Andy Farkas wrote: "even a person wearing a t-shirt with a STOP sign on it can affect > the navigational capabilities of autonomous cars" >
A recently paper in the Journal of Planning Education and Research, Pedestrians, Autonomous Vehicles, and Cities by Adam Millard-Ball, makes an interesting point about driverless cars using game theory. Currently, pedestrians play a game of chicken with cars that includes severe personal injury in the trade-offs. Pedestrians push drivers to slow down for them and drivers push back with near-misses and hits. This creates norms over time. We can be reasonably sure that driverless cars won’t have the onboard algorithms to take the outa-my-way-scum approach to pedestrians. This shifts the right-of-way game in favour of pedestrians. In a mixed environment, human drivers would be forced toward the same norms. This could result in cities that are more pedestrian-oriented, which is arguably a good thing. It could also make vehicle travel slower and perhaps even unworkable with some imperious pedestrian populations. It might eventually result in jaywalking laws being dusted off and revamped. Jim (xposted) _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
