Honking at Waymos

Not too long ago, I was enjoying an early dinner on the patio at Beethoven Market when a Waymo, as Waymos do, stopped and blocked traffic while dropping off its passengers. Somebody in another car laid on his horn, and somebody else on the patio called out, “There’s no driver to hear you honking!”

That second somebody had a smug tone, as if expecting others on the patio to turn and raise their glasses of nonalcoholic wine in appreciation of how he'd put that silly driver in his place. 

I’m here to side with the honker.

There was not a human behind the wheel of that Waymo, but the machine could register the sound of a car horn. We know this because Waymos are programmed to honk at each other. We might not know everything that happens with the data, but we can assume the honk is processed and a signal is sent to the company, the algorithm, whatever, letting them know that this particular robot in this particular situation is doing something that pisses someone off.

If you decide not to send that signal, or if you mock others for doing so, you might be smug but I would not call you smart. You’ve given over the future to a tech company and offered basically no resistance, you big wuss. The future is not written, and don't let anyone hoping to profit tell you otherwise.

As an aside, I'll admit there’s a real David Brooks vibe in my taking a small incident at an eatery and crafting it into a moral tale (but at least I’m not making it up). I'll try not to turn this tale into too much of a rant, lest I sound like Larry David. Or even Larry David Brooks. But let's keep moving.

Thinking there’s no point in trying to register your displeasure with a situation just because robots are involved — there's nothing savvy about that. If you go back enough steps, and it’s usually just a step or two, every robot’s decisions are programmed by human beings. There are ethical decisions back there, and the humans making those decisions need to hear when the decisions are bad.

The people in the car on Beethoven needed to hear it too. Sure, they didn’t tell that Waymo to stop and block traffic. When the honk happened, I imagine they were thinking, “Hey, we’re just passengers here.” But they made the decision to give themselves over to a robot, and they could’ve registered their own displeasure with the situation by contacting the company or doing any number of things beyond just shaking their heads and thinking, “Blame the machines, not me.”

Especially because the company behind the machines is blaming the passengers. According to Streetsblog, “Waymo has told advocates that expecting it to respect bike lanes is ‘too high a bar’ because customers expect to be dropped off in them.”

To which I say: honk!

I’m not against Waymos on principle. When I’m on my bicycle, I‘d rather share the road with an autonomous vehicle than some jerk in a big truck. I’m just saying this technology is not inevitable. We have choices in where it’s allowed, in what it’s allowed to do. The future is not written.

We can honk.