Walkaway

by Cory Doctorow

“I don’t think I’ve ever traveled this fast in city traffic,” he said. Jacob gave him a fatherly wink. Natalie reached across the large internal compartment and gave her dad a sock in the thigh. “He’s showing off. There’s custom firmware in these, lets them cut the clearance envelope in half, which makes the other cars back off because we’re driving like unpredictable assholes.” “Is that legal?” Hubert, Etc said. “It’s a civil offense,” Jacob said. “The fines are paid by direct-debit.” “What if you kill someone?” Seth got to the point. “That’s a criminal matter, more serious. Won’t happen, though. There’s a lot of game theory stuff going on in the car’s lookahead, modeling likely outs and defectors and injecting a huge margin of safety. Really, we’re playing it safer than the stock firmware, but only because the car itself has got much better braking and acceleration and handling characteristics than a stock car.” “And because you’re terrifying other cars’ systems into getting out of your way,” Seth said.