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San Franciscans disable robotaxis by placing a traffic cone on the hood
- vkou 3y agoI'll point out that it's very easy to disable other menaces to society, like personal automobiles, by just booting them. I don't consent to having to deal with automobiles in the city... They pollute, they make a lot of noise, they are a life-threatening danger to other street users, and many people operate them very poorly.
- Thrio499 3y agoYou can disable all sort of bad stuff from robbers, junkies, rapists, aggressive dogs... by carrying weapon for self defense.
- eimrine 3y agoWhat will you do to an agressive dog in the middle of a city/town if you have a loaded firearm?
- Thrio499 3y agoPet it, and politely ask it to leave.
- mcphage 3y ago> You can disable all sort of bad stuff from robbers, junkies, rapists, aggressive dogs... by carrying weapon for self defense. Also kids knocking on your door, or people pulling into your driveway, or people shopping in a grocery store three hours away, or
- globular-toast 3y agoDoes "booting" mean clamping, ie. locking a metal thing to the wheel of the vehicle? In the UK booting means kicking so it read quite funny to me. Unfortunately, in some places (like the UK) clamping a vehicle you don't own is illegal even if it's on your private property. Cars are heavily subsidised and the huge external costs absorbed throughout society. Also, kicking a vehicle, which could at most cause superficial damage, is not considered an acceptable way to signal to the driver in any situation, even if you feel your life or body is in danger. I don't fully understand why this imbalance exists. I've long dreamed of a portable device that can produce an electromagnetic pulse capable of disabling a car. It really only seems fair that if they can disable me I can disable them.
- hutzlibu 3y agoI think booting here is a metapher to get rid of them all (by laws probably and not by fire).
- aidenn0 3y agogiven that they are talking about disabling the car, they almost certainly mean "booting" in the sense of "to attach a wheel clamp"
- aidenn0 3y agoYes a "Wheel Boot" is another term for a wheel clamp, and "booting" is the act of attaching it. Booting can also mean to kick in the US, fwiw. I suppose I could say "I was so frustrated that the police booted my car, that I booted my car in the boot and hurt my foot!"
- mistrial9 3y agoat a local college town, several young men got into an argument leading to a fist fight. One of the guys was a current athlete star in American football, so we can imagine he was muscular and in peak condition. A rival got into an ordinary car and backed into the athlete, who was [strong|drunk|stupid] enough to try to physically challenge the car moving one meter. The athlete had both legs broken, and the guy driving was "in trouble" .. so there is some context for future auto rodeo players.
- jsnell 3y agoDupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36624172 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36624172 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36627272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36627272
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- seizethecheese 3y ago> They're now encouraging others to do it: "Hell no, we do not consent to this." That’s not how this works. Rules that govern public spaces do not require the consent of everyone. (The alternative would be absurd.) The elected governments of San Francisco and California HAVE consented to this, on behalf of the people.
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y agoHonestly, such toxic culture, I'm curious if they manage to turn it around before this city dies completely.
- bpodgursky 3y agoThe attitude is just NIMBYism for people too poor to buy houses.
- DANmode 3y agoActive consent of the governed has often been a large sticking point for rule of law, historically. Whether or not you, or we, believe that is correct, incorrect, otherwise.
- Manuel_D 3y agoConsent of the governed doesn't mean unanimous consent. If I don't consent to being taxed, I don't get to skip on my taxes. If I don't consent to sharing the road with self driving vehicles, I don't get to sabotage them.
- thebooktocome 3y agoThe sticking point is that “consent of the governed” doesn’t even mean majority consent anymore.
- lo_zamoyski 3y agoThat's too vague. If you mean "every law", it never did mean that, and never should. Mob rule is awful.
- throwaway9274 3y agoThis wasn’t organic. It was organized by a tiny group of activists looking for an anti-tech flashpoint. It’s a hoax. A fiction. An attempt to portray widespread safety concerns among the populace that do not exist. Here’s the local context. There’s a hearing coming up at the board the state of California appointed regarding expansion of the robotaxis. Alongside that vote, the city’s quality of operation has noticeably deteriorated. Encampments are more common, drug intoxication to the point of collapse and physical decay is highly visible. Robberies have become commonplace. These effects are now beyond the point where they be explained by pointing at flat trend data, or as a temporary effect of more severe pandemic measures. A number of local politicians have been facing significant heat over this dysfunction. National and international media publications have begun to distrust local publications for papering over issues and have amplified that pressure. At that point, those SF politicians began a sudden unified push attacking self-driving cars. Self-driving cars have recently become more reliable than manually driven taxis in SF in terms of accidents per miles driven. The attacks escalated to the point that false data was submitted against robotaxis to the California board, mischaracterizing accidents where another driver impacted the self-driven car while stopped. That falsehood was later discovered. When those same people began promoting this “night of the cone” meme, the origin was obvious to even the most casual observer. Robotaxis have been up and operating for some time. The city is in trouble and it needs the revenue innovation brings. We need to stop playing games.
