"You WILL Wear Your Tracking Beacon!"
Hats off to Justin over on the Open Post at Ecosophia this week for this article,
His comment was spot on:
“The more likely version of the future is deeply dystopian, says transport historian Peter Norton. Only the beacon-equipped will be spotted, he fears. Those choosing—say, for economic or privacy reasons—not to fit bicycle-to-vehicle beacons will be blamed for being hit by sensor-equipped cars, believes Norton, author of Autonorama, a new book which details the potential civil liberty issues that pedestrians and cyclists may face from the roll-out of driverless vehicles.”
“The auto industry is interested in getting pedestrians and cyclists to transmit real-time location information because it’s perhaps the only way AVs can operate in dense cities. Lidar, 360-degree cameras, and other “smart” vision technologies cannot yet give warning of the person running out from behind parked vehicles.”
You WILL live in the pod. You will eat the bugs. You will wear your tracking helmet.
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Justin rightly in my opinion points out the coming push for less energy intensive transportation NOT part of the Elite in a self driving car, will be to require to everyone on public streets to wear an identifier. Though I suspect it will be in the form of a cell phone app. Self driving technology that is good enough to recognize pedestrians and bicycles is prohibitively expensive. Corporations will do what they always do and push the costs of their new toys off onto the public. It will be done under the guise of "safety", and under the pressure of "insurance".
Safety because "We don't want people to die, do we? So wear one of these or we'll give you a ticket!". We've already seen this happen with helmets for cyclists. And Insurance because "You weren't wearing one of these so WE don't have to pay for your self inflicted injuries. Don't even think of suing the poor self driving car owner either!"
More bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure would be great but the push to use more of it, is going to have unexpected consequences too.
ADDED EDIT: Looks like I got the wrong link to the article. That's been changed.