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A crowd set fire to a driverless Waymo taxi in San Francisco, as tensions about driverless tech grow (www.businessinsider.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] -2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Driverless cars are cool as fuck but still need their kinks worked out. Driving sucks and so does doing it for a living, I don't see a real negative especially once the tech cements them as safer than human driven cars, or at least no real negative which doesn't have it's root in our broken economic system.

An other article explain it got stuck in the crowd and then stopped moving as it should. Embarrassing to see people cheering on mindless vandalism and sharing false info.

Edit: it doesn't seem to be very clear what happened and there's conflicting information so my last paragraph might be completely wrong and even worse, hypocritical.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I disagree about being no negatives. Cars with or without drivers are ruining both our cities and our planet and San Francisco already has multiple excellent public transportation options. All driverless cars do is discourage people from taking public transit.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I see them as a stepping stone towards a mostly carless society personally.

I also think anyone being discouraged from taking public transit would likewise buy a car before taking public transit. I can even see the opposite, where it lets people who still need a car 5% of the time sell their ride in exchange for mostly public transit and a bit of taxi.

Individually owned cars are the devil and true public transport is definitely king, but I think driverless taxi services can serve an important niche.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I think you're missing the end goal here, which is having everyone in a driverless car. The taxis are a first step in that direction. It will by no means stop there.

There was a reason why GM was investing so heavily in Cruise (until a woman got dragged under a Cruise car in SF during a crash). They weren't doing it in the hopes people would transition to public transit.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'm not missing the end goal, I just don't think GM will pull back if we decide to ban driverless cars or boycott them.

We both want 100% public transport but that's beside the point, the event happened because the car was driverless, not because it wasn't a bus.

If someone was proposing to ban all cars in San Francisco, I'm all for it but that isn't really what's happening. But for now, I'll take driverless cars even if it only gets rid of a couple privately owned ones.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

You're right. It isn't what's happening and I am proposing a ban on personal transport in San Francisco (and other major metropolitan areas with decent public transportation systems).

I also don't see this as a path to that happening. And that should be the goal.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

It's going to weird when people are choosing a vehicle based on whether it will decide to drive you off the cliff, or just plow through the pedestrian. There will be a Jerryrigeverything who buys cars to test their self driving to destruction.

Given how little liability auto manufactures have due to the responsibility put on the driver, I don't see why they would be pushing for self driving. Unless there's a single unified AI that makes the same driving decisions for every car, which I don't think is a good thing, the manufactures will then take the responsibility for accidents involving their proprietary driving software.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

Unless there’s a single unified AI that makes the same driving decisions for every car, which I don’t think is a good thing

Honestly? I don't know that it would be the worst thing, especially on busy highways and streets, to have the same AI controlling all of the traffic instead of individual self-driving cars from individual brands, all with different software and hardware.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

In the full original post I saw, it was trying to move forward and honking.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

There seems to be a lot of different version and witnesses saying different thing. I edited my previous post.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 9 months ago

Clearly a crime worthy of complete destruction.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (5 children)

They were going nuclear on it for one reason.

it drove into the crowd and didn't recognize the crowd as People.

It was actively trying to drive through them.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Where is that quote from? I didnt see it in the article

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

From the original social media video.

Ask yourself, this is a Chinese new year celebration, a street party. Why is there a driverless car in the middle of a street party?

All the media reports start with a driverless car in the middle of a street party, surrounded by really angry people. Why was the car there? Why are they angry at it?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago

Seems like the witnesses saw it differently.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/02/12/waymo-set-on-fire-sf/72567647007/

"They were putting out some rage for really no reason at all. They just wanted to vandalize something, and they did," witness Edwin Carungay told KGO-TV.

The witness told the outlet the Waymo was vandalized and set on fire by a big group of people.

"One young man jumped on the hood, and on the windshield.," Carungay told KGO. "That kind of started the whole melee."

[–] [email protected] 30 points 9 months ago (1 children)

This happened during street festivities for lunar new year, so a lot of people are connecting the dots. They don't mention that the car was aggressively trying to drive through a crowd, but it seems like it was trying to make its way through a crowd.

https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/why-did-a-san-francisco-crowd-light-waymos-driverless-vehicle-on-fire/

Multiple witnesses said Waymo’s navigation technology became confused by festivities and fireworks that were lit to celebrate the Lunar New Year. Witness Anirudh Koul said the driverless car “got stuck immediately in front.”

Another witness said the car’s presence in the middle of Chinatown’s celebrations triggered frustrations in the crowd. “You could feel the frustration when people were just trying to celebrate,” she told KRON4.

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