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Comment by mrfusion | Hacker News Reader

Guys here's my prediction on this.

Cities will become completely Undriveable and possibly off limits to cars once the majority are self driving.

Here's why; pedestrians will know that all cars will stop for them and people will just start crossing anytime they want and even start simply walking in the street. There might be some jaywalking enforcement attempts but ultimate they'll fail.

What do you guys think?

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I think we know (i.e. 90% of the time) that people will stop for us if we walk out in front of them with ample notice and conditions... It's more from a norms / politeness perspective that we don't; it's simply not accepted that you can just walk into the road when you want to get across because (most of us) we don't want to be judged by others for behaving recklessly, either by the driver we're forcing to stop or the other pedestrians.

There will most often than not still be people in these driverless cars that we will irritate, and pedestrians that we fear will scorn us. However, I think you make a good point about non-passenger vehicles. Perhaps we will be more likely to walk out in front of an unoccupied Uber that we know will stop for us on an empty street where no one will judge us — but this won't affect the busy streets / scenarios where it's most important that I mention above.

Interesting prediction, nonetheless...

I go out of my way not to step in front of a car if it is on a trajectory that would hit me. It's a "never trust the driver" mantra.

These aren't busy city streets where I'm making that choice, but I'm not getting to the point where I'm being considerate of the driver, I simply don't want to create the situation where I am dependent on their noticing me.

I do the same, but will walk as if I'm about to (as long as I'm in a crosswalk, where drivers are supposed to yield to pedestrians). I can stop walking way faster than drivers can stop their cars, so they basically have to lose the game of "chicken" or be willing to run over pedestrians in crosswalks. Only once they've visually committed themselves to stopping do I take that last step into the path of the vehicle.

It's a little douchy, but goddamnit, California law says I've got right-of-way in crosswalks. When you're holding a mutex, what you do is get rid of it ASAP and get out of the way.

Your right-of-way/mutex metaphor is outstanding. I'm going to be stealing that for this and other physical-space-occupying race conditions.

"California law says I've got right-of-way in crosswalks"

That's for the safety of the pedestrian in order to avoid confusion and make liability strictly fall on the shoulders of the party with the 2 killing machine.

Regardless of my legal right-of-way, though, I try not to be a jerk about it.

If you're about to cross a crosswalk, you're contributing to the attentional noise that drivers have to deal with. IMHO, just get out of the way so that fewer people have to make sure that they aren't going to hit you.

I generally agree that doing a dance entering the crosswalk is unhelpful, but there are lots of cases where you can stand back and wait to enter the crosswalk in order to avoid making a car slam on its breaks.

>making a car slam on its breaks

If you need to "slam" on your breaks to let a pedestrian cross, you are driving too fast.

Nothing douchey about it. Car drivers are taking an enormous amount of public resources and endangering the public while they do it. They can wait a few seconds so that you don't have to wait indefinitely for them in crosswalks.

As a tangent, I think people are severely underestimating how high the percentage of non-passenger vehicles will go up when we're driverless. I'm not talking about empty passenger vehicles looking for passengers, rather goods being shuttled to and fro. Look at all the startups for bringing you food and various other goods that are semi-profitable even with a human wage. History and common sense show that making something cheaper will mean we make more use of it. The driverless future will be filled with autonomous vehicles moving goods around our cities. In the extreme we may even lose apartment kitchens in dense areas because shuttling your meals to you may be cheaper.

It's more from a norms / politeness perspective that we don't; it's simply not accepted that you can just walk into the road when you want to get across because (most of us) we don't want to be judged by others for behaving recklessly

Anyone who has ever lived (or otherwise spent a lot of time driving) in a bad neighborhood knows intimately that this is true. People walk in the street in rough places. And there aren't any norms compelling them to get out of the way.

Nah I think there's always a little bit of fear about that 10% of the time. Humans are unpredictable- what if they don't see you until it's too late. What if they want to give you a "scare" and screech to a halt right at your feet- and what if they get the distance wrong and wind up hitting you. Robot cars on the other hand, while they might fail on a rare occasion, will have very predictable behavior.

When you walk up to a doorman, you make eye contact and look for him to open the door. When you walk up to an automatic door, you have been trained to know it will open for you.

Run an experiment with a bad doorman who doesn't open doors, and an automatic door that doesn't open, and you'll have a lot more people running into the automatic door.

Well to this I say 90% is way different than 99.99 when your life is on the line.

Also you'd feel less bad about making a car slow down if you assumed the occupants weren't paying attention and you're just annoying a machine, no?

