walls
| and confused people, until developer on an emergency Slack
| call along facility managers and company CTO verifies and
| communicates a likely-safe state of robot and surrounding
| equipment to field operators and a go is given to pull the
| thing out of the elevator.
| sizzle wrote:
| This is so detailed, are you speaking from experience
| perhaps?
| agumonkey wrote:
| wouldn't people prefer choking robots rather than overly
| confident and bumping ones ?
| pc86 wrote:
| Probably not if they're sticking 18" into the only
| elevator on the floor.
| erulabs wrote:
| Tesla does exactly this and it gives rise to the phantom
| breaking problem. Still seems like a good solution for a
| small bot with no passengers
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| No? There are numerous clips where Telsas in "full self
| driving" mode pull the equivalent maneuver of a teenager
| going "OH SHIT I WANT TO GO THERE" and veering very
| violently.
|
| The phantom braking problem is likely just one of the many
| symptoms of Musk's insistence on relying on optical systems
| instead of more expensive sensors.
| gzer0 wrote:
| Expense was part of the equation initially, however,
| through economies of scale, we eventually would have been
| able to reach a feasible price point. Cost has nothing to
| do with why Tesla is pursuing an optical-only system.
|
| To get rid of the dependency on the radar sensor for
| autopilot, we generated over 10 billion labels across two
| and a half million clips. To do this we had to scale our
| offline neural networks and our simulation engine across
| 1000s of GPUs, and just a little bit shy of 20,000 CPU
| cores. We also included over 2000 actual autopilot full
| self driving computers in the loop with our simulation
| engine. And that's the smallest compute cluster.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Those are very large numbers for something that doesn't
| work very well.
| atleta wrote:
| So what's the point then? You said it's not expenses and
| then you explain how you think it caused you extra
| trouble/work/development effort. But what's the reason?
| stefan_ wrote:
| That must be why complaints about phantom braking have
| gone through the roof since the switch away from radar.
| outworlder wrote:
| > The phantom braking problem is likely just one of the
| many symptoms of Musk's insistence on relying on optical
| systems instead of more expensive sensors.
|
| Based on what? How would 'expensive' sensors help?
| bluGill wrote:
| We know that in some situations expensive sensors can get
| data that optical cannot. What we don't know is if any of
| the above is enough extra data.
|
| What we do know is there are times when humans are bad
| drivers, and other times when humans continue when they
| shouldn't relying on luck. (Ie driving in snow storms
| with low visibility)
| DamnableNook wrote:
| Kiwi bots aren't (weren't?) actually AI controlled. They had
| human drivers in South America that controlled them remotely.
| If one attacked you, it was either the human driver going agro,
| or just a problem with the latency of the camera -> cell
| network -> streamed to South America -> driver inputs command
| -> sent back to the US -> over the cell network -> back to the
| bot. And the cameras they have were pretty bad (the ordering
| app would show you the camera view when the bot was nearing its
| destination.)
| r_klancer wrote:
| What's the business model here? It seems like delivery bots could
| only work on wide walking paths on closed campuses. Or are the
| startups here assuming we'll build dedicated infrastructure for
| them?
|
| I can't imagine they would ever work in real world cities
| (putting rolling roadblocks on busy public sidewalks is
| antisocial at best, and besides they're bound to get blocked by
| obstructions en route that require them to be lifted up and over
| the curb--trash cans, outdoor seating, carelessly parked
| scooters...)
|
| And if I ever came up behind one put-putting along in a bike lane
| I'm not sure what I would do but I like to believe it wouldn't
| _technically_ be illegal.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| If the new infrastructure cost is less than the old manual
| labor cost, you can bank on the infrastructure being built.
|
| Truckers holding out on "only humans can handle last mile" are
| in for a surprise when we start rebuilding the last miles.
| thaeli wrote:
| Don't underestimate the option of "if the cost of making the
| old infrastructure hostile to other users is even less"..
| duxup wrote:
| I want one of those pneumatic tubes that banks have installed
| that runs from the local Chipotle to my house ... I'd even
| pay for it.
|
| I think even random citizens would be happy to adjust to it.
| soared wrote:
| I cannot seem to find the right words to google, but you'd
| enjoy reading about (Chicago maybe?) a city that had a long
| rotating pipe running under the city. Instead of using
| electricity, or maybe prior to electricity, factories could
| attach a strap to the pipe to power machines.
| randycupertino wrote:
| Stanford has a pneumatic tube system for lab samples and
| it's several miles long and you can tour it!
|
| https://sm.stanford.edu/archive/stanmed/2010summer/article4
| ....
|
| I would abuse the FUCK out of a burrito delivery pneumatic
| tube system to my house and would become orca fat.
| duxup wrote:
| There was a good "how its made" out there that showed a
| company that sells them for hospitals and etc.
|
| It was cool to see how the various intersections and etc
| worked.
| jaclaz wrote:
| JFYI:
|
| http://www.douglas-
| self.com/MUSEUM/COMMS/pneumess/pneumess.h...
| r_klancer wrote:
| Well, the tide has been turning in many cities towards
| building more human-scale infrastructure by improving
| walkability and protected lanes for bikees/scooters etc.
| Delivery bots have a severe risk of wrecking the "flow" of
| sidewalks and bike lanes by being slow or just behaving
| robotically instead of like a person.
|
| (Side comment/why I'm interested: I finally have bandwidth
| for civid engagement and I decided I'd like to work on
| helping my already cycling-friendly city enact policies to
| encourage food delivery services to use bike delivery, as
| part of its upcoming bike network plan.)
| AuthorizedCust wrote:
| At my campus, these devices cross public streets. They are
| scurrying around quite a bit, so it seems they are being used
| productively.
| notnotjake wrote:
| At least for the Starship bots that we have on my campus, they
| can go up and down curbs. But they will go down very narrow
| sidewalks where students have to get off the sidewalk to avoid
| them
| colechristensen wrote:
| These little guys or very similar ones wander the sidewalks of
| Mountain View freely.
| r_klancer wrote:
| Interesting, I'm sure somebody has made a Youtube video of
| them. Only been to MV once and that was before these were
| around.
|
| (EDIT: of course, there's also an East Coast/West Coast, or
| at least an old city/new city issue here. Based on your
| experience, can you imagine them working in NYC?)
| colechristensen wrote:
| I assume such robots would get murdered/mugged in NYC,
| they're not appropriate for busy sidewalks and are about as
| conducive to other people as an elderly person on the
| sidewalk using a walker (without the human understanding of
| "this person is a bit inconvenient, but they have a right
| to be here")
|
| Mountain View is a pretty relaxed suburb kind of vibe with
| closely spaced residences and lots of mostly empty
| sidewalks.
|
| A snapshot of one in the wild:
|
| https://imgur.com/a/hLbmRkB
| josephcsible wrote:
| Can't these go anywhere that a person in a wheelchair can go?
| And doesn't the ADA already make sure that a person in a
| wheelchair can go anywhere?
| thrd wrote:
| In Moscow there are such robot deliver post, where traffic more
| complicated than in campus, I think couple years and they are
| completely replace human delivery
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| So, this is what the future is like...
| coolreader18 wrote:
| I'm on a campus with these robots and over winter break, with the
| first big snow, a friend of mine was bored and apparently spent
| parts of his days just going around and helping the Starships
| that got caught in the snow.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| What are the security measure to avoid the food and or the robot
| to be stolen?
|
| I guess some GPS localization of the robots thenselves. And
| cameras?
| _fullpint wrote:
| Absolutely hate these scooters from an ADA prospective.
|
| My neighborhood is a mostly quiet one near the center of a large
| city, where there are a lot of mothers who push their kids in
| strollers, older folks with canes, and some people even in
| wheelchairs.
|
| On the weekends -- sometimes the weekdays as well depending on
| the time of the year -- the city gets flooded with both tourists,
| and suburbanites who want to go to all the 'trendy' spots often
| opting to use these scooters.
