[core-utility]

My Roomba robot vacuum came with little beacon towers that mark keep-away zones. Maybe a solution is for first responder vehicles to have something like that they can turn on where self-driving cars do everything they can within safety limits to stay away from those.

[lolinder]

And should pedestrians carry those as well? I guess I'd better strap one to my kids' ankles just to be safe. Oh, and my dog. And...

A self-driving car that can't react appropriately to the world as it is is not a self-driving car, it's a fantasy. The world cannot adapt to the needs of current self-driving car tech, there are just too many moving parts that would need to change. It's up to the self-driving cars to adapt to the world as it is, and if they can't do that then they're not ready.

[jonhohle]

When I got my first Roomba I quickly realized I had traded the chore of vacuuming for the chore of robot maintenance (our apartment had old, long carpet that would frequently wrap around brushes, wheels, etc. that never happened with a normal vacuum). It eventually got to the point where maintaining Roomba was more of a hassle than just vacuuming. I spent hours a month covered in dust trying to clean and debug Roomba failures.

When I realized how stupid this was, we got rid of the Roomba and used the vacuum again.

Several houses later, several generations of Roomba later, and hard floors, Roomba mostly works well. I infrequently need to tear it down to cut out hair and other stuck debris.

We should not expect first responders to adapt to and accept shortcomings of autonomous vehicles. If they endanger lives in novel ways that were never an issue before, they need to be deployed in areas where they won’t encounter those issues and/or be updated to recognize existing signals (tap, lights, traffic signal preemption devices, people telling them to move or go a different way, etc.).

If I can’t opt out of having a driverless car on my street I want to be absolutely positive it poses no higher risk to my family and neighbors than to other drivers without needing to remember to perform robot maintenance first.

[Jevon23]

Why do other people have to make accommodations for self-driving cars?

The whole point of a self-driving car is that it’s supposed to do what a human driver does. Why can’t it just… avoid emergency vehicles?

[avereveard]

Yeah that what I want to see when I'm in a crash, responders wasting time with tech support on some tech device.

And let me be super straightforward here: if a radio technician needs to be on emergency vehicle at all times, it better be that his salary comes out of self driving licenses fees and not my taxes.

[NoZebra120vClip]

Emergency responders use all sorts of radios already. They pretty much pioneered the ubiquitous use of radio in all sorts of situations. If there is one thing that first responders know, besides health and safety, it's radio. Licensed amateur radio operators tout their ability to respond in emergency situations as well, and whether that is true or not, many emergency responders are also Hams.

If you have not looked at a fire engine or ambulance lately, you would be a little surprised at how much technology they bristle with. The last time I called 9-1-1, they showed up with an EKG, and all the other machines to monitor vital signs. In fact, there are services now that advertise they will bring a fully-functional Emergency Department to the comfort of your own home.

Yeah, who wants to mess with ancillary tech that isn't part of the emergency. Nobody, but a transponder is fairly dumb. You press a button on it and it starts. Transponders don't have a mic, they don't have a frequency dial, they are just gonna send out your ID code until you shut it down again. It will be the least of worries for the first responders, especially if they will be safe from errant SDCs.

[jonhohle]

Emergency vehicles already have traffic signal preemption devices on them. Is that not recognized autonomous vehicles?

The devices you listed were chosen by emergency services to make them more efficient at their primary purpose. Beacons have nothing to do with improving their ability to do their job and are just an additional burden.

[avereveard]

you cannot just use a dumb trasponder duh, imagine people being able to cause a mess with 100$ hardware

you need some form of authentication on it. needs to be impossible or at least very hard to spoof.

and now your device is not so dumb anymore.

[jayGlow]

you could just make spoofing it a felony like using any other emergency protocols are.

[NoZebra120vClip]

And you could offer a $5,000 reward, plus legal fees, for everyone who uses it and gets caught

[drewbug01]

People were proposing those for pedestrians, as well.

It’s not a good answer - driverless tech just simply isn’t ready.

[space_fountain]

The problem discussed here isn’t these vehicles failing to see people and running them over. These aren’t Teslas. The issue that sometimes when driving the rules of the road break down. A police office stopped to direct traffic or some sticks used to designate that people should merge left. These are situations a human can handle, even if they might get flustered and make more mistakes, but a robot will find very tough. Instead you might see them trying to move slowly by deliberately through a crime scene ignoring the gestures made to try to make them stop