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Comment by relyks | Hacker News Reader

This article captures the problem exactly. In Miami, there are areas where sidewalks are too narrow for a robot (from Serve Robotics) and a human to share simultaneously, so either the robot or the human goes first. If the human wants to go first, they have to step into the street and walk around the robot. The robot and its operator are never courteous enough to back up.

Which raises the question: why should these robots be prioritized over humans? Why can't they use the streets when there are pedestrians? Why should the SAFETY OF HUMANS be compromised for these profit-seeking corporations and their robots?

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> If the human wants to go first, they have to step into the street and walk around the robot. The robot and its operator are never courteous enough to back up.

Tip them over to make a path. The sidewalk is for humans, the robot is a guest.

Can't program your robots to behave properly? Have fun spending a fortune running after them!

> Which raises the question: why should these robots be prioritized over humans? Why can't they use the streets when there are pedestrians? Why should the SAFETY OF HUMANS be compromised for these profit-seeking corporations and their robots?

That's a good start, now ask some of the same questions about cars vs pedestrians. Ultimately, big money will win as it always does. Get used to dodging robots.

Good point. Just look up the invention of Jay-walking. It was a marketing campaign that called people "jays" (bozo, basically) for walking "improperly" in the streets when that used to be what everyone did. Eventually, cities came up with penalties for j-walking.

New York City DOT actually made jaywalking legal there last year

And then started using it as pretense for harrassing minorities. In California, they recently made it so they have to prove you caused or nearly caused an accident for it to be a crime.

Those are not comparable at all, because cars also have humans inside.

Sure, and the delivery robots have people who want the things at the end, and the robots can't (apparently) go in the road.

Roads used to be for people and wagons, till cars showed up and kicked the people off. Now delivery bots are trying to do the same thing, kick the humans on foot off the sidewalks.

You are hardly searching for parallels where no are.

No, his parallel works. This was also like when the e scooter/e bike craze was high and they just started occupying public space on the sidewalks because “fuck you, I can” and it was the nominal citizens problem to work around it.

Some of this does seem to stem from pedestrian infrastructure not exactly being great in the first place.

The insurance and litigation industries are big money

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