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Comment by rurp | Hacker News Reader

The specific examples listed out in the article are egregious, causing real harm. The fire chief is right to be angry, if anything her response is too measured.

From the article:

- Running through yellow emergency tape and ignoring warning signs to enter a street strewn with storm-damaged electrical wires, then driving past emergency vehicles with some of those wires snarled around rooftop lidar sensors.

- Twice blocking firehouse driveways, requiring another firehouse to dispatch an ambulance to a medical emergency.

- Sitting motionless on a one-way street and forcing a firetruck to back up and take another route to a blazing building.

- Pulling up behind a firetruck that was flashing its emergency lights and parking there, interfering with firefighters unloading ladders.

- Entering an active fire scene, then parking with one of its tires on top of a fire hose.

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Time for Zero Tolerance, if one of these do it seize it, and levy the robotaxi company and whomever built it with Huge Fines. Not "oh that will just be another expense", make it that those fines pierce the corporate veil and get to the executives and the millionaire shareholders. And now that I think of it, if there are any passengers, arrest them. That way they can sue the RoboTaxi company too.

Cheaper and more effective to simply add some ram bars to the fire trucks.

They're already well capable of ramming vehicles with their current bumpers, they're just too scared to do it.

Montreal has no qualms going for it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCT74Szg_sA

I would hesitate to arrest passengers that can't override the taxi. There are knock-on effects that can't be remediated by suing a robo taxi company, such as loss of job, violation of parole, or simply not having any money to begin the suit to begin with. [I know that it's unlikely that someone wealthy enough to hire a robotaxi for a trip may not be wealthy enough to hire a lawyer, but you never know and it would be a supremely nasty edge case]

I understand your point, but I can see the reasoning to arrest the passengers. In summary, the robotaxi company's business model and how its cars work is none of the emergency service's business. It's a car, in the way, with people in it.

If an ostensibly normal car were to block an emergency response, would its occupants be off the hook if they all denied having driven the vehicle to its current location, and said they have no ability to move it out of the way? I doubt it. They would be at the very least charged with something.

The same thing should go for alleged robotaxis—“But we don't control the car we're sitting inside of!”... not the city's problem. The car you were in was blocking an emergency response.

Would this be unfair? Yes it would. Would this make people fearful of using robotaxis? Absolutely yes it would. And would that put economic pressure on the robotaxi operators to fix these issues as fast as possible? Damn right it would.

These robotaxis are operating legally with permits from the city are they not? It's nonsensical to suggest arresting the passengers sitting in a licensed robotaxi for something they have no control over. This is entirely on the city (and state?) for authorizing something that clearly isn't ready for use on public streets.

So by your logic, if I order a human driven taxi, and the driver does something illegal, I should be arrested along with him? Obviously assumming I didn't threaten and/or bribe him to do that illegal action.

No, this is more akin to hiring an uber, the uber driver does something illegal and the cops arrest you for it with the idea that you can sue uber for the injustice. That's obviously wrongheaded.

In general I agree with the general concept, Scale up standard punishments to be in line with corporations.

* Robotaxi violates traffic laws like blocking a fire engine? Fine of $10,000

* Robotaxi drive into an active crime/fire scene? $100,000 fine

* Robotaxi actively hinder emergency services (ex parking on a hose)? Confiscate the vehicle.

Corporations are the same anywhere, until a problem becomes too expensive, they don't do anything about it. So sure, let them drive anytime anywhere, but if they make egregious mistakes the cost is not "oh darn, an minimum wage 'automation engagement specialist' will have to drive out to the car and move it", it will be a "We were fined $1 million last night due to interactions with emergency services".

> * Robotaxi violates traffic laws like blocking a fire engine? Fine of $10,000

$10,000 seems fair. A blocked fire engine could only lead to delay firefighters to get where they’re going. What’s the worst that could happen? A few building burn down? Somebody has to wait to receive medical intervention?

In the scale of things that’s a small price to pay to uh, eventually avoid small talk with Uber drivers. /s

I don't think these actions take place enough times for your numbers to have any impact on the robo taxis. At that point it wouldn't even be a slap on the wrist.

You'd have to add at least 2-3 zeros before any action would be taken, and the action would likely be something else then what you are expecting. These things just don't happen often enough for this to ever be addressed without the original point of piercing the corporate veil and making management personally responsible for these crimes.

But at that point you'd likely still end up with the dynamic of people getting paid to become the fall guy

> Since Jan. 1, the Fire Department has logged at least 39 robotaxi incident reports.

Assuming they are all the lowest "class" of incident with a $10k file each, that's $390,000 . A not insubstantial fine but maybe not huge impact. Though we know several of these incidents (because they were in the news) were of a more severe class. So lets assume that's half a million in fines at least.

So a million dollars a year in fines just to operate at limited times and in limited locations. Open that up to a lot more cars in a lot more places? Those fines will add up to be quite substantial.

> Time for Zero Tolerance, if one of these do it seize it, and levy the robotaxi company and whomever built it with Huge Fines

This is certainly in San Francisco’s tradition. Given the economic depression those policy’s are putting it in, one might wonder if chasing away this industry, too, is smart in the long run.

