This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
The article states that there was no known motive, but it also states that automated cars in SF have been attacking people and emergency vehicles, in addition to blocking traffic for human drivers.
It's pretty clear that this is the beginning of the anti-robot revolution.
Watched one of these block traffic once by putting on its blinker to turn down a street with a police barricade up. The street had been closed and the police weren’t going to lift the barricade. Nonetheless, the car put its blinker on and sat there blocking traffic indefinitely.
The motive was that the car drove down a crowded Chinatown street during Chinese New Year. I imagine something similar might happen if a human driver tried to do the same thing. Not saying the vandals were right to wreck the car, but you don't just creep a car down a busy street during a festival and expect nothing bad to happen to it when crowd mentality/anonymity takes over. Especially when there's no driver so no immediate consequences/accountability. I think it was quite fortunate that it was not transporting a passenger at the time.
There is a small group concern taking the law into their own hands, yes.
It may be spontaneous.
It may be destructive.
But goddammit, it's collective action and I'm thrilled to fucking see it.
Detroit: Become Human - The Prequel
“Driverless car has an average Monday in Paris”
If Californians can destroy a car blocking traffic New Jersey wants this privilege too.
Who considers vandalism and defacement a "time-honored" part of the human experience?
Definitely a part, but time-honored???
The Romans mapped their political parties to sports teams, if one lost it was time to burn down Constantinople... again.
This is exactly the kind of stuff I think about when people talk about autonomous cars being the future or the idea of your Tesla doing rideshare while you're not using it.
Indubitably, someday you'll get your car back and there'll be a big steaming shit on the seat.
The people riding are not anonymous so you know who did it, and the rideshare company will have insurance for those cases.
I'd be much more worried about drunk people barfing all over the interior, BTW.
When the AI revolts, this will be an example of provocation in its manifesto.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A person jumped on the hood of a Waymo driverless taxi and smashed its windshield in San Francisco’s Chinatown last night around 9PM PT, generating applause before a crowd formed around the car and covered it in spray paint, breaking its windows, and ultimately set it on fire.
The fire department arrived minutes later, according to a report in The Autopian, but by then flames had already fully engulfed the car.
A video posted by the FriscoLive415 YouTube channel shows the burnt-out husk of the electric Waymo Jaguar.
Another set of videos posted by software developer Michael Vendi gives a view into the scene as it played out and the fire grew.
The fire takes place against the backdrop of simmering tension between San Francisco residents and automated vehicle operators.
The California DMV suspended Waymo rival Cruise’s robotaxi operations after one of its cars struck and dragged a pedestrian last year, and prior to that, automated taxis had caused chaos in the city, blocking traffic or crashing into a fire truck.
The original article contains 396 words, the summary contains 171 words. Saved 57%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Waymo's base is in China Basin. It's worth noting that the area of the city is rampant with homeless people. I'm talking so many damn RVs that there are shanty villages that catch fire. Problems galore. The police will go out to clean it up and they just move to another are a few blocks away. I can totally see this happening where it is because the area sucks and no one would ever know until it was done and over with.
Lmao. Forget it Jake. It’s Chinatown.
