San Franciscans disable robotaxis by placing a traffic cone on the hood

https://twitter.com/DavidZipper/status/1676968755522588682

44 95 3 years ago

vkou• 3 years ago

I'll point out that it's very easy to disable other menaces to society, like personal automobiles, by just booting them.

I don't consent to having to deal with automobiles in the city... They pollute, they make a lot of noise, they are a life-threatening danger to other street users, and many people operate them very poorly.

Thrio4992• 3 years ago

You can disable all sort of bad stuff from robbers, junkies, rapists, aggressive dogs... by carrying weapon for self defense.

eimrine• 3 years ago

What will you do to an agressive dog in the middle of a city/town if you have a loaded firearm?

mcphage4• 3 years ago

You can disable all sort of bad stuff from robbers, junkies, rapists, aggressive dogs... by carrying weapon for self defense.

Also kids knocking on your door, or people pulling into your driveway, or people shopping in a grocery store three hours away, or

globular-toast• 3 years ago

Does "booting" mean clamping, ie. locking a metal thing to the wheel of the vehicle? In the UK booting means kicking so it read quite funny to me.

Unfortunately, in some places (like the UK) clamping a vehicle you don't own is illegal even if it's on your private property. Cars are heavily subsidised and the huge external costs absorbed throughout society.

Also, kicking a vehicle, which could at most cause superficial damage, is not considered an acceptable way to signal to the driver in any situation, even if you feel your life or body is in danger. I don't fully understand why this imbalance exists.

I've long dreamed of a portable device that can produce an electromagnetic pulse capable of disabling a car. It really only seems fair that if they can disable me I can disable them.

hutzlibu• 3 years ago

I think booting here is a metapher to get rid of them all (by laws probably and not by fire).

aidenn02• 3 years ago

Yes a "Wheel Boot" is another term for a wheel clamp, and "booting" is the act of attaching it. Booting can also mean to kick in the US, fwiw. I suppose I could say "I was so frustrated that the police booted my car, that I booted my car in the boot and hurt my foot!"

mistrial9• 3 years ago

at a local college town, several young men got into an argument leading to a fist fight. One of the guys was a current athlete star in American football, so we can imagine he was muscular and in peak condition. A rival got into an ordinary car and backed into the athlete, who was [strong|drunk|stupid] enough to try to physically challenge the car moving one meter. The athlete had both legs broken, and the guy driving was "in trouble" .. so there is some context for future auto rodeo players.

jsnell• 3 years ago

Dupe:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36624172

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36627272

seizethecheese3• 3 years ago

They're now encouraging others to do it: "Hell no, we do not consent to this."

That’s not how this works. Rules that govern public spaces do not require the consent of everyone. (The alternative would be absurd.)

The elected governments of San Francisco and California HAVE consented to this, on behalf of the people.

3cats-in-a-coat• 3 years ago

Honestly, such toxic culture, I'm curious if they manage to turn it around before this city dies completely.

bpodgursky• 3 years ago

The attitude is just NIMBYism for people too poor to buy houses.

DANmode• 3 years ago

Active consent of the governed has often been a large sticking point for rule of law, historically.

Whether or not you, or we, believe that is correct, incorrect, otherwise.

Manuel_D4• 3 years ago

Consent of the governed doesn't mean unanimous consent. If I don't consent to being taxed, I don't get to skip on my taxes. If I don't consent to sharing the road with self driving vehicles, I don't get to sabotage them.

lo_zamoyski2• 3 years ago

I don't understand what you mean by what you've written. What is "active consent"? What, here, is described by that term?

A few people has said "WE don't consent". That's the first issue: a few people think they have the authority to speak for everyone. Is that your definition of "active consent", the commandeering of society by a few self-appointed authorities? Sorry to break it to you, but that's exactly the opposite of the rule of law. That is the tyranny of an aggressive minority.

The second issue is that mob rule is an absolutely terrible way to govern, which doesn't apply here. We have representatives for a reason. Direct democracy is tyranny of the mob, and mob rule, too, is the opposite of rule of law.

