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Comment by hasmolo | Hacker News Reader

what does this fear come from? the logic doesn’t hold up with any automated mass transit i’ve seen. why aren’t people standing on the train lines at airports? why aren’t people trying to hit the distribution robots in Japans airports?

do you really think there’s a future where people in ‘rough neighborhoods’ (this is very poorly hidden classism/racism) where they are jumping out in front of cars? there’s very little evidence that people in a mentally sane state, read not incapacitated, will self harm to spite technology.

i know living in the bay i’d mess with the self driving cars, but never by getting in the right of way and risking my damn life, only by signaling a left and forcing them to slow down behind me. i never once tried to get infront of the car at the last moment to see if i could be menaingfully maimed. i strongly suspect the desire to not be hurt will trump your concept of how ‘poors’ live

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> what does this fear come from?

For starters, dash cam footage of how drivers and pedestrians are willing to interact with vehicles with human drivers. If that's what they're willing to do when it's an unpredictable human in control, I can only imagine what they'll do when it's an extremely predictable computer in control.

> people in ‘rough neighborhoods’ (this is very poorly hidden classism/racism)

I think it's racist to assume that rough areas implicitly means a different racial demographics. That might be the case in your country, but it isn't in mine.

In cases where there are different racial demographics in rough areas, the fact of this disparity is a fact. Your dispute is with reality, not the person who might dare to point at reality. It's my opinion that systemic improvement is made harder when we cloak reality in double-speak.

> i strongly suspect the desire to not be hurt

I'm not necessarily talking about jumping into the path of an autonomous car so that it's forced to perform an emergency brake. I'm talking about jaywalking without concern for the car having to slow down well ahead of you to maintain a safe distance.

Oh look, just posted to Youtube

https://youtu.be/fci0__FKp9Q?t=553

historically, i get what you mean about ‘ghetto’ or ‘rough area’. i see your point about not intending to be racist, and that’s fair. words have history, and ‘ghetto’ has long been linked with minority groups in a negative light. i’ll be more conscious about the terms i use.

about the dashcam footage, i think we’re seeing different things. it’s true, some of the behavior in the footage is similar to what’s normal in parts of asia. cultural habits can clash, and it’s rough to see. but i agree, it’s probably not deliberate, just different habits.

and you’re right, some drivers are just inconsiderate. but an autonomous car, with its 360-degree awareness, might handle things like unexpected merges better than we think. it’s a good point, technology might adapt to these situations more efficiently than we anticipate.

‘jaywalking’ is racist in origin, a term used to denote ‘jays’ who didn’t understand the rules of the road because the rules where so new culturally. it’s a fitting term, but poor narative, for the clashes you’ve identified in social expectations

> ‘jaywalking’ is racist in origin

This is false. The origin of the term is NOT racist. Please stop reflexively assigning racism to things, it dilutes and degrades actual racism.

There's no mention of race associated with it's appearance in circa 1905 Kansas:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/why-is-it-called-ja...

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