50
votes
San Franciscans are taking the opportunity to have sex in robotaxis and it's not part of the conversation about driverless vehicles
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- Title
- San Franciscans Are Having Sex in Robotaxis, and Nobody Is Talking About It
- Authors
- Liz Lindqwister
- Published
- Aug 11 2023
- Word count
- 1622 words
I'm not sure how I feel about this one. On one hand it feels potentially invasive, on the other hand, if I was owned/operated my own robo-taxi I would have cameras in there and probably hand the footage over to police in many situations. Also, lots of cabs have inward cameras now too so the standard for lack of privacy in a cab has already been set.
As always, there will always be option for people who value privacy, like driving your own car or owning your own robo-taxi (maybe).
I don't think it's invasive at all. You have zero right for privacy inside a robo-taxi. Inside a normal taxi or uber, many drivers have inward recording dashcams for their own safety. In public transit, there are cameras. You have no right, nor should have any expectation of privacy inside a robo-taxi. Don't like it? Don't go in a robo-taxi.
If you have sex in a robo taxi, they will have your sextape in fish-eye lens, low bitrate form. If you don't like this, the simple solution is to not have sex in robo taxis.
I think that, much like a glass office or a phone booth (in the old days), you can expect no visual privacy, but you could reasonably expect that your conversations aren't recorded.
Some people tend to ruin things for everyone. I'd rather have a camera in my taxi than a used condom stuck to the window for the duration of my ride. And now I'm imagining all the vandalism and trash and whatever else that occurs when people don't think they'll be held accountable.
The contrast between public transit in East Asia (especially Japan) and here is very much a study in public etiquette. The Japanese are very mindful of how their behavior and presence affect others, while Americans feel very entitled to do whatever they want with public property.
I recently mentioned in a comment here that a few weeks ago, on the BART, I saw a half eaten tub of melted ice cream left on the train priority seat that had been jostled, its melted contents spilled across several seats and across the floor, rendering 6 seats and a large standing area unusable.
Some BART users are actively antisocial, not just indifferent to other people's wellbeing. We really need to change the laws and standards governing mental health care in this country as one step toward improving the situation. The new taller fare gates that can't be jumped should help some also.
The difference is that one is public and the other is private. We naturally have the expectation that any activity or place we occupy privately, is actually private. The bus and train have people all over the place, so you naturally don't expect it. The closest similar space, a private car, is very private. I don't think it's necessarily wrong to record a robo-taxi, but I can certainly see why people think they have full privacy in them.
I would be surprised if people had an expectation that a taxi is a private space, i.e. that they could reasonably expect it to be private. Not saying that they don’t have that expectation, just that if they do then huh.
People expect private rooms in trains to be private even though they are public shared spaces. It's really not a stretch to image the same in a private car.
Purchasing the use of a room that has a bed and no windows (at least into the corridor) is significantly different from getting a ride from a taxi and I don't see how you can earnestly say otherwise.
Not all private rooms have beds.
It's also not a very far stretch at all to imagine one way glass or privacy screens on all windows of future autonomous cars.
Some of those robotaxis will have tinted windows (anywhere close to the equator has this on most vehicles), and as a practical matter any car that's moving 60MPH is basically impossible for anyone to accidentally snoop on for more than a blurry split-second.
I don't see how you could seriously claim such a moving vehicle isn't private.
This is San Francisco. They aren't moving 60 mph. These are the taxis that we have been hearing about stopping and blocking traffic.
Anecdotal, and this is not entirely related since it's not about taxis, but about 20 years ago I heard a piece on the radio about how people behave differently in the comfort of their cars than they do in public -- even if they're stopped at a red light or in heavy traffic where they're clearly visible to other people. People admitted that they would sing in their cars, whereas they typically did not sing in front of other people, pick their nose, and other things. I think the idea was that people treat their car as a private space, but I wonder if it's better to make the distinction of a personal space versus a private one. They clearly understood they'd be seen by other people, but they could still do things that were more personal while in a car.
I'm not sure how people view taxis, but I do wonder if there are correlations between expectations of privacy and whether or not that person views the taxi driver with any semblance of respect.
Some people are kind of exhibitionists, and others just might not care about possible cameras. I've read about the mile high club and it changed my perspective about where people are likely to have sex.
You have a right to not be recorded in public. The law in the US is simply is inadequate and does not recognize that. Some countries correctly recognize this right (such as Germany's laws against photographing individuals in public) instead of allowing it to be trampled on.
That's the fun thing about the concept of rights: they're squishy, relative moral concepts. Law is not, and law can change.
It's not that the law is inadequate, it's that afaik public recording is explicitly allowed in most situations. There is no right to not be recorded in public, and I'll argue that it's in the name 'public', as in, no expectation of privacy.
In one-party states, you don't even need the consent of the people you as an individual are filming afaik.
Do you have a right to privacy as a renter? Or as a guest at a hotel?
A robotic tax feels more akin to renting a hotel room for a short time than a conventional taxi. With a conventional taxi, you are paying a person to drive you somewhere. With a robotic taxi, a person isn't driving you. A vehicle is.
