Got to admit, as disruptive an action this may be, it’s also pretty funny given how simple and non-destructive this is.
Usually we see actions that are more damaging - but the simple act of “coning” would seem to be a relatively low risk act of defiance that Waymo may not have an easy answer to.
Since this is essentially a victimless crime, and also as innocuous as you say, I believe that this is the tip of the iceberg of pranks/aggression against SDCs. I've seen that stickers have also been plastered over sensors. I believe that attackers will often take advantage of the unattended nature of SDCs in order to confuse and disable them, and the manufacturers will have little recourse but to basically wage an arms race, cat-and-mouse, to continually mitigate each situation as it manifests.
I wouldn't call this a victimless crime. This is putting the vehicle out of service causing a loss of revenue. I consider victimless crimes to be things that consenting adults choose to do that would not harm anyone else. There is clear harm to the company.
Although, I don't disagree with the method of protest.
I don't see how a putative loss of revenue causes a victimization here. A victim is an identifiable human being, with the God-given right to life and dignity, who suffers real harm. A multibillion-dollar robotaxi AI company claims to lose a hypothetical $15 fare because their dumbass vehicle is too stupid to move? Not a victim.
Anyone with a 401k or pension is heavily invested in these businesses, so they are at least victims to these crimes. Having destitute retirees around because the economy didn’t grow enough to support their retirements is a very bad thing.
Anyone who speculates with 401k money on relatively risky tech stocks and startups should either be prevented from gambling with other people's money or should accept the risk to their own money.
Carl's Jr. has several workers and a manager right there to restart the grill and get it working again.
These coners are exploiting a simple hack that would ordinarily be nothing but a minor nuisance to a human driver, but it turns into a showstopper for an SDC, because there is no responsible human for dozens of miles around. It disables the car for an inordinate period of time without a realistic mitigation. It's genius!
Okay, disabling self-serve gas pumps during off hours at a 24/7 station. Removing a stop sign in the middle of the night. Turning on the faucet in an unoccupied apartment.
Did you miss the latter part of the comment? Waymo and Cruise operations in California have been explicitly authorized, i.e. written down on paper/databases, passed through the legislature that has binding authority on all of California, etc...
Funny and i hope you are being funny, it’s the internet you never know.
In case you are serious, there is a difference between acting to harm (human, animal, building, company). Not acting to prevent harm, not acting to provide gain.
Stealing a burger, Reporting a burger being stolen, rolling your sleeves jumping behind the grill to help out
I’m sure a philosophy major can add to the list with a clearer argument
If you don’t eat at Carl’s Jr, you didn’t deprive them of willing revenue. If you decided to bar their doors so others couldn’t eat there, ya, you should go to jail.
Your comment instituted a tongue & cheek low bar for low jail threshold, I just went with it. These days you need to practically murder someone to finally get sent to jail (at least where I live). But if someone physically barred me from entering a fast food restaurant, I’m not sure why that wouldn’t at least be assault (assuming I tried to force myself in, of course then the question is who is assaulting who, that can get messy legally). But, no, you wouldn’t even go to jail for assault, or would get bailed out quickly and get let off by the judge.
Well if someone barred you from entering a fast food that would be assault, absolutely.
But what if someone was pretending to be a public worker doing sidewalk maintenance and that forced you to simply walk on the other side of the road and not being able to access the fast food?
That to me is more like an annoyance and a form of protest.
It’s blinding sensors on a car. Best case, nothing is damaged in a way that hurts someone later.
It’s also property damage. Excusing it in this form is the same blindness that has led to retail becoming unviable in downtown San Francisco. Damage and victimhood doesn’t disappear just because it’s complicated.
How thrilled would you be if I threw a traffic cone on or snowball at your car or house every day? Is that response unjustified because my actions are unlikely to cause damage every time?
The line between peaceful protest and rioting is property damage. This looks intended to be peaceful, but the intent is ambiguous. All it takes is a toss too hard or a hooligan to cross that line, and the line is crossed and civic argument toasted.
Put another way, this is aimless catharsis. Not civic engagement. It’s about as mature as the folks who were egging Google busses a decade ago, and now decry the budget cuts those jobs leaving San Francisco bring.
If we put it into context of a city where the police care about traffic infractions, and you have some guy wearing a ski mask that runs up and throws a large opaque object onto the hood of a moving vehicle, I am confident that any cop worth his salt could think up a plausible reason to write a ticket for that ski-mask guy.
