
Wielding Rocks and Knives, Arizonans Attack Self-Driving Cars - guard0g
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/31/us/waymo-self-driving-cars-arizona-attacks.html
======
rjdagost
My brother lives in the neighborhood where this public beta testing is
occurring. Folks, let me tell you from first-hand experience- these cars are
terrible drivers. They are extremely hesitant, and because of this they cause
traffic backups and delays in places where safety is compromised. You better
hope you are not behind one when they perform a left-hand turn onto a busy
street, because you are probably going to be waiting a while. They stop in
seemingly random situations where human drivers would never stop, like a
bicyclist standing way off the side of the road (talking to someone) with his
bike pointing towards traffic. People have told me they've been in the middle
of a turn behind a Waymo car, when all of a sudden the car just randomly stops
for no apparent reason, leaving them stranded in the middle of the
intersection as the light turns red. The default reaction for a Waymo car
under any sort of ambiguity seems to be to just stop (literally) until the
ambiguity resolves itself. Unfortunately this causes considerable confusion
and traffic backups for human drivers.

I understand why Waymo is proceeding cautiously. But you really get the
impression that the technology has a long ways to go. People in Chandler are
pissed because this fleet of cars is a huge nuisance and is in fact less safe
for human drivers who are sharing the road. I have no doubt that autonomous
vehicles will be safer than human drivers someday, but that day is definitely
not today.

~~~
hardatwork
> People have told me they've been in the middle of a turn behind a Waymo car,
> when all of a sudden the car just randomly stops for no apparent reason,
> leaving them stranded in the middle of the intersection as the light turns
> red.

How does that work? My driving experience is limited, and only in Australia,
but I can't think of a situation where I'd be allowed to enter an intersection
if there is already a car ahead of me that's still in it.

Edit: I'm getting downvoted so maybe I didn't explain it right. Here's a quote
from AU law: _It is against the law to enter an intersection if you cannot
drive through and into the road you plan to enter. However, when turning
right, you can proceed into the intersection and wait near the centre of the
intersection for the oncoming traffic to pass (as long as it is safe and the
road you are turning into is clear)._ So from my POV it's pretty unfair to
blame Waymo for getting stuck in a situation when it's only your law breaking
that's making it so dangerous.

~~~
PakG1
All you have to consider is the possibility that in some other regions of the
world, that law doesn't exist and you're allowed to trail the car in front of
you to make the turn you want. This is because for busy intersections, the
closer you are to making the turn, the more chance you have of making it
successfully. In general, there is greater throughput, and the safety risks
are minimal because the yellow light signals for oncoming traffic to stop and
gives enough time for everyone waiting to make the turn before it goes red (at
least, that's what a yellow light is supposed to be, some people run it, and
some people even run red lights).

I take it that in Australia, you drive on the left side of the road? In North
America, you drive on the right side of the road, so the logic would apply
when you're turning left, not right.

~~~
bicubic
The rule has nothing to do with the handedness of the traffic. The rule comes
down to 'do not enter an intersection unless you are 100% sure you will clear
it before the lights change'. If you enter an intersection so late that it's
about to turn red while another car is waiting to turn, you're at fault, not
the car in front of you for not turning sooner. The red light transition
timing is set to allow one and only one car to exit the intersection before
the other side has a green light to enter.

The rule exists to prevent intersections from getting blocked by idiot drivers
who enter too late and get stuck, which if not immediately cleared will cause
gridlock to begin forming.

I find it a bit hard to believe that such a rule doesn't exist in America.

~~~
mattbreeden
> The rule comes down to 'do not enter an intersection unless you are 100%
> sure you will clear it before the lights change'.