Also, re: the tweet, I cannot take seriously anyone who uses words like "un-alived". It's clownish newspeak.

RobotToaster• 3 years ago

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 3 years ago

Where does the consent come from? Is consent implied because elections are held?

throwaway927411• 3 years ago

This wasn’t organic. It was organized by a tiny group of activists looking for an anti-tech flashpoint.

It’s a hoax. A fiction. An attempt to portray widespread safety concerns among the populace that do not exist.

Here’s the local context.

There’s a hearing coming up at the board the state of California appointed regarding expansion of the robotaxis.

Alongside that vote, the city’s quality of operation has noticeably deteriorated. Encampments are more common, drug intoxication to the point of collapse and physical decay is highly visible. Robberies have become commonplace.

These effects are now beyond the point where they be explained by pointing at flat trend data, or as a temporary effect of more severe pandemic measures.

A number of local politicians have been facing significant heat over this dysfunction.

National and international media publications have begun to distrust local publications for papering over issues and have amplified that pressure.

At that point, those SF politicians began a sudden unified push attacking self-driving cars. Self-driving cars have recently become more reliable than manually driven taxis in SF in terms of accidents per miles driven.

The attacks escalated to the point that false data was submitted against robotaxis to the California board, mischaracterizing accidents where another driver impacted the self-driven car while stopped. That falsehood was later discovered.

When those same people began promoting this “night of the cone” meme, the origin was obvious to even the most casual observer.

Robotaxis have been up and operating for some time. The city is in trouble and it needs the revenue innovation brings.

We need to stop playing games.

vore• 3 years ago

What does an activist group putting cones on robotaxis have to do with homeless encampments and public drug use?

throwaway927411• 3 years ago

Scapegoating tech makes for a popular distraction from the increasingly dire real world issues facing the city.

Let me give a concrete example. Two weeks ago nine people were shot at a street fair in the Mission. It appears tied to organized gang activity.

The SF papers ran with a story about “self-driving car obstructs emergency response” more prominently placed than the actual shooting.

The Fire Chief personally debunked the story, but it was syndicated across online outlets, and remains un-retracted.

JumpCrisscross• 3 years ago

An attempt to portray widespread safety concerns among the populace that do not exist

It’s a good example of a totem. On one side, activists can use the media uptake to show traction in their anti-tech crusade, intentionally muddying attention and support. On the other side, a separate group uses the first to show San Francisco is crumbling and anti-innovation. Neither need any relation to facts, just exist in respect of each other; in their engagement within themselves and with one another, their convictions gain strength.

mighmi• 3 years ago

The city is in trouble

What are your thoughts on the city's future? I've seen a lot of doomerish articles of late, many did seem to leave during Covid etc. however I still know many who happily look to buy property or relocate to the city right now. Do you believe the core innovation drive is in trouble, threatening it becoming a new Detroit? (Or even just the city itself, while the suburbs continue to boom and do well in the future as the city collapses - like Metrodetroit?)

throwaway927411• 3 years ago

It’s a good question. I believe SF will rebound as a city, and that it remains the indispensable center of the global technology ecosystem.

My level of certainty is such that I’m personally betting my livelihood and savings on it by building a startup here.

It’s really hard to uproot an ecosystem where multiple stakeholders are co-located (founders, developers, ML engineers, VCs, accelerators, executives experienced with tech business models) and move them elsewhere.

The specific cultural factors around openness to experience, centrality to internet culture, and global orientation are difficult to find or replicate in other cities.

But the short term disruptions are going to be painful due to the shift to remote work.

Right now this is compounded by very bad policy (saying this as a registered member of the DSA. This is not a left vs. right issue.)

We need basic enforcement of laws and provision of city services to allow the city to recover in a reasonable time frame.

opportune• 3 years ago

I think the city is still great - there has been general doomerism about SF for literally half a century at this point: hippies, AIDS, the 90s crime wave, dotcom, gentrification, WFH. A lot of this is motivated more by what SF represents (the American brand of corporate liberalism) than what it is.

