It would be amusing to see how humans react if you run up to their cars while stopped, put a traffic cone on the hood, and run away. Would most people try to shake it off while driving away, or stop in the middle of traffic? What's actually the right thing to do, both as a person and as an AV?
More pertinently, should it be legal for people to go up and put traffic cones on top of actively driven vehicles, intentionally to confuse or disrupt the driver? Or should they be punished?
> It would be amusing to see how humans react if you run up to their cars while stopped, put a traffic cone on the hood, and run away.
Hah, good call. I'm thinking that if I was at a traffic light or stop sign, and it wasn't a major road with other lanes of cars and lots of traffic whizzing by, I'd hop out, move the cone, and go about my day. If I didn't feel safe, I'd accelerate slowly enough so as not to shake off the cone, and move to the side of the road and deal with it there.
> More pertinently, should it be legal for people to go up and put traffic cones on top of actively driven vehicles
No, it absolutely shouldn't. In the case at hand, what if one of these AVs with a cone on it ended up blocking traffic and delaying an ambulance or fire truck, causing someone to die? I get that this is a protest movement, but I wouldn't want that on my conscience. And people protest in all kinds of ways that aren't legal (often called "civil disobedience"). People who do that should expect to suffer consequences, and accept that outcome as a part of the protest.
More pertinently, should it be legal for people to go up and put traffic cones on top of actively driven vehicles, intentionally to confuse or disrupt the driver? Or should they be punished?