|
| More often than not they park them right in the middle of the
| sidewalk. The side walk that the strollers, canes and wheelchairs
| use on a daily basis. Usually when I see this, I just knock the
| things over and push them out of the way.
| AJ007 wrote:
| The other big problem is the trucks that drive around
| constantly loading/unloading the scooters. Often they park on
| the sidewalk, fully blocking anyone from getting through. One
| time I saw a driver back in to a woman was as trying to cross
| the street with a baby carriage.
|
| Unfortunate side effect of the past capital incineration years.
| If it doesn't make sense to have unlocked bike-share, it
| definitely doesn't make sense to do it with electric scooters.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| > Usually when I see this, I just knock the things over and
| push them out of the way.
|
| So you make the problem _worse_?
|
| Why don't you take 2 minutes and push them to the side of the
| sidewalk if you care so much about ADA access? You can fix the
| problem you are encountering, and the people you want to
| protect CANT. You are choosing to make the problem _worse_ for
| them? Why?
|
| I live in a major downtown full of these scooters. When I see
| them blocking something, I just move them. Why is this so
| difficult? It takes such a tiny amount of effort to fix this
| problem you are describing. You live in a society, and it's
| your responsibility to contribute.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| > Why don't you take 2 minutes and push them to the side of
| the sidewalk if you care so much about ADA access?
|
| Because you'll be doing this over and over again. How about
| those companies educate their users how to behave in a
| neighbourhood where those people are basically guests?
| josephcsible wrote:
| That may be a valid argument to not push them all to the
| side every time, but it isn't a valid argument for
| intentionally worsening the problem.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| How does the gp make the problem worse? Instead of gently
| moving them over to the side of the sidewalk, they toss
| it to the side of the sidewalk.
|
| End result is the same, they're out of the way... Just a
| bit more rage maybe in the process.
| josephcsible wrote:
| By knocking them over, they're now wide enough to be in
| the way even on the side.
| zenithd wrote:
| GP said "and out of the way".
| peteradio wrote:
| Toss them into a pile will make them more compact. Really
| it wouldn't take too long to clear a whole sidewalk of
| them, granted it might get more difficult once the pile
| gets to significant height. But I'm thinking 1 scooter
| toss every 2-5 seconds: 1 grunt grab, 2 grunt grab, 3
| grunt grab etc, you can imagine it happening at a decent
| pace.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| I mean do we really need the scooters at all in a country
| with 71.6% of adults overweight? A walk would do some good.
| triceratops wrote:
| Let's be real, no one's going to walk. If they scooter
| instead of driving, it's a win.
| jaredmosley wrote:
| Exactly. Where I've gotten the most benefit from scooters
| is in cities like Dallas and Phoenix. It's impossible to
| walk around those cities because they're so big and
| spread out, but a scooter means I don't need to drive
| constantly.
| kube-system wrote:
| I don't imagine that would help. Most of these scooter
| companies already do some sort of education regarding
| traffic laws... but when was the last time you saw a person
| on a scooter, stopped at a red light, wearing a helmet?
|
| The only way it'll be fixed is if someone actually enforces
| compliance.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| I agree, and even if punishing bad behavior is appealing,
| I think it'd work best if Scooter Co. added sensors so it
| could tell/see where the rider parked the scooter, and
| rewarded good parking with free rides (which would also
| prevent griefing the last rider by quickly dragging it
| somewhere terrible to get them punished).
| widdakay wrote:
| Last time I rode one they required that I take a picture
| of how I left it to prove that I abided by their
| placement rules in order to end the ride.
| kube-system wrote:
| I think most of those simply require that you send a
| picture. I'm not sure that they validate that the scooter
| is parked correctly, and I have seen people submit
| pictures of _other scooters_ parked correctly.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| I haven't, one of these things knocked me out unconscious
| while I was waiting for green light to cross the road.
|
| It came from the side, hit me, I landed in the middle of
| the street. Happened right in front of the central
| station in Antwerpen.
|
| Just imagine how confused you are waking up laying in the
| middle of the road while a paramedic smacks you in the
| face and asks you if you know what your name is. I'm
| going to spare the details for how long the grit I landed
| with my face on was coming out of my nose and the chin.
|
| I don't understand how it's okay for these scooters to be
| legal. They are so quiet and so fast. They can come from
| any direction and you'll not hear a thing. Apparently
| that's what is so appealing about them.
|
| I mean, with a car there are at least some clearly
| defined rules. Barring mental people, everyone drives on
| the roads, within clearly defined lanes while we walk on
| the sidewalk. These scooters are everywhere!
| Symbiote wrote:
| If it helps, you can point Antwerp's politicians to
| Copenhagen, where rental scooters have been banned from
| starting or ending journeys in the city centre.
|
| https://www.eltis.org/in-brief/news/e-scooters-allowed-
| back-...
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| I don't live in Antwerpen, just visiting sometimes. But
| good to know.
|
| My doctor in Germany said to me this is a surprisingly
| common story.
| freeopinion wrote:
| Perhaps it is human nature to want to inflict harm on those
| we perceive to be causing harm. This rarely leads to the best
| outcome. So I would love to hear from cooler heads that could
| improve the following idea and take the pointless retribution
| out of it:
|
| It is not enough to kick over a scooter. We need to tag
| repeat offenders and increase the severity of the response.
| For instance, paint one handlebar grip on the first
| infraction, then the other grip on the second, then a seat,
| headlight/taillight, etc. A scooter that has been tagged
| enough can have the tires flattened, spokes broken, etc.
|
| Clearly, there are numerous flaws with the solution above.
| It's really a terrible idea. To some degree it shows the
| flaws with kicking over offending scooters.
|
| Alternatively, you could hire enforcement officers to issue
| citations. That also has flaws. You could build a system that
| allows random citizens to document offenses in a credible way
| and then have authorities act on repeated offenses. Also not
| without problems.
|
| Perhaps coloring the scenario differently might help.
| Imagine, for instance, that a certain neighborhood house is
| popular with the neighborhood children. The children
| frequently ride their bikes to the house and leave their
| bikes strewn in the driveway, the front yard, and on the
| sidewalk. What would be an appropriate series of responses?
| How could you build a system that protects against a grumpy
| neighbor abusing whatever escalation mechanism you devise?
| Tagbert wrote:
| Who is the repeat offender in this situation?
|
| The scooter company who provides the scooters? The scooter
| renter who drops the scooter in semi-random locations? The
| city who built the sidewalks?
|
| It seems like you are targeting the scooter company when it
| may be the users who are being careless. I've seen a lot of
| scooters left in the way when a reasonably clear area was
| just a few feet away.
| freeopinion wrote:
| In the first scenario, the repeat offender is clearly the
| tagger.
|
| But to address your valid question, the scheme shifts the
| costs to the scooter provider who would likely then
| impose costs on the scooter polluter. Although they may
| instead choose to impose costs on all their customers to
| subsidize the offender.
|
| But it is a very clumsy scheme with many flaws, so
| probably not a great model upon which to iterate.
| GrantZvolsky wrote:
| If Moore's law continues for a few more years, we'll
| probably see offenders fined automatically with the use of
| omnipresent traffic cameras. Since the scooters have number
| plates just like cars, it isn't infeasible to identify them
| and their drivers at any moment. The cameras and software
| that are already in place made me wary of driving, and
| especially parking, in the UK (after fining me for parking
| at an empty motorway restaurant parking lot overnight, and
| at a half-empty supermarket car park with no gate for more
| than 90 minutes), and there is nothing that will prevent
| them from spoiling my preferred mode of transport that I
| use to travel to work every day, electric scooters.
|
| In particular, they could achieve this by enforcing the law
| that makes them illegal to drive on the sidewalk. It won't
| matter that it is 3am and the nearest pedestrian is two
| miles away, or that you're driving at less than walking
| speed. You'll get fined anyway.
