cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/53250107
Police confirmed they had responded to a report of “criminal mischief involving a robot” on the 1200 block of Filbert Street around 1:16 p.m. on Wednesday. A woman on the scene ignored “multiple commands” to move, they said, resulting in a criminal violation notice for disorderly conduct.
Uber declined to comment.
Marvin, who plans to contest the charge on the grounds of her First Amendment right to protest, has been undeterred by the arrest. She plans to continue blocking Uber Eats robots and chatting with curious passersby who ask what she’s doing.
“It allows me to talk to people about what’s going on,” she said. “It’s always very interesting conversations that we have, and I think it’s good to have those kinds of conversations in public space.”
If she was not touching the thing then why didn’t it try and get out of her way? It should not be on the sidewalk in the first place, and should not have right of way.
Maybe the robot should be charged for blocking her way
That’s always one of the tricks these companies pull. They take some communally-owned thing that used to have a clear purpose and start using it for their different for-profit use.
Take sidewalks. They’re surprisingly expensive to build, but they’re built from community tax money so that people walking don’t have to walk on the road. Now Uber is using them as a place where they can drive their robots. Are they paying anything? I assume not. Sidewalks have also become a favourite parking spot for rental scooters. Do the scooter companies pay for that? Of course not. Even when they’re parked well they reduce the space available for walking, and when they’re parked badly they can force pedestrians out into the street.
Ugh the rental scooters. Thankfully I’ve seen this dying down. A more common sight in my city now is parking spaces getting turned into bike rental stations. I’m all for that.
The scooters are so much better though? Just park near where you need to go, not where the bike station is. Just take photos of the poorly parked ones and whoever last parked it gets a fine.
Better only for the person who drops it right where they arrives at their destination. That is almost never also a sensible place for these things to be. What if everyone just got out do their car the second they were in front of the building they want to go to? That would be so much “better” for them!
That is kind of how taxis work though
Yeah, it sucks when I get out of a taxi and the driver just gets out and leaves their car there.
I don’t need to repeat dark onions response but did you even think for a moment before commenting?
I found myself wondering about this. If you stand blocking the entrance to a building, and won’t move when the police tell you to, I guess I can see them turning that into a disorderly conduct charge. Of course we are solely debating whether blocking a robot is a crime, but their rationale iin court is probably going to be more based around obstructing a place of public accommodation or something like that.