- vore 3y agoWhat does an activist group putting cones on robotaxis have to do with homeless encampments and public drug use?
- throwaway9274 3y agoScapegoating tech makes for a popular distraction from the increasingly dire real world issues facing the city. Let me give a concrete example. Two weeks ago nine people were shot at a street fair in the Mission. It appears tied to organized gang activity. The SF papers ran with a story about “self-driving car obstructs emergency response” more prominently placed than the actual shooting. The Fire Chief personally debunked the story, but it was syndicated across online outlets, and remains un-retracted.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- whalesalad 3y agoI’d be the first on the team to code in a “clean hood” routine where the vehicle rapidly accelerates in a safe area and then slams on the brakes to yeet the cone off the hood. I still don’t understand why there isn’t a manual override with a staff member sitting in a racing sim 24x7 who can “jack in” to any deployed vehicle and take over. They’d be able to do the same thing.
- hacoo 3y agoWaymo and Cruise both have remote operators who can remotely unstuck cars. AFAIK they can’t drive the cars directly, but the they can give override commands, reset software, or make the car follow a manually set path. They probably can’t make it reverse at full tilt though ;) Directly driving cars is considered very sketchy as you could have network latency spikes or dropouts at any time. That said, it’s possible the cone still prevents the car from moving at all because either: a. It creates a large enough sensor blockage to be deemed ‘unsafe’ for any movement Or b. The car thinks its been in a collision, or thinks it can’t move without ‘colliding’ with the cone further.
- mcphage 3y ago> I still don’t understand why there isn’t a manual override with a staff member sitting in a racing sim 24x7 who can “jack in” to any deployed vehicle and take over. Maybe it's harder for a car company to disclaim responsibility for accidents that do occur, if there is always the potential for a human driver to take over. Suddenly they can't say "well we couldn't have prevented this", because they now could have.
- whalesalad 3y agomeanwhile these vehicles will get stuck blocking an intersection for hours on end. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/san-francisco-waymo-stopped-in-street-17890821.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/san-francisco-wa... https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/cruise-driverless-cars-block-traffic-san-francisco https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/cruise-driverless-c... https://twitter.com/Tweetermeyer/status/1542625065144946688 https://twitter.com/Tweetermeyer/status/1542625065144946688 a manual override is the easiest solution here. we pilot drones that drop bombs in the middle east from air conditioned containers in arizona, there is no reason we can't do the same for these stuck vehicles after X time period has elapsed.
- googlryas 3y agoGo around putting cones on non-robot cars while people are driving them, and I do believe you will get your ass kicked.
- stfp 3y agoI used to be very very excited about self-driving cars. Now I'm 1000% certain they will not improve anything meaningful at all. There are no urgent, legit needs that make these things necessary or acceptable. Meanwhile there are concrete, easier, but "boring" things we could do today to improve safety and comfort on the streets and highways. Here's a dumb list of some of the automation I want to see: - Automated speed and acceleration limits based on location. In cities, 20km/h. From 0 to 20 in 5 seconds. On highways, whatever makes sense. But, sorry, you can't go 200 km/h unless you're on a track, a train or a plane. - Automated / smart traffic lights to end unnecessary stopping and waiting, while giving priority to emergency vehicles, transit, pedestrians, bicycles over individual cars - Automated emergency vehicle notification to drivers, without increasingly loud,blaring sirens (esp. at night when the streets are empty and response times are 2x better than during the day in the first place) - Mandatory collision mitigation and other safety assists; you shouldn't have to pay more money to get a safer vehicle (especially safer for others) - ...but no autopilot allowed outside of specific places/times (eg. certain highway segments at certain times) - Automated, guaranteed fines when speeding, running red lights or driving recklessly. - APIs for cities/counties/regions to influence routing decisions made by maps applications: people are free to drive on small streets but the algorithm should not send them there. Before I started using it, waze, in particular, often steered me to complicated routes via small streets to save 90 seconds in a 15 minute trip. Cities should be able to align traffic engineering decisions at all levels. - Automated engine shutoff and notifications to prevent idling and educate folks. I see people browsing for minutes before/after driving, with the engine on. People eating in their cars with the engine on, etc. In front of folks sitting at a cafe etc. Just ignominious stuff given the noise, heat and air pollution output (idling generates more toxic exhaust than driving).
- seizethecheese 3y ago> There are no urgent, legit needs that make these things necessary or acceptable. Same could have been said for any labor saving technology. And, I think you’re wrong. The US economy has an acute labor shortage.
- stfp 3y ago
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago[dupe]
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoLots of conversation over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36624172 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36624172