|
| To add a bit of optimism, maybe these systems will become
| good enough to only fine those who drive inconsiderately or
| dangerously, and a successful campaign will make that the
| law, instead of the blanket ban.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Moving one scooter aside doesn't fix the problem. Also they
| said they move them aside, the only difference between them
| and you is they knock the scooters over. I don't see how
| they're worsening the problem by moving the scooters aside.
| [deleted]
| chasd00 wrote:
| In Dallas everyone started loading them up in trucks and
| throwing them into the lake. The city quickly banned them.
| avereveard wrote:
| No lol, it's the other people responsibility not to be a
| nuisance.
|
| But I agree throwing them aside is not the optimal solution.
|
| Municipality looking for money could get some large cash
| influx from ticketing improperly parked scooters, the owning
| company can decide to eat the loss or flip the ticket on the
| user, either way people will get educated fast.
|
| It would only take for the law enforcement to enforce rules
| that are already there
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| A fine doesn't help the person actually "inconvenienced" by
| the scooter(s). It just gives the city more money.
|
| Seems like the company might eat the fine, the city will
| take the money, and the problem persists, but now the city
| is happy too.
| avereveard wrote:
| > A fine doesn't help the person actually
| "inconvenienced" by the scooter(s). It just gives the
| city more money.
|
| not immediately, (albeit towing would). but would solve
| the problem in the long run, which will eventualy help
| the person be inconvenienced less.
| amalcon wrote:
| They could impound the scooters, only to release them
| when the fines are paid; this prevents (some of) the
| inconvenience.
| hospadar wrote:
| > Seems like the company might eat the fine, the city
| will take the money, and the problem persists, but now
| the city is happy too.
|
| Then the fine isn't big enough? (:
| cmmeur01 wrote:
| It also said "and out of the way".
|
| How is getting them out of the way, on their side or not,
| worsening the situation?
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| >So you make the problem worse?
|
| It might make the problem worse in the short term but maybe
| those leaving them in the middle will move them out of the
| way in the future possibly reducing the issue long term.
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| Good old accelerationism.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > Why don't you take 2 minutes
|
| Wow, if a 3-4 minute walk involves 10 scooters that's now
| almost a 25-minute walk.
|
| It's not the OP's job to clean up after everyone else.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| It doesn't take 2 minutes to move a scooter 3 feet. It
| takes about 10 seconds.
| mywittyname wrote:
| It doesn't take very long for me to pick up litter on my
| walks. But I still will wish people would stop fucking
| littering.
| lucasmullens wrote:
| No one encounters 10 misplaced scooters in a 3-4 minute
| walk, and it would take under a minute to move a single
| scooter. That's a very unrealistic hypothetical.
| clsec wrote:
| I guess you've never been in SOMA in San Francisco. I
| used to live in that neighborhood and in the 3 block walk
| to the coffee shop I could easily pass 20-30 of them. In
| my current neighborhood I'll see about 6 in the same
| distance.
| lucasmullens wrote:
| You passed 20 scooters blocking your path in a 3 minute
| walk?
|
| I lived in SF when the scooters first appeared. Maybe
| it's gotten worse, but I thought they made you prove you
| parked it somewhere legally with a photo. So I would
| figure at least the majority aren't just blocking the
| sidewalk.
|
| I'm not saying they aren't misplaced a lot and that it
| isn't a problem. I'm just saying there's no way every 10
| seconds you're climbing over a scooter on your walk (20
| in 3 minutes).
| yebyen wrote:
| I think you underestimate the number of people who are
| careless and inconsiderate. Or maybe you live in a very
| nice part of town. I sometimes get stuck doing 8 things
| on the way to do a thing I intended to do, because I see
| a thoughtless thing and cannot help myself from fixing
| it. It's important to higher functioning to be able to
| look at a thing wrong and say "not my job to fix it!"
| without guilt.
| atleta wrote:
| I have similar feelings. Though I don't hate the scooters per
| se. I'm pretty upset with the idiots who leave them right in
| the middle of the side walks AND the companies that don't do
| anything about it. They could pretty easily penalize the users
| for leaving these in the wrong place if they wanted to.
|
| Now I actually don't understand at all why they don't do it. On
| the surface, you can say that they don't give a shit about non-
| users, they just care about their customers and they are afraid
| of scaring them away. However, where I live (Budapest, Hungary)
| these have already been banned from the centermost district of
| the city. The district, the area most frequented by tourists.
| As it was predictable.
|
| Also, the city mayor came up with a regulation so that they'll
| designate several hundred e-scooter parking lots throughout the
| inner city and leaving these anywhere but those places will
| results in the company being fined. Which is a smart and
| friendly move, because there will be indeed lots of lots :) .
| But it's still a lot worse than if the e-scooter companies have
| solved it for themselves because then you'd still be able to
| leave them almost anywhere.
|
| Actually I see two king of annoying parking habits. The first
| one is the completely reckless, when they literally leave it in
| the middle of the walking path of everyone. I sometimes even
| think that it's deliberate. Like wanting to show off or
| something. "I'll just leave it here in the middle, so that
| everyone can see it." Quite often right in the front of zebra
| crossings.
|
| The other one is more like sheer stupidity. When they do park
| it besides a wall, but they do it as if it was a car. So 45
| degrees, with front wheel to the wall. But that doesn't make
| much sense, because you want it to be out of the way (which
| almost always means parallel to the wall, preferably leaning
| towards the wall and not leaning away from the wall).
|
| This is all pretty sad because e-scooters, while I think they
| are dangerous to ride, are pretty cool and efficient vehicles.
| And being able to pick up one on the street, though more
| expensive than owning one, very convenient for the occasional
| user. (I mostly ride a bike though, and pre-covid I used to use
| a kick scooter + public transport.)
| watwut wrote:
| > The side walk that the strollers, canes and wheelchairs use
| on a daily basis. Usually when I see this, I just knock the
| things over and push them out of the way.
|
| Way better approach is to take phone and send complain to
| company that runs these. At least in our city, they do in fact
| end contracts with people who park them wrong. The threat and
| actual drivers who lost the ability to use scooters makes
| others park better.
| sharken wrote:
| Electric scooters have been heavily regulated where i live,
| helmet is now required and you have to leave them at designated
| locations. And a photo upload showing how it was parked is now
| also required.
|
| Oh, and Friday and Saturday between 00 and 05, you cannot use
| the scooters.
|
| It kinda makes me sad that we can't just let people use
| scooters as they please, but as you observe that isn't working.
|
| It was much the same with drones, which is now also heavily
| regulated, e.g. you must maintain a certain distance to
| buildings.
| Ekaros wrote:
| City bikes which have stations seem much better option. At
| least if run by city itself, higher installation cost, but
| means that they are much more orderly.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Also subject to the same kind of abuse if our society
| continues to degrade to justifying more and more antisocial
| behavior.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Some vandalism will always happen, but the key seems to
| lie in making such an amenity loved by the people rather
| than forced upon them by faceless and unapproachable
| corporations.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| That's kind of subjective, isn't it? A lot of people
| don't feel threatened by businesses but instead feel
| threatened by a faceless and unapproachable government
| bureaucracy. See the DMV.
|
| When anti-business or anti-government ideology gives
| moral license to antisocial behavior, nothing is gonna
| work out for you.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| It depends on how far the relation between citizen and
| government has deteriorated, and is certainly something
| to take into account. A practical example is the mayor of
| Manchester asking people not to apply the same
| destructive tactic to the new municipal bicycle plan1. In
| Manchester the memory of the invasion of Chinese rent-a-
| bikes is still fresh, so the new plan will have to work
| at not being unapproachable and providing an asset to the
| city rather than a service for the few.
|
| And it's not just the potential vandal (or activists) who
| affect the balance. If someone were to molest one of the
| unasked for app-hireable mopeds cluttering the sidewalk
| in my Dutch town, I wouldn't bother reporting it (in
| fact, I'd probably cheer them on). If someone did this to
| bicycles for hire part of a municipally managed plan (for
| which I can hold the council accountable as a voter, and
| whom I can address with complaints or suggestions for
| improvement) with fixed parking areas rather than devil-
| may-care-anywhere-on-the-sidewalk-parking, I would act
| differently.
|
| 1: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/nov/10/andy-
| burnham...
| rtlfe wrote:
| > helmet is now required
|
| FYI some context on bike helmet laws: https://www.thestranger
| .com/slog/2021/04/06/56408419/seattle...
| 30385421 wrote:
| I am heartened to hear that I am not the only one who does
| this. I feel the same about the Al Fresco dining set-ups. Happy
| that restaurants got more space for their business but angered
| that it comes at the cost of accessibility for wheelchair users
| and others like them.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I just knock the things over and push them out of the way._
|
| Start "putting them away" for the careless people. In
| dumpsters. Pretty soon the scooter companies will figure out a
| solution.
| [deleted]
| showerst wrote:
| This is my _exact_ experience, I end up having to move at least
| two a week to get our stroller past, and they are a huge pain
| when my wheelchair-bound mother visits.
|
| I consider myself a law abiding person but have been sorely
| tempted to load them up into a truck and toss them into the
| Chesapeake ...