Yes, that is how it's supposed to work here. But when you enter because there
isn't any traffic coming and you assume the waymo vehicle will do the obvious
and turn left, and then it just stops, it's very easy to get stuck out in the
intersection behind it - in a situation that wouldn't happen with any human
driver.

~~~
Operyl
Might I introduce you to South Florida then. Overly cautious 80+ year old
drivers that cause accidents for being just too cautious/slow to react. That’s
what the Waymo cars sound like right now.

------
KKKKkkkk1
I love this quote:

 _“People are lashing out justifiably, " said Douglas Rushkoff, a media
theorist at City University of New York and author of the book “Throwing Rocks
at the Google Bus.” He likened driverless cars to robotic incarnations of
scabs — workers who refuse to join strikes or who take the place of those on
strike.

“There's a growing sense that the giant corporations honing driverless
technologies do not have our best interests at heart,” Mr. Rushkoff said.
“Just think about the humans inside these vehicles, who are essentially
training the artificial intelligence that will replace them.”_

Why is it that for every act of random vandalism or hooliganism, there's
always an academic who will find a way to blame the victim?

~~~
wwarner
Wait -- Scientist kills innocent bystander with his experiment and the public
shouldn't be mad about it? Would you have said the same thing if the professor
defended Waymo?

~~~
ng12
I feel like this rapidly moves into Trolley Problem territory. 10,000+ people
die in a year due to drunk driving, what's the acceptable death toll for
rolling out driverless cars as fast as possible?

~~~
jdavis703
Wouldn’t mandatory breathalyzer ignition locks solve this problem? This is a
proven technology that shouldn’t kill anyone as it’s being rolled out. Move
fast and break things is great for websites and apps, but when human lives are
at stake it requires strict ethical considerations.

~~~
rblatz
What about all the existing cars on the road? What about manual cars that can
be push started? Who installs and certifies these, they need calibrated
frequently, they are extremely simple to bypass for anyone with even basic
vehicle knowledge.

~~~
jhbadger
If the law starts now, in 5-10 years the vast majority of old cars will be
junked. Sure, there will still be a few old cars, but they will be an
insignificant minority. It's not unlike how other rule introductions worked.
Nobody banned old cars without seatbelts, they just required that all new cars
have them.

------
kodablah
> In some of their reports, police officers also said Waymo was often
> unwilling to provide video of the attacks. In one case, a Waymo employee
> told the police they would need a warrant to obtain video recorded by the
> company’s vehicles.

Veering off topic a bit here, but this is a very good decision by the company.
Taking a hard line here removes the subjectivity of when to violate your
customer's privacy and puts the onus on the police to choose to make that
violation.

~~~
sneakernets
I'm not sure if they really care about privacy as much as they do arse-
coverage. The sentence before that one:

>The emergency drivers in the Waymo vans that were attacked in various cases
told the Chandler police that the company preferred not to pursue prosecution
of the assailants.

If I didn't know any better, this statement reads as if the emergency driver
doesn't exist to Waymo. One could argue that they aren't the target, but
nowhere else can I think of someone attacking a vehicle _because_ of the
vehicle, and not the one "not driving" it.

~~~
xiphias2
It doesn't matter why the emergency drivers attacked. It's a hubris of Google
Management that they think that they should be the ones who decide whether the
victim (the driver) should pursue prosecution or not, and the company should
help the driver in his decision, whatever it is.

It was very sad to see that the forced arbitration case was handled only for
sexual offences, Google management has too much power over employees when they
are assaulted.

~~~
mikeash
Neither Google nor the driver gets to make that choice. The police decide
whether to refer the incident for prosecution and the prosecutor decides
whether to pursue it. Google saying they don’t want to pursue it carries only
as much weight as the police and prosecutor give it.

~~~
masonic
If Google refuses to provide video and sensor data, it becomes difficult to
impossible to prosecute.

