In every city, the most experiences and stories precipitated, may have to be the street cab masters – drunk and vomit, to the place does not pay, want to catch up with the front car to play tracking, all kinds of things. And, of course, there’s certainl y no shortage of those, hot couples in the backseat getting intimate. In the face of a real driver who is driving, these flaming passengers may still have qualms, but what about when the cab master, is a self-driving robot? Things get very subtle.
This week, Robotaxi (self-driving cabs) from Google’s Waymo and GM’s Cruise will be able to operate 24/7 in San Francisco. In doing so, San Francisco will become the first U.S. city to fully commercialize driverless cabs. However, just at the same time, the San Francisco Standard reports that already passengers are experiencing the great harmony of life in the back seat of a self-driving cab. So, driverless cabs, will they become the new lover’s hotel or party mecca? Is it really okay for passengers to have so much fun?
1. Self-driving lover’s hotel
A couple recently tested the limits of Robotaxi’s indulgence – they took a late-night ride in a Robotaxi and filmed themselves in the car, an indulgence reported by The Standard. The Standard referred to them as Alex and Megan to protect the couple’s privacy, and did not provide the exact date of their indulgence, but confirmed their ride with documentation.
In an interview with The Standard, Megan said the trip wasn’t very comfortable, but it was exciting. The fact that we did it in a public place made the taboo even more fun and exciting for us.Alex also added that no one will tell you that you can’t do it. It will make you more and more comfortable, and if you’re with someone, like a more serious partner, it will naturally escalate to other activities.
Additionally, The Standard separately interviewed four other Cruise passengers who said they had also made out or had sex in San Francisco’s Robotaxi in recent months and provided receipts for the rides. Interestingly, The Standard did not reach out to passengers who claimed to have had sex in Waymo’s self-driving cars. In response, a Waymo spokesperson said proudly that the vast majority of our passengers are respectful and follow the rules of our rides.
In fact, this is not the first time that this kind of debauchery in a self-driving car has occurred. A video of someone making out in the cockpit of a Tesla with Autopilot turned on was uploaded on the popular adult website P, and Elon Musk responded to it below the Twitter post. What’s also a bit surprising is that there may be some science to the idea that people will be inclined to let loose in self-driving cars, with a little-known 2018 study suggesting that more self-driving cars will mean more sex on the road, as well as other unsavory behaviors that you don’t want Uber drivers to witness.
Citing a 2019 article on self-driving cars and the future of urban travel, The Standard says that sexual activity and sex work inside these cars will become an increasingly common occurrence. The article even predicts that self-driving cars will replace hotels that charge by the hour, and that they will be monitored to prevent things like sex and drug use inside the car.
However, the rules and regulations surrounding Robotaxi are currently vague, largely because the industry is so new.
2. Robotaxi is not outside the law
When asked about anecdotal evidence of in-car indulgences, neither Cruise nor Waymo explicitly commented on this to The Standard, and their respective rules don’t specifically mention it. Their terms of service both require passengers to respect the interior of the vehicle, keep it clean, and control noise, but they also don’t mention sex.
For example, in Cruise’s community rules, there are some key points about respectful behavior in driverless cars (AVs), including not doing anything that might make others uncomfortable and avoiding activities that could be categorized as threatening, confrontational, discriminatory, harassing, disrespectful, offensive, or treating others inappropriately.The Cruise spokesperson also emphasized that we’re working hard to make sure our service is safe, clean and accessible to all, and that passengers agree to do their part when they sign up to use our services. We will take appropriate action against anyone who violates these guidelines, which may include suspension or termination of their Cruise account.
It’s also worth mentioning that both companies allow eating in their vehicles, but neither allows drugs, cigarettes, e-cigarettes, etc., and Waymo explicitly prohibits the consumption of alcohol. a Waymo spokesperson said Waymo passengers are allowed to eat and drink non-alcoholic beverages during their rides. It’s reasonable to expect riders to be clean and leave no trash behind, but it’s human nature to leave the occasional crumb. However, if passengers leave Robotaxi dirty, they may have to pay an additional service charge.
As a result, Cruise and Waymo like to brag that their cars will never drink, get high, or drive impaired, and Cruise, in particular, insists on cracking down on users caught on its cameras drinking in their cars. For example, one passenger, a writer for the popular tech social media account Whole Mars Catalog, received a written warning from Cruise for drinking a can of beer in the backseat of a Cruise car.
In addition to the company’s own 2 rules, the California Vehicle Code is very clear in this regard: drivers and passengers are prohibited from drinking alcohol, smoking marijuana, or possessing open containers of any kind of substance in their vehicles on public roads. However, there may be a small loophole in California law: open container laws do not apply to passengers in buses, cabs, or rental limousines. As a result, the California Highway Patrol, which oversees the state’s vehicle code, has so far been unable to confirm how the code applies to Robotaxi. in short, self-driving cabs are still too new, and the rules and regulations surrounding Robotaxi need to be refined.
3. No one in the car but eyes
While sexual behavior itself is not a violation, passenger activity inside the vehicle is monitored, and both Waymo and Cruise have cameras both inside and outside the vehicle. Both companies say it’s for safety and maintenance purposes, but the chances of your sexual behavior being recorded are high. Plus, the windows aren’t tinted, so it’s possible for someone outside the car to see what’s going on inside, Cruise writes on its website. We record video inside the vehicle for safety and support, and if you have an accident during your ride, we may review the footage to better understand what happened. We only record audio when a passenger initiates a support call.
Waymo has also said that its team may view footage if there are concerns about cleanliness, safety, crashes, or missing items.
But such a move also raises concerns about privacy breaches. Opponents argue that self-driving car surveillance would be a huge violation of people’s privacy rights. After all, it’s not hard to imagine surveillance data becoming a means for private companies to make illegal profits; and there’s also a good chance that self-driving cars (AVs) could turn into surveillance tools, since they’re equipped with cameras and other sensors that would hand over the data recorded by the vehicles to law enforcement upon request – in San Francisco, the police have already asked Waymo and Cruise for driverless car footage to help solve crimes.
Proponents, on the other hand, argue that in-vehicle surveillance doesn’t seem so hard to swallow, considering that self-driving vehicles are safer than human-driven ones and could be a boon to disabled passengers who currently lack the means to get around. In response, Alice Busching Reynolds, chair of the California Public Utilities Commission, said we must base our decision on this data and evidence, and then on the boundaries of our authority. We encourage self-driving car companies to engage with law enforcement and municipal officials, and to take action over time to assuage people’s concerns.
Although self-driving technology has not yet fully matured, it is true that there are already hundreds of self-driving cabs, already running in the middle of the world’s major cities, how to regulate the behavior of passengers in the car, may be a self-driving technology itself is not comparable in difficulty. But obviously, the self-driving companies at the moment, do not have the energy to face this challenge.