Crime is worse but not unlivably so. We have wonderful innovations like Facebook, Citizen, Nextdoor, and Ring to thank for the increased spotlight. While tech decamped from the Bay Area during the pandemic, and SF commercial real estate values are in trouble, plenty of companies are still operating here and people do still want to live here.

SF offers an urban lifestyle/environment you can’t get elsewhere in the Bay Area which draws young tech workers and hence companies. The crime would have to get much, much worse to threaten this. Others may chime in that it got too much for them, but this is a general trend as people hit their 30s and start families. The bigger threat is if young people don’t even give SF a shot at all.

mcphage4• 3 years ago

The city is in trouble and it needs the revenue innovation brings.

What kind of revenue does self-driving taxis bring? And are the problems you describe above due to a lack of revenue?

w0m• 3 years ago

His comment is more about the false equivalency i think; papering over/distracting from other very real issues by demonizing something flashy but unrelated.

throwaway927411• 3 years ago

You’re talking about an industry that could be responsible for a 5-10% GDP boost, freeing up millions for non-driving labor.

The revenues to the city where those companies are based would be in the billions.

abeppu8• 3 years ago

What does organic mean? Everything starts with a small group, and of course the first people to act will be labeled activists.

Self-driving cars are not organic; they are organized by a tiny group of companies.

I think the dumbest thing not mentioned n the video is that when they drive around empty, they're using our roads, contributing to traffic, emitting carbon, and they're not even transporting anything! Who cares if you're safer per mile driven if you're driving miles that serve no purpose other than to demonstrate your ability to drive?

I think (a) there should be bans on the vehicles driving empty other than to pick up a passenger, who must be close by and (b) whenever a vehicle blocks an emergency vehicle or transit or inappropriately blocks traffic, that company should be suspended from un-manned operation until they can explain the error and make a plausible argument that they have resolved the issue. If you're trapped in a muni train with 60 others for 20 min bc a vehicle that isn't even transporting anyone refuses to move and their parent company doesn't have an operator close by, that's unacceptable. Until companies demonstrate that they won't disable transit, why shouldn't people disable their vehicles?

The driverless cars, wittingly or not, sabotaged transit already; turnabout is fair play.

standardUser3• 3 years ago

"Who cares if you're safer per mile driven if you're driving miles that serve no purpose other than to demonstrate your ability to drive?"

You make a very compelling argument against student drivers.

You also seem to miss the MAJOR point that once cars are an on-demand service and not a 4,000lb accessory every adult carries with them everywhere they go, we can finally see a reduction in the vast parking lots that have eaten up most of our urban and suburban spaces.

spacKingChamath8• 3 years ago

There is a strong monetary incentive to make sure every car has a high utilization time. The cars driving around empty are there so they can collect data to prove the safety. No one is targeting transit. Autonomous cars will also have a place in transit. Its highly likely one day you will be relying on an autonomous car to get you somewhere for cheaper than transit does today. AVs have real potential to get people to forgo personal car ownership which actually will reduce traffic, emissions and restore millions of sqft in parking spaces to be reclaimed for parks and housing.

throwaway927411• 3 years ago

This is a bad faith argument.

Transit is not down because of self-driving cars, but due to remote work. Cell traffic at city center is dramatically lower in SF compared to pre-pandemic baselines as compared to other major cities.

That’s not to say WFH is bad. But that’s the reality the city is facing.

Transit cars are not being blocked by self-driving vehicles at any appreciable rate. I ride transit every day and have never encounter it. I have encountered transit cars getting stuck due to mentally ill unhoused people refusing to move from the tracks.

This head-in-the-sand mentality squandered a decade of tax revenues driven by tech on vanity projects and ineffective non-profits.

It is further compounded by a severe lack of safety on public transit. What chief problems people are experiencing on transit are not a result of self-driving vehicles.

I can personally name six people who have been assaulted on public transit, been victimized by robbery, or had their homes or vehicles burglarized.

The entire mindset espoused in your post a fundamentally unserious attempt to make facts fit a narrative.

“Driverless cars sabotaged transit” is a fever dream untethered to reality. The state set targets for safety and interference with services. The companies met those targets.

