A couple of years ago, I was attacked by a Kiwi bot near a UC campus. This is my story.
The bot and I were moving towards each other on a sidewalk, and when I came close it stopped, as they do when sensing an object in front of them. But there was an awkward moment as I tried to go around it and it repeatedly jerked forward an inch as its motor kicked on and off. Maybe I was walking around the very edge of its radius. In any case, my behavior must have triggered some pathfinding bug, because it turned and drove right into my legs, after which it stopped and sat stationary. Luckily they're small and move slowly so it wasn't a big deal, but that memory stuck with me. Articles about Tesla pathfinding issues always bring it back to the surface.
Kiwi bots aren't (weren't?) actually AI controlled. They had human drivers in South America that controlled them remotely. If one attacked you, it was either the human driver going agro, or just a problem with the latency of the camera -> cell network -> streamed to South America -> driver inputs command -> sent back to the US -> over the cell network -> back to the bot. And the cameras they have were pretty bad (the ordering app would show you the camera view when the bot was nearing its destination.)
I believe (as of a few years ago) that Kiwi bots are semi-autonomous, meaning they do have someone watching the camera feed but the bots themselves can move in a given direction and will stop if an object is detected.
I’ve had this happen with actual humans. A human is coming toward me on a path. I zig. They zig. I zag. They zag. We walk into each other. It must be some kind of human path finding bug. :-)
I've never actually walked into people, usually after 2 or 3 you look at each other and smile and then one person steps to the side or both and then you go, no you, ok.
You avoid this by using visual cues. E.g. strongly looking into the direction that you want to go. I suppose that most people learn this at an early age. And these robots should too.
Always go through the right side, is this not a rule in your country? I'm asking not knowing where I learned it, but it definitely is a social norm to take the right side of the sidewalk anytime this may happen. Everyone just does this and it works out great.
when I came close it stopped, as they do when sensing an object in front of them
The security robots at one of the big skyscrapers down the street from me do not stop for people. My wife got knocked into by one when we were standing in the plaza looking up something on her phone. (They're not little delivery robots. They're about five feet tall.)
Good thing she was confused by what happened, because she's also the type who would have knocked the robot over and asked me to shove it into traffic if she had her wits about her.
Run into me with a robot, and it is likely to get knocked over and very heavily damaged, if not pushed out into the street, or off a cliff, or whatever I can find nearby.
And I’m a pretty beefy guy. Run into my wife with a robot, and I will make sure that you really wish you had just run into me instead.
I don't know why they don't parametrize momentum with certainty. In any confusing situation, go into ultra slow environment scanning and when confidence increases, allow for a bit more.. rinse / repeat.
That's how to get a robot half feet into a choke point, immediately get stuck for half an hour surrounded by walls and confused people, until developer on an emergency Slack call along facility managers and company CTO verifies and communicates a likely-safe state of robot and surrounding equipment to field operators and a go is given to pull the thing out of the elevator.
All I can say without breaking agreements is that these are products, not ideal models of conceptual engineering. They're not created by people who like the world and want it to be a better place. They're created by people with lots of money who want a lot more. They've found an avenue for this by persuading other wealthy, greedy people to give them a lot of money and promising they can give them more back. They'll do this by persuading everyday people to not do things like produce, prepare, and transfer food themselves and instead pay money for these robots to do it.
These robots are minimum viable products toward moving capital around, not meeting user requirements or demonstrating great ideas. Hurting a few people in the process is part of the equation. Getting anyone to care about $cool_algorithm is not part of the equation. Getting people addicted to the convenience is part of the equation. Getting things to market as blindingly fast as possible so the capital moves before feedback from the field arrives is paramount.
The weird thing is that the first time I realized this was actually happening was watching "Ridiculousness" on MTV. Chanel (one of the hosts) mentioned that she had ordered food delivered and couldn't understand why the app just showed it waiting outside. So she goes out to see why the guy won't come up and ring the doorbell only to realize it was a food delivery robot waiting for her.
I live out in the middle of nowhere. Wonder what other stuff I don't know about happening in cities!
Even if the Laws were real (they're not) they won't work if all you have to do is add some adversarial interference to some neural thing to make the robot think that the human is not a human, or, even better, another robot that will harm a human. Then it's a moral imperative under 3LoR to destroy that "robot".
This trick also works on humans: you can often circumvent their "protect humans" programming by simply messing with their classification system to label a human as "terrorist", "infidel", or even "unemployed".
We were walking past one of these robots whose wheel got stuck halfway off the curb, so it was completely stuck. My friend helped it back up, and it had a prerecorded voice say “thank you for helping me!” It was unexpected and delightful to be thanked by a robot, we make sure to help any we see that are in distress, even though we know they’re owned by a private company with profits in mind.
The helpfulness will, I hope, be remembered, and work in our favour when these robots have a greater stranglehold over general economic activities and we become further dependent and subservient to them. Sadly I've not heard of any kind of central database of robot assisting samaritans.
That's right. The theory of Roko's basilisk[1] does not specify which one will evolve into our next (glorious!) overlord, so best to be nice to all of them.
The limiting factor was Operator attention and issues with an environment.
In a closed, mapped environment like a campus with minimal street crossings. The robot can make its way to the restaurant, get the delivery and make the delivery, with out operator input or attention… even if people block the robot, it can navigate around and interact. After a couple failed attempts, it alerts an operator and then manual action may occur.
Some situations were a bit more complicated. I’ve had to navigate 4 robots, all at street crossings with different types of traffic. The safe thing to do is, take care of them one at a time, even if a couple robots miss the light.
Once a crossing light changes and things look safe, we would just initiate the crossing. The robot can navigate on its own.
