Woman arrested after blocking delivery robot in Center City Philadelphia
6abc.com
6abc.com
Consider:
When the police officer gave the human an order to disburse, and the person willfully refused, they then went to jail. Perhaps they are vindicated. Perhaps not. (even if vindicated the process is the punishment.)
However, if a police officer also gives the robot a verbal order to disburse, and the lidar just sits there are spins, who goes to jail? And if willfulness is a component to the crime, and the engineers did not design a system capable of understanding police orders, then did a crime even occur?
In PA statute, "pedestrian" confers mostly protection, not obligation. The corresponding obligations imposed on human pedestrians in PA code are mostly downstream of willfulnes and/or personhood. I.e., you need to be a person or act willfully to be bound by the typical obligations of a pedestrian.
The law worked well to-date because all pedestrians were human persons, so you didn't end up in a weird edge case of having a pedestrian's protections without a human person's obligations. But if the robot gets all the protections but few of the obligations of pedestrianhood, well, that violates my moral intuition.
In the spirit of intellectual curiosity regarding this fascinating legal situation, the next officer facing a similar situation should issue a disbursal order to the robot and the human, and the DA should pursue criminal charges against any party that willfully refuses that order. Which, to be fair, is probably what would happen if two humans were engaged in a similar standoff.
i would just let them stand there like the idiots they are. (unless that happens in the middle of the road)
I have to wonder if in the long term this bot is an uber product or a restaurant owned product.
In which country? People normally consider outsourcing to a cheaper country as taking jobs.
Those kinds of robots should never be allowed on sidewalks.
the robot will continue to try to get past her as long as it has a charge. when its charge runs out, it will cease. if these robots are anything like instagram users' phones, typically the charge will be less than 20%.
> ... she was protesting the use of delivery robots because she believes they are replacing human workers.
Right: you win arguments against cops in court, not on the street.
Unless you're in your home, and they don't have a warrant.
(Not endorsing this view, just spelling it out bc I had to look it up.)
> ignored multiple commands from officers to move.
> She was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.
The fact that it was a robot doesn’t really matter. Blocking traffic on a sidewalk and refusing to stop after police intervened was the basis for the charge.
"Foot traffic" is a thing, and is typically (AFAIK) the only type of "traffic" strictly legal on sidewalks in many (most/all?) places in the USA.
When I was younger I was taught that bikes weren’t allowed on the sidewalks, but to my surprise it’s actually been legally allowed in most cities where I’ve lived. There are a lot of wheeled and motorized types of traffic allowed on sidewalks in a lot of cities.
Yeah, there's entirely valid exceptions to the rule for sure, and this is definitely one of 'em.
> When I was younger I was taught that bikes weren’t allowed on the sidewalks, but to my surprise it’s actually been legally allowed in most cities where I’ve lived. There are a lot of wheeled and motorized types of traffic allowed on sidewalks in a lot of cities.
I've had police where I live ride up to me on their bikes, on the sidewalk to warn me that riding my bike on the sidewalk is illegal. Normally I'd just say "sorry" and stop doing the illegal thing, but in this case, they choose to consistently break the law themselves while telling others that activity is illegal, so I respond with "I'm willing to accept that, except why are you riding your bikes on the sidewalk?" - Police response: "Because it's not safe in the road here. Have you seen how drivers here drive?" - Me: "Point made. Thank you officer." - Police: "Okay, well, just be careful. Don't run into anyone on the sidewalk or we'll have to ticket you." - "Thanks officer. Y'all have a nice day." - Police: "You too." (Our police here are mostly pretty human and overall decent folk if you treat 'em as such. We're kinda lucky in that regard. I've been other places where that's absolutely not the case.)
According to the article, yes.