And now the people opposed to tech generally, with no specific reasonable objection to self-driving cars, are trying to modify the agreed standards at the eleventh hour out of simple animus.

stemlord• 3 years ago

There also needs to be a person/people on standby to support riders or pedestrians in case of issue. Last thing the world needs is another supportless automated monolith where you're simply fucked if anything happens

thatfrenchguy• 3 years ago

Alongside that vote, the city’s quality of operation has noticeably deteriorated. Encampments are more common, drug intoxication to the point of collapse and physical decay is highly visible. Robberies have become commonplace.

These have been mainstay of San Francisco life for at least a decade: some neighborhoods suck and have a ton of homeless folks, and where they are tend to move around (in gentrifying neighborhoods). I remember the first time I moved here almost a decade ago and was shocked with the drugged homeless folks. They're still there.

Those protests will go the way of the Google Bus protests: make a lot of noise, before they disappear.

throwaway927411• 3 years ago

Those protests will go the way of the Google Bus protests: make a lot of noise, before they disappear.

Totally agree, I expect they’ll dissipate pretty quickly, because there’s no actual committed support.

These have been a mainstay…

Disagree here. Yes, these issues have always been more visible in SF than elsewhere: mild climate, permissive drug laws, and a low income area in the Tenderloin that’s closer to more affluent areas than other major cities.

The extent has changed markedly over just the last few years. Police don’t respond to calls. Home invasions don’t result in charges.

Physical attacks by the unhoused used to be a concern of suburbanites on a weekend trip, not something residents really factored into realistic risk.

Now it’s something folks in my circle who have been here for a very long time witness and in some cases have experienced.

I hear you that to a certain extent this has always been here, and I agree. But this is outside of the normal bound of historical SF.

spacKingChamath8• 3 years ago

Death on the streets via drugs, assaults and homelessness but because locals want more "empathetic leaders", that are hard on big business, so the leaders focus on that. Recent SF politicians are not proactive. They are reactive and in the worst way. They use bureaucracy to clog the system and strongly believe the status quo is good enough. Mean while, the urban area continues to decay, albeit slowly thanks to the regions weather and views being sought after. Very similar to national level politics where filibusters and repeals are trying to maintain the status quo or go backwards for the sake of the "better times". All these people are not leaders. They are just people who know how to get theres while they make you think you are getting yours. They don't care for the future at all.

cycomanic• 3 years ago

Can you give some references of those events I want to read up on this.

throwaway927411• 3 years ago

Sure, let me grab the links from my bookmarks.

Adding below as I go:

“What if SF never pulls out of its Doom Loop?” - https://www.ft.com/content/71d8013d-9d94-441e-b2d1-3039c0439... -This one brought the simmering debate to the fore and put pressure on officials, particularly Mayor London Breed and District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston

-Preston begins Twitter push against self-driving cars.

-“New letter from CA state accuses SF officials of data manipulation.

In the 4 @Waymo traffic collisions SF cited to prove driverless cars are less safe, 3 were the Waymos being rear-ended and 1 didn't even involve any cars touching, CA says.” https://twitter.com/annatonger/status/1673403230804385813

June 29, 2023 California PUC original letter here: https://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Published/G000/M512/K...

“A viral video of a 'reckless' robotaxi caused an uproar in San Francisco. Police say the internet got it wrong.” https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna89329

KennyBlanken3• 3 years ago

An attempt to portray widespread safety concerns among the populace that do not exist.

Guess you didn't watch the video clip then, because they both describe and show the problems.

You mean like Uber taxis in the first week of operation in CA were caught repeatedly committing grave traffic violations like running red lights...and killed someone because their software failed to correctly classify an object its sensors picked up in the middle of the road

Then there's all the problems with Bolts ignoring police vehicles, randomly stopping in intersections, and mysteriously all getting stuck in one particular street, causing a blocade?

Or how about Tesla's "self driving betas" where the cars have been shown to drive at pedestrians standing on street corners, swerve at cyclists, randomly hit the brakes, and drive at traffic islands/poles?