If they do this in _some_ but not all cases, that lends to suspicion that the
denial cases could show egregious misconduct on the part of the Waymo software
(I.e. avoiding self incrimination).

~~~
mikeash
Seems like it would be pretty easy to get a warrant for the video.

------
rdtsc
It is interesting how Waymo chose not to pursue charges in a few cases where
they had footage of the assailant. They thought it would further antagonize
people in the community of making it an us vs them issue, with court cases,
lawyers and publicity ensuing. But if charges are not pursued, it might also
increase the attacks...

There are already road-rage issues between human drivers, as cars are
perceived to dehumanize other side "me vs car". In this case this just gets
amplified. A few tricks might help here, for example, making the car look less
a "Waymo" car and just make it like a normal car. It might be hard to hide the
camera and sensors completely. In that case maybe make a random logo, say Acme
Surveyors, inc.

Another trick could be to have the test drivers pretend they are driving the
car rather than sit and watch. They could keep their hands on the wheel and
pretend to move it, so make it seem like they it's just a human driver.

~~~
beisner
Letting a large number of attacks slide is probably worth a piece of the ~$1
trillion private and industrial transport market.

------
Jedi72
I'm all for driverless cars, but if you put an algorithm in charge then the
creators of that algorithm need to be legally responsible for the outcome. I'm
talking engineers going to prison when one of these cars does inevitibly hit
someone. Every driver is liable for their actions on the road, for some reason
SV thinks being "statistically better than humans" means they aren't
responsible for however small a % of crashes they are responsible for. It's
like saying I only crashed once in my 50 years of driving so on average I'm
not responsible for killing that kid last Tuesday.

~~~
b_tterc_p
In what universe would it make more sense to make the engineer liable rather
than the larger corporate entity? Also, that’s not how human driving works. If
you hit someone while following the rule of the road and not doing anything
especially negligent, you won’t face criminal charges. You use the word
“inevitably” but it doesn’t make sense at all with your world view.

~~~
Jedi72
If, in the view of a court of law, it was not the algorithms fault due to
negligence or whatever then I agree they are not responsible. I only ask the
same rules be applied to the machine as a human. As for who ultimately pays,
fine, substitute CEO or whatever. As long as someone actually does time, and
it's not just a fine, because you can't put a company in prison. If we were
talking about civil engineers designing a bridge that causes a death, I'm sure
that chief engineers face at least some personal liability regardless of
whatever shield the company offers.

~~~
valar_m
Fortunately, the law is actually quite sane in this area, so there won't be
any engineers going to prison for vehicular manslaughter:

 _Manslaughter is the unlawful killing of a human being without malice. It is
of three kinds:

(c) Vehicular—

(1) Except as provided in subdivision (a) of Section 191.5, driving a vehicle
in the commission of an unlawful act, not amounting to a felony, and with
gross negligence; or driving a vehicle in the commission of a lawful act which
might produce death, in an unlawful manner, and with gross negligence.

(2) Driving a vehicle in the commission of an unlawful act, not amounting to a
felony, but without gross negligence; or driving a vehicle in the commission
of a lawful act which might produce death, in an unlawful manner, but without
gross negligence.

(3) Driving a vehicle in connection with a violation of paragraph (3) of
subdivision (a) of Section 550, where the vehicular collision or vehicular
accident was knowingly caused for financial gain and proximately resulted in
the death of any person. This paragraph does not prevent prosecution of a
defendant for the crime of murder._ [0]

[0]
[https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=PEN&sectionNum=192).

------
Barrin92
Vandalising cars or causing threats of violence should never be condoned, but
their still is something very wrong in the way tech companies encroach on the
lives of people unwillingly.

>“They didn’t ask us if we wanted to be part of their beta test,” added his
wife, who helps run the business.

The woman in the article is correct in my opinion. It ought to be up to the
people of Arizona to decide what happens on Arizona's streets, not to a
company from California, because it's the people of Arizona that are the
receiving end of all the social, economic, and safety implications of this
technology.

We have had this trend of tech companies creating facts and asking democratic
permission afterwards a few times now in the world of social media apps, but
now with autonomous driving things are getting a little more physical.

