The Passengers

by John Marrs

  Each of the major internet service providers had been legally ordered to remove and block inflammatory comments that contained any accounts or speculation of what Vehicle Inquest Jury Duty involved.

  Her last resort was the official VIJD website, which comprised a five-minute film churning out nothing but government propaganda. Under pressure from those in opposition to artificial intelligence having so much control of cars, the government created the Vehicle Inquest Jury. Using cameras and a vehicle’s black box data, the jury decided if a fatality was the fault of a vehicle’s AI or the Passenger. If it was the former, manufacturers and insurers jointly faced compensation claims. Adequate and costly software reprogramming would also be necessary to ensure the error was not repeated.

  But Libby knew how rarely the inquests blamed AI, a system seen as virtually infallible. She had read about angry, bereaved families protesting the jury’s unjust verdicts placing the cause of a fatal accident squarely upon their loved ones. Those related to the dead had no right to appeal, and as a result, some next of kin who had lost their main bread-winner went on to lose their homes too.

  How the jury reached a verdict was also kept secret. It was self-governing and did not have to justify its decisions. As Libby was someone who believed in complete transparency, it was yet another part of the process that didn’t sit comfortably with her.

  As the day of her duty approached, she vowed to use her five days of service to provide a voice to the minority and challenge decisions where she saw fit.

  But once inside that inquest room, it became apparent her best intentions would be thwarted. Each time she made her point of view known, the initially friendly Jack patronised, belittled, and encouraged her to back down in such a subtle, passive-aggressive way that she couldn’t be sure if she was imagining it. Eventually, and to her shame, she sank into her chair, defeated. In the real world, she wouldn’t hesitate to stand up for herself or her patients. But that room did not represent the real world. It was a private members’ club and she had only been given a guest pass.

  Suddenly, Libby became aware of all eyes upon her.

  “Miss Dixon, have we lost your interest already?” Jack said with a smile. “Do you need me to repeat anything I’ve just said?”

  “No, please go on,” she whispered, her throat dry.

  “How generous of you,” the woman in plaid replied.

  “Well, hopefully with no further lapses of attention from our guest, we can begin,” Jack continued, and gave Libby a wink. “And please be advised, what you are about to witness contains particularly graphic evidence.”

  Libby thought she caught a glimmer of delight behind Jack’s eyes as he ordered the footage to be shown.

  CHAPTER 10

  JUDE HARRISON

  Jude remained paralysed inside his vehicle, his hands clasped on either side of his head and his mouth open. He watched helplessly as the GPS map on his monitor calculated a destination he had no control over. The arrival time for an address in Birmingham was in two hours and twenty-five minutes’ time.

  In his head, he replayed the voice that moments ago had come through his speakers and informed him someone else was controlling his car. And if it were to be believed, he soon would be dead. He reached for the door release button but it didn’t work. He leaned over and tried the same with the other door, but again, nothing.

  “Okay, you’ve got me,” he said aloud. “Whoever is doing this, you’ve had your fun. Can I have my car back, please?” He awaited a response, but none came. Instead, the car continued driving in a direction he had not chosen for it.

  “Think, think,” he muttered, before jabbing icon after icon on the screen of his dashboard, attempting to regain control of both the vehicle and the programmed destination. But nothing he pressed made any difference.

  “Car, go online,” he ordered, trusting that the vehicle’s operating system would allow him to open its user manual and override the navigational system.

  “Vehicle offline,” it replied.

  “No,” Jude commanded. “I need you to go online.”

  “Vehicle offline,” the car repeated.

  He ran through a list of alternative phrases, hoping one might work. “System override,” he said. “Pull vehicle over. Let the driver take control. Open owner manual.” The car failed to respond to any. “Car, do as I fucking tell you!” he yelled in frustration. After a pause, the OS responded.

  “No.”

  Jude hesitated. He had never heard the car use that word before. Typically, if his vehicle was unable to carry out an order, it was programmed to politely reply with an “I apologise, your request is not possible at this time,” followed by an explanation. It had never been a point-blank refusal.

  He grabbed an earpiece from his pocket and affixed it to make a telephone call. “Dial emergency services,” he said.

  “No,” the OS repeated.

  Jude remembered that each time he entered the car, his phone automatically logged on to the vehicle’s Wi-Fi. He scrambled around until he found the accompanying handset in the glove box. He devised a way to turn off the Wi-Fi and reroute the phone to find a 5G signal. But the symbol to confirm it was connected vanished as soon as it appeared. “Signal jammed,” it read. He took a deep breath and tried to look outside for help, but the frosted glass windows remained.

  Suddenly, his speakers came to life, startling him. This time the voice belonged to a woman. “Please, let us go,” he heard her sob. “I haven’t done anything to you.”

  Jude spoke tentatively. “Hello? Who is this?”

  “Who . . . who are you?” she replied, with equal uncertainty.

  “Jude . . . Jude Harrison,” he replied. “Something’s happening to my car.”