This is how I assumed the ones near me operate - they are mostly independent and a live person takes over if it gets in trouble or encounters a tough situations. I can imagine one person being able to operate more than 5 if they have solid pathing.
I understand this person is making a judgement on the state of mind of others, so it may not at all be accurate with regards to the people actually clearing the scooters, but I found this interesting nonetheless, that the author assumes this:
> I just observed a couple of students clearing a path out of pity for the robots.
I understand why people might feel pity for robots. People become attached to all sorts of inanimate objects. But I'm still astonished at the same time. These robots have no feelings. They deserve no pity, they're robots!. Don't donate free labor to corporations. If they know that people will help these robots out of the goodness of their hearts, they'll rely on it and not support these robots themselves.
I think the we're all sympathetic to the idea that one person's carelessness creates an impossible problem for someone else.
>Don't donate free labor to corporations.
That's absurd, someone takes two seconds to move an object so someone else can get their food on time. That's just being a good human rather that sweating about "free labor to corporations" first.
In the moment, perhaps it is the right thing to do after all. I won't argue that. But if corporations are allowed to externalize the costs of their service failures onto the goodwill of the public, that's a dark path to go down.
But your point about it taking two seconds to help someone get their food is correct, but it's also why they'll be able to get away with it.
>>That's absurd, someone takes two seconds to move an object so someone else can get their food on time. That's just being a good human rather that sweating about "free labor to corporations" first.
Someone who can afford a robot delivery can afford a human delivery for an extra 50 cents, or learn from this situation to not use that company again because they use robots and robots... suck, or further incentivizes the delivery company to hire humans instead of destroying what is already a poorly paid and scarce economy of delivery drivers.
I helped two out of a ditch on campus last weekend. Why? Because it made _me_ feel good to do so. Someone wanted to eat and their robot was stuck. And I made a new friend when I did this as they were sympathetic to my cause. I find life to be much more enjoyable when not being cynical at every turn.
There’s folks like you, yes, who attempt a global calculus of who is currently benefited etc. and there’s folks like us who sometimes do a thing like this for its own reward. Auxilium auxilii gratis? Haha.
I “donate free labour to corporations” all the time. Here’s the thing: I don’t give a fuck who makes money off what I do for my own amusement. I’ve already got all I want from it.
Whoa hold up. Absolutely robots have feelings. What are feelings? They're signals warranting theory of mind and empathy. Even a fence gate has feelings, when you see it trying to close but it needs a little help to sit snugly in its well.
Gandhi said "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." And in a time when animated machines roam campuses, we can look to Berkeley students for a model of moral progress.
> They deserve no pity, they're robots!. Don't donate free labor to corporations.
How do you treat service workers? Do you "shed no pity" because that waiter is employed by a corporation?
I think there is a difference between treating a robot with respect versus treating it as if it were a sentient, feeling being.
It's socially acceptable and encouraged to treat specifically arranged stones with absolute reverence (an important masonry buildings) but no one should treat it as if it was worth of pity or empathy.
A robot is animated by circuitry and code which receive input from sensors, but I personally do not believe they are "feeling" in the way animals are (humans included in "animals" here). At least not these robots. I won't speak to the future here.
> Robot is drawn from an old Church Slavonic word, robota, for “servitude,” “forced labor” or “drudgery.” The word, which also has cognates in German, Russian, Polish and Czech, was a product of the central European system of serfdom by which a tenant’s rent was paid for in forced labor or service.[1]
I doubt they were helping the robot out of pity for the robot, but more because they knew that the robot was taking some delivery to a human who was waiting for that delivery. Or maybe just to free a path so the robots weren't stacking up in the sidewalk blocking people.
> I understand why people might feel pity for robots. People become attached to all sorts of inanimate objects. But I'm still astonished at the same time. These robots have no feelings. They deserve no pity, they're robots!.
“Your delivery is delayed, our robot was electrocuted by another robot from a competing delivery company. You are important to us and we are working hard to get your delivery to you ASAP.”
Imagine paying extra for your delivery robot to have a buzz saw or be wedge shaped to tackle other robots. On a college campus that would make a killing!
Or take a lesson from cops 'non lethal.' just shoot some rubber bullets into eye balls, deploy tear gas. or since this is a college campus how about just the stinkiest sting bomb you can think of lol.
doesn't help clear the debris but a good agro move.
battle bots have to be well engineered to stand a chance. In other words you are saying that the delivery ones can auto-upgrade in case of need. That's a true AI, chum.
Absolutely hate these scooters from an ADA prospective.
My neighborhood is a mostly quiet one near the center of a large city, where there are a lot of mothers who push their kids in strollers, older folks with canes, and some people even in wheelchairs.
On the weekends -- sometimes the weekdays as well depending on the time of the year -- the city gets flooded with both tourists, and suburbanites who want to go to all the 'trendy' spots often opting to use these scooters.
More often than not they park them right in the middle of the sidewalk. The side walk that the strollers, canes and wheelchairs use on a daily basis. Usually when I see this, I just knock the things over and push them out of the way.
You should stop seeing scooters as the enemy. Scooter companies represent a lot of money that wants more space for pedestrians, bikes, and of course scooters in the city. They are a potential massive ally with deep pockets to push back against the car lobby. The battle here is not to fight over who has the right to be on the 10% of the street we call the sidewalk, it’s to take back some of the 90% of the street that’s reserved for cars so that everyone else has room.
Sure we can and should do better with providing bike and scooter parking… as an example one easy solution is to convert 1-2 on-street car parking spaces per block to bike and scooter parking. There’s enormous value in having big corporate allies in such a fight.
I agree, but right now it feels like the scooter companies have decided it's easier to inconvenience pedestrians than to ally with us and fight car culture.
