From what I've seen the burned cars are Waymos, which have their own set of issues and the burning is probably more opportunistic than related to the protest in general. People have been protesting Waymo for years now, obstructing them with cones and other such vandalism. One big thing is that since Waymos are driverless the violence is not being perpetrated against people.
Its LA. When the dodgers won the world series they burned a metro bus in the streets. And those events were way bigger and drew a lot more chaos and crowds. But of course downplayed due to a lack of a political angle at the time to milk out of the event, unlike now.
I was at OSU when they won the 2018 natty. They deployed the horse cops. The riot squad. Teargassed most of High st and campus. Arrested dozens. But it was legendary, and I will never forget that night and its energy.
Excellent, so it's working. Waymo has been nonconsensually testing their unready "autonomous" cars on people for far too long.
As recently as last year a Waymo stopped at a stop sign and then accelerated directly towards me in a crosswalk.
These vehicles aren't ready and have already injured people. Lighting them on fire seems a valid defense strategy since the government's unwilling to intervene to protect its citizens.
Personally I can't wait until Waymo reaches the east coast. Within the past year, my neighbor was hit in a crosswalk pushing a baby stroller (minor injuries to mom and baby, but could have been much worse). And while walking my daughter our of an kids art school, an impatient car sped past the cars stopped at the crosswalk and were a foot or two from hitting my kids. These were both human drivers. And both cases would have been avoided if they were Waymos. In the first situation, the driver was only looking forward instead of the direction they were turning.
Any mode of transportation will cause injuries, especially since other humans are on the road. So just saying "Waymos have already injured people" is kind of a meaningless comment. I do think the type of accidents matter as much as the number of incidents. For example, the video that went viral recently of a self-driving Tesla randomly making a dramatic left turn into a tree on a rural road (possibly because it misinterpreted a shadow in the road) is not a mistake a human would have made.
> And both cases would have been avoided if they were Waymos.
This is speculative. Waymos hit people too.
I agree that pedestrian infrastructure in the USA is sorely lacking. The proven solution that worked in other countries is to take measures to reduce the number of cars on the road, not try to replace every driver with a computer that can only be trained by putting stupider computers on the road first to experiment on the population.
Public transit. A subway moves literally millions more people than car infrastructure can with significantly fewer injuries - basically 0 if the platforms are built with doors or gates. Busses and cable cars, driven by professional drivers, have far lower incidence per capita of injury as well.
What I was hoping to see from your post was some stats showing Waymo incidents where Waymo is at fault. I'm not actively following this stuff, but after some googling it's hard to find anything. There's tons of links with click-bait titles and then once you click into them you see things like:
- "Waymo drove through a red light (while being driven by a human)"
- "Waymo involved in a hit and run (it recorded a hit and run by a human using it's cameras)"
- "Waymo was involved in a multi-car accident (while it was stopped with other stopped cars)".
I'm not saying they don't happen. I'm sure they definitely do. As a father of two little girls, I would feel much safer with them getting into a Waymo for a short trip than an Uber. With that said, I'm strictly talking about Waymo. I would never get into a Tesla Robotaxi.
I understand that what I'm basically saying is that, if Cruise, Waymo, etc, want to develop self driving cars, they need to basically figure out a way to do so without testing in live environments against a non-consenting population. I understand that for you, you're down, and it's frustrating to hear that someone who might be your neighbor not wanting that means you don't get self driving cars.
I don't have a solution for this annoying aspect of democracy, other than to try to convince you that I'm not crazy for not wanting self driving cars at all - really, truly, it's just not the path we need to go down, we should be getting rid of cars almost entirely in cities and switching to public transit, with private vehicles driven entirely by professional drivers.
I chased up the old email. First, apologies, it was a Cruise driverless car, not Waymo.
I informed them of the incident, and here was their response, about 24 hours after my email to them:
> Copy of CUSTOMER SUCCESS (2)
> Hi Caleb,
> I'm sorry to hear you experienced this. At Cruise we take safety very seriously and this is not the experience we’d like you to have. This issue is being escalated to the appropriate team to be looked into further. Your input is greatly appreciated as we grow our ride-hail service, We appreciate your assistance.
> Best Regards,
> Jamilla
> Cruise Support
I never heard back from them again. The incident was on sep 4, 2023, at just about exactly 4pm, in San Francisco around potrero hill, perhaps Mariposa street. The vehicle was named "Bruschetta," I believe I saw that on the back or something.
