I don’t think that comparison works. People aren’t attacking Flock cameras because they’re taking work away from hard working video camera watchers. It’s because they’re spying on them. By comparison autonomous delivery vehicles aren’t doing anything the manned vehicles don’t do today.
> As part of a June 2024 survey, the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator for Political Economy
and Regulation (VPA) polled 1,031 U.S. adults ages 18 or older to identify attitudes
toward drone delivery services, which may soon be much more common due to
changes in the regulations governing them.
Our polling reveals that Americans are deeply concerned about the possibility of
neighborhood disturbances, privacy violations, and abuses of power by the large
corporations poised to dominate drone delivery, including Amazon, Google, and
Walmart. Moreover, we find overwhelming bipartisan support for the regulation of
drone delivery services. When Americans learn about policy options to curtail the
drawbacks of drone delivery, they respond positively to the government taking action.
Aerial drone delivery services creating a fleet of flying lawnmower noises over my house is entirely a different thing than quiet electric based ground delivery vehicles... At least theoretical ground based delivery vehicles without humans aren't dumping gatorade piss bottles.
The business conditions that necessitate the use of piss bottles themselves are a pretty good indicator of how poor the working conditions are for many 3rd party contracted delivery services.
To drive itself around safely, any ground vehicle will need some kind of awareness of those surroundings. Right now, that means cameras. I don't think people will be satisfied if those cameras get replaced with short wavelength radar given that WiFi-band radio goes through walls and would therefore allow spying inside houses and there's already people messing around with this as YouTube tech demos.
Similar applies to basically all sense equipment: if it is good enough for safe driving, it's good enough to be a surveillance node.
And given that "oh no my data was leaked" is a big enough problem even with just websites, that there are whole businesses dedicated to just helping with it, anyone who starts with "Your Privacy Is Important To Us" is automatically facing a massive trust deficit.