~~~
FreakyT
If they have a problem with it, they should take it up with the state
government of Arizona, which specifically allowed self-driving cars.

~~~
reaperducer
_If they have a problem with it, they should take it up with the state
government of Arizona_

Passing the buck is a very SV-centric response to importnat issue.

Like Google's response from the CCC the other day saying, "Yeah, we track
people in bad ways, but everyone else does it too, so it's OK."

"Oh, our self-driving car isn't responsible for killing a pedestrian. It's the
governor of Arizona who allowed us to kill the pedestrian who is to blame. Go
after him! We're only responsible to shareholders, and the kid wasn't a
shareholder."

~~~
kodablah
> Passing the buck is a very SV-centric response to importnat issue.

Eschewing responsibility is a very SV-targeted response to an important local
issue. I'd rather these decisions be made at the local government level
instead of having outliers in the community (i.e. your neighbors) appeal to
higher authority usurping democracy. Especially when those squeaky wheels are
throwing rocks, claiming the company others asked to have in town are passing
the buck, etc.

------
FreakyT
Unfortunate, but I guess with any new tech there will always be luddites.

Many HN folks probably already know the etymology, but for those that aren't
familiar, the word "luddite" itself comes from "English textile workers in the
19th century [who] destroyed textile machinery as a form of protest" [1]

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite)

~~~
pdkl95
Unfortunately, there is a common misconception that Luddites were against
technology. That's incorrect: they were skilled textile workers that _used_
technology similar to any other skilled profession. From the first paragraph
of the wiki page:

> The group was protesting the use of machinery in a "fraudulent and deceitful
> manner" to get around standard labour practices.

There is a lot of similarity with modern tech companies (Uber is the canonical
example) working around labor in a way that concentrates wealth. As an early
form of labor fighting back against capital abusing the amplifying effect of
technology, I agree with the Luddites. Learn from them, or - as described in
this article - we will see their violent methods again.

~~~
c3534l
It's not a misconception. I know a lot of authors have argued, correctly, that
there was some nuance to the Luddites arguments, but the fact remains that
they did in fact behave exactly as was described: there was a technology that
they comitted acts of terrorism against because they prefered the old ways and
attempted to slow that progress. People are now throwing in these corrections
every time someone mentions luddites even though nothing they said was wrong,
simply non-sympathetic. Those aren't the same things. Not agreeing that they
should be as iconically maligned as they are isn't the same thing as a common
misconception. None of the core fact are in dispute, you just want to defend
them while ignoring the central point of it's futility.

~~~
pdkl95
> they comitted acts of terrorism

I never said they didn't.

> they prefered the old ways and attempted to slow that progress.

Yes, that's correct. _Why_ did they "prefer the old ways"?

~~~
SamReidHughes
Because they were against technology.

~~~
markdown
No, they were against this particular technology because its introduction
meant they could no longer earn a living and feed their families.

Technology that benefits the few _at the expense of the many_ is going to
destroy us.

The only way around it is UBI in some form or another.

~~~
ufmace
Macroeconomic forces are complex. Technology has wiped out entire types of
work many times over the years, and the workers usually, though not always,
make out all right. The problem is not any particular technological advance
IMO, but overloading the economic mechanisms that allow people to find new
careers. Too much technological advance too fast plus too many industries
shipped overseas where labor is cheaper in an environment without enough new
job development equals a permanent underclass, with all of the economic
tensions that come along with it.

Meanwhile, UBI has many serious problems and we don't have anywhere near the
level of job disruption to make it a workable solution.

~~~
newer_guy
Your entire viewpoint is based on the idea that there will always be jobs no
matter how advanced ai and automation becomes. This is the idea that needs to
be addressed, not the shrubbery surrounding it. It’s meaningless to say that
new jobs have always been found and that rapid advancement in technology has
not seemed to doom us so far. That’s like saying we haven’t run out of oil yet
so why would we ever run out. The number of tasks that a human can do is
_finite_. When machines saturate that set of tasks, something really bad will
happen. But even long before, there will be massive problems as we approach
it.

I already know you won’t be convinced by what I’m saying. Just respond with
your strongest counter-argument to my _central point_ about the finite nature
of human jobs, or in other words what will happen when machines can do
everything we can. Just give me your strongest counter-argument about that. I
will then explain why that’s wrong, and we can continue until you see that
you’re wrong. I will be extremely patient about it.