Kye2• 3 years ago

So what you're saying is the organizers are the modern equivalent to Luddites, and the campaign to smear them the same way is in full force. Got it.

googlryas• 3 years ago

Go around putting cones on non-robot cars while people are driving them, and I do believe you will get your ass kicked.

whalesalad3• 3 years ago

I’d be the first on the team to code in a “clean hood” routine where the vehicle rapidly accelerates in a safe area and then slams on the brakes to yeet the cone off the hood.

I still don’t understand why there isn’t a manual override with a staff member sitting in a racing sim 24x7 who can “jack in” to any deployed vehicle and take over. They’d be able to do the same thing.

mcphage4• 3 years ago

I still don’t understand why there isn’t a manual override with a staff member sitting in a racing sim 24x7 who can “jack in” to any deployed vehicle and take over.

Maybe it's harder for a car company to disclaim responsibility for accidents that do occur, if there is always the potential for a human driver to take over. Suddenly they can't say "well we couldn't have prevented this", because they now could have.

whalesalad3• 3 years ago

meanwhile these vehicles will get stuck blocking an intersection for hours on end.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/san-francisco-wa...

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/cruise-driverless-c...

https://twitter.com/Tweetermeyer/status/1542625065144946688

a manual override is the easiest solution here. we pilot drones that drop bombs in the middle east from air conditioned containers in arizona, there is no reason we can't do the same for these stuck vehicles after X time period has elapsed.

stfp9• 3 years ago

Hopefully also the first on the team to go to jail for coding clearly unsafe dangerous behaviors into 3 ton autonomous robots. What the hell?

I think software engineers are wholly unprepared and uneducated to be designing and building these things. This is a domain where the rules and responsibilities should be very well defined, and close to what you see in other "hard" engineering domains.

whalesalad3• 3 years ago

seriously? if a cone was on the hood of my car I could floor it for like 3-5 feet, slam the brakes, and it would fly off. this is a trivial maneuver.

hacoo2• 3 years ago

Waymo and Cruise both have remote operators who can remotely unstuck cars.

AFAIK they can’t drive the cars directly, but the they can give override commands, reset software, or make the car follow a manually set path. They probably can’t make it reverse at full tilt though ;)

Directly driving cars is considered very sketchy as you could have network latency spikes or dropouts at any time.

That said, it’s possible the cone still prevents the car from moving at all because either:

a. It creates a large enough sensor blockage to be deemed ‘unsafe’ for any movement

Or b. The car thinks its been in a collision, or thinks it can’t move without ‘colliding’ with the cone further.

stfp9• 3 years ago

I used to be very very excited about self-driving cars. Now I'm 1000% certain they will not improve anything meaningful at all. There are no urgent, legit needs that make these things necessary or acceptable. Meanwhile there are concrete, easier, but "boring" things we could do today to improve safety and comfort on the streets and highways.

Here's a dumb list of some of the automation I want to see:

- Automated speed and acceleration limits based on location. In cities, 20km/h. From 0 to 20 in 5 seconds. On highways, whatever makes sense. But, sorry, you can't go 200 km/h unless you're on a track, a train or a plane.

- Automated / smart traffic lights to end unnecessary stopping and waiting, while giving priority to emergency vehicles, transit, pedestrians, bicycles over individual cars

- Automated emergency vehicle notification to drivers, without increasingly loud,blaring sirens (esp. at night when the streets are empty and response times are 2x better than during the day in the first place)

- Mandatory collision mitigation and other safety assists; you shouldn't have to pay more money to get a safer vehicle (especially safer for others)

- ...but no autopilot allowed outside of specific places/times (eg. certain highway segments at certain times)

- Automated, guaranteed fines when speeding, running red lights or driving recklessly.

- APIs for cities/counties/regions to influence routing decisions made by maps applications: people are free to drive on small streets but the algorithm should not send them there. Before I started using it, waze, in particular, often steered me to complicated routes via small streets to save 90 seconds in a 15 minute trip. Cities should be able to align traffic engineering decisions at all levels.