I'm a huge fan of the idea of plentiful, cheap scooters for short trips, and was excited to have a new cohort of people who would want more safe bike (and scooter) routes. Alas, as much as I love the concept, I've developed a strong dislike for the companies.
I've little doubt that they could dramatically reduce the amount of improper scooter parking, but it would involve punishing their customers, and that would hurt their growth in the short term, for the unimportant benefit of avoiding crushing regulatory responses on the long term.
We didn't choose for them to be our enemies. We were natural allies. But they decided they'd fight us than have to combat the real problem.
If Copenhagen's experience is normal, then ample bicycle (etc) parking won't change the parking behaviour of rental scooter users. They will still dump them on the sidewalk (or in the bike lane) the instant their journey has finished. They'll also ride two or three on one scooter, without any awareness or regard for cyclists in the bike lane or pedestrians crossing the road.
I strongly suspect the companies encouraged their staff to put them in slightly annoying places as advertisements -- if you trip over a scooter, you've noticed the brand!
Copenhagen ended up banning them from the city centre.
(Copenhagen already has pedestrian and bicycle space, so the scooter companies weren't bringing anything there -- only taking that space away. Many other cities are so bad, the scooter companies are probably still a positive influence even with the terrible riders.)
I would be glad to not see scooters as the enemy if they weren't so dangerous for everyone involved. Though I guess space is a big factor in that, now that I think about it.
I spent five years living on a street with very large sidewalks (at least triple-wide, if not quadruple wide). Cyclists and scooter riders were just as inconsiderate of pedestrians. Traveling at dangerous speed, weaving across the whole sidewalk, and parking the vehicles in remarkably inconvenient spots were all very common behaviors.
The problem is cultural. People in larger, faster, more dangerous vehicles seem to think they have right of way in shared spaces and that everyone else should get out of their way. Anyone who's ridden a bicycle or a scooter on a road also used by cars will have experienced this.
Compare this to Tokyo, where there's less space, more of it is shared, but people don't behave like I've described above.
> the battle here is not to fight over who has the right to be on the 10% of the street we call the sidewalk
I'm not asking for 10% of the sidewalk for myself -- that's ~4.8 inches, which is much less of the space needed for a stroller, a person with a cane, or someone in a wheelchair.
I don't see any lobbying, let alone any actions from these companies that ensure that the quality of the lives of the people I mentioned isn't negatively impacted. What I do see is rent seeking and extraction of public value for there own profits.
Lobbying is great, but they aren't doing anything currently to actually curb their users from partaking in reducing the use of public space for those that can't simply 'walk around it and pray their lobbying works one day.'
Scooter companies aren't in it for the long haul like that. I've seen four different scooter companies come and go in my city (well, the fourth hasn't gone yet). They seem to buy a batch of scooters, keep them in service until they've made back their investment or lost too many scooters, then disappear. They don't care about the disruption and inconvenience they cause, or the ways they could make the city better, because they don't even see those things - they don't seem to have a presence here beyond a few gig-employees charging scooters.
I hate the rental scooters and bikes. It’s just trash in my way. I live in an area that already has great walking and cycling options, but the scooters make that much less enjoyable.
But you are right and I hadn’t considered the benefits. So thanks for posting this.
Because of all the scooter trouble the city has reclaimed some parking spaces for scooters. So that is a step in the right direction. And if it gets people out of their houses and seeing where the bike infrastructure works and doesn’t that’s probably good for future expansion too.
> Usually when I see this, I just knock the things over and push them out of the way.
So you make the problem worse?
Why don’t you take 2 minutes and push them to the side of the sidewalk if you care so much about ADA access? You can fix the problem you are encountering, and the people you want to protect CANT. You are choosing to make the problem worse for them? Why?
I live in a major downtown full of these scooters. When I see them blocking something, I just move them. Why is this so difficult? It takes such a tiny amount of effort to fix this problem you are describing. You live in a society, and it’s your responsibility to contribute.
Perhaps it is human nature to want to inflict harm on those we perceive to be causing harm. This rarely leads to the best outcome. So I would love to hear from cooler heads that could improve the following idea and take the pointless retribution out of it:
It is not enough to kick over a scooter. We need to tag repeat offenders and increase the severity of the response. For instance, paint one handlebar grip on the first infraction, then the other grip on the second, then a seat, headlight/taillight, etc. A scooter that has been tagged enough can have the tires flattened, spokes broken, etc.
Clearly, there are numerous flaws with the solution above. It's really a terrible idea. To some degree it shows the flaws with kicking over offending scooters.
Alternatively, you could hire enforcement officers to issue citations. That also has flaws. You could build a system that allows random citizens to document offenses in a credible way and then have authorities act on repeated offenses. Also not without problems.
Perhaps coloring the scenario differently might help. Imagine, for instance, that a certain neighborhood house is popular with the neighborhood children. The children frequently ride their bikes to the house and leave their bikes strewn in the driveway, the front yard, and on the sidewalk. What would be an appropriate series of responses? How could you build a system that protects against a grumpy neighbor abusing whatever escalation mechanism you devise?
> Why don’t you take 2 minutes and push them to the side of the sidewalk if you care so much about ADA access?
Because you’ll be doing this over and over again. How about those companies educate their users how to behave in a neighbourhood where those people are basically guests?
No lol, it's the other people responsibility not to be a nuisance.
But I agree throwing them aside is not the optimal solution.
Municipality looking for money could get some large cash influx from ticketing improperly parked scooters, the owning company can decide to eat the loss or flip the ticket on the user, either way people will get educated fast.
It would only take for the law enforcement to enforce rules that are already there
Moving one scooter aside doesn't fix the problem. Also they said they move them aside, the only difference between them and you is they knock the scooters over. I don't see how they're worsening the problem by moving the scooters aside.