~~~
dang
Can you please not cross into incivility in HN comments? It leads to flamewars
and we're trying for better than that here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
jameslk
> “The behavior is causing the drivers to resume manual mode over the
> automated mode because of concerns about what the driver of the other
> vehicle may do,” Officer Johnson wrote.

Interesting that the drivers don't trust how the autonomous vehicles will
handle these cases. In the case of someone actively being malicious, it seems
more manual intervention will be desired. I can't see how this will work out
with certain car companies touting their cars will not be equipped with
steering wheels.

~~~
falcor84
As I understand it, a remote operator would be able to assume control

~~~
pavel_lishin
At the speeds cars travel at, this seems like a solution that isn't going to
work very well.

------
jancsika
To all the Hacker News bringing up Luddites:

Why aren't there similar stories of people throwing rocks at Tesla vehicles?

Those vehicles are readily identifiable and have had safety issues from
drivers using its cruise control _as if_ it were autopilot. Moreover it's a
goddamned battery on wheels which could put an enormous number of car service
shops out of business. There are already laws in various states to keep Tesla
out for that reason.

There could be a lot of reasons why someone throws rocks at a Waymo vehicle
but also thinks Tesla is cool. Ludditism is not one of those reasons.

~~~
tlb
Someone spray-painted my wife’s Tesla while she was sitting at a stop light
and ran away before she could believe it was happening. In a nice part of
Silicon Valley. It happens.

The original Luddites didn’t hate all technology, just the tech (powered
looms) that was putting them out of work. I suspect that’s behind every attack
on technology.

~~~
whatshisface
That might have been out of hatred for people affluent enough to afford a
Tesla, rather than a dislike of Teslas. Also many if not most vandals are
motivated exclusively by the thrill of avoiding being caught.

------
almost_usual
These vehicles will get vandalized even if the public accepts them. Great new
graffiti medium owned by “Big Corp” that drives all over metro areas 24/7\.
Wonder how much companies will need to spend just to keep them from being
covered in tags.

~~~
mda
As if every aspect of our life is not shaped by "big corp"s. It is laughable
actually. They should vandalize their tv, detergent box and cereals as well.

~~~
almost_usual
You’re missing the point of a vandals initiative.

You don’t get famous vandalizing things in your home. You do get famous
vandalizing things that move through metro areas 24/7\. Look at NYC subways in
the 70s and 80s. They needed to create entire cleaning facilities that
operated nonstop to finally get the graffiti off the trains. The insides are
still tagged up to a degree.

Spray paint is probably the easiest thing to clean. Wait for people to use
etch bath on the windshields and windows of these vehicles. They’ll need to
replace all the windows to get them looking right again.

------
kart23
Yes, of course violence and vandalism is never justified, but think of it from
a bored high schoolers perspective. It would be so much fun in the future to
stop a waymo in the middle of an street, cover its cameras, and watch the
aftermath. Pranks involving technology are gonna be way more fun in the
future.

~~~
analog31
People who lose their jobs to the new technology can be hired as guards to
protect the technology from Luddites. Or as insurance adjusters.

~~~
questionasked
not every truck driver can be retrained as private security

~~~
analog31
I'm sorry, I was being snarky, and yes I justly deserved the downvote.

------
chevas
Fear of change and new things. People were opposed to cars when they were
first introduced. Ironically self-driving cars will arguably save countless
lives. The resistance and fear will pass. But I do love driving...

~~~
zanny
In the same way you can go horseback riding today on dedicated tracks and in
areas under the ownership of the farm you will still have courses to manually
drive cars on for a very long time after the general introduction of self
driving vehicles.

