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posted by takyon on Tuesday January 01 2019, @04:50PM   Printer-friendly
from the defenseless-car dept.

The old gray lady reports that the people of Tempe AZ, a popular testing location for self driving cars, are fighting back. Here are a couple of snippets from the longer article:

The [tire] slashing was one of nearly two dozen attacks on driverless vehicles over the past two years in Chandler, a city near Phoenix where Waymo started testing its vans in 2017. In ways large and small, the city has had an early look at public misgivings over the rise of artificial intelligence, with city officials hearing complaints about everything from safety to possible job losses.

Some people have pelted Waymo vans with rocks, according to police reports. Others have repeatedly tried to run the vehicles off the road. One woman screamed at one of the vans, telling it to get out of her suburban neighborhood. A man pulled up alongside a Waymo vehicle and threatened the employee riding inside with a piece of PVC pipe.

[...] "There are other places they can test," said Erik O'Polka, 37, who was issued a warning by the police in November after multiple reports that his Jeep Wrangler had tried to run Waymo vans off the road — in one case, driving head-on toward one of the self-driving vehicles until it was forced to come to an abrupt stop.

His wife, Elizabeth, 35, admitted in an interview that her husband "finds it entertaining to brake hard" in front of the self-driving vans, and that she herself "may have forced them to pull over" so she could yell at them to get out of their neighborhood. 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.

"They said they need real-world examples, but I don't want to be their real-world mistake," said Mr. O'Polka, who runs his own company providing information technology to small businesses. "They didn't ask us if we wanted to be part of their beta test," added his wife, who helps run the business.

It looks like The New York Times used this article from December 11 as part of their story:

A slashed tire, a pointed gun, bullies on the road: Why do Waymo self-driving vans get so much hate?

This seems to be happening everywhere Waymo is testing, not just Tempe.

Lots of comments about this article on other sites, SoylentNews should get in on the fun too! A quote from a "media analyst" suggests that driverless cars are like scabs, hired to break a union strike.

Also at The Hill.


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

 
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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday January 02 2019, @01:18AM (3 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 02 2019, @01:18AM (#780814) Journal

    If I'm in a society where the majority of us can't afford our own automation, then the majority of us will employ each other.

    Interesting idea.
    Mainly in the context of a majority of people that cannot afford to pay what the owners of automation ask for their products because the owner of automation doesn't 'trickle down' (because why should he?). In such a context, the people will need to abandon the "coin" used in an economy that no longer serves their purposes and use substitutes to keep up the 'tab' on due value for services.
    Interesting of what will happen when the govt realize a parallel untaxed economy starts to happen on a non-trivial scale.

    ---

    Anyhow, the implicit assumption on (all) the above is that people who "employ each other" actually have their survival needs covered. Which is very likely not true. For an example of how that can happen see the corn laws [wikipedia.org]

    The Corn Laws enhanced the profits and political power associated with land ownership. The laws raised food prices and the costs of living for the British public, and hampered the growth of other British economic sectors, such as manufacturing, by reducing the disposable income of the British public.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 02 2019, @04:13AM (2 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 02 2019, @04:13AM (#780884) Journal
    Regulation circumvention is probably the real problem. For example, street gangs often employ people at well below minimum wage. They get away with it because any authority isn't going to bother with labor crimes, it has terrible effort to reward ratio compared to the usual crimes.

    But if you're going to employ people in a regulation breaking way, your assets are at risk. Most businesses have a lot of capital and other assets. Sure, you'll occasionally see businesses which play games with labor regulations, but they usually are short sighted, say because the business is near bankruptcy or they're not thinking past the next few quarters (past which where fines and possible prison sentences would reside). Or it's a scam in which case the regulations don't really matter because the culprits plan to be far off by the time the authorities get involved.

    But if you're running a normal business for years with significant assets, then regulation breaking is a huge risk.

    I bring this up because the obvious way to further automation at the expense of human workers is to dump regulations on employers: minimum wage, harsh labor and safety regulations, short work weeks, etc. These regulations can generate a lot of business for automation vendors. Similarly, dumping regulations on automation vendors that only large businesses can meet then creates the perfect environment for a cartel with both strong barrier to entry and a captive customer base. This may have already been going on for some time in the developed world!
    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday January 02 2019, @05:44AM (1 child)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 02 2019, @05:44AM (#780904) Journal

      But if you're running a normal business for years with significant assets, then regulation breaking is a huge risk.

      And if you don't run any business because you can't afford to? How are you going to be able to employ someone within the regulatory bounds?
      If you cannot and the majority is like you, how does "majority of us will employ each other" gonna work?

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 02 2019, @06:00AM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 02 2019, @06:00AM (#780908) Journal

        And if you don't run any business because you can't afford to?

        With goods and services produced by automation. You then run the business with goods and services not provided by such.

        If you cannot and the majority is like you, how does "majority of us will employ each other" gonna work?

        How does it work now? It'd work the same way.