How should humans really be ‘in the loop’ in cities under autonomous mobility?
What questions lie amidst the wreckage of Joshua Brown’s Tesla Model S?
“A car crash harnesses elements of eroticism, aggression, desire, speed, drama, kinesthetic factors, the stylizing of motion, consumer goods, status — all these in one event.”
—JG Ballard, interviewed in Penthouse, September 1970
On May 7th 2016, 40 year-old Joshua Brown died in a car crash near Williston, Florida. So many people die in car crashes that this in itself is hardly remarkable, something that does not reflect terribly well on us as a species. Yet this one was remarkable as Brown was driving a Tesla Model S in ‘Autopilot mode’ at the time.
And so in fact the Tesla was driving Brown, as it collided with a tractor trailer turning left. The large white side of the trailer against a brightly lit sky apparently rendered the truck ‘invisible’ to the Tesla’s systems, and so the brake was not applied. (It later transpires that Brown was speeding; other rumours suggest he was also watching Harry Potter at the time.)
This is hardly the first time a human has been killed by a robot, or some other less obvious form of autonomous machinery. Hundreds, thousands, must have done. But it is perhaps the most high profile…