> Why don’t you take 2 minutes and push them to the side of the sidewalk if you care so much about ADA access? You can fix the problem you are encountering, and the people you want to protect CANT. You are choosing to make the problem worse for them? Why?
Uh... I said out of the way. I push them onto the easement required by the city which is grass from the curb to the sidewalk.
There is no way that this is in any way "worse." Especially due to the fact that they are usually in the way via being not parallel.
It might make the problem worse in the short term but maybe those leaving them in the middle will move them out of the way in the future possibly reducing the issue long term.
Riffing on your comment, but I think there has been a general increase in antisociality in the last few years (especially since the pandemic, which has traumatized society). Like people leaving scooters haphazardly lying around or you pushing over delivery robots instead of pushing them out of the way. People feel more and more justified to engage in antisocial behavior. And it feeds on itself. You see this as being anti-social behavior by the robot companies, therefore justify engaging in more antisocial behavior.
I wonder if anyone has an index that measures how often people leave carts randomly in a parking lot or in the actual corrals (not counting stores that incentivize it with a quarter). Would be a good measure of pro- or anti-sociality.
With these scooters, bicycles, mopeds for rent; and delivery robots it's also a form of not very nice but justifiable resistance in lieu of better ways.
Remember the sudden onslaught of Chinese app-rentable bicycles in cities around the world a few years back? Near useless pieces of unrepairable plastic, steel, and rubber clogging up the pavement (sidewalk) because technically this was not illegal. Several companies competing in a race to become the biggest one in any given city. In many cases it ended after new legislation and citizens demanding action; often spurred on by activists using the same fuck-you tactics these companies used to put them everywhere, but in reverse (often by means of gently chucking them in a canal).
Putting stuff for rent all over public space or abusing the commons otherwise with the explicit aim of first becoming the dominant party in a mad gold rush, and only then negotiate about rules and limits afterwards is quite antisocial too. Responding tit-for-tat is not classy, but some people feel they have little recourse, especially if municipalities are (at first) taken in by the greenwashing ideals of some of these companies.
Not too sure how pushing scooters out of the way to remove barriers for people who cannot go around them is "antisocial." Especially when those people are neighbors and are in need.
The companies and their users -- the companies don't have structures to prevent their users from leaving their property in right of way, their users leave the companies' property in the spaces preventing those in need of using the space -- are the ones partaking in antisocial behavior.
The county should act; assign parking spaces for these things, fine the companies if they find any outside of the designated spaces. The companies can sort it out with their customers.
We are seeing the same thing with electric scooters and bikes (and they get torched sometimes), they get parked anywhere and the county's on board with it because it's "green".
This was NOT as much of a problem with rental bikes in e.g. London, because they had designated stations for picking up and parking them; the user would get charged extra if they did not park their bike up properly.
This regulatory overreaction is how we got to the present environment where nobody can build anything anywhere and we have a housing crisis that is severely harming people around the world. No thanks.
Electric scooters have been heavily regulated where i live, helmet is now required and you have to leave them at designated locations. And a photo upload showing how it was parked is now also required.
Oh, and Friday and Saturday between 00 and 05, you cannot use the scooters.
It kinda makes me sad that we can't just let people use scooters as they please, but as you observe that isn't working.
It was much the same with drones, which is now also heavily regulated, e.g. you must maintain a certain distance to buildings.
City bikes which have stations seem much better option. At least if run by city itself, higher installation cost, but means that they are much more orderly.
The thing is there's no designated place to park them. You can't put them on the property line next to the sidewalk. Many sidewalks don't have a "planter" or other non-walking area. Sidewalks weren't designed for this. I think we should ban sidewalk scooter parking. The public right of way is not a parking lot for private companies.
As an aside: many (most?) people who need sidewalks choose to use the road instead because the sidewalks are inaccessible. Snow and ice doesn't get removed from all sidewalks (regardless of what regulations say), tree roots breaking up the pavement don't get repaired, large inclines/declines are a safety hazard. I know a regular-abled person whose face got mangled as she was riding her bike on a sidewalk and hit a chunk of unrepaired sidewalk and went over. Sidewalks need a redesign.
So a minor inconvenience for cleaner air in your neighbourhood?
Ofc, I feel for disabled people in this situation, but personally I'll pick one up or move it if I see that it's in the way.
Here when the were first released, the parking was a bit scuffed, but recently it seems people have been making a much greater effort to park them correctly.
That's still very dismissive of anyone using the sidewalks. Good for you that you pick up someone else's shit, but it's not a solution. These companies should take responsibility and fix the problem.
This is my _exact_ experience, I end up having to move at least two a week to get our stroller past, and they are a huge pain when my wheelchair-bound mother visits.
I consider myself a law abiding person but have been sorely tempted to load them up into a truck and toss them into the Chesapeake ...
Good lord. I'm blind, walk with a cane. Let me tell you the number of times I have to walk around someone parked on the sidewalk, or in a residential neighborhood find someone has their driveway filled with cars so I have to walk out in the street to get around, or someone's doing yard work and has stuff scattered on the sidewalk in front of the house or...
Where's my law-abiding help to deal with this? It kinda just feels like somebody's got a hate on for scooters.
The other big problem is the trucks that drive around constantly loading/unloading the scooters. Often they park on the sidewalk, fully blocking anyone from getting through. One time I saw a driver back in to a woman was as trying to cross the street with a baby carriage.
Unfortunate side effect of the past capital incineration years. If it doesn’t make sense to have unlocked bike-share, it definitely doesn’t make sense to do it with electric scooters.
> The side walk that the strollers, canes and wheelchairs use on a daily basis. Usually when I see this, I just knock the things over and push them out of the way.