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Toss them onto all the access roads and grounds of the
| company that owns them instead, maybe they'll take a hint.
| ctoth wrote:
| Good lord. I'm blind, walk with a cane. Let me tell you the
| number of times I have to walk around someone parked on the
| sidewalk, or in a residential neighborhood find someone has
| their driveway filled with cars so I have to walk out in the
| street to get around, or someone's doing yard work and has
| stuff scattered on the sidewalk in front of the house or...
|
| Where's my law-abiding help to deal with this? It kinda just
| feels like somebody's got a hate on for scooters.
| showerst wrote:
| While I can't imagine the difficulty of being blind, I'm
| right there with you on the cars front!
|
| It's just that with scooters we're introducing something
| new, and unlike with cars it would be technologically
| reasonable to say "you can only park this at the end of
| block in the scooter zone" and nail the companies with a
| huge fine if they don't enforce it.
|
| I'm actually fairly pro-scooter (though I wish people just
| used city bikes in the places that have them, but I get
| it), but I think final parking location should be more like
| the city bikes, in designated spots.
| CPLX wrote:
| How selfish of you. You should take more than 2 minutes and
| spend the time to throw them in a nearby body of water and
| solve the problem more permanently.
| coldpie wrote:
| Please don't pollute our waterways. Place them where they
| belong--into a nearby dumpster or the middle of the street.
| renewiltord wrote:
| This is one of those online exaggerations. Occasionally some
| people will behave badly. Just like sometimes you'll see people
| stop their cars on the sidewalk or whatever. It's fine.
| coldpie wrote:
| draw_down wrote:
| josephcsible wrote:
| Yes, let's make innocent people crash their cars! That'll
| teach the people who left the scooters there a lesson!
| pengaru wrote:
| > Yes, let's make innocent people crash their cars! That'll
| teach the people who left the scooters there a lesson!
|
| The cars are insured, the insurance companies will pursue
| the owners of the scooters. It's the negative feedback
| required to compel scooter companies to operate more
| responsibly.
| CalRobert wrote:
| I'm here for this 100% because cars destroy cities and
| lives except that this could kill motorcycle riders or
| cyclists. If you ride any debris in the road can be
| deadly.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Sometimes people get hurt or killed in car crashes, which
| just having insurance doesn't magically fix. And besides,
| if I were the scooter company, I'd be going after you who
| intentionally threw the scooter into the road, not after
| the last rider who parked it somewhere inconsiderate but
| not dangerous.
| pengaru wrote:
| Are you aware that if you loan your vehicle out and it's
| used in a crime you're liable?
| josephcsible wrote:
| Maybe, but if someone steals my car and uses it in a
| crime I'm not. And in this hypothetical, the company
| didn't loan the scooter to the person who caused the car
| crash with it.
| pengaru wrote:
| The crime in this case is littering, and the person your
| hypothetical scooter company is going to pursue for
| moving the litter into the road where a car hit it is
| quite likely to be a minor whose identity you'll never
| determine.
|
| But you're creating circumstances for this outcome to be
| probable by leaving unescured scooters littering
| sidewalks. Much like leaving your car idling with a key
| in the ignition and the doors unlocked creates
| circumstances for someone, possibly even a child, to
| climb in and commit a crime with it. It's _negligence_ on
| your part.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > The crime in this case is littering
|
| Doesn't something have to be trash for leaving it
| somewhere to count as littering? After all, improperly
| parking a car isn't littering, even if it's a Zipcar or
| something.
|
| > leaving your car idling with a key in the ignition and
| the doors unlocked
|
| But it isn't like that, since these scooters do lock
| their wheels.
| pengaru wrote:
| > Doesn't something have to be trash for leaving it
| somewhere to count as littering? After all, improperly
| parking a car isn't littering, even if it's a Zipcar or
| something.
|
| Any object improperly placed so as to be a public
| nuisance or health concern is litter. If you abandon an
| object obstructing sidewalks, it's a public nuisance.
|
| In the case of a zipcar improperly parked there are more
| relevant laws with more severe penalties, automobiles
| have a whole world of explicit laws governing their safe
| use for obvious reasons.
|
| In the case of bicycle rideshares we've long had
| precedent of a more responsible operator; velib in paris
| had dedicated bike racks for storing the bikes and the
| borrowers would be fined for abandoning the bikes. Velib
| employed staff in vans to regularly collect the bikes
| when they weren't returned to the racks. This is what it
| means to at least try not be negligent.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > Any object improperly placed so as to be a public
| nuisance or health concern is litter.
|
| Can you cite a law that says this? And does a scooter on
| a sidewalk meet the legal definition of "public nuisance"
| or "health concern"?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Are you aware that if you loan your vehicle out and
| it's used in a crime you're liable?
|
| That's...very much not true.
|
| For certain _torts_ related to the vehicle you would be
| liable, but unless you actively and with requisite mental
| state engaged in the crime, you would not be liable for a
| _crime_.
| manarth wrote:
| Given that the rental scooter market is concentrated in
| cities, and that the roads where they're used are
| typically limited to 30mph or less, unless the person is
| actively _throwing the scooter at the car_ , the cause of
| a crash would be an inattentive driver rather than a
| poorly-positioned scooter.
| coldpie wrote:
| No one cares if pedestrians have to navigate around these
| things. But if people have to get out of their 4,000 lb
| steel cages to move these things out of the way, there will
| be consequences.
| [deleted]
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Riffing on your comment, but I think there has been a general
| increase in antisociality in the last few years (especially
| since the pandemic, which has traumatized society). Like people
| leaving scooters haphazardly lying around or you pushing over
| delivery robots instead of pushing them out of the way. People
| feel more and more justified to engage in antisocial behavior.
| And it feeds on itself. You see this as being anti-social
| behavior by the robot companies, therefore justify engaging in
| more antisocial behavior.
|
| I wonder if anyone has an index that measures how often people
| leave carts randomly in a parking lot or in the actual corrals
| (not counting stores that incentivize it with a quarter). Would
| be a good measure of pro- or anti-sociality.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| With these scooters, bicycles, mopeds for rent; and delivery
| robots it's also a form of not very nice but justifiable
| resistance in lieu of better ways.
|
| Remember the sudden onslaught of Chinese app-rentable
| bicycles in cities around the world a few years back? Near
| useless pieces of unrepairable plastic, steel, and rubber
| clogging up the pavement (sidewalk) because technically this
| was not illegal. Several companies competing in a race to
| become the biggest one in any given city. In many cases it
| ended after new legislation and citizens demanding action;
| often spurred on by activists using the same fuck-you tactics
| these companies used to put them everywhere, but in reverse
| (often by means of gently chucking them in a canal).
|
| Putting stuff for rent all over public space or abusing the
| commons otherwise with the explicit aim of first becoming the
| dominant party in a mad gold rush, and only then negotiate
| about rules and limits afterwards is quite antisocial too.
