Self-Driving Cars Are Being Attacked By Angry Californians (theguardian.com)

According to incident reports collected by the California department of motor vehicles, some Californians are purposely colliding with self-driving cars. The Guardian reports: On January 10, a pedestrian in San Francisco's Mission District ran across the street to confront a GM Cruise autonomous vehicle that was waiting for people to cross the road, according to an incident report filed by the car company. The pedestrian was "shouting," the report states, and "struck the left side of the Cruise AV's rear bumper and hatch with his entire body." No injuries occurred, but the car's left tail light was damaged. In a separate incident just a few blocks away on January 28, a taxi driver in San Francisco got out of his car, approached a GM Cruise autonomous vehicle and "slapped the front passenger window, causing a scratch." The police were not called in either case.

Comments

Re:Go for the food delivery robots!

[Kjella]

They have to catch you first. They have real criminals to catch first. If you RTFA, you'll see that nobody was arrested for the incidents.

More specifically, it said they didn't call the police in the first place. I guess they're trying to send the message that you're just being a nuisance and we don't care, so there's no point in doing it and maybe avoid a Streisand effect. If that backfires I'm sure they'll call in the police if they take serious damage, widespread damage, have repeat offenders or the service for paying customers is sabotaged. Right now though it seems they're just reporting it to be totally up-front with the regulators about all unwanted contact, not because it matters.

Re:It's just vandalism

[crgrace]

Many, many people in SF lack good economic prospects. There are a lot of highly educated engineers and physicians, sure, but these aren't the folks that are attacking self-driving cars.

We have a large population of dead-end folks living day-to-day in Single-Occupancy Residences (essentially run down hotels), shelters, housing projects, and on the streets. They are largely unskilled and many of them are not mentally balanced.

We also have economically disadvantaged neighborhoods with large numbers of people who don't (or can't) graduate high-school. Where is there a place for them in the new economy?

If you ever visit San Francisco, what will strike you is the extreme mismatch between the upper-middle class and the poor. We have a lot of both and not as many blue-color traditionally middle-class folks. The working class mostly commutes.

Re: It's just vandalism

[Pfhorrest]

Your point of confusion is thinking that the left is in favor of blacks, hispanics, etc, against whites, while the right is for whites against everyone else. In fact, the left is in favor of everyone being equally free, and if more blacks and hispanics would freely choose to have fewer kids if presented with the opportunity than white people would, that's not against the left's aims, because the left isn't trying to breed blacks and hispanics, just to let them live.