Robot cars, pedestrians, and rumblings of class revolution
George Carlin observed a phenomenon of relativity that Einstein had missed: anyone driving slower than you is an idiot, while anyone driving faster than you is a maniac. True, though there’s a more significant car-related social order we need to talk about. Cars enable the easy identification of two other kinds of people: anyone driving is of the nobility, while anyone on foot is a peasant. But word on the street is that this hierarchy will be shaken as technology advances and robots take over driving duties.
It’s taken for granted that Western society has moved on from an overt class system, but we can still see vestiges of a feudal order on the roads today. When behind the wheel of a car, ordinary citizens are granted noble status, endowed with awesome powers over the peasant pedestrian class.
Consider: when you’re walking down the sidewalk or along a hallway, it’s seldom that you see a fellow walker coming straight at you, staring you down with casual menace, even increasing their speed and making ear-piercing honking noises as they loom ever closer, forcing you to jump out of the way at the last minute in obeisant fear. This happens only rarely because everyone is part of the general class of citizens, and no one has a prevailing claim over the sidewalk or hallway.
This power structure is radically transformed when you bring a car into the picture. If you’ve ever set foot on a road where cars are in motion, you know your place: not there. But if you must be on the road, then make it a quick dash across. Lowly peasants look around anxiously while crossing the road, cowering and scurrying out of the path of approaching nobles. Being on a crosswalk while the walk signal is on helps a bit, but even then, heaven help you if you should linger too long as you traverse the street. You’ll incur the wrath of a nobleman or noblewoman, perhaps in the midst of a right turn, incensed at having their swift passage impeded. (Don’t get me wrong: I personally have spent my share of time behind the wheel of a car, so I know all too well how a few seconds here and there eventually adds up to a minute or two.)
To be fair, this modern noble class doesn’t have quite the scope of powers their medieval forebears did. Threats alone were usually sufficient to chasten the insolent peasants, but when a stronger hand was needed, the nobility of yore could deploy all manner of tools of horror to mete out inventive punishments, or even relatively straightforward death. In contrast, present-day nobility have no access to the mace or the rack or its ilk; they can wield only the car to intimidate, maim, and kill the peasantry. Still, the noble car-driver possesses fearsome might: while a car lacks the macabre Gothic flair of a mace, it can exert far higher impact forces against an unruly peasant.
But revolution is looming.
Automated vehicle technology is advancing. Robot drivers threaten to upset the class hierarchy. In an article published last week in the Journal of Planning Education and Research, Adam Millard-Ball of the University of California, Santa Cruz, argued that automated vehicles will be risk-averse, so they will defer to pedestrians, who “will be able to behave with impunity”. The word “impunity” is well-chosen: peasants will walk scot-free, untouched by the psychological and physical punishments once exacted by the nobility.
The ensuing headlines bear chilling portent for the ruling class. “Self-driving cars doomed to be bullied by pedestrians”: indeed they are, as they will lack the quiet sense of sociopathic entitlement you need to rev an engine and swerve just slightly toward an upstart pedestrian. “Pedestrians may run rampant in a world of self-driving cars”: this suggests that people on foot will brazenly walk all over the roads as if they were meant for the general public, rather than being the exclusive domain of people who ensconce themselves in large self-propelled metal cases. “Will Overly Polite Self-Driving Cars Brake for Jerks?” The lesson from this headline is that if “peasant” seems too anachronistic, “jerk” may be sufficient to describe the effrontery of a person who has the gall to step onto a road and compel a vehicle to reduce its speed. “Will pedestrians walk freely in a world of self-driving cars?” As if there wasn’t already enough panic, another speculative, sensationalist headline ratchets up the fear. “How Driverless Cars Could Empower Pedestrians”: this says it all. Imagine a world of empowered pedestrians—if you dare.
The writing is on the wall for the present-day nobility. Once robots take over the wheel, those on foot, once at the bottom rung of the social hierarchy on the road, will walk roughshod all over the streets. One can hope.