  “My name is Claire Arden and I’m inside a Skepter AR5, registration number FGY778. I was on my way to work when my car started driving in a different direction and a voice told me I was going to die. My phone won’t work—can you send someone to help me?”

  “I wish I could but I’m in the same boat as you,” Jude replied. “I’m locked in my car and I can’t get out.”

  “I don’t understand?” she replied. “Ben told me he’d taken out the full service and emergency plan. Aren’t you an operator?”

  “No, I’m sorry,” said Jude. “I’ve tried everything I can think of but I can’t get my car to stop either.”

  “Why . . . why is this happening?” she stammered. “What do they want from me? Do they want money? I haven’t got much but I can try and find some?”

  “Did someone tell you that your car had been hacked?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And did they ask you for money?”

  “No. All they said was that in two and a half hours, I was going to die.”

  Her voice broke and Jude heard her crying again. “They said the same to me,” he replied.

  “Who’s going to help us?”

  “I have no idea. I think we just have to wait until they tell us—”

  “Sam, what’s going on?” A second distressed voice, a female one, came from nowhere and filled Jude’s car.

  “I don’t know, but please try and stay calm,” came a third, this time male.

  “Hello!” yelled both Claire and Jude together.

  How many more of us are there? Jude thought. “Can you hear us?” he asked.

  “Yes, who’s that?” the man replied.

  “We are trapped in our cars and can’t get out—can you help us? Do you have access to a phone signal or Wi-Fi?”

  “No, my wife and I . . . someone has us locked inside . . .”

  But before the male voice could continue, the dashboard in Jude’s vehicle turned on and he saw himself on the television monitor. He was being filmed face-on, from a camera embedded in his dashboard. Then smaller screens appeared with strangers’ faces inside. Jude
counted five in total.

  His heart was beating twenty to the dozen as he listened to the terror-stricken confusion of the others as they begged to be told what was happening to them.

  Then, as quickly as they arrived, they were muted, leaving him in an ominous silence again.

  CHAPTER 11

  ZEPHERTRON MARK 5 INSTRUCTION MANUAL

  5.b. How can your car tell the difference between weather conditions?

  From their birthplace in California’s Silicon Valley to the extreme heat of the Gobi Desert, to Australian wildfires and Siberian ice sheets, test vehicles operated by AI have driven nine million miles around the world. They have negotiated falling ash from Norwegian volcanoes, tornadoes in America’s Midwest, and smog pollution in China. And in the UK, there is now not one single road that an autonomous vehicle has not driven upon. Every piece of data acquired, no matter how small, is studied and used to update technology in every make of vehicle.

  Jack Larsson raised his right hand into the air and lowered his index finger to signal to one of his two assistants.

  “Case number 322,” he began, and footage from a moving vehicle appeared on the jurors’ tablets. A street was also projected as a three-dimensional moving hologram, coming from wall-attached lasers that were directed towards a table in the centre of the room. Moving vehicles could be seen from every angle.

  On her tablet, Libby assumed that from the positioning and close proximity to the road, footage had been taken from high-definition cameras integrated into the front grille of a vehicle. The corner of the screen displayed various statistics, including its speed, and the weather conditions, road gradient, and geographical coordinates.

  “The location of this incident was a new town development just outside Hemel Hempstead,” continued Jack. “The car is a Howley ET, a Level Five autonomous vehicle manufactured like most, from graphene and carbon-reinforced plastic. One owner, no previous incidents recorded, the road tax and insurance details are up to date and the latest software had been downloaded.”

  Libby watched her tablet’s screen as the car maintained a steady pace, travelling at twenty-five miles per hour. The footage switched to a dashboard lens.

  “The temperature outside was a steady twenty-two degrees,” continued Jack. “There was no precipitation, the vehicle was journeying five miles under the speed limit on a dry asphalt dual carriageway, which had seen resurfacing work three months prior. There is one Passenger inside and the vehicle has been on the road in moderate two-way traffic for twenty-two consecutive minutes.”

  Out of nowhere, a white moped appeared and attempted to overtake the car. Libby pushed back in her seat, anxious at what was to come. Her eyes moved towards the hologram images and watched as the moped weaved its way into the gap between the Howley and the truck ahead, clipping the car’s front right bumper. Suddenly, the moped lurched to its left and as the motorcyclist attempted to take control of it, it spun around in a half-circle. Behind it, the autonomous car braked sharply but failed to swerve to avoid it. Then, as quickly as the moped appeared, it toppled to one side, and both it and the rider slipped out of view and under the car.

  Jack lifted his hand again to give a second signal. Without warning, the camera was replaced by another affixed to the car’s chassis. On the jurors’ tablets and the largest of the wall screens, a young woman lay motionless on the road, her limbs protruding at awkward angles and the left-hand side of her skull crushed. Next to her was her helmet. Libby looked away from her tablet, only to be confronted by the same, much larger image, frozen on the wall.

  She became overwhelmed by a feeling of nausea when, for a moment, she was transported back two years ago to Birmingham’s Monroe Street. She could see herself standing in the road, utterly helpless, inhaling the odour of rubber tyres, recalling the crunch of broken glass under the soles of her trainers and staring at her hands, wrists, and shirt cuffs, all stained by blood. She blinked the memory away.