And while its not directly comparable, I still see horse and buggy carriages
on public roads in PA so they haven't ever outright banned that particular
obsoleted mode of transport. If the Amish lobby can keep shit getting dropped
in my streets I'm sure the collective car enthusiasts of the world will keep
their right to drive for a while at least.

------
bawana
IT's the 'misuse'of tech. Sure, we can optimize for efficiency if efficiency
is defined by minimizing cost or maximizing safety. But in a world of humans,
efficiency should be defined by 'maximizing human utility'. In other words,
use tech to make people better, more employable, happier. And no I do not mean
borg. If we continue down this path, ultimately we will marginalize humanity
because our systems are far more efficient than the evolutionary process that
spawned and selected us. in the specific example of 'self driving vehicles' an
analogy might be to have an AI supervisor issuing directives. Much as our GPS
issues turn directions, an advanced AI could be pointing out traffic hazards
hundreds of feet away that many people who are distracted, texting, talking or
just have poor vision would miss. OTOH, we have the resilience of millenia on
our resume, whereas machines are scarcely 200 years old. If a cataclysm hits
the planet, much of the static infrastructure will fail.

------
Scoundreller
> A man pulled up alongside a Waymo vehicle and threatened the employee riding
> inside with a piece of PVC pipe.

PVC???

~~~
protomyth
You could hurt someone with it. Its not as intimidating as copper, but its
going to hurt. Never tried to break a window with it.

[https://www.lowes.com/pl/PVC-pipe-PVC-pipe-fittings-Pipe-
fit...](https://www.lowes.com/pl/PVC-pipe-PVC-pipe-fittings-Pipe-fittings-
Plumbing/4294763909)

------
kamaal
_The antitechnology Luddite movement will grow increasingly vocal and possibly
resort to violence as these people become enraged over the emergence of new
technologies that threaten traditional attitudes regarding the nature of human
life (radical life extension, genetic engineering, cybernetics) and the
supremacy of mankind (artificial intelligence). Though the Luddites might, at
best, succeed in delaying the Singularity, the march of technology is
irresistible and they will inevitably fail in keeping the world frozen at a
fixed level of development._

\- Ray Kurweil

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_made_by_Ray_Kurzwe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_made_by_Ray_Kurzweil)

------
village-idiot
On one hand, I am sympathetic to fears of driverless car safety and job
losses. I would not be a big fan of having my (hypothetical) children playing
on a street that self driving cars are being tested on.

On the other, if you threaten the employee within the car or attempt to drive
them off the road, you should be prosecuted with the full force of the law.
There are still people within those self driving cars, and attempted homicide
is still a crime.

Edit: being opposed to attempted vehicular homicide is an unpopular opinion.
Never saw that coming.

~~~
userbinator
Another position to take against driverless cars (or rather, the proliferation
and eventual obligation thereof) is the loss of freedom and control. Instead
of the fault of human causing harm to another human, it's replaced with the
fault of an opaque, massively complex algorithm; and that is rather unsettling
to some people.

~~~
mmmeff
Ghost in the Shell touched on this really well.

There's the potential for bad actors to plant dangerous training into these
algorithms. Hypothetically, someone could turn an entire fleet of self-driving
taxis into an assassination mechanism. Every vehicle can wait until a specific
individual is spotted crossing the street and fail to stop at a light. The
corporation that owns this taxi then will say there was a software failure
with the one specific taxi, take it out of commission, and move on with
business as usual. A few deaths a year is still less than the death toll of
human-operated cars, after all.

------
sokoloff
> The emergency drivers in the Waymo vans that were attacked in various cases
> told the Chandler police that the company preferred not to pursue
> prosecution of the assailants.

This is part of the problem, IMO. Make it known that you will act lawfully to
protect the safety of your drivers and will cooperate fully with law
enforcement. This pacifist policy does nothing to discourage future attacks.

~~~
pjc50
As others have pointed out, that's escalating. It forces the other party to
back down _or escalate_. It forces the conflict into the public eye and
undoubtedly costs more in bad publicity than damage to cars.