- Automated engine shutoff and notifications to prevent idling and educate folks. I see people browsing for minutes before/after driving, with the engine on. People eating in their cars with the engine on, etc. In front of folks sitting at a cafe etc. Just ignominious stuff given the noise, heat and air pollution output (idling generates more toxic exhaust than driving).

seizethecheese3• 3 years ago

There are no urgent, legit needs that make these things necessary or acceptable.

Same could have been said for any labor saving technology.

And, I think you’re wrong. The US economy has an acute labor shortage.

stfp9• 3 years ago

Same could have been said for any labor saving technology.

Lol no. When I say "this technology is unnecessary" that doesn't means I think "all technology is unnecessary" :shrug"

idank• 3 years ago

They will change the lives of people who can't drive, that's pretty meaningful.

stfp9• 3 years ago

There are many easier, "boring" ways to accomplish this goal.

manzanarama• 3 years ago

Most of these give way too much power to the government to control people's movement.

Oh sorry, its a pandemic, the maximum speed for you vehicle is now 0 for 6 days a week. And to get to drive on the 7th day, you need XYZ vaccines.

stfp9• 3 years ago

I don't think you have seriously thought about this long enough. It'll be exactly as easy to disable "autonomous" cars.

itronitron• 3 years ago

It's nice to be able to walk places. Maybe a middle ground for having self-driving cars is to think of them as mini-trams.

The self-driving-car-mini-trams pick up and drop off at specific stops, on numbered routes, and they have a dedicated lane that can also be used by emergency vehicles (human driven).

To improve passenger safety the self-driving-car-mini-trams could be made larger, maybe the size of buses, which would have the added benefit of allowing people to stand in them, not use seat belts, and get off and on a lot more easily than crawling in and out of a car.

stfp9• 3 years ago

Sure yep. Why do they need to be self driving? We could build 8-10 people electric buses today, and let randos drive them just like we let randos drive lyfts/ubers.

spacKingChamath8• 3 years ago

Such a fake comment. You were never excited for AVs.

-As AVs scale, there cost will go below that of personal car ownership -AVs maintain the same flexibility as personal cars, something public transit cannot resolve. -As Personal cars ownership declines, real progress in emissions, land and safety will be made.

Your suggestions just add more regulation and fees that always end up impacting low income people more.

stfp9• 3 years ago

Such a fake comment. You were never excited for AVs. I was excited for AVs for most of my life, just like everybody, because it's cool sci-fi tech. But if you start thinking about the whole picture of transportation / urban design... they mostly don't make sense. Just like flying cars.
As AVs scale, there cost will go below that of personal car ownership Why?
AVs maintain the same flexibility as personal cars, something public transit cannot resolve.

Sure. Why are we testing/using them in SF, a city that can resolve its transportation needs with public transit and light electric vehicles?

As Personal cars ownership declines, real progress in emissions, land and safety will be made.

My whole point is we can make these progresses today.

Self driving cars and other innovations cribbed from sci-fi, are a distraction that prevent us from addressing our real issues in real ways.

Your suggestions just add more regulation and fees that always end up impacting low income people more.

Actually, none of my suggestions would impact low-income people more.

You don't think giving 24/7 control of all personal vehicles to a handful of companies is going to hurt lower-income people?

throwaway927411• 3 years ago

“There are no urgent, legit needs that make these things necessary or acceptable.”

—Americans alone spend more than 70,000,000,000 hours each year driving.

-On average, not counting commercial drivers, each American spends over 13 hours a week driving, or one third of a full time job.

-Over 20% of the American labor force is primarily employed driving a commercial vehicle.

We are talking about a collective waste of human time and effort of 350,000 lifetimes per year in the U.S. alone.

We are talking about waste of collective labor enough to totally rebuild the physical environment: laying train tracks, building housing, raising flood walls, building pads for rockets and nuclear reactors.

We are talking about centuries of time worth of cognitive capacity to be used as leisure for making art, music, literature. Or simply bonding with families and strengthening our communities.

If that’s not a pressing need I don’t know what is.

ChrisArchitect2• 3 years ago

[dupe]

ChrisArchitect2• 3 years ago

Lots of conversation over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36624172

San Franciscans disable robotaxis by placing a traffic cone on the hood

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