Hands Out for Another Government Subsidy

This tweet is wrong on a number of levels:

At a mobility event today I met an auto industry rep who told me “to enable AV’s we need a period of increased urban law enforcement so pedestrians know what they can’t do. Then they’ll change behavior.”
I was so stunned I could barely respond “I think that’s a horrific idea.”

— David Zipper (@DavidZipper) March 28, 2019

The first, and most disturbing, thing is that self driving car people are proposing criminalizing walking to make up for their inability to deliver the promised product, a self driving car that can actually drive itself.

But there is a more important point: When demanding that pedestrians be criminalized, they are actually seeking a subsidy.

It’s too difficult (read expensive) to develop a self-driving car that can deal with the real world, so they want tax dollars to enforce a world that is more convenient (cheaper) for them.

H/t Eschaton.

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