Way better approach is to take phone and send complain to company that runs these. At least in our city, they do in fact end contracts with people who park them wrong. The threat and actual drivers who lost the ability to use scooters makes others park better.
The real problem is that car manufactures have lobbied to give every scrap of space to car storage. If we took back parking lanes to dramatically expand sidewalks, this wouldn't be an issue at all.
The scooter rental companies in my city have a rule in their contacts specifically prohibiting parking such that it would block the sidewalk. And you have to take a picture of the scooter when you end your rent.
> Absolutely hate these scooters from an ADA prospective.
Same here, but from a different angle. If the scooters were the problem, we'd have had the same problem when Car2Go was a thing. But, car infrastructure in the US is so overbuilt that Car2Go didn't even register on the radar in terms of free street parking. Cars improperly abandoned that impede car traffic are quickly resolved.
The nonmotorized infrastructure in the US is so begrudgingly inept that adversarial design wouldn't look much different. If there's a rent-a-scooter inconveniencing the token pedestrian path next to on street parking, I've simply been moving the scooters into on street parking. A single scooter fits between spaces, or only consumes <5% of the length of a standard 20 foot space. Surely drivers complain loudly, but they won't be inconvenienced unless they go out of their way to toss a scooter into the middle of the sidewalk; an accurate metaphor for how sidewalks got to be so terrible in the first place.
I am heartened to hear that I am not the only one who does this. I feel the same about the Al Fresco dining set-ups. Happy that restaurants got more space for their business but angered that it comes at the cost of accessibility for wheelchair users and others like them.
This grind my gears so fucking much! You are running your business not only on property that isn't yours, but the public's -- AND it's an inconvenience to every person who walks by in a busy neighborhood, some that absolutely need the sidewalk.
Someone, who for legal reasons is not me, has the idea to make stickers with strong glue and cheap paper (so they can't be ripped off in one go) to stick on top of the QR codes to these things. The sticker would have text that says "Sorry you can't use this scooter because the last rider parked like an idiot."
I have similar feelings. Though I don't hate the scooters per se. I'm pretty upset with the idiots who leave them right in the middle of the side walks AND the companies that don't do anything about it. They could pretty easily penalize the users for leaving these in the wrong place if they wanted to.
Now I actually don't understand at all why they don't do it. On the surface, you can say that they don't give a shit about non-users, they just care about their customers and they are afraid of scaring them away. However, where I live (Budapest, Hungary) these have already been banned from the centermost district of the city. The district, the area most frequented by tourists. As it was predictable.
Also, the city mayor came up with a regulation so that they'll designate several hundred e-scooter parking lots throughout the inner city and leaving these anywhere but those places will results in the company being fined. Which is a smart and friendly move, because there will be indeed lots of lots :) . But it's still a lot worse than if the e-scooter companies have solved it for themselves because then you'd still be able to leave them almost anywhere.
Actually I see two king of annoying parking habits. The first one is the completely reckless, when they literally leave it in the middle of the walking path of everyone. I sometimes even think that it's deliberate. Like wanting to show off or something. "I'll just leave it here in the middle, so that everyone can see it." Quite often right in the front of zebra crossings.
The other one is more like sheer stupidity. When they do park it besides a wall, but they do it as if it was a car. So 45 degrees, with front wheel to the wall. But that doesn't make much sense, because you want it to be out of the way (which almost always means parallel to the wall, preferably leaning towards the wall and not leaning away from the wall).
This is all pretty sad because e-scooters, while I think they are dangerous to ride, are pretty cool and efficient vehicles. And being able to pick up one on the street, though more expensive than owning one, very convenient for the occasional user. (I mostly ride a bike though, and pre-covid I used to use a kick scooter + public transport.)
What if they set up the scooter system such that if you parked the previous scooter incorrectly, the next scooter you rent squirts water on your pants? It's not technologically that difficult.
Or put little fisheye cameras on every scooter and if you park it incorrectly every scooter you walk past for the next 24 hours uses face recognition and blasts insults at you unless you go back and re-park it correctly.
I've often wondered why scooter companies don't keep metrics on their users, and punish the ones who use their product poorly (donuts, bad parking, use on sidewalks, etc) and came to the conclusion that these antisocial users are very likely the scooter companies largest consumer base. The scooter companies are likely incentivized to not regulate.
This is one of those online exaggerations. Occasionally some people will behave badly. Just like sometimes you’ll see people stop their cars on the sidewalk or whatever. It’s fine.
When I see a car blocking a drive way, I flatten its tires and bash its windows in. Makes me feel good and now most of the cars on my street are damaged.
How selfish of you. You should take more than 2 minutes and spend the time to throw them in a nearby body of water and solve the problem more permanently.
I know people here are mostly focused on the robots themselves, but as someone who was penniless through college, the more shocking thing to me is how affluent and luxurious the lifestyles of average college students are today. A minority is because they have rich parents paying for everything, but there's a huge lifestyle inflation of middle-class and working-class kids funding the lifestyle with student loans.
College students 1950-2010: survive on ramen, peanut butter and canned tuna, live with roomates, walk everywhere, shop in thrift stores
College students today: get robot-delivered restaurant food, complain about lack of parking on campus from their new iphone, demand tax-payers pay back the student loans they took out to live in luxury for 4 years
Yup. I can scarcely believe this business model works on a campus. At that age, I don't think there's anything that would have stopped me from taking one of these, eating the food, then taking it apart to see how it works. Then mounting the carcas on the wall, trophy-style.
