Defense Against the Dark Cars: How People Grief Autonomous Vehicles

As autonomous vehicles (AVs) become a reality on public roads, researchers and designers are beginning to see unexpected behaviors from the public. Ranging from curiosity to vandalism, these behaviors are concerning as AV platforms will need to know how to deal with people behaving unexpectedly or aggressively. We call these antagonistic behaviors griefing of AVs, adopting the term from online gaming, which Warner and Raiter define as "Intentional harassment of other players...which utilizes aspects of the game structure or physics in unintended ways to cause distress''. We used the term griefing (rather than bullying), as not all behavior was intended to be violent or demeaning. However, any behavior that delays an AV's journey could be problematic for AV developers and consumers. We observed ten griefing instances over four years and five studies of pedestrian-AV behavior in three countries. For each study, we modified a conventional vehicle to appear autonomous through fake LiDAR and decals saying "Driverless Vehicle''. The driver hid beneath a costume that looked like a car seat, allowing them to remain in control of the vehicle at all times while the vehicle appeared fully autonomous from the outside. Pedestrians were generally convinced of the illusion, as confirmed through interviews with consenting pedestrians and video recordings of all interactions. Full detail on the study, as well as proposed design principles to counter this behavior, will be published at HRI 2020 as a full paper. These observations build on accounts of bullying towards robots that have been previously reported in the HRI community. While AV developers such as Uber and Waymo have shared anecdotes of past vandalism, we believe this to be the first public video made available that captures the range of griefing from playful to aggressive. We hope this video stimulates conversation regarding appropriate design principles to counter griefing towards AVs. Several researchers study motivations behind this behavior, and it remains unclear how long it will take for it to naturally subside. In the meantime, AVs should be designed with this behavior in mind.