| Responding tit-for-tat is not classy, but some people feel
| they have little recourse, especially if municipalities are
| (at first) taken in by the greenwashing ideals of some of
| these companies.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| > Putting stuff for rent all over public space or abusing
| the commons otherwise with the explicit aim of first
| becoming the dominant party in a mad gold rush, and only
| then negotiate about rules and limits afterwards is quite
| antisocial too.
|
| Tell that to the rideshare companies whose drivers crowd
| the streets of cities, circulating while they stare at
| their phones waiting for a passenger (and leaving bottles
| of human waste everywhere).
| rosndo wrote:
| > but I think there has been a general increase in
| antisociality in the last few years (especially since the
| pandemic, which has traumatized society)
|
| It makes sense that people who feel that they've been
| unfairly imprisoned in their homes by the rest of society
| would feel rather bitter about that.
|
| To restore faith societies could take steps to compensate
| those worst hit by pandemic measures (i.e young people), so
| far that hasn't happened.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Oh, it's that and also anger at folks who don't take
| prosocial steps like wearing a mask, justifying being
| antisocial to "those" kind of people...
|
| ...and the blame cycle goes round and round. Break the
| cycle! Be nice to people who don't deserve it!
| watwut wrote:
| Your claim is that it is all right wing people becoming
| anti-social in unrelated areas?
| benglish11 wrote:
| You think only right wing people didn't like being
| forcibly locked down?
| vangelis wrote:
| What lockdowns has the US had?
| watwut wrote:
| I think that this was heavily partisan issue. So, yes,
| the "unfairly imprisoned in their homes by the rest of
| society" would have severe right wing bias. Just like
| anti masking and anti vaccine attitudes are currently
| heavily biased by partisan politics.
|
| OP could have stated it in more neutral terms, but chosen
| not to.
| rosndo wrote:
| Why right wing? I'm rather left leaning, even by European
| standards. I'm not some crazy antivaxxer either, plenty
| of those on both sides.
|
| Nevertheless the pandemic responses by various
| governments I have to interact with have done much to
| deepen my distrust of them and the society around me.
|
| Various governments have deployed drastic measures such
| as lockdowns in an effort to control the pandemic, but
| they've released little evidence to demonstrate the
| usefulness of these measures.
|
| Research is increasingly showing that the lockdowns were
| not worth it. If that is really true their victims should
| be lavishly compensated and those responsible actually
| held responsible.
|
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ijcp.136
| 74
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7499782/
|
| Of course I personally am not qualified to judge whether
| or not the lockdowns were a mistake, but the evidence
| _seems to be_ piling up against them. The governments
| could alleviate these concerns by showing solid research
| confirming that they didn't fuck up.
| watwut wrote:
| Because this was heavily partisan issue. It is just
| absurd to claim it was not.
| rosndo wrote:
| Bad government decisionmaking should very much be a
| common issue.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I don't think it's fair to blame the pandemic measures, at
| least in the USA. People weren't nice and then all of a
| sudden turned shitty because they were asked to voluntarily
| stay home. I think it's more likely that they were already
| antisocial people, but spent most of their lives keeping it
| inside and mostly hiding it under a thin facade of basic
| manners. Then, maybe several years ago, _something_
| happened that encouraged them that manners didn 't matter,
| and it's ok to own your own asshole. Maybe _someone_ showed
| us that you could just say the quiet part out loud without
| consequences. Hmm... Some human embodiment of narcissistic
| anti-social contrarianism... Can 't quite put my finger on
| it though...
| netsharc wrote:
| Someone, who for legal reasons is not me, has the idea to make
| stickers with strong glue and cheap paper (so they can't be
| ripped off in one go) to stick on top of the QR codes to these
| things. The sticker would have text that says "Sorry you can't
| use this scooter because the last rider parked like an idiot."
| josephcsible wrote:
| So "someone" thinks it's okay to vandalize other people's
| property just because the last person to use it didn't put it
| away right?
| winkeltripel wrote:
| The company which owns the scooter is responsible for the
| location of the scooter. They choose to let users leave
| scooters in shitty locations. They invite vigilant
| responses from other sidewalk users.
| donkarma wrote:
| since when is a corporation a person? if they leave their
| crap in public then I personally couldn't give more of a
| fuck to what happens to it
| mtVessel wrote:
| 2010, in the U.S.[1]
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| It's a frustrating problem, but isn't it better to not be a
| jerk?
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| Sadly the problem is not the scooters themselves. They don't
| park themselves at random. The problem is the people.
|
| If, in general, people were just at tiny bit more respectful of
| others around them - the world would be a lot better off.
| rtlfe wrote:
| The real problem is that car manufactures have lobbied to
| give every scrap of space to car storage. If we took back
| parking lanes to dramatically expand sidewalks, this wouldn't
| be an issue at all.
| nabilhat wrote:
| > _Absolutely hate these scooters from an ADA prospective._
|
| Same here, but from a different angle. If the scooters were the
| problem, we'd have had the same problem when Car2Go was a
| thing. But, car infrastructure in the US is so overbuilt that
| Car2Go didn't even register on the radar in terms of free
| street parking. Cars improperly abandoned that impede car
| traffic are quickly resolved.
|
| The nonmotorized infrastructure in the US is so begrudgingly
| inept that adversarial design wouldn't look much different. If
| there's a rent-a-scooter inconveniencing the token pedestrian
| path next to on street parking, I've simply been moving the
| scooters into on street parking. A single scooter fits between
| spaces, or only consumes <5% of the length of a standard 20
| foot space. Surely drivers complain loudly, but they won't be
| inconvenienced unless they go out of their way to toss a
| scooter into the middle of the sidewalk; an accurate metaphor
| for how sidewalks got to be so terrible in the first place.
| Accacin wrote:
| So a minor inconvenience for cleaner air in your neighbourhood?
|
| Ofc, I feel for disabled people in this situation, but
| personally I'll pick one up or move it if I see that it's in
| the way.
|
| Here when the were first released, the parking was a bit
| scuffed, but recently it seems people have been making a much
| greater effort to park them correctly.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| That's still very dismissive of anyone using the sidewalks.
| Good for you that you pick up someone else's shit, but it's
| not a solution. These companies should take responsibility
| and fix the problem.
| ctoth wrote:
| I keep seeing people say "these companies" when the actual
| problem is the people who ride the scooters. Maybe your
| problem is with people in general? It doesn't feel super
| great to internalize, but if the problem keeps happening
| with different people riding the scooters then I think we
| can conclude that your anger is misplaced. Call out people
| you see misusing the infrastructure, don't destroy the
| infrastructure for everyone.
| Kye wrote:
| Waiting for capitalists to clean up their mess is a losing
| strategy. Change is almost universally a grassroots thing.
| Get enough people to put things in their proper place, and
| people leaving them there will get the message. I've seen
| this work at all scales. Model the society you want to live
| in and it _will_ catch on, at least a little.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| The thing is there's no designated place to park them. You
| can't put them on the property line next to the sidewalk. Many
| sidewalks don't have a "planter" or other non-walking area.
| Sidewalks weren't designed for this. I think we should ban
| sidewalk scooter parking. The public right of way is not a
| parking lot for private companies.
|
| As an aside: many (most?) people who need sidewalks choose to
| use the road instead because the sidewalks are inaccessible.
| Snow and ice doesn't get removed from all sidewalks (regardless
| of what regulations say), tree roots breaking up the pavement
| don't get repaired, large inclines/declines are a safety
| hazard. I know a regular-abled person whose face got mangled as
| she was riding her bike on a sidewalk and hit a chunk of
| unrepaired sidewalk and went over. Sidewalks need a redesign.
| dublinben wrote:
| >The public right of way is not a parking lot for private
| companies.
|
| Yet we often dedicate 50% of our roadway for the storage of
| private automobiles, and this is okay?
| rosndo wrote:
| > The thing is there's no designated place to park them.
