Automatic Breaking Implications

[isaacsapphire]

During my time at that aborted car sales gig, I learned a lot about the latest features of new cars, including automatic breaking/"pre collision systems". These systems are supposed to break if the driver doesn't in situations where the car is about to run into either a wall, or a pedestrian (only some of the systems detect pedestrian at this point).

The sales documents never mentioned suicide or terrorism, but the implication of a car that cannot be used as a weapon against others or the driver are fairly obvious; try to drive a car with automatic breaking into a wall to kill yourself, or into an individual or crowd to commit vehicular homicide or terrorism, and the car itself won't let you. Or at least that's the idea. Obviously there's still a lot of technical kinks to work out, not to mention getting the price down or long term reliability.

But mechanically preventing a vehicle from being usable for terrorism or suicide is a real thing that is on the road today, very possibly in your car right now. I haven't seen any discussion about the implications of this technology; might more "driving into a crowd" type terrorist attacks lead to these systems becoming legally required automotive features? Will we discover that "accidents" decrease and the suicide rate doesn't rise elsewhere, a la the phasing out of coal gas ovens?

Comments

[highpriestessofelua]

Interesting

[gattsuru]

They're already set to be mandatory for new vehicles as of 2022, though NHSTA claims it's more for prevention of genuine accidents rather than going after bad actors. Barring an unlikely consumer uprising like back when they were talking about seat belt ignition interlocks, we'll probably get a chance to see pretty soon.

Unfortunately, they're really hard to retrofit into already-built vehicles, and a lot of newish cars can last forever. Doubt there'll be the political chops for another cash-4-clunkers style 'stimulus' for new cars.

They're also very easy to work around, even for the implementations that don't just turn off if the accelerator is pushed harder.

[child_of_the_air]

If the "very easy to work around" requires some mechanical / electrical skill and getting under the car to work on it, it would probably at least stop them from being used as an impulse weapon? Like, it's hard to keep a dedicated person from killing themself or others; it's a lot easier to keep someone from doing it on an impulse, which is how many suicide attempts, and I think a number of the "driving into a crowd" terrorist attacks happen.

[gattsuru]

At least with the current generation, it's 'know where to slap between two and four stickers'. That might stop intrusive thought level impulse killers, but even a lot of those have people psyching themselves up for the confrontation long enough to be dangerous.

It might make the convictions easier, I suppose.

[isaacsapphire]

Probably enough to prevent impulsive suicide or Pulp Fiction/Ted Cruz type "the person I hate the most in all the world just stepped in front of my car" impulsive attacks, but yeah, not really "stop ISIS" level difficulty to break the systems at this point.

[isaacsapphire]

The terrorism using vehicles in France seems to have all been premeditated, with the truck being rented and driven a substantial distance before the attack occurred.

The Charlottesville rally driver doesn't appear to have been very premeditated though, and even small easily surmountable obstacles reduce suicide rates.

[sophus]

That's really interesting!

Though one downside comes to mind; it occurs to me that given this scenario, a malicious person could easily prevent someone else from driving away and/or impel them to leave their car via merely standing in front of it. (Whereas before, they could only do so if they wanted to risk harm.)

[isaacsapphire]

True. And with blocking traffic a standard tool of protesters/rioters, who have been known to drag people from their cars and beat them, I definitely know people who would preemptively sticker their car and encourage others to do the same. Deaths or serious injury caused by the anti-collision system making someone unable to flee a protestriot could easily provide the catalyst for legislative reversal to the planned requirement for anti-collision systems.

Otoh, I have blocked cars from going certain directions by standing in front of them while directing traffic for event parking, and back when I worked at Walmart (when it was still a decent place to work), our cart pusher got hit-and-run-ed (not fatally, thankfully) by an idiot, so I definitely see the appeal as a pedestrian.