There is an incredibly damning piece of footage in the new film Pavement Overload (YouTube) from Living Streets. A clip of just a few seconds pretty much does the whole job of the charity’s latest campaign – which is calling for an immediate ban on the wheeled food delivery robots used by the likes of Co-op and Just Eat in several UK towns.
In the clip, a wheelchair user, youth disability rights advocate Emily Green, is travelling down a clear pavement, when one of the bots whips across a road, up the curb and rams at full pelt into her legs.
It’s not a one-off. Another robot blocks Green’s path and forces her into a parked car. They also seemingly harass disability rights campaigner Dr Amit Patel, near tripping him on a path.
“If you can see, walk or hear, you probably won’t be affected by delivery robots, but for those of us who’ve worked so hard to get our independence back, this is yet another hurdle,” Patel says.
The film does a good job at stripping away the cutesy image of the bots, showing them ominously loitering on street corners and doing wheelies like a gang of robotic ruffians up to no good.
The footage is punctuated with people directly affected by the electronic pests, as well as stats and polls indicating they’re drifting quickly from novelty to nuisance.
As one campaigner explains: “Our cities don’t accommodate for essentially a mini tank operating on our pavements”.
On the crash footage alone, the film makes a convincing argument.
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