|
| We have designated parking spots for rideshare scooters in
| London.
| cabbagehead wrote:
| Yes, we have this in my city too, and it works really well
| - I'd say 98% of scooters get parked in these places. The
| council leans on the hire company to incentivise good
| parking - seems like a solved problem.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| This is a good idea. Innovation sometimes requires some
| additional provision of public goods. Seems like a good way
| to solve the problem!
| kijin wrote:
| Designated parking spaces are a good idea, but they
| should be paid for by companies that make a profit by
| renting out scooters. Not taxpayers.
|
| Public funding might be justified if the majority of
| scooters were owned by individual citizens with the right
| to vote on city affairs. Most rideshare companies, on the
| other hand, will simply siphon off public subsidies as
| additional profit to be taxed (or not) somewhere else.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Wait, why NOT have a public good paid by _taxpayers_?
| Just have a progressive taxation system.
|
| A system where private companies effectively own these
| little spots would stifle innovation and competition (ie
| the big players would be the only ones with a chance of
| succeeding) as well as individual freedom.
| rosndo wrote:
| Crazy that this gets downvoted. smh HN
|
| Parking spaces dedicated to scooters are vastly better
| than parking spaces dedicated to privately owner cars. A
| scooter parking spot will serve vastly more people than a
| car parking space.
| rosndo wrote:
| But why? These are same parking spots I would park my car
| in.
|
| A parking spot for cars is useful to only one person at a
| time, if converted to a scooter parking space with some
| paint it can serve vastly more people.
|
| Straight up donating parking spaces to private scooter
| share companies is probably a net positive for the
| public.
| grishka wrote:
| The scooter rental companies in my city have a rule in their
| contacts specifically prohibiting parking such that it would
| block the sidewalk. And you have to take a picture of the
| scooter when you end your rent.
| dheera wrote:
| What if they set up the scooter system such that if you parked
| the previous scooter incorrectly, the next scooter you rent
| squirts water on your pants? It's not technologically that
| difficult.
|
| Or put little fisheye cameras on every scooter and if you park
| it incorrectly every scooter you walk past for the next 24
| hours uses face recognition and blasts insults at you unless
| you go back and re-park it correctly.
| slickdork wrote:
| I've often wondered why scooter companies don't keep metrics
| on their users, and punish the ones who use their product
| poorly (donuts, bad parking, use on sidewalks, etc) and came
| to the conclusion that these antisocial users are very likely
| the scooter companies largest consumer base. The scooter
| companies are likely incentivized to not regulate.
| dheera wrote:
| They spell their own death if they piss off the city
| though. So they are incentivized to not piss off the city
| and kick out the users that contribute to that.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| The county should act; assign parking spaces for these things,
| fine the companies if they find any outside of the designated
| spaces. The companies can sort it out with their customers.
|
| We are seeing the same thing with electric scooters and bikes
| (and they get torched sometimes), they get parked anywhere and
| the county's on board with it because it's "green".
|
| This was NOT as much of a problem with rental bikes in e.g.
| London, because they had designated stations for picking up and
| parking them; the user would get charged extra if they did not
| park their bike up properly.
| burlesona wrote:
| This regulatory overreaction is how we got to the present
| environment where nobody can build anything anywhere and we
| have a housing crisis that is severely harming people around
| the world. No thanks.
| nikanj wrote:
| We gave about 95% of the street for cars+parking cars, and
| are now frustrated that the sidewalks aren't wide enough for
| mixed use.
|
| There would be no issues with fitting the bikes and the
| scooters, if the middle of the street was also freely
| available
| dtech wrote:
| The Netherlands has the best worldwide biking
| infrastructure and decent walking infrastructure, and these
| things are a blight here too.
|
| They're just parked and discarded wherever because the
| users don't care and there aren't logical places for them,
| contrary to people's own property.
| burlesona wrote:
| You should stop seeing scooters as the enemy. Scooter companies
| represent a lot of money that wants more space for pedestrians,
| bikes, and of course scooters in the city. They are a potential
| massive ally with deep pockets to push back against the car
| lobby. The battle here is not to fight over who has the right
| to be on the 10% of the street we call the sidewalk, it's to
| take back some of the 90% of the street that's reserved for
| cars so that everyone else has room.
|
| Sure we can and should do better with providing bike and
| scooter parking... as an example one easy solution is to
| convert 1-2 on-street car parking spaces per block to bike and
| scooter parking. There's enormous value in having big corporate
| allies in such a fight.
| trainsarebetter wrote:
| This. end the stroads!
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Tell me that when I trip over them in the dark, or when
| they're buried under a foot of snow.
| Kaze404 wrote:
| I would be glad to not see scooters as the enemy if they
| weren't so dangerous for everyone involved. Though I guess
| space is a big factor in that, now that I think about it.
| rtlfe wrote:
| > I would be glad to not see scooters as the enemy if they
| weren't so dangerous for everyone involved.
|
| There's absolutely no comparison between the dangers of
| scooters and cars. Every person who decides to use a
| scooter instead of driving or taking a taxi is having a
| huge positive effect on safety.
| slickdork wrote:
| Counterpoint: These scooters go 20 MPH and there's no
| oversight on where or how they are used. I walk around a
| 'pedestrian only' lake every day, and these scooters come
| about literally 2 inches from me going 20 mph every 2-3
| minutes. Usually they are driven by (likely drunk)
| teenagers.
|
| My daily walk is incredibly more dangerous and stressful
| due to these scooters existing.
| isomel wrote:
| Maybe it depends on the cities but where I live, these
| scooters are limited to about 12.5 mph (20 km/h), and are
| supposed to share the space with bikes on the bike lanes
| and road, not on the sidewalk. So while they are indeed
| parked on the sidewalk everywhere, I do not see them as
| dangerous at all.
| rtlfe wrote:
| That's a pretty different situation than what people who
| walk around cities for transportation deal with. I have
| no objections to banning scooters, bikes, etc from
| recreational pedestrian areas.
| Kaze404 wrote:
| You are right that there is no comparison, and I haven't
| made one. Scooters are safer than cars, but me wanting
| them gone does not mean I want those people to be driving
| instead.
| ta8903 wrote:
| mywittyname wrote:
| The thing is, cars operate on roads, while pedestrians
| operate, largely, on sidewalks. Roads have lights and
| signals to help mediate situations where pedestrians and
| cars need to use the same stretch of road. Pedestrians
| only really need to worry about cars at crosswalks, and
| even then, the most dangerous situations are cars making
| left turns (who can't see the cross walk in use).
|
| Scooters are vehicles and should operate along side cars.
| The reason scooter rides don't drive one the roads with
| cars? Because it fucking dangerous. They want safety, and
| they want it at the expense of the safety of others.
|
| A scooter on the road is a net gain to safety. But a
| scooter on a sidewalk is a net loss.
| rtlfe wrote:
| > cars operate on roads, while pedestrians operate,
| largely, on sidewalks.
|
| In theory yes, but in practice most cities do a terrible
| job of separating cars and pedestrians. Here in NYC a
| pedestrian dies in a crosswalk almost every day, and on a
| sidewalk much more often than you'd hope. Here's one from
| last week:
| https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2022/02/10/breaking-careless-
| suv...
| 1over137 wrote:
| Are scooters more dangerous than cars? No. But you've
| internalized the 1.4 million yearly global deaths from car
| crashes as "normal".
| lnsru wrote:
| Yes they are. Cars are separated from pedestrians.
| Scooters and e-bikes aren't. There is always some jerk
| with scooter trying to push through the cyclists on the
| bike lane or show his driving skills between pedestrians
| when I go to the office.
| outworlder wrote:
| > Cars are separated from pedestrians.
|
| Not everywhere. And usually, not by much.
| meowkit wrote:
| Justifying your position with your anecdotal point of
| view is not convincing at all.
|
| What's your case for the number of reported deaths and
| incidents of cars vs scooters?