This doesn't happen in countries unlike the US where "jaywalking" is not a crime or even a concept. I think even people that know intellectually that the cars should stop aren't going to push their luck in traffic traveling at speed.

Jaywalking is definitely a crime and a concept in the U.S. In urban environments where speed limits are usually lower, the laws are generally unenforced (source: I'm a serial jaywalker) however you definitely can get a ticket crossing a busy highway.

I originally interpreted his phrasing the same way as you, but I think it's a bracketing thing:

> This doesn't happen in countries unlike the US where "jaywalking" is not a crime or even a concept.

I think it should be "This doesn't happen in (countries unlike the US) where "jaywalking" is not a crime of even a concept" rather than how I initially read it "This doesn't happen in countries unlike (the US where "jaywalking is not a crime or even a concept.)"

Some places are like this already but people manage, in Brighton in the UK people walk in the road all the time... in London, if you try this, well - don't try it.

As someone who works in London, I can definitely say that a lot of people will walk straight into the road at the first slightly clear opportunity. In the the City of London part, your car being stopped for about a minute seems to be enough for the large group of waiting pedestrians to try and walk around it.

Awesome. We'll take our cities back. It'll be what streets were like before the invention of the crime of jay-walking.

http://www.citylab.com/commute/2012/04/invention-jaywalking/...

That sounds like an amazing improvement. It could be the best effect of autonomous vehicles.

More likely that cars will automatically report jaywalkers and that police, due to a lack to traffic tickets for cars, will start giving tickets to those on foot.

That's an interesting point. I think you may see something similar to tourist districts today where the streets are closed to traffic outside of certain hours. People drive near the area and continue on foot.

Autonomous vehicles may be even better for this, as a person could be dropped off at the closest accessible point, then the vehicle retreats to a lower-density area.

There are already places where people walk like this, and they still have cars (even if they're a bit less effective).

With that said, I hope they phase out human driving (or require similarly ex(p|t)ensive insurance policies) once SDCs become robust; the joy of driving isn't enough, IMHO to build the entire infrastructure and compromise safety.

Why would enforcement attempts fail? They don't work right now because nobody really cares, jaywalking is almost never a real problem. If it starts seriously affecting transportation, laws will change and enforcement will increase.

Frankly if you're hitting people just because they aren't in a crosswalk while you're driving, you have no business driving now, let alone in the future. As the controller of the 2.5 ton metal machine, you are responsible for making sure you don't hit things or people.

With the saturation of safety gear on newer cars you really have no excuse anyhow, the newer ones even slam on the brakes FOR you when they detect an obstacle.

I think the original poster's point is that people will just run into the street with greater abandon than they do currently.

People already feel entitled to block traffic they don't think will kill them.

One time someone was standing in the bike lane attempting to cross a 3 lane road against the light. She seemed upset that I was going to ride my bike through the green light anyway, and told me that you have to always stop for pedestrians in the crosswalk regardless of the traffic signal. Unfortunately, pedestrians aren't allowed to enter the crosswalk except when they have a walk signal (that flashing red hand means you're not allowed to cross, though I've never seen a single person follow that rule).

As a cyclist I think we should ban both walking and driving ;)

> and told me that you have to always stop for pedestrians in the crosswalk regardless of the traffic signal

Well she's right; of course you have to stop for pedestrians in the crosswalk. You can't wilfully hit someone and just say 'my right of way' and be all in the clear.

I think in the UK pedestrians actually always have priority, as long as they are travelling in a straight line and you as a driver are making some kind of turn. So for example a road joining another road at a T junction, pedestrians crossing the joining road have priority over cars, regardless of lights or markings.

I think your response is missing the point. Of course you have to avoid hitting someone even if they're technically in the wrong. The point was that people feel entitled to do things without even a basic understanding of the law (or even what's sensible).

Indeed. The fact that cars will swerve to avoid you doesn't mean that you should delay traffic because you feel like crossing now rather than in 30 seconds. The crossing of streets are coordinated by an agreed-upon mechanism. Try to observe it, so everyone gets their fair chance to make forward progress.

> You can't wilfully hit someone and just say 'my right of way' and be all in the clear.

Willfully perhaps, but if it's accidental and all other circumstances being equal I would say that's the pedestrian's fault. I don't understand this logic that because the pedestrian is ignorant about how traffic law works that they're exempt from following it, yes the driver should be paying attention at all times and be ready for anything to happen, but if someone breaks a don't walk light and just wanders into traffic, they should be held liable for the resulting accident.

Yeah, but robocars don't honk. Or perhaps they will, too.

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