I think it would be a minor infraction of some kind, of course: jaywalking, or mischief, or interfering with moving traffic.
I think that if a cop was determined to ticket the guy, that it wouldn't matter whether the vehicle is driverless or not, it'd still be (in a cop's mind) a ticketable offense.
But of course this is transpiring in San Francisco, where the cops don't care if you're mugged and beaten, or your drugstore is smash-and-grabbed, unless you happen to be Nancy Pelosi's husband.
I'm all for it. Cruise cars have been "coning" mine all over the city by stopping wherever and whenever they want and getting stuck in the middle of the street indefinitely. Have been encountering this multiple times a week now. They should not be allowed if they are not subject to the same traffic rules as the rest of us.
I just rode Cruise for the first time tonight. Within the first 5 minutes of the ride, the car got stuck in the middle of two different intersections. Both times it just sat there with its hazards on while someone remotely tried to unstuck it. All the while, drivers around us were honking (rightfully so). Soon after that, the car turned right on red at an intersection with a sign saying not to.
These cars also drive much slower than others and frequently stop unnecessarily, which annoys every other driver, and causes more honking.
Based on that experience, I totally understand why folks are frustrated with them. Especially drivers who need to drive around these stopped cars everywhere.
1. Are there reliable statistics that show SDC are currently more dangerous than the average, non-incapacitated person?
2. Regardless, those people are still driving today and hopefully driving less in a future world full of SDC. I’m just making assumptions (bad idea I know) but I’m guessing traffic mortality goes down when alternative, safer options are more viable
My major moral issue with SDCs is that they lack a human being who can be responsible for their actions and held liable when something goes wrong.
If you have a human in control, they are presumably licensed, they are identifiable, and they have a personal interest in a clean record (presumably). So there is a full legal system in place to take care of problems on the road.
If there is no human, then who's liable? Who's responsible for mistakes? Do you fine Waymo $100 for blocking fire hydrants? If an SDC drives wrong, do you take it out of service? What are the penalties and recourses for shenanigans? I don't like the fact that the legal system hasn't been able to catch up to this, despite having decades of lead time, and now these things are all over the streets like a cancer. I support the coners wholeheartedly.
> don't like the fact that the legal system hasn't been able to catch up to this
Where are these open questions? In California and San Francisco there is specific enabling statute and liability framing. Every car, self driving or not, is registered. There is no liability black hole at the centre of this, just a lack of public understanding of the law.
> Are there reliable statistics that show SDC are currently more dangerous than the average, non-incapacitated person?
Is there any proof that they aren't? If not, they have no business being on the road. It's not society's responsibility to validate every new potentially deadly tech that a for profit company comes out with, it's the people developing and profiting from the new tech that have the burden to show that it's safe.
I wasn't implying anything; rather, I've just seen various forms of "if you exclude drunk/high/etc. drivers then they are more dangerous" repeated multiple times in different comments. Curious where that was coming from.
> ...it's the people developing and profiting from the new tech that have the burden to show that it's safe.
Is there a reason to believe this hasn't happened? I don't know the process involved in approving an autonomous system but I'm guessing they showed some convincing data to regulators.
It baffles me that San Francisco, with its reputation for cheering on lawlessness, is a priority test site for expensive hardware. When this graduates to smashing sensors, does anyone expect either its citizens to speak up or the SFPD to do anything?
Police in this country have a long and consistent record of protecting the capital class effectively. I see no reason why that would be different here. If someone causes expensive damage to one of these camera-encrusted cars, investigators will be all over the case within hours.
I'm all for reigning in some of the larger stupidity we have around cars and transit, but we're never completely getting rid of single occupancy vehicles and the best route to nearly eliminating DUIs and pedestrian deaths is ultimately going to be driverless vehicles.
The follow-up to "we're never completely getting rid of single occupancy vehicles" should not be "let's put 0 occupancy vehicles on the road" which are not doing any useful transportation service, but are contributing to congestion, emissions etc.
Since it's pointless to come occupied vehicles (which have a person who will have a clear motive to remove the cone), the only ones being impacted are empty and _not_ carrying drunk or reckless otherwise-could-have-been-drivers.
It probably won't happen in most of the United States because most Americans don't want it to but it's not because it's an outlandish idea. It's the cheapest and most practical one.
I just have to say, this is pretty cyberpunk and I'm proud it's San Francisco. That said this comment is a bit low-value so I'll take my downvote if them's the rules.