| Kaze404 wrote:
| You don't know me. Me saying scooters are dangerous does
| not, in any way shape or form, imply that I think cars
| are safe. They are death machines that I would also very
| much like to see gone.
| 1over137 wrote:
| OK, I was a bit presumptuous. Replace "you" with "the
| public at large".
| lkbm wrote:
| I agree, but right now it feels like the scooter companies
| have decided it's easier to inconvenience pedestrians than to
| ally with us and fight car culture.
|
| I'm a huge fan of the idea of plentiful, cheap scooters for
| short trips, and was excited to have a new cohort of people
| who would want more safe bike (and scooter) routes. Alas, as
| much as I love the concept, I've developed a strong dislike
| for the companies.
|
| I've little doubt that they could dramatically reduce the
| amount of improper scooter parking, but it would involve
| punishing their customers, and that would hurt their growth
| in the short term, for the unimportant benefit of avoiding
| crushing regulatory responses on the long term.
|
| We didn't choose for them to be our enemies. We were natural
| allies. But they decided they'd fight us than have to combat
| the real problem.
| derivagral wrote:
| Complaints like this are typically run through the city or
| campus that leases operation rights to the fleet. These
| entities usually get fairly forceful in (competitive)
| markets. Your local scooter outfit(s) are not going to want
| to risk a market with a ton of complaints and bad
| operations feedback.
|
| That said: given GPS limitations, the time it takes for a
| van with humans to arrive (and park!), as well as lagging
| feedback loops... this isn't an easy problem. Last I was in
| the industry, they were just starting to concept customer
| reputation systems, but generally they were more concerned
| with winning markets and decreasing operating costs.
| Symbiote wrote:
| If Copenhagen's experience is normal, then ample bicycle
| (etc) parking won't change the parking behaviour of rental
| scooter users. They will still dump them on the sidewalk (or
| in the bike lane) the instant their journey has finished.
| They'll also ride two or three on one scooter, without any
| awareness or regard for cyclists in the bike lane or
| pedestrians crossing the road.
|
| I strongly suspect the companies encouraged their staff to
| put them in slightly annoying places as advertisements -- if
| you trip over a scooter, you've noticed the brand!
|
| Copenhagen ended up banning them from the city centre.
|
| https://www.eltis.org/in-brief/news/e-scooters-allowed-
| back-...
|
| (Copenhagen already has pedestrian and bicycle space, so the
| scooter companies weren't bringing anything there -- only
| taking that space away. Many other cities are so bad, the
| scooter companies are probably still a positive influence
| even with the terrible riders.)
| rcpt wrote:
| This isn't a difficult situation
| Aachen wrote:
| I think that's the joke being made
| gfd wrote:
| I didn't realize we had food delivery bots already...
| pjerem wrote:
| Same. That for sure fixes a huge problem of humankind.
|
| When I was young, we had to walk hundreds of meters to eat a
| pizza.
| jaclaz wrote:
| >When I was young, we had to walk hundreds of meters to eat a
| pizza.
|
| But - to be fair - your nowadays almost unbelievable athletic
| feat was compensated by being able to eat a hot pizza just
| out of the oven.
| addandsubtract wrote:
| That robot is the oven (soon)
| fishtacos wrote:
| The funniest/strangest/saddest angle I've encountered on this
| thread so far is regarding disabled people potentially not
| getting their food... as if human delivery was somehow not an
| option.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I cannot believe you would type this comment
| electronically, thereby depriving a scribe, a courier, and
| a town crier of jobs.
|
| Three jobs gone, and for what? A snarky comment. The
| horror.
| fishtacos wrote:
| Your insipid examples imply improvement, whereas these
| "robots" imply "needing help from the general public".
|
| My argument stems from a different angle, but yours fails
| completely.
| dymk wrote:
| Humans can also perform manual arithmetic, but we still
| prefer to let the computer do that for us.
| fishtacos wrote:
| While the end result is inevitable, I am in no rush to
| automate all of humanity to its detriment.
|
| Socially/culturally/economically no civilization on Earth
| is advanced enough to provide for their people when faced
| with the above. Menial labor has its downsides, but the
| upsides are survival instead of death.
| onion2k wrote:
| Surely whether or not you chose to use a computer to
| achieve something depends on its capability. Computers
| are better at humans when it comes to arithmetic. They're
| worse than humans at delivering food (hence the tweet).
| It makes sense to use computers for one of these things,
| and not for the other.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| They're pretty popular in CHina from what I can tell. Mostly on
| college campuses in the US.
| dinkleberg wrote:
| Same, apparently they've been out for some years. I guess I
| live in an area with too much sprawl for these to be practical.
| duxup wrote:
| They're mostly located on college campuses / in those highly
| localized areas.
|
| Give the company a pretty reasonable controlled environment to
| work / develop in rather than deal with all the exceptions you
| would have at scale.
| warner25 wrote:
| I didn't know what it was at the time, but I saw one matching
| this photo on another college campus back in 2017-2018.
| duxup wrote:
| I wonder if it is possible to measure the volume of poorly
| discarded scooters and properly parked scooters and compare
| location to location.
|
| There is an area I visit often and it started with lots of poorly
| parked scooters but after a while ... I didn't see many. I don't
| know if folks just did a better job or if the company scooter
| shepherds (don't know what to call them) were cleaning them up
| effectively or what.
|
| On the other hand I have visited places where it was scooter
| chaos...
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| The company that owns these will know exactly where they are
| (or at least their last position); I don't believe they publish
| this data in the open, but they could be mandated to do so by
| local governments.
| lucb1e wrote:
| https://nitter.net/seanhecht/status/1493432613628825600
| alternative link
| jimmaswell wrote:
| It's so disappointing to see people going on tirades against
| these things for no good reason other than seemingly to fit in
| with the trendy new "anti-techbro" luddite mindset. Automatic
| delivery robots and e-scooters are awesome. The future is awesome
| and we're living it and these people just want to be downers
| about it.
| yumraj wrote:
| > future is awesome and we're living it
|
| This sentence which I keep seeing again and again always
| confuses me, because it makes no sense whatsoever.
|
| Is this something new that people have started using to defend
| and assign value to things when they run out of logical
| arguments in their favor? I see it being used to support crypto
| a lot.
| psyc wrote:
| I mean, I've felt that way since the Commodore 64 and the
| feeling has mostly only increased. When I was a kid, I
| assumed video phones would look like desk phones with a TV on
| top. I couldn't have imagined they'd be wallet sized, and
| include an encyclopedia.
| [deleted]
| baud147258 wrote:
| e-scooters driven at full speed by (drunk) teenagers aren't
| that awesome when you have to share the same narrow sidewalks.
| Don't have anything against them when they're on the roads/bike
| lanes if available, though
| onion2k wrote:
| _It 's so disappointing to see people going on tirades against
| these things for no good reason other than seemingly to fit in
| with the trendy new "anti-techbro" luddite mindset._
|
| I understand that you are keen on the idea, but that doesn't
| mean _every possible criticism_ is wrong. Dismissing
| potentially valid posts because you have an unfounded belief
| about the motivations behind them is not the best way to defend
| an idea.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| Why should scooter companies and robots be allowed to be rude
| to humans? We live in civil society and electronic things made
| by companies have no more right to the sidewalk than anyone
| else.
|
| Is it an 'anti-techbro luddite mindset' or are unattended
| electronic devices being bad citizens?
|
| I would treat any other jerk on the street the same way.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Maybe we need bigger sidewalks. This is historically how
| progress always happens, companies come up with something
| people want to take advantage of in the public space, then
| after the dust settles we accommodate it in an efficient way,
| like how NYC was a jungle of overhead wires for some time.
| The solution wasn't to ban electricity and telephones, it was
| to accommodate the need by investing in underground
| infrastructure.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| Right, we need to share the space and not just take it over
| with electronics. Respect is a two-way street. I did not
| call for banning anything, I called for scooters and robots
| to be good citizens.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| The food delivery robots don't look that awesome, in fact they
| look really shitty compared to their human counterparts.
