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A pair of vehicles are operating on a route through the city as part of the Baltic state's presidency of the European Union, and have so far managed not to collide with any other road users, national broadcaster ERR reports [gallery itself requires JS from s.err.ee and news.err.ee -- Ed.].
But there have been a number of near misses since the launch on Saturday, ERR says. An eyewitness reports that one of the buses failed to give way to a police car with its lights flashing on Monday; while an ERR photographer saw a bus ignore a red light at a pedestrian crossing, ploughing on regardless of the "surprise" it had provoked.
Despite no-one driving, local traffic law means that there still has to be a responsible person on board, meaning that all passengers are greeted by a host. They've been tasked with explaining the technology to passengers new to the world of autonomous vehicles, ERR says.
Judging from the picture, the buses soothingly seem to be constructed out of Nerf.
Your humble editor lives and works only hundreds of meters from each end of the trial route, so decided to take a quick, and fortunately uneventful, trip on one this (thursday) lunchtime. I now realise there are some things I forgot to snap, such as what the member of staff (a) does, and (b) can do. The answers to which are simple: (a) very little apart from gesticulate to pedestrians who are too frightened to cross in front of the vehicle; and (b) very little at all, as there are no controls. There's a keyboard from which a reset can probably be invoked, but that's it. [Not so - I saw more on my second trip, see below -- Ed.]
I'm happy to treat this as an AMAA (Ask Me Almost Anything), in particular if that means I can waste time on the bus again tomorrow!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 04 2017, @11:36AM (1 child)
I've no idea whether there are any laws in Estonia about hacking. I personally view unauthorized access to anything connected to a network as equivalent to entering someone's home/office without permission, which is wrong even when the door is unlocked.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Friday August 04 2017, @11:49AM
Yes, there are laws. That place was a training ground for Putin's criminal hackers:
2007 cyberattacks on Estonia [wikipedia.org]
10 Years After the Landmark Attack on Estonia, Is the World Better Prepared for Cyber Threats? [foreignpolicy.com]
And some more context (this was in 2007):
Hackers Take Down the Most Wired Country in Europe [wired.com]
Don't embrace online voting! ... Don't embrace hackable vehicles?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]