Too soon to ban robots
San Francisco’s sidewalks are a battlefield filled with skateboards, scooters, cracked pavement and heedless humans glued to smartphones. To this obstacle course add delivery robots, which could pose a danger — or maybe none at all.
That’s the problem with a plan by Supervisor Norman Yee, who wants to ban the hamper-size devices. He believes the remote-controlled vehicles are too unreliable and lethal to allow on streets or sidewalks. Regulations won’t work and more testing and tweaking will ensure only that the devices take root and zoom along public paths, he argues.
No question the rolling robots are a surprising sight, but it goes too far to dump an innovative idea before it can prove itself. A handful of other cities and states are open to experimenting with the self-piloting gizmos. Tech-mecca San Francisco would be at odds with this willingness.
Yee is keying into larger issues: the runaway success of ride-hailing services that are blamed for increasing traffic and soon-to-arrive self-driving cars and trucks, which need ample scrutiny. A sprinkling of slow-speed robot vehicles could mean upending another corner of the transportation world and its economy.
These uncertainties still aren’t enough to quash a promising idea. Study and controls should come first. Don’t ban the bots.