r/law • u/screw-britannia • 3h ago
Other A retired Penn professor has been blocking Uber Eats robots for months. This week, she got arrested for it
https://www.phillyvoice.com/philly-woman-arrested-uber-eats-robot-protest/?l332
u/SwordfishOfDamocles 2h ago
What's the charge? Blocking a succulent Chinese meal?
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u/Scrapple_Joe 2h ago
This is in Philly?
I think she should be commended for not beating the bricks off the damn thing. That's how Philly usual treats an unaccompanied robot
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u/Joatboy 1h ago
Poor Hitchbot, it didn't deserve that
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u/pewpl 1h ago
Hitchbot got what it deserved
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u/NonsequiturSushi 6m ago
Looking back, Hitchbot being destroyed in Philly might have been the start of the Butlerian Jihad.
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u/Quinnett 3m ago
I still think about this sentence frequently, more than a decade later.
“If our guileless, simpleton neighbors to the north wish to draw faces on their buckets and treat them like friends, the sparse population density of their pine-fresh taiga wilderness makes this a sad but understandable choice, but the United States is not a receptacle for twee Canadian garbage.”
https://deadspin.com/hitchbot-was-a-literal-pile-of-trash-and-got-what-it-de-1721850503/
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u/Aeolus_14_Umbra 1m ago
” We’ll be sent to the spice mines of Kessel, smashed into who knows what, and then burned!”
— C-3PO, Star Wars
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u/Fusional_Delusional 2h ago
"Disorderly conduct" loosely translates to "contempt of cop." I've seldom seen it stand up in court against anyone but an idiot or a pro se litigant.
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u/razzemmatazz 2h ago
Given that she is willing to waste her personal time by physically blocking it, more power to her.
I'd probably throw a clamp on a wheel to act as a makeshift boot and walk off.
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u/Ging287 2h ago edited 2h ago
Drones are used for reconnaissance, for killing soldiers on the battlefield, to fight fires in China. I personally believe if there's a will, there's a way to program a drone to do it, within reason. Moving food items from point A to B seems like a reasonable use of drones to me. It probably runs on batteries, rather than the gasoline engine a driver would use. Still, for personal and long-term reasons, I support her. Do you want the police to be able to arrest you for impeding a drone? It sets precedent. And for a private corporation nonetheless. Then we get into logistical concerns, taking up space on the sidewalk, no accountability for running into people. I could call the police on someone running into me, but not for a drone doing the same. Until these critical questions are resolved, I support the notion of protesting these drones. There's too many unanswered questions.
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u/20_mile 2h ago
Do you want the police to be able to arrest you for impeding a drone? It sets precedent. And for a private corporation nonetheless.
Well argued. Drones are going to end up with more rights than people if we don't move to prevent that from happening.
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u/ChanceryTheRapper 1h ago
Well, they are extensions of corporations, and many politicians seem to think corporations should have more rights than (poor) people anyway, so...
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u/GargamelBalls 2h ago
Then they came for the food delivery people
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a food delivery person12
u/Ging287 2h ago
I'm acutely aware of that poem. Her freedom was infringed because of private corporation's drone couldn't get around her/she was impeding. With the right of movement, first amendment, freedom of speech and expression. I'll just say I don't think there's a law against impeding a drone. And I don't think there should be one. Is it a conspiracy against rights? I think we should let a jury decide. The Bill of Rights is the foundation of our nation yet LEOs still seek to arrest people for obliging by their liberty.
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u/KieferSutherland 2h ago
They came with an elevator button for the elevator operator
And I did not speak out
Because I was not an elevator operator
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u/Open_Pollution_8038 1h ago
Damn those food delivery jobs were good jobs I’m so glad we died on the hill to save them
Not
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u/articulatedbeaver 2h ago
I would have some sympathy for the police decision if she had pushed, kicked, tipped it or something direct. If it can't just go around a person or obstacle it probably isn't fit for the public space.
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u/real-bebsi 1h ago
you don't think she just kept moving left or right to prevent it from navigating around her?
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u/articulatedbeaver 1h ago
There is a link in the article of her just standing in one spot not moving while a bot just is stopped. I can't say if that is how this encounter went down, but it isn't out of the question.
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u/Logically_Insane 2h ago
“ 5503. Disorderly conduct.
(a) Offense defined.--A person is guilty of disorderly conduct if, with intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof, he:
(1) engages in fighting or threatening, or in violent or tumultuous behavior;
(2) makes unreasonable noise;
(3) uses obscene language, or makes an obscene gesture; or
(4) creates a hazardous or physically offensive condition by any act which serves no legitimate purpose of the actor.”
Totally unfamiliar with Pennsylvanian disorderly conduct, but reading the above it feels like this could go either way. 4 is awfully broad, and disorderly conduct is a bullshit way for cops to oppress us generally going to cover making any sort of unusual scene. Could argue that any blocking of the sidewalk is a hazardous condition regardless of her claims to move for humans. I am partial to her political speech argument, but don’t have any idea if the court will care. I’m also of the opinion that robots don’t deserve any rights to unimpeded travel, cause fuck em, but that’s not very legally sound.
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u/Zealousideal-Oil-462 1h ago
Seems like they also apply to Uber Eats robots! They cause public inconvenience, and recklessly create a risk thereof.
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u/Mtshoes2 1h ago
Seems like she could also claim she was exercising her freedom of speech, since it seems like that is exactly what she was doing.
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u/TemporalColdWarrior 2h ago
Yeah, I think it’d be very hard to prove “intent to cause public inconvenience…” and is this really “recklessly creating a risk thereof”? I think you’re right though that (4) is broad enough to apply to almost anything, depending on what courts consider a legitimate purpose.
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u/Logically_Insane 2h ago
Disrupting a delivery seems a public inconvenience, in the sense that the buyer would likely be waiting longer and may be turned off from patronizing that business.
Digging in element four a bit more, she may have a good case. Seems hazardous/physically offensive have been interpreted rather literally, stuff that could actually hurt a person or tangible offenses like a stink bomb, not morally offensive.
So in terms of being disruptive, in a hazardous way, without legitimate purpose, seems like she was disruptive in a non-hazardous way for a rather proportional political statement.
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u/Jupenator1 1h ago
Also, the law as applied to her actions might lead to a first amendment issue. She's protesting the use of delivery robots because of her beliefs about them. So the action servers a legitimate purpose.
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u/Senacharrib 1h ago
Seems interesting though because these robots commonly obstruct foot traffic. Seems a slippery slope to having to yield right of way to a robot
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u/frakking_you 2h ago
Looking forward to discovery. Hopefully she requests disclosure on robot caused collisions with humans.
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u/ChanceryTheRapper 1h ago
She should have thrown batteries at it and said she mistook it for Santa Claus.
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