| E-scooters are good at what they do at least, but they can also
| be a major pain in the ass, as we can see here where they are
| discarded carelessly because parking them is evidently not the
| techbros' problem.
|
| It's awesome that technological progress is made, but that
| doesn't mean everything with a circuit board is awesome or we
| can't complain about technology when it causes stupid problems
| like these.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| > discarded carelessly because parking them is evidently not
| the techbros' problem
|
| You can't expect the scooter companies to spend 5-10 years
| partnering with the city and funding parking stations on
| every block before launching. This is historically how these
| things have to happen - thing comes out, has growing pains as
| it interacts with the public space, public space accommodates
| it. Cars came before traffic lights, bicycles came before
| bicycle lanes, electric power came before NYC's underground
| infrastructure, and I think it would be appropriate for
| cities to accommodate these kind of rental scooters and robot
| deliveries. People using these things will cause pressure for
| the city to accommodate faster than the infeasible top-down
| approach of having everything in place beforehand.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| E-scooters aren't really as big a jump as those other
| things; they are just another way to travel on roads, not
| that conceptually different to bikes or cars. Traffic
| lights were pretty much an alien concept before cars became
| widespread, whereas sane parking is something we already
| have and expect of all other forms of transport.
|
| Many big cities have bike rental schemes where you have
| stations dotted around the city so I'm not sure why we
| couldn't expect the scooter companies to do something
| similar. At the very least force them to internalise these
| costs by fining them heavily whenever their scooters cause
| a nuisance, so that their incentives are aligned. I don't
| agree that the only way to have technological progress is
| to let tech companies do whatever they like while society
| picks up the bill.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Scooters are awesome.
|
| Scooter companies intentionally not installing parking for
| their new scooters and encouraging people to abandon them in
| walkways is not awesome.
|
| Robots are awesome.
|
| A bunch of robots creating a hazard for people whether on foot
| or wheelchair is not awesome.
|
| It is tempting as a company to subsidize your "great idea" by
| making other people pay the cost. Capitalism is great, but
| abusing people and the system to make an easy dollar is
| distinctly not great.
| greensardine wrote:
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| lm28469 wrote:
| Ignorance is bliss I guess.
|
| Private companies using public infrastructure to earn money
| (and usually not pay tax in said country) rubs me the wrong way
| to be honest. Not talking about the fact that users don't give
| two shits about where they park: in front of my building door,
| in the middle of the sidewalk used by old people / pregnant
| women, in the middle of the bicycle path
|
| Then we can talk about the newspeak term we use for this new
| trend, "sharing economy", which is as much about "sharing" as
| renting my flat to my landlord is "sharing" (ie. it's not, it's
| renting)
|
| We can also talk about the digitalisation of every single
| aspect of our lives. Want to move ? use your phone, want food ?
| use your phone, want to be distracted ? use your phone, want to
| date ? use your phone, you ran out of toilet paper ? use your
| phone, uncle Bezos got you covered
|
| Food delivery robots ? I don't even see the point to be honest.
| Sounds like a solution looking for a problem, just how lazier
| can we get ?
|
| If the future is half assed dumb pizza delivery toy cars being
| stuck behind badly parked glorified kids transportation devices
| idk what's awesome about it. It kind of sound like a comedy
| version of black mirror. I guess if you just stop your
| reasoning early enough all these new fancy/cheap/disrupting
| services are indeed awesome. You can trade money for
| convenience and forget about everything else. Just don't think
| about who profit from it, how it is rapidly and deeply
| reshaping our societies, &c.
|
| It's all about merchandising every single aspect of your life,
| but consume away, we're in Paradise !
| jimmaswell wrote:
| >Private companies using public infrastructure to earn money
|
| That's what the infrastructure is there for. To be used. The
| food you ate today was probably transported on the
| interstate.
|
| The rest of what you said comes off to me like the ancient
| Greeks complaining books make you not have to memorize
| everything. Technology marches on and things become more
| convenient.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > That's what the infrastructure is there for. To be used.
|
| By anyone who decides to ? With no regulations ? Nice, I'll
| open a BBQ stand in the middle of the crossroad next to my
| building then.
|
| Stopping for half a second to wonder where we're all
| collectively going might be a tiny bit more useful that
| what you insinuate, but I guess that makes me a turbo
| boomer.
|
| You seem to think that every new technology is by default
| "progress" and we should accept progress, because why not,
| hence every new technology should be accepted. I assume
| you're smart enough to see how that argument doesn't hold
| water.
|
| Technology doesn't just automagically happen, people make
| it happen, people with opinions, opinions which might not
| be aligned with other people's opinions and should be
| discussed.
|
| > things become more convenient.
|
| For who ? Not for the old woman with a cane who has to walk
| on the road to avoid the scooter on the sidewalk. Not for
| the "juicer" working all night to charge your e scooter for
| a few $. Not for the mom and pops shop who have to
| buy/rent/license amazon (or whoever) bots to deliver their
| food to customers through some third party app which takes
| a cut.
| roughly wrote:
| They're awesome when people don't half-ass them. They're
| awesome when they don't cause piles of problems that any half-
| competent social scientist could've highlighted immediately but
| no engineer ever seems willing to consider. They're awesome
| when they show actual engineering prowess, and not just
| slapping the cheapest shit on the cheapest other shit,
| outsourcing maintenance and operation to the cheapest available
| labor, and then leaving the broken carcass behind to pollute
| the public roads because it's cheaper that way. They're awesome
| when they're not thinly veiled ways of concentrating capital
| put into a world in which people can't afford insulin because
| that would cause some concentrated capital to be dispersed.
| They're awesome when we're creating an awesome world, not when
| we're sprinting towards dystopia.
|
| It's a cool toy, don't get me wrong, but I'm an adult now and
| I'm aware I need to put my toys away myself because my mom
| won't do it for me anymore.
| paganel wrote:
| Those e-scooters depress me, they're everywhere in my city.
| aaron695 wrote:
| chidog12 wrote:
| I worked for this specific company, a couple years ago, as a
| robot handler and operator.
|
| In situations like this it is possible for an operator to
| manually organize the robots.
|
| Before I left we were making great strides to allow 1 operator to
| be able to keep tabs on up to 5 robots at a time in certain
| neighborhoods.
|
| Campuses, which are fully and thoroughly mapped, can probably
| have 1, maybe 2 operators at a time. Just watching and
| interjecting when issue arises.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| What was the limiting factor? Operator attention or actual
| control/monitoring plane limitations?
| chidog12 wrote:
| The limiting factor was Operator attention and issues with an
| environment.
|
| In a closed, mapped environment like a campus with minimal
| street crossings. The robot can make its way to the
| restaurant, get the delivery and make the delivery, with out
| operator input or attention... even if people block the
| robot, it can navigate around and interact. After a couple
| failed attempts, it alerts an operator and then manual action
| may occur.
|
| Some situations were a bit more complicated. I've had to
| navigate 4 robots, all at street crossings with different
| types of traffic. The safe thing to do is, take care of them
| one at a time, even if a couple robots miss the light.
|
| Once a crossing light changes and things look safe, we would
| just initiate the crossing. The robot can navigate on its
| own.
| teej wrote:
| This sounds like a cool idea for a game.
| dilippkumar wrote:
| This sounds like a cool idea for a Twitch stream. I would
| watch this.
|
| Bonus points if you hook up the robot's control to Twitch
| chat, #TwitchPlaysPokemon style.
| jayd16 wrote:
| This is basically Lemmings.
| kingcharles wrote:
| Immediately reminded me of this old Game and Watch:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQZtdXLWHk8
| Melatonic wrote:
| This is how I assumed the ones near me operate - they are
| mostly independent and a live person takes over if it gets in
| trouble or encounters a tough situations. I can imagine one
| person being able to operate more than 5 if they have solid
| pathing.
| KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
| Any investable public companies around this?
| tim333 wrote:
| Starship Tech seem private still
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Technologies
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