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

[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.