  Of the six cases presented to the inquest yesterday, none had been as graphic as what she had just witnessed. She turned her head to look at her colleagues, but their faces showed no flickers of emotion. They had been doing this for so long, they were immune to death. Libby was not. Especially as it had followed her all her life.

  The dark-haired, dark-eyed man representing the General Medical Council rose to his feet and pointed a laser pen towards the wall. A red dot appeared as the clip was repeated in slow motion. Libby held her eyelids shut.

  “As you can see,” he began, “when the motorcyclist appears, there is very little the vehicle can do to avoid it. It does as it is programmed to do and brakes sharply, but a collision is inevitable.”

  “What was the cause of death?” Jack asked.

  “The autopsy revealed it was a result of severe cranial injuries to the brain stem, limbic cortex, and skull. It’s likely her death would have been instant.”

  “What happened to her crash helmet?” asked the woman in plaid. “Did the impact knock it off?”

  “Yes, it wasn’t fastened properly. It was independently tested and there were no hairline cracks in its shell, no issues with the chin strap or flaws in its manufacture.”

  Jack sniffed sharply. “Vanity. That will be the root cause of this, mark my words. A silly girl less concerned with her own safety than her appearance.”

  Libby opened her eyes and mouth to protest but quickly lost her nerve.

  “What do we know about the Passenger?” asked the religion rep.

  “Male, thirty-seven years old, works in the financial district of London, has no criminal record or convictions,” Jack explained. “He has two children under five years of age and is the sole bread-winner in the house. Obviously, he was left very shaken by this and out of pocket following the repairs that needed to be carried out to his vehicle.”

  “And the victim?”

  Jack shot her a warning glance. “You know very well that we don’t ever refer to the deceased as ‘victims,’” he said. “There are no victims here unless we judge they have been unlawfully killed.” The religion rep’s head fell like that of a scolded dog as Jack continued. “The motorcyclist was nineteen years old, with a similarly clean criminal record, a theatre studies student in her first year of university. No dependents of note.”

  Libby reflected upon her own late teenage years, specifically how her attitude towards her life changed the day her brother took his. Nothing had ever been the same again after she found Nicky’s body hanging from a light fitting in his bedroom. The cracks in her family were instant, then grew longer and wider as the years progressed. It was her fault that he died, and she would never forgive herself for letting it happen. Failure to use her voice and speak of her concerns would always be Libby’s biggest regret. She would not let it happen again.

  Suddenly, the urge to defend the motorcyclist got the better of her. The girl’s life was worth more than a case number.

  “What was her name?” Libby asked gingerly.

  “Does it matter?” the woman in plaid replied, tilting her head forward so her glasses slid down her nose again.

  “Yes, because I’d like to know.”

  She rolled her eyes and looked to one of the assistants in the corner of the room. He swiped his screen, and something appeared on the plaid woman’s tablet. She was about to answer, when Jack interrupted.

  “That’s classified,” he replied.

  “What were her grades?”

  “Again, classified information, Miss Dixon.”

  Libby was reluctant to give up. “You said she had no dependents of note. Precisely what relatives did she have?”

  “Classified.”

  This time he shrugged as if to apologise. But everyone in the room knew better than to believe him.

  “What about the name of the Passenger whose vehicle killed her?”

  Jack shook his head. “
I appreciate you have a curious nature, somewhat like an excitable puppy, however, none of this is of any consequence to the outcome of our decision, I’m afraid.” He looked to the woman in plaid. “Any faults reported within the vehicle?”

  “The black box was given the standard examination along with a full diagnostic check, and there were no errors reported,” she replied. “From a legal perspective, I have no doubt that this is human error caused by the motorcyclist.”

  “Why didn’t the car try to avoid her?” Libby continued. “All it does is brake.”

  Jack looked at the others and rolled his eyes, offering another fake smile. “Are you not aware of how an autonomous vehicle makes a decision in a life-or-death scenario, Miss Dixon?”

  “Yes, of course, but . . .” However, Jack had little interest in Libby’s reply and spoke over her.

  “Then you will know that if a vehicle, like the one we have just watched, brakes without swerving, it has calculated the risk cost and makes its choice for a very, very good reason.”

  “Look to the left- and right-hand sides of hologram,” added the dark-haired man. He was less condescending than Jack but still had yet to make eye contact with her. “On one side are parked cars, and on the other there’s a stream of moving vehicles. Swerving into the path of moving traffic could have caused more fatalities. Next to the parked vehicles is a pavement—from this angle you can see there are at least twelve pedestrians. Colliding with any of those cars could have pushed them into their path.”

  “Could have,” Libby repeated. “That’s by no means a certainty though, is it?”

  The room fell silent and she became aware that even Jack’s assistants were looking at each other nervously. But Libby wasn’t prepared to back down now. “Do you have a projection of exactly which cars it could have hit, the materials they’re made of, and the force required to push them onto the pavement?” she asked.