Denial of Agency

The other day, I was driving along in a ’26 Honda Pilot (you can find the review here) when all of a sudden and for no reason I could divine, a bright orangish flashing box appeared in the main instrument cluster.

BRAKE!

It practically screamed at me.

Thing is, there was no reason to BRAKE! Nothing was in front of me. much less slowing down in front of me.

But the Pilot – its automatic emergency braking (AEB) system thought differently. It can do more than that, too. Depending on its judgment – that is, the judgment of the software – the AEB system can slam on the brakes if it decides it is necessary to slam on the brakes. The Pilot didn’t but I have had other AEB-equipped vehicles do it when the software thought I was getting too close to a vehicle in front of me that was slowing down. I could see that it was slowing down – and was ready to brake if the situation (in my judgment) required it. The software’s judgment superseded my own – and on came the brakes.

Abruptly and forcefully.

This superseding brings up the issue of agency. Put another way, who is in charge of your car? If the car can brake on its own – and contrary to your own judgment – then it’s pretty clear that to a degree at least, you are not in charge of your car. This, in turn, brings up another, related issue that is likely to become a big issue in about three years from now, come 2029, when all new vehicles will have to be equipped with AEB (many already are, in anticipation of the pending federal mandate). It is: When a car automatically brakes – and an accident results – who will be held responsible for the damage/injuries that result?

Accidents, for instance, that occur when an AEB-equipped car suddenly brakes for no apparent (to the other driver) reason and the following car’s driver wasn’t ready for it or didn’t react in time. This is certain to happen. It could have happened to me. If the Pilot had braked when there was no good reason to, if someone had been behind me, there’s a good chance they’d have rear-ended me. Not because they were “following too closely” but because the braking event was unpredictable. You are behind another car on an otherwise clear road. You can see what’s ahead of you both – and you can also see the car ahead isn’t slowing to turn off the road. There’s no red light or stop sign coming up. You are just driving along when – all of a sudden – the AEB-equipped car glitches – and BRAKES! – and your reaction time isn’t quite quick enough or you didn’t brake hard enough to avoid rear-ending the car that BRAKED!

This, in turn begs an ominous question: Will our Safety Overlords say the problem isn’t AEB but rather older cars that do not have AEB? The likely answer is, of course yes. Because it’s what they do – to riff a little on what Dr. Evil said about his North Korean sidekick, Random Task.

Here’s how it’s likely to go. More precisely, here is what the Safety Overlords are likely to say:

Cars with AEB are not the problem. Cars without it out are the problem.

In the scenario I described, the AEB-equipped car that was following the AEB-equipped car would also BRAKE! when the AEB-equipped car in front BRAKED! because it glitched (or saw a shadow in the road). You see? The problem is those unsafe older cars that do not have AEB. The Safety Overlords might not outright bar them from using the government’s roads but it is very likely the insurance mafia – which effectively is the government, ex officio – will impose exorbitant premiums on the owners of non-AEB-equipped vehicles, citing the higher risk they present.

Gas meet light, anyone?

But you see the point. The way it is likely to go, once AEB becomes something like ABS and all the other “safety” stuff that, bit-by-bit, has taken away the last little bit of agency we used to have over our vehicles and given it to the vehicle.

No, that’s not quite it. The vehicle is after all just a tool made to work a certain way by its designers. These designers are, of course, typically just rank-and-file engineers whose job is to engineer these things. The orders come from higher up. And it is the corporation – another ex officio adjunct of the government – that has control over what’s engineered and by dint of that, has control over you (assuming you bought one of their vehicles). This did not happen all at once but gradually, bit-by-bit and one thing at a time over a period spanning several decades. Few saw the implications of ABS and traction control, for instance – and now we have Speed Limit Assist and Lane Keep Assist and (coming next year) Drowsy/Distracted Driver Assist.

Soon there will be AEB, too.

Your car may already have it.

Soon more will, just the same as (at first) only a few cars had Lane Keep Assist and Speed Limit Assist and now they pretty much all do. It’s kind of like those Flock cameras that are sprouting up everywhere, as if by osmosis or magic. It is changing the world – or will soon change the world – in ways that are unpleasant to think about.

Which is exactly why we ought to be thinking about it a lot – and hard – right now.

. . .

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