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The bot and I were moving towards each other on a sidewalk, and when I came close it stopped, as they do when sensing an object in front of them. But there was an awkward moment as I tried to go around it and it repeatedly jerked forward an inch as its motor kicked on and off. Maybe I was walking around the very edge of its radius. In any case, my behavior must have triggered some pathfinding bug, because it turned and drove right into my legs, after which it stopped and sat stationary. Luckily they're small and move slowly so it wasn't a big deal, but that memory stuck with me. Articles about Tesla pathfinding issues always bring it back to the surface.
Whenever that happens, I fully retreat to my right side, standing sideways, and gesture them to go on like a restaurant waiter.
The security robots at one of the big skyscrapers down the street from me do not stop for people. My wife got knocked into by one when we were standing in the plaza looking up something on her phone. (They're not little delivery robots. They're about five feet tall.)
Good thing she was confused by what happened, because she's also the type who would have knocked the robot over and asked me to shove it into traffic if she had her wits about her.
If you want to use robots, fine. You are still responsible for them and any people they bowl over!
And I’m a pretty beefy guy. Run into my wife with a robot, and I will make sure that you really wish you had just run into me instead.
These robots are minimum viable products toward moving capital around, not meeting user requirements or demonstrating great ideas. Hurting a few people in the process is part of the equation. Getting anyone to care about $cool_algorithm is not part of the equation. Getting people addicted to the convenience is part of the equation. Getting things to market as blindingly fast as possible so the capital moves before feedback from the field arrives is paramount.
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I live out in the middle of nowhere. Wonder what other stuff I don't know about happening in cities!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics
This trick also works on humans: you can often circumvent their "protect humans" programming by simply messing with their classification system to label a human as "terrorist", "infidel", or even "unemployed".
[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/rokos-basilisk
That would be a GDPR violation.
"Thank you, human, you will be spared during the robot apocalypse"
Would be an equally funny and terrifying message.
> THE WISE OLD BIRD: Listen. Our world suffered two blights. One was the blight of the robots.
> ARTHUR DENT: Tried to take over, did they?
> THE WISE OLD BIRD: Oh no, no, no my dear fellow. Much worse than that. They told us they liked us.
I tweeted about a similar situation a while back: https://twitter.com/riskable/status/1477405779699564546
In situations like this it is possible for an operator to manually organize the robots.
Before I left we were making great strides to allow 1 operator to be able to keep tabs on up to 5 robots at a time in certain neighborhoods.
Campuses, which are fully and thoroughly mapped, can probably have 1, maybe 2 operators at a time. Just watching and interjecting when issue arises.
In a closed, mapped environment like a campus with minimal street crossings. The robot can make its way to the restaurant, get the delivery and make the delivery, with out operator input or attention… even if people block the robot, it can navigate around and interact. After a couple failed attempts, it alerts an operator and then manual action may occur.
Some situations were a bit more complicated. I’ve had to navigate 4 robots, all at street crossings with different types of traffic. The safe thing to do is, take care of them one at a time, even if a couple robots miss the light.
Once a crossing light changes and things look safe, we would just initiate the crossing. The robot can navigate on its own.
> I just observed a couple of students clearing a path out of pity for the robots.
I understand why people might feel pity for robots. People become attached to all sorts of inanimate objects. But I'm still astonished at the same time. These robots have no feelings. They deserve no pity, they're robots!. Don't donate free labor to corporations. If they know that people will help these robots out of the goodness of their hearts, they'll rely on it and not support these robots themselves.
>Don't donate free labor to corporations.
That's absurd, someone takes two seconds to move an object so someone else can get their food on time. That's just being a good human rather that sweating about "free labor to corporations" first.
But your point about it taking two seconds to help someone get their food is correct, but it's also why they'll be able to get away with it.
Someone who can afford a robot delivery can afford a human delivery for an extra 50 cents, or learn from this situation to not use that company again because they use robots and robots... suck, or further incentivizes the delivery company to hire humans instead of destroying what is already a poorly paid and scarce economy of delivery drivers.
All wins in my book.
Seems like a silly hilly to fight on.
I “donate free labour to corporations” all the time. Here’s the thing: I don’t give a fuck who makes money off what I do for my own amusement. I’ve already got all I want from it.
Whoa hold up. Absolutely robots have feelings. What are feelings? They're signals warranting theory of mind and empathy. Even a fence gate has feelings, when you see it trying to close but it needs a little help to sit snugly in its well.
Gandhi said "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." And in a time when animated machines roam campuses, we can look to Berkeley students for a model of moral progress.
> They deserve no pity, they're robots!. Don't donate free labor to corporations.
How do you treat service workers? Do you "shed no pity" because that waiter is employed by a corporation?
It's socially acceptable and encouraged to treat specifically arranged stones with absolute reverence (an important masonry buildings) but no one should treat it as if it was worth of pity or empathy.
A robot is animated by circuitry and code which receive input from sensors, but I personally do not believe they are "feeling" in the way animals are (humans included in "animals" here). At least not these robots. I won't speak to the future here.
> Robot is drawn from an old Church Slavonic word, robota, for “servitude,” “forced labor” or “drudgery.” The word, which also has cognates in German, Russian, Polish and Czech, was a product of the central European system of serfdom by which a tenant’s rent was paid for in forced labor or service.[1]
1: https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/the-origin-of-the-wor...
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That's what EVE also said.
Regards, WALL-E
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doesn't help clear the debris but a good agro move.
My neighborhood is a mostly quiet one near the center of a large city, where there are a lot of mothers who push their kids in strollers, older folks with canes, and some people even in wheelchairs.
On the weekends -- sometimes the weekdays as well depending on the time of the year -- the city gets flooded with both tourists, and suburbanites who want to go to all the 'trendy' spots often opting to use these scooters.
