Retired professor arrested for blocking delivery robot. Will do it again

This is not the full story, even before cars came into common use, society had to figure out how to manage pedestrians coexisting with horses and carriages on public roadways.

Eg. Check out the UK's Highway Act 1835 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Act_1835). It criminalized riding or driving a carriage on the footway (sidewalk) and made both pedestrians and drivers responsible for using due care to avoid collisions in the road.

This was a long-term societal shift to having dedicated infrastructure for both pedestrians and vehicles to avoid collisions, not some sort of sinister auto industry scheme.

As car ownership increased, it seems possible that norms would change a bit.

... jay driving was a thing first.

I would suspect safety had more to do with it than anything else. The closest I've ever personally come to hitting someone was because they jaywalked directly in front of my car, after walking between two parked vans so they were not visible until they strode right out in front of me. It was a near thing, but my reaction time is good and I am pretty attentive to what is in front of me. But physics is a harsh mistress, it is a dumb game to play.

We're not going to get rid of cars, much as some people think that would be a net improvement, so the sensible thing to do is make pedestrian crossings plentiful, obvious, and respected by both drivers and walkers. Public space is shared.

that's how you get people's attention to something, bring about public discourse, which can lead to political action

This would have been unthinkable 200 years ago, during a time we are trained to think of as much more barbaric than the present.

Quote from a lawyer in the article:

> Personal delivery devices must yield to other pedestrians and pedalcyclists in a pedestrian area

Sounds like the robot legally had to yield to her. If so, what lawful basis would the officer have had to make the order?

Why? You already demonstrated that we are able to acknowledge scooters and wheelchairs. That shows that exceptions can be made. They were made on some basis that is not all or nothing. Likewise we can review the basis here and decide that robots are not allowed or we can decide that robots are allowed.

It’s a collective space and how we collectively allocate it is useful to consider. I’d happily take wider sidewalks if it meant admitting robots for instance.

There’s no reason to believe this is a walk-or-nothing situation. In SF, for instance, children do not need the sidewalk to travel on their bikes but they are permitted to use it.

From the article it sounds like the Pennsylvania legislature has already considered the case of delivery robots specifically and decided that they should go on the sidewalk, though to what degree that reflects the popular will is unknown to me.

I see people on rented scooters/bikes on the sidewalk all the time. Society at large seems to absolutely accept this. (note that I'm commenting on the current state of affairs, not what I think ought be the case)

Robots owners got big bucks which means power. They need ROI, not sidewalks (also, guess do they use sidewalks or cars?).

Now the story is that the police came and protected an innocent robot by chaining up an old woman. That sure makes them seem like misanthropes.

I'd like to extend this quote from Stephen Jay Gould:

>I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops [and driving cars to deliver burritos]

(This also ignores all the fun things about work culture in the USA, like healthcare being tied to your job.)