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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.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 02 2019, @03:42AM (2 children)
Ok, what makes that a crime? There's not a law explicitly to criminalize that. And they no doubt had ideas about how to compensate for the disabling of those systems.
It's worth keeping in mind that disabling safety systems is not evidence of a crime because the safety systems can fail to work properly in context. Consider the situation of a fire alarm that starts generating false alarms every fifteen minutes. One can't empty a busy office building or hotel every time and conduct a search by the fire department each time. And prohibiting habitation for the few days while the alarm is repaired can result in huge hardship while the problem is resolved. So a common approach is to manual patrol the building on a regular basis through the full day (for example [ua.edu]) till the fire alarm is repaired.
The alarm has been circumvented, but no crime has occurred because the people responsible have implemented alternate procedures for the alarm system's task.
The same occurs here. Sure, these systems were disabled by Uber personnel in the accident which killed Elaine Herzberg. But the vehicle wasn't traveling fast and there was a human driver at the wheel. On paper, I'm sure they thought they had covered the dangers that these safety systems were supposed to address - which is particularly innocuous-looking since these systems aren't required for safe driving. There probably is a consistent pattern of taking short cuts and complacency, but that isn't usually good enough to qualify as a crime in the absence of criminalizing regulations.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday January 02 2019, @12:36PM (1 child)
That is precisely the problem. Removing accountability is bad, m'kay.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 02 2019, @03:03PM