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

I wonder what good they think that will do?

[WilliamGeorge]

I wonder what good they think that will do? Its not going to offend the car, or cause it to retaliate. Its also not going to stop progress on this front.

Re:I wonder what good they think that will do?

[mark-t]

I imagine they think it will annoy the owner enough to not want to deal with the hassle of owning such a vehicle.

It's just vandalism

[rsilvergun]

We encourage self expression but also shit all over a big portion of our population (economically speaking). The result is vandalism. They're not thinking in terms of stopping progress. They're just angry. Usually because they lack good economic prospects.

Countries like Japan deal with this by discouraging expression. They also have unusually high suicide rates. I suppose we could also not abandon a large chunk of our population to economic desolation, but, well, that costs money. And we're nothing if not cheapskates.

Re:It's just vandalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Sad as that is, I think you entirely correct in this analysis.

What's sad about it ?

Anyone who is paying attention can see the gene pool of the human race needs a good cleaning, and that those who should not be breeding are breeding like rabbits while those who should be breeding are choosing not to have families. If you're going to have an emotional response to the situation, a mixture of fear and disgust would be most appropriate. Sadness doesn't belong in an analysis of the current mess that is humanity, unless it is a result of noticing the tremendous disparity between what could have been and what actually is.

Re:It's just vandalism

[Anonymous Coward]

If you cannot handle that notion, maybe you should kill yourself so you don't burden others with your needy pathetic existence.

Talking about maturity and then making the above statement, irony level: EPIC

Re:It's just vandalism

[angel'o'sphere]

Countries like Japan deal with this by discouraging expression.
Expression of what?
Ever been in Japan? Guessed so ...

They also have unusually high suicide rates.
But not for the reasons you think.

In Japan unemployment is a shame.
In America it is a disgrace.
In Europe it is _normal_

Re: It's just vandalism

[c6gunner]

It's rarely the poor who are out there protesting these things. The people at the G20 and "occupy Wall Street" protests may have looked homeless, but the vast majority were quite well off. It's not about actual impact, it's about ideology, and spoiled overgrown children looking for a cause.

Re:It's just vandalism

[Immerman]

You want to balance the breeding rate? It's easy enough to do - give the "undesirable" women easy access to cost- and stigma-free birth control, and good family planning education. People are never going to stop humping like bunnies, so give them a reliable option to avoid reproducing because of it, of the same sort that wealthy people make regular use of. It's worked extremely well pretty much everywhere it's been tried, as is pretty much the only thing that has actually worked.

You take a huge step in the direction you want to go, and you do it without genocide, in a way that actually helps the undesirables improve their situation and themselves. But just try to get that past the "moral majority" in the US.

Re: It's just vandalism

[pedz]

Well... you are neglecting something called consequences. Sure, it is "illegal" or "improper" to kill folks or vandalize cars and often those who do that go to jail or whatever.

But it is also illegal as well as immoral to utterly fuck over your fellow citizen with your greed and usually those folks do not go to jail. But, karma still comes around and shits on them by way of being vandalized, assassinated, and taunted a second time.

Its all good man.!

As AI improves

[Lead Butthead]

the machines would eventually concludes the root cause of most collisions had been the humans and their elimination would go a long way toward traffic safety...

Re:What is the gain?

[arth1]

What do people expect to happen from attacking robots?

That they get heard.

Send a letter, and nobody will read it, and it will certainly not be escalated up to the person you addressed it to. But do a small act of defiance like this, and it hits the news, and those high up will notice that the product doesn't get an universal warm welcome, no matter what their trail of sycophants might have told them.

Re:All this tech

[fluffernutter]

Exactly this. Companies think it sucks that they can't track you unless you use a certain app or website. They want to track you everywhere and this fits the bill. The old line that humans suck at driving is the new "won't you think of the children". They don't care about making these as safe as possible, they only care about making them as safe as a human; which means they don't care about reducing fatalities at all.