------
defen
Are there any other examples from relatively recent history of new technology
that people would spontaneously attempt to attack/destroy in an uncoordinated
fashion like this?

~~~
Jill_the_Pill
I remember reading a "how-to" about blinding public surveillance cameras --
not sure how many folks actually did so.

------
Eric_WVGG
Imagine how furious the citizens of Chandler, AZ will get when they find out
how many people are killed by human-driven cars every year.

~~~
whatshisface
That fury has already been folded in to society in the form of the many
negative consequences awaiting the perpetrators of vehicular manslaughter.

~~~
stefan_
None at all? A citation? That is the reality.

Look at this very story. Erik and Elizabeth O’Polka driving dangerously on
purpose, and all police has to offer is a 'warning'? It's even an off-hand
joke in this NYT piece.

~~~
whatshisface
Here is a page detailing the situation in California:
[https://www.shouselaw.com/vehicle-
manslaughter.html](https://www.shouselaw.com/vehicle-manslaughter.html)

~~~
stefan_
You are not hearing me. The theory is clear; the practice is that if you kill
someone with your car and you are not DUI (no license is fine), you will be
very likely not charged.

[https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2018/07/30/five-weeks-later-
broo...](https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2018/07/30/five-weeks-later-brooklyn-da-
eric-gonzalez-hasnt-charged-the-driver-who-killed-4-year-old-luz-gonzalez-and-
left-the-scene/)

------
kgwxd
Probably not a good idea to damage property in protest. Maybe build something
cheap and portable that should prevent them from moving. If they do move
through the obstacle anyway, you've demonstrate how unsafe they can be.

------
baxtr
Somehow, this reminds me of google glass hole incidents...

------
bko
> "People are lashing out justifiably," said Douglas Rushkoff, a media
> theorist at City University of New York and author of the book "Throwing
> Rocks at the Google Bus." He likened driverless cars to robotic incarnations
> of scabs — workers who refuse to join strikes or who take the place of those
> on strike.

I don't see how violence or vandalism of property is ever justified. Not to
mention the fact that pelting self-driving cars with rocks or trying to run
them off the road puts others in danger as well.

What I don't understand about these modern day Luddites is why what's
considered today's technology is okay but any technological advances beyond
this point is harmful. Why not attack washing machines and dishwashers? Surely
forcing people to get their clothes washed by hands would create hundreds of
thousands of jobs.

~~~
istjohn
>The trouble started, the couple said, when their 10-year-old son was nearly
hit by one of the vehicles while he was playing in a nearby cul-de-sac.

I would be angry, too. The prospect of self-driving cars excites me, but I can
totally understand not wanting your neighborhood to become the testing grounds
for this new tech. Uber and Tesla's mishaps in the self-driving space
understandably color the public's perception of Waymo's far more responsible
efforts to date.

~~~
Aunche
I understand the sentiment, but I'd take the word of those who harass random
Waymo drivers with a grain of salt.

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0x8BADF00D
This article really sums up 2018 quite nicely. A year exemplifying the heights
of both technological achievement and human stupidity.

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sneakernets
It only sounds barbaric until the automation comes for _your_ job.

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monksy
> Officer William Johnson of the Chandler Police Department described in a
> June report how the driver of a Chrysler PT Cruiser wove between lanes of
> traffic while taunting a Waymo van.

How do we know that it just wasn't the PT Cruiser's driver's normal driving
behavior. They did buy a PT Cruiser in the first place.

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narrator
I wonder what the algorithm says to do when a protestor steps in front of a
speeding car that would have to brake hard enough to injure the occupants of
the car in order to avoid hitting the protestor? Under a comparative fault
regime, Google and the protestor would both be partially at fault for the
occupants injuries. The protestor is broke, so Google will bare the whole
burden of being jointly and severally liable. Or should it make a calculation
of how badly it's going to injure the occupant and the protestor and minimize
the situation in terms of damage to the company, thus possibly choosing to
injure the protestor over the occupants to preserve brand value and future
revenue?