More often than not they park them right in the middle of the sidewalk. The side walk that the strollers, canes and wheelchairs use on a daily basis. Usually when I see this, I just knock the things over and push them out of the way.
Sure we can and should do better with providing bike and scooter parking… as an example one easy solution is to convert 1-2 on-street car parking spaces per block to bike and scooter parking. There’s enormous value in having big corporate allies in such a fight.
I'm a huge fan of the idea of plentiful, cheap scooters for short trips, and was excited to have a new cohort of people who would want more safe bike (and scooter) routes. Alas, as much as I love the concept, I've developed a strong dislike for the companies.
I've little doubt that they could dramatically reduce the amount of improper scooter parking, but it would involve punishing their customers, and that would hurt their growth in the short term, for the unimportant benefit of avoiding crushing regulatory responses on the long term.
We didn't choose for them to be our enemies. We were natural allies. But they decided they'd fight us than have to combat the real problem.
I strongly suspect the companies encouraged their staff to put them in slightly annoying places as advertisements -- if you trip over a scooter, you've noticed the brand!
Copenhagen ended up banning them from the city centre.
https://www.eltis.org/in-brief/news/e-scooters-allowed-back-...
(Copenhagen already has pedestrian and bicycle space, so the scooter companies weren't bringing anything there -- only taking that space away. Many other cities are so bad, the scooter companies are probably still a positive influence even with the terrible riders.)
I spent five years living on a street with very large sidewalks (at least triple-wide, if not quadruple wide). Cyclists and scooter riders were just as inconsiderate of pedestrians. Traveling at dangerous speed, weaving across the whole sidewalk, and parking the vehicles in remarkably inconvenient spots were all very common behaviors.
The problem is cultural. People in larger, faster, more dangerous vehicles seem to think they have right of way in shared spaces and that everyone else should get out of their way. Anyone who's ridden a bicycle or a scooter on a road also used by cars will have experienced this.
Compare this to Tokyo, where there's less space, more of it is shared, but people don't behave like I've described above.
I'm not asking for 10% of the sidewalk for myself -- that's ~4.8 inches, which is much less of the space needed for a stroller, a person with a cane, or someone in a wheelchair.
I don't see any lobbying, let alone any actions from these companies that ensure that the quality of the lives of the people I mentioned isn't negatively impacted. What I do see is rent seeking and extraction of public value for there own profits.
Lobbying is great, but they aren't doing anything currently to actually curb their users from partaking in reducing the use of public space for those that can't simply 'walk around it and pray their lobbying works one day.'
But you are right and I hadn’t considered the benefits. So thanks for posting this.
Because of all the scooter trouble the city has reclaimed some parking spaces for scooters. So that is a step in the right direction. And if it gets people out of their houses and seeing where the bike infrastructure works and doesn’t that’s probably good for future expansion too.
So you make the problem worse?
Why don’t you take 2 minutes and push them to the side of the sidewalk if you care so much about ADA access? You can fix the problem you are encountering, and the people you want to protect CANT. You are choosing to make the problem worse for them? Why?
I live in a major downtown full of these scooters. When I see them blocking something, I just move them. Why is this so difficult? It takes such a tiny amount of effort to fix this problem you are describing. You live in a society, and it’s your responsibility to contribute.
It is not enough to kick over a scooter. We need to tag repeat offenders and increase the severity of the response. For instance, paint one handlebar grip on the first infraction, then the other grip on the second, then a seat, headlight/taillight, etc. A scooter that has been tagged enough can have the tires flattened, spokes broken, etc.
Clearly, there are numerous flaws with the solution above. It's really a terrible idea. To some degree it shows the flaws with kicking over offending scooters.
Alternatively, you could hire enforcement officers to issue citations. That also has flaws. You could build a system that allows random citizens to document offenses in a credible way and then have authorities act on repeated offenses. Also not without problems.
Perhaps coloring the scenario differently might help. Imagine, for instance, that a certain neighborhood house is popular with the neighborhood children. The children frequently ride their bikes to the house and leave their bikes strewn in the driveway, the front yard, and on the sidewalk. What would be an appropriate series of responses? How could you build a system that protects against a grumpy neighbor abusing whatever escalation mechanism you devise?
Because you’ll be doing this over and over again. How about those companies educate their users how to behave in a neighbourhood where those people are basically guests?
Wow, if a 3-4 minute walk involves 10 scooters that's now almost a 25-minute walk.
It's not the OP's job to clean up after everyone else.
But I agree throwing them aside is not the optimal solution.
Municipality looking for money could get some large cash influx from ticketing improperly parked scooters, the owning company can decide to eat the loss or flip the ticket on the user, either way people will get educated fast.
It would only take for the law enforcement to enforce rules that are already there
How is getting them out of the way, on their side or not, worsening the situation?
Uh... I said out of the way. I push them onto the easement required by the city which is grass from the curb to the sidewalk.
There is no way that this is in any way "worse." Especially due to the fact that they are usually in the way via being not parallel.
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It might make the problem worse in the short term but maybe those leaving them in the middle will move them out of the way in the future possibly reducing the issue long term.
I wonder if anyone has an index that measures how often people leave carts randomly in a parking lot or in the actual corrals (not counting stores that incentivize it with a quarter). Would be a good measure of pro- or anti-sociality.
Remember the sudden onslaught of Chinese app-rentable bicycles in cities around the world a few years back? Near useless pieces of unrepairable plastic, steel, and rubber clogging up the pavement (sidewalk) because technically this was not illegal. Several companies competing in a race to become the biggest one in any given city. In many cases it ended after new legislation and citizens demanding action; often spurred on by activists using the same fuck-you tactics these companies used to put them everywhere, but in reverse (often by means of gently chucking them in a canal).
