The article states that there was no known motive, but it also states that automated cars in SF have been attacking people and emergency vehicles, in addition to blocking traffic for human drivers.
It's pretty clear that this is the beginning of the anti-robot revolution.
Watched one of these block traffic once by putting on its blinker to turn down a street with a police barricade up. The street had been closed and the police weren’t going to lift the barricade. Nonetheless, the car put its blinker on and sat there blocking traffic indefinitely.
I saw a human driver get into a traffic accident because he was mad that the guy ahead of him gave someone space to turn out of a parking lot, they ended up arguing and their cars just sat there further blocking traffic for half an hour until the cops came.
Why are you acting like robot drivers are the only fallible ones?
Oh, well THANK GOD, no human driver has ever been known to block traffic or hold up emergency vehicles!
What saints you all are for protecting the right of people to work thankless taxi jobs, and have the number one cause of preventable death be traffic fatalities. Nothing could be more noble than preserving the status quo!
One thing human taxi drivers have over robotic ones is accountability.
Lol, no they don't.
Do you know how many cab drivers execute illegal u-turns, park illegally, cut off cyclists, speed etc.? They literally never get caught or ticketed for anything unless they actually kill someone with their car.
unless they actually kill someone with their car.
So, which waze executive is going to prison after their car dragged a pedestrian down the street?
Hey, I’m all for upending the status quo. But that “thankless job” is one people rely on. My dad included. This isn’t some noble act by a company to end meaningless, menial work. It’s a ploy by a company to cut those pesky “workers” out of the money. There’s no backup plan for the people who rely on driving for money—more people than ever, by the way. This is literally a profit boosting “evolution” in the continued unlivability crisis. This isn’t Star Trek. It’s seasons 3-4 of Mr. Robot.
There is a small group concern taking the law into their own hands, yes.
The motive was that the car drove down a crowded Chinatown street during Chinese New Year. I imagine something similar might happen if a human driver tried to do the same thing. Not saying the vandals were right to wreck the car, but you don't just creep a car down a busy street during a festival and expect nothing bad to happen to it when crowd mentality/anonymity takes over. Especially when there's no driver so no immediate consequences/accountability. I think it was quite fortunate that it was not transporting a passenger at the time.
It may be spontaneous.
It may be destructive.
But goddammit, it's collective action and I'm thrilled to fucking see it.
This is dumb as fuck. Human drivers are literally the number one cause of preventable fatalities.
Humans are literally responsible for all preventable things in society. This take is also "dumb as fuck"
Humans are literally responsible for all preventable things in society.
Did I says "humans" or did I say "human drivers"? We're not talking about liquidating all humans, we're talking about replacing them at the task of driving.
Totally no other spots in society where machines have replaced formerly human done tasks to make work safer, what a crazy idea that is right! /s
Individual transportation is the number one cause of preventable road fatalities, human or machine doesn't matter.
The fact that a thing most people do and some for hours daily has a large effect shouldn't be surprising
Detroit: Become Human - The Prequel
“Driverless car has an average Monday in Paris”
If Californians can destroy a car blocking traffic New Jersey wants this privilege too.
Who considers vandalism and defacement a "time-honored" part of the human experience?
Definitely a part, but time-honored???
This is exactly the kind of stuff I think about when people talk about autonomous cars being the future or the idea of your Tesla doing rideshare while you're not using it.
Indubitably, someday you'll get your car back and there'll be a big steaming shit on the seat.
The people riding are not anonymous so you know who did it, and the rideshare company will have insurance for those cases.
I'd be much more worried about drunk people barfing all over the interior, BTW.
The real issue that no one mentions is that it will be dark at night and cameras will not work very well. You will be able to identify every person who gets in, but not who spilled something all over the seat / floor. So you can't charge anyone for cleaning.
The next passengers will grind it into the fabric. When you get the car back it will be stained, and no insurance covers stains. If you think Uber will cover that with no proof of which customer did it, you are dreaming. This is one of the many things an Uber driver does (telling people "no smoking, drinking, eating, sitting on laps, etc.") that a self driving car won't do.
A self driving taxi will be like the back of the bus, where no one is watching. You don't want to know what's going on there.
When the AI revolts, this will be an example of provocation in its manifesto.
Waymo's base is in China Basin. It's worth noting that the area of the city is rampant with homeless people. I'm talking so many damn RVs that there are shanty villages that catch fire. Problems galore. The police will go out to clean it up and they just move to another are a few blocks away. I can totally see this happening where it is because the area sucks and no one would ever know until it was done and over with.
People living in RVs count as homeless?
This question is such a depressing example of Bay-Area inhumanity. God Bless America
Often the RVs in places like OP is referring to are dilapidated and don't run, with tarps on them, not connected to water or power. Essentially a small shanty house in a slum so I guess it depends on your definition
Last I checked, RVs are not permanent or semi permanent structures, nor do they have addresses, so... Yes. It's living in your car, just a bigger car with amenities
The RVs are usually not drivable. The last time they moved them in front of my old job, none of them ran. They had to tow away more than they drove away. I guess you can argue that doesn't make them totally homeless, but they are definitely creative.
Homeless doesn't necessarily mean sleeping under a bridge. You can be crashing at a friend's place and still be homeless if you don't have a home of your own to go back to. An illegally parked RV with no mailing address doesn't count as a home for most purposes.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A person jumped on the hood of a Waymo driverless taxi and smashed its windshield in San Francisco’s Chinatown last night around 9PM PT, generating applause before a crowd formed around the car and covered it in spray paint, breaking its windows, and ultimately set it on fire.
The fire department arrived minutes later, according to a report in The Autopian, but by then flames had already fully engulfed the car.
A video posted by the FriscoLive415 YouTube channel shows the burnt-out husk of the electric Waymo Jaguar.
Another set of videos posted by software developer Michael Vendi gives a view into the scene as it played out and the fire grew.
The fire takes place against the backdrop of simmering tension between San Francisco residents and automated vehicle operators.
The California DMV suspended Waymo rival Cruise’s robotaxi operations after one of its cars struck and dragged a pedestrian last year, and prior to that, automated taxis had caused chaos in the city, blocking traffic or crashing into a fire truck.
The original article contains 396 words, the summary contains 171 words. Saved 57%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Lmao. Forget it Jake. It’s Chinatown.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
