Seattle’s passive-aggressive pedestrians can’t be trusted around self-driving cars

Last Tuesday, the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted Google a patent for a pedestrian detection and notification system.

And why would Google need that? Because in another patent filing, which is still pending, Google describes a second-generation self-driving car that has exactly three control buttons: “Go”, “Pull Over”, and “Stop Now.”

What this means is the people at Google have decided that letting humans drive isn’t working. And they’re right. We’d rather text each other and get drunk. So they’re taking away our steering wheels, and that means the car has to detect and avoid pedestrians all on its own.

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I find this terrifying because Seattle, the city where I do most of my driving, has the most passive-aggressive pedestrians in the world. They cross the street surrounded by a force field of righteousness that makes it unnecessary even to acknowledge the existence of the automobile.

But Google thinks it is ready for this. The 22-page pedestrian avoidance patent claims the self-driving cars will identify pedestrians with 99 percent certainty. Video eyes mounted on the hood of the cars will make eye contact, and then the car, through an outside speaker, will say either, “safe to cross” or “coming through.”

By the way, the car is also designed not to get mad when you flip it off.

However, I think even Google has its doubts about this whole system because I notice the prototype cars are designed with soft foam bumpers.

Welcome to the city of the future: delivery drones above, pedestrian hockey below, and rest of us busy texting while drunk.