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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: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 02 2019, @06:39AM (2 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 02 2019, @06:39AM (#780915) Journal

    If they want real-world examples, build a city where people VOLUNTEER to live where your killer machines drive: don't use people as fodder for your profits.

    "Well, if we only kill 40 people, but our profits are 3 billion, then HEY, fuck humans, I got MINE!"

    Last I heard the body count was 1 people from Uber, a company which probably will go nowhere with its self-driving cars. No profits however so sure, that might change with some of the other players.

    Seems kind of premature to deride the evil industrialists when they haven't started killing people yet.

  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday January 02 2019, @08:14PM (1 child)

    by Gaaark (41) on Wednesday January 02 2019, @08:14PM (#781153) Journal

    "Last I heard the body count was 1"
    "when they haven't started killing people yet."

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_self-driving_car_fatalities [wikipedia.org]
    https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-self-drive-20180403-story.html [latimes.com]

    4 total. But who's counting.

    The deaths will continue until a lawsuit makes it too expensive and executives/CEO's go to jail, but as TMB said, who do you sue when these things happen: who is accountable.

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 03 2019, @02:16AM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 03 2019, @02:16AM (#781331) Journal
      Look at the list. The count is still 1. Tesla's "autopilot" doesn't count.