You've got hydraulic cutters on board.

If a robotaxi gets in the way of your fire appliance, chop it up.

And also bill the robo taxi company for the operation.

So, by your argument, if people are riding a bus and the driver decides to just cartwheel out the door and leaves the bus parked in front of a fire hydrant, everyone on the bus should be arrested?

Yikes.

There's that scene from a TV show where the fire fighters are at a fire, and a car is in front of the fire hydrant. One of the characters calls out "Car!" and they then proceed to smash the windows, and route the fire hose through the car and connect it to the fire hydrant. Throughout the course of the incident, the hydrant leaks and fills the cars interior with water.

If only there was, perhaps, a similar effective, and cathartic response to these things.

Yeah, but imagine the car starts trying to drive away while the fire hose is attached to the fire hydrant. They'd have to disable the vehicle completely in this case, right?

That’s pretty much SOP (there are videos on YouTube), however it still wastes time, and damages lines, and if the car parks on a line you have to waste time shifting the car itself.

https://lukas.com/en/

When I was a kid back in the late-70s, I saw a handful of firefighters and a few other burly dudes overturn a car that was blocking a hydrant near an active fire. They got the car bouncing, then completely turned it over onto its roof. Then, then sorta scooted it out of the way of the hydrant. It's one of my oldest memories, and it was awesome!

That list is almost funny, as if they’re already trying to kill us.

It would be funnier without the life endangerment, but it is funny regardless. Practical AI can be so smart and so clueless at the same time, it's like watching a kid grow up.

I don't know if massive fines are the way to go, because they could cripple that technology, but firefighters should have free reign to shove those vehicles around when they misbehave, or some way to signal them to get the hell out of the way.

If this were a human driver, at least half of those would loose you your driver's license. Why are there no such consequences for the companies?

You won’t even lose your license for killing people or multiple DUIs

Just lose your license? If I did one of those, I might get sued. If I did more than one, I might wind up in jail. (What charge? Reckless endangerment, if nothing greater.)

Are you joking? Name any jurisdiction in America where you can lose your license for parking in front of a firehouse. There are no points for that in California.

OK, then the US is a very strange place. I'm European, so forgive my ignorance in those matters, I thought things worked similarly over there.

LOL no. Personally I look upon the Swiss "via sicura" regime wistfully. I want people who speed through central cities to go to jail and have their cars crushed.

As long as we can also jail the people who, for no fucking reason whatsoever, drive 15 mph slower than the rest of traffic, too.

If the rest of traffic is driving 15 mph faster, clearly it isn't difficult to ignore the people driving slowly. So if anything, surely it's the people who want them imprisoned who should be punished. Their crime? Poor priority management.

You won't immediately loose your license for speeding, even in Switzerland. Afaik it'll be expensive until 20km/h over, only after that will the really nasty things like criminal prosecution and car impound start (for first-time offenders, repeat offenders are punished more harshly).

40km/h over in a built-up area in Switzerland is not only an automatic fine and loss of license, it is automatic jail time with no judicial discretion. This is the equivalent of 45MPH in a city, for the American readers.

Yes, but there are a lot of "in-betweens":

https://www.ch.ch/en/vehicles-and-traffic/how-to-behave-in-r...

Some states have "super speeder" punishments similar to this, with mandatory jail time if you're over a certain speed (>100mph usually) or just over a certain amount over the speed limit (double the limit, or something).

Either way, none of those address the new problem of robotaxis. If any normal human did this type of thing, you could go scream at them or honk your horn enough for them to figure it out. If it isn't programmed into the robotaxis logic it won't do anything as shown. Or possibly do the wrong thing.

You mean parking in front of a firehouse, having it open its doors, having a firetruck come out with lights and sirens, and then continuing to sit there blocking its way while twiddling your thumbs? That would most certainly warrant some kind of criminal charges.

We need to stop allowing computational agents (and thus those who deploy them) to escape blame as if they don't exist, or as if their behavior is just nobody's fault. Computational agents need to be viewed as bona fide actors (as people are), with the actions of the computational agent being considered the willful actions of whomever deployed it.

None of those will lose you your license in California. I'm not sure how to lose your license in California, as I don't know of anyone personally who has lost their license.

There was a case in the news where someone was exceeding the posted speed-limit by 150kph on an undivided highway (i.e. just a stripe between you and the traffic going the opposite direction) and got a 6 month suspension.

I was on the jury for a case where the defendant was involved his third DUI, fled the scene of the accident, and still had his license.

Uber has been and continues to be just as egregious in SF. I’ve been hit by two Ubers, both when I was in the crosswalk, and one incident caused me a $500 loss. There are Uber Eats double-parkers who stand in queues all night long making key roads unsafe or impassible. I’ve been in an Uber where the driver was literally trying to brake-check and cause rear-enders and he wouldn’t let me get out until I opened the door while the car was in motion. I’ve messaged Uber support dozens of times and they of course do nothing.

Uber is clearly a different problem, but a much bigger one in the macro.

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