I wouldn't expect privacy on a train, but I would have some expectation of privacy as the single rider in a car.
This is the only part that concerns me, it's only hypothetical right now but there may not always be another option on public roadways if autonomous cars live up to their potential and lawmakers enforce their level of safety. It's been heavily theorized that afterwards private car ownership will dwindle in favor of subscribing to an autonomous car service.
At which point just like every other privacy law that hasn't kept up with technology, "the standard for lack of privacy" that has already been set becomes permanent and applies to the entirety of commuting for the lower or middle class that can't afford their own autonomous car. I don't believe privacy as a right should be limited to only those who can afford to not rely on mainstream services, especially as laws entrench those services.
I get that, but like, you can't fuck in a bus and use classism as a right to privacy. It seems like an expectation of privacy is misguided, and an autonomous taxi, like any other public commuting service, is a shared public space, not a rented private space like an apartment.
Agreed, but there should be a middle ground. Without a driver we don't need to cling to the "public" idea of a taxi. A hotel room is rented for short periods and only occupied by the renters and has a high expectation of privacy, why can't we hold other potentially private spaces to similar standards?
I just foresee us needing to entirely redefine how we treat cars once they are fully automated. The "space" will be used for personal preparation, conversation, work, and sleep instead of just for mindless transportation in a glass box. Letting the valuable commute time and all of those activities slip into being "public" when we could make them private simply by restricting automated surveillance would be a colossal loss.
But most public transit is already recorded for safety purposes, and I struggle to understand why publicly-owned robo-cars should be treated any different from train-cars. There's still an expectation that an individual can do as they please in semi-private spaces, but it's blatantly disrespectful to use a shared space in a way that would make other users uncomfortable.
It's expected that the sheets will be changed and room cleaned because of how hotel rooms are expected to be used. On the other hand, if someone smoked in a robotaxi, I think future users of that robotaxi would want the smoker to be reprimanded.
Safety isn't a big concern in a private car. Yes people can still attack each other but you'd expect that the people know each other are less likely randomly commit violence. The real reason why companies want to record is for insurance reasons. This could be solved by having the car take pictures of the internals between customers. Then you'd know when damage occurred and which customer did it.
For smoke, a smoke detector is a non-privacy intruding monitor. For other non-visible things like horrible smells, a "how was your ride" or "submit a problem" should help the company narrow down who's messing up their cars.
According to the DOJ's Criminal Victimization, 2020 –
Supplemental Statistical Tables,
that's far from true, stranger violence only makes up a little less than half of those reported violent crimes.
So on average you're about as likely to be attacked by someone you know as much as a stranger, I'm sure the reasons are probably different though.
Here's what an FBI article observes from what I believe is a similar but different study with a larger sample:
https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-releases-2020-incident-based-data
A hotel is inspected and cleaned after each user while a taxi is not.
I feel like maybe this would be solved with a higher cost rental? Like, your base level robo-taxi is going to have cameras and is primarily for public transport only. Your luxury suite robo-taxi is private, but has a substantive additional fee that includes cleaning afterward.
So this is slightly off topic, but is there a proposed solution for autonomous cars driving in weather that obscures vision like blizzards, sleet, downpours, fog? Or is it just a hand wavy 'technology will improve'?
There's radar, which won't do it all but is better than what human drivers have.
There's also slowing down, or pulling over and waiting for conditions to improve.
That's still pretty hand-wavy. Someone who did their research would know more.
Yeah I think they should just make it very clear that you are being recorded. If you were in an actual taxi it would be viewed by the driver so we should probably just stick to that level of awareness.
Some privacy and retention policy to only access the footage upon registration of a complaint or investigation and to only keep them for a span of 3 years or something should also be in place.
Although quite a few people would probably not let that deter them from making out or boning in the taxi. They’d probably find it thrilling.
I ride the Cruise robotaxis here in SF and they very explicitly tell me—through text in car, in my app, and a spoken announcement—before the ride starts that there are cameras recording video (but not sound).
I am bewildered that people are having sex despite that warning.
If reddit has taught me nothing else, it has taught me that there is huge diversity in what people are into sexually.
Yeah I really think there's a bit of exhibitionism going on.
I'm all for privacy, and feel that recordings need to be handled appropriately. That said, as someone who would absolutely use a robo taxi, I'm team camera if it ensures the ride is safe and clean. Those recordings should just be subject to retention and privacy laws.
You could always just wear a hat, facemask, and sunglasses.
Really hope they clean up after. No one wants to sit in your jizz. Pretty shit behavior.
So how do you think these laws and standards are enforced? I am truly uncertain but the best similar example I can think of is a movie theater and people most definitely have sex there.
If you have sex in a robo taxi during rush hour, is that..... sex trafficing?
I'll see myself out. #joke
so? why should it be? 🤣
I think the gist is that certain considerations need to be made when you subtract the driver from the situation. Making sure a soiled vehicle doesn't go on to collect more passengers, recourse for passengers who are picked up by a soiled vehicle, and deterrents for anti social behavior that damages the public service.