A city full of driverless cars? John Curley says humans would interfere

Author Malcolm Gladwell’s theory that cities full of driverless cars wouldn’t work is going viral. He tested a Waymo, a self-driving car, and said it kept stopping as he ran around it.

“I realized, if every car on the road is a driverless car, then there is no penalty whatsoever to pedestrians misbehaving,” he said in a video posted on Facebook by the Wall Street Journal.

After hearing the theory, KIRO host John Curley said there would need to be a deterrent to prevent humans from interfering with the cars.

“Technology will have to step in and have to create deterrence for the people that are in the way of the car,” he said on “The John Curley Show” on KIRO Newsradio.

Curley’s idea was for the car to take a photograph of the person, who would then receive a citation in the mail.

“Or in some way, they would have to enforce you behaving in a proper manner,” he added.

Gladwell said that in a city full of Waymos, kids wouldn’t fear being hit by a car and would play games in the street — forcing the Waymos to wait until they finished before moving on.

“People are always saying the problem with driverless cars is they’ll make mistakes. No, they don’t make mistakes, and that’s the problem,” he said in the Wall Street Journal’s video.

Driverless cars in Seattle next?

Curley pointed to people blocking traffic for protests in Seattle.

“We don’t do anything about them. So they continue to behave the way they do, because there’s no deterrent to them. We don’t arrest them. We don’t in any way stop them. So they just block traffic,” he said.

In the Los Angeles anti-U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) riots, several Waymos were targets of graffiti and vandalism, The Associated Press reported in June.

Curley noted with no owner present, driverless cars would be more vulnerable.

“There’s a sort of level of civility that is, everyone is to take care of themselves first, their own material things, and then that extends to you. The grace extends to you. And this is an interesting idea, that people don’t run any risk, because the thing will not create a risk for them,” Curley said.

Listen to the full conversation below.

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