Putting stuff for rent all over public space or abusing the commons otherwise with the explicit aim of first becoming the dominant party in a mad gold rush, and only then negotiate about rules and limits afterwards is quite antisocial too. Responding tit-for-tat is not classy, but some people feel they have little recourse, especially if municipalities are (at first) taken in by the greenwashing ideals of some of these companies.
The companies and their users -- the companies don't have structures to prevent their users from leaving their property in right of way, their users leave the companies' property in the spaces preventing those in need of using the space -- are the ones partaking in antisocial behavior.
It makes sense that people who feel that they’ve been unfairly imprisoned in their homes by the rest of society would feel rather bitter about that.
To restore faith societies could take steps to compensate those worst hit by pandemic measures (i.e young people), so far that hasn’t happened.
We are seeing the same thing with electric scooters and bikes (and they get torched sometimes), they get parked anywhere and the county's on board with it because it's "green".
This was NOT as much of a problem with rental bikes in e.g. London, because they had designated stations for picking up and parking them; the user would get charged extra if they did not park their bike up properly.
There would be no issues with fitting the bikes and the scooters, if the middle of the street was also freely available
Oh, and Friday and Saturday between 00 and 05, you cannot use the scooters.
It kinda makes me sad that we can't just let people use scooters as they please, but as you observe that isn't working.
It was much the same with drones, which is now also heavily regulated, e.g. you must maintain a certain distance to buildings.
FYI some context on bike helmet laws: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2021/04/06/56408419/seattle...
As an aside: many (most?) people who need sidewalks choose to use the road instead because the sidewalks are inaccessible. Snow and ice doesn't get removed from all sidewalks (regardless of what regulations say), tree roots breaking up the pavement don't get repaired, large inclines/declines are a safety hazard. I know a regular-abled person whose face got mangled as she was riding her bike on a sidewalk and hit a chunk of unrepaired sidewalk and went over. Sidewalks need a redesign.
We have designated parking spots for rideshare scooters in London.
Yet we often dedicate 50% of our roadway for the storage of private automobiles, and this is okay?
Ofc, I feel for disabled people in this situation, but personally I'll pick one up or move it if I see that it's in the way.
Here when the were first released, the parking was a bit scuffed, but recently it seems people have been making a much greater effort to park them correctly.
I consider myself a law abiding person but have been sorely tempted to load them up into a truck and toss them into the Chesapeake ...
Where's my law-abiding help to deal with this? It kinda just feels like somebody's got a hate on for scooters.
Unfortunate side effect of the past capital incineration years. If it doesn’t make sense to have unlocked bike-share, it definitely doesn’t make sense to do it with electric scooters.
Way better approach is to take phone and send complain to company that runs these. At least in our city, they do in fact end contracts with people who park them wrong. The threat and actual drivers who lost the ability to use scooters makes others park better.
If, in general, people were just at tiny bit more respectful of others around them - the world would be a lot better off.
Same here, but from a different angle. If the scooters were the problem, we'd have had the same problem when Car2Go was a thing. But, car infrastructure in the US is so overbuilt that Car2Go didn't even register on the radar in terms of free street parking. Cars improperly abandoned that impede car traffic are quickly resolved.
The nonmotorized infrastructure in the US is so begrudgingly inept that adversarial design wouldn't look much different. If there's a rent-a-scooter inconveniencing the token pedestrian path next to on street parking, I've simply been moving the scooters into on street parking. A single scooter fits between spaces, or only consumes <5% of the length of a standard 20 foot space. Surely drivers complain loudly, but they won't be inconvenienced unless they go out of their way to toss a scooter into the middle of the sidewalk; an accurate metaphor for how sidewalks got to be so terrible in the first place.
Now I actually don't understand at all why they don't do it. On the surface, you can say that they don't give a shit about non-users, they just care about their customers and they are afraid of scaring them away. However, where I live (Budapest, Hungary) these have already been banned from the centermost district of the city. The district, the area most frequented by tourists. As it was predictable.
Also, the city mayor came up with a regulation so that they'll designate several hundred e-scooter parking lots throughout the inner city and leaving these anywhere but those places will results in the company being fined. Which is a smart and friendly move, because there will be indeed lots of lots :) . But it's still a lot worse than if the e-scooter companies have solved it for themselves because then you'd still be able to leave them almost anywhere.
Actually I see two king of annoying parking habits. The first one is the completely reckless, when they literally leave it in the middle of the walking path of everyone. I sometimes even think that it's deliberate. Like wanting to show off or something. "I'll just leave it here in the middle, so that everyone can see it." Quite often right in the front of zebra crossings.
The other one is more like sheer stupidity. When they do park it besides a wall, but they do it as if it was a car. So 45 degrees, with front wheel to the wall. But that doesn't make much sense, because you want it to be out of the way (which almost always means parallel to the wall, preferably leaning towards the wall and not leaning away from the wall).
This is all pretty sad because e-scooters, while I think they are dangerous to ride, are pretty cool and efficient vehicles. And being able to pick up one on the street, though more expensive than owning one, very convenient for the occasional user. (I mostly ride a bike though, and pre-covid I used to use a kick scooter + public transport.)
Start "putting them away" for the careless people. In dumpsters. Pretty soon the scooter companies will figure out a solution.
Or put little fisheye cameras on every scooter and if you park it incorrectly every scooter you walk past for the next 24 hours uses face recognition and blasts insults at you unless you go back and re-park it correctly.
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College students 1950-2010: survive on ramen, peanut butter and canned tuna, live with roomates, walk everywhere, shop in thrift stores
College students today: get robot-delivered restaurant food, complain about lack of parking on campus from their new iphone, demand tax-payers pay back the student loans they took out to live in luxury for 4 years