In Singapore, residents have expressed concerns about the safety of autonomous vehicles. This chapter considers the case of Singapore, which has supported the development of autonomous vehicles and tested their use. Using research studies and newspaper reports, the chapter examines the rhetorical devices used to frame relevant discussion and identifies the narrative arguments used to reduce fears and justify the presence of vehicles on public streets. The narratives of government and commercial entities complement each other and are frequently upbeat, but they differ in that commercial entities asserted the narrative that autonomous vehicles were inevitable, while government entities did not. The government’s rejection of inevitability supports a different view of law and government, in which government officials decide the degree and pace of AV development. However, Singapore has not adopted a strict regulatory approach, and opted instead for light touch regulation. As a narrative argument, rejection of inevitability does not dictate regulatory approach.

Are robots a tool mindlessly following their programming, or an actor with agency? Are robots inevitable to the extent that we should just accept them, or does regulation have a role to play? And how do we understand our understanding, that is, how do we arrive at concepts to understand human–robot interaction that adequately incorporate different disciplines? These questions suggest that to understand robots and our place in the legal world with them, we must consider subject matter beyond substantive law and procedure. The narrative chapters in this Part of the book provide additional ways to identify the questions raised by human–robot interaction and propose how to begin answering them.

This chapter reexamines the extensively discussed evidence for the circumstances that drove the Jews to a seemingly irrational and hopeless challenge to the power of Rome. The account of Josephus, on which we almost exclusively rely, offers the teleological scenario of a long build-up of hostility that issued inevitably in disaster. While acknowledging the background and circumstances that lay behind the conflict, this chapter emphasizes the numerous contingencies, unanticipated events, personalities, and miscalculations that played a key role in bringing it about. The tension and anxiety that had built up for two generations in a series of individual episodes supplied a significant impetus. But error, accident, and unintended consequences are critical to understanding the course of events. Josephus’ sense of inevitability, born of hindsight and his special situation, needs a corrective.