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People Are Harassing Waymo's Self-Driving Vehicles (usatoday.com)
Waymo's testing dozens of self-driving mini-vans near Phoenix. Now the Arizona Republic asks why the vehicles are getting so much hate, citing "a slashed tire, a pointed gun, bullies on the road..."
"Police have responded to dozens of calls regarding people threatening and harassing Waymo vans." That was clear August 19, when police were called because a 37-year-old man who police described as "heavily intoxicated" was standing in front of a Waymo and not allowing the van to proceed. "He stated he was sick and tired of the Waymo vehicles driving in his neighborhood, and apparently thought the best idea to resolve this was to stand in front of one of these vehicles," Officer Richard Rimbach wrote in a report.
Phil Simon, an information systems lecturer at Arizona State University and author of several books on technology, said angst from residents is probably less about how the Waymo vans drive and more about people frustrated with what Waymo represents. "This stuff is happening fast and a lot of people are concerned that technology is going to run them out of a job," Simon said. Simon said it is hard for middle-class people to celebrate technological breakthroughs like self-driving cars if they have seen their own wages stagnate or even decline in recent years. "There are always winners and losers, and these are probably people who are afraid and this is a way for them to fight back in some small, futile way," Simon said. "Something tells me these are not college professors or vice presidents who are doing well."
Police used video footage from Waymo to identify the license plate of a Jeep that kept driving head-on toward Waymo's test car -- six different times, one in which the driver then slammed on the brakes, jumped out of their car, and demanded that Waymo get out of their neighborhood. Another local resident told the newspaper that "Everybody hates Waymo drivers. They are dangerous." On four separate occasions, people have thrown rocks.
A 69-year-old man was even arrested for pointing a revolver at the test driver in a passing Waymo car. He later told police he was trying to scare Waymo's driver, and "stated that he despises and hates those cars." He was charged with aggravated assault and disorderly conduct. The man's wife told reporters he'd been diagnosed with dementia, but the Arizona Republic calls it "one of at least 21 interactions documented by local police during the past two years where people have harassed the autonomous vehicles and their human test drivers," adding "There may be many undocumented instances where people threatened Waymo drivers..."
"The self-driving vans use radar, lidar and cameras to navigate, so they capture footage of all interactions that usually is clear enough to identify people and read license plates," the paper adds. (Waymo later cites its "ongoing work" with communities "including Arizona law enforcement and first responders.") When one local news crew followed Waymo vehicles for 170 miles to critique their driving, a Waymo driver eventually pulled into a police station "because the driver was concerned we might've been harassing them. After they learned we were with the media, they let us go on our way."
"Police have responded to dozens of calls regarding people threatening and harassing Waymo vans." That was clear August 19, when police were called because a 37-year-old man who police described as "heavily intoxicated" was standing in front of a Waymo and not allowing the van to proceed. "He stated he was sick and tired of the Waymo vehicles driving in his neighborhood, and apparently thought the best idea to resolve this was to stand in front of one of these vehicles," Officer Richard Rimbach wrote in a report.
Phil Simon, an information systems lecturer at Arizona State University and author of several books on technology, said angst from residents is probably less about how the Waymo vans drive and more about people frustrated with what Waymo represents. "This stuff is happening fast and a lot of people are concerned that technology is going to run them out of a job," Simon said. Simon said it is hard for middle-class people to celebrate technological breakthroughs like self-driving cars if they have seen their own wages stagnate or even decline in recent years. "There are always winners and losers, and these are probably people who are afraid and this is a way for them to fight back in some small, futile way," Simon said. "Something tells me these are not college professors or vice presidents who are doing well."
Police used video footage from Waymo to identify the license plate of a Jeep that kept driving head-on toward Waymo's test car -- six different times, one in which the driver then slammed on the brakes, jumped out of their car, and demanded that Waymo get out of their neighborhood. Another local resident told the newspaper that "Everybody hates Waymo drivers. They are dangerous." On four separate occasions, people have thrown rocks.
A 69-year-old man was even arrested for pointing a revolver at the test driver in a passing Waymo car. He later told police he was trying to scare Waymo's driver, and "stated that he despises and hates those cars." He was charged with aggravated assault and disorderly conduct. The man's wife told reporters he'd been diagnosed with dementia, but the Arizona Republic calls it "one of at least 21 interactions documented by local police during the past two years where people have harassed the autonomous vehicles and their human test drivers," adding "There may be many undocumented instances where people threatened Waymo drivers..."
"The self-driving vans use radar, lidar and cameras to navigate, so they capture footage of all interactions that usually is clear enough to identify people and read license plates," the paper adds. (Waymo later cites its "ongoing work" with communities "including Arizona law enforcement and first responders.") When one local news crew followed Waymo vehicles for 170 miles to critique their driving, a Waymo driver eventually pulled into a police station "because the driver was concerned we might've been harassing them. After they learned we were with the media, they let us go on our way."
People Are Harassing Waymo's Self-Driving Vehicles
Self-Driving Vehicles Are Harassing Waymo's People . . . would be more interesting.
Self-Driving Vehicles Are Harassing Waymo's Self-Driving Vehicles . . . would be the pinnacle.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Why don’t communities vote on whether Waymo is allowed to drive in their town/neighborhood/street? Waymo could take the lead here and conduct the vote. Instead, they’re relying on lawyers, cops and greasy politicians, none of whom represent the people they’re charged with serving.
n/t
I want to kick them all in their drooling vacuous faces, and slap them upside the head for their inane FULL COMMUNISM NOW idiocy, and just generally shit all over them!!!!â(TM)
Fortunately I can do this legally by tipping like shit since they all work in the service industry.
There are much better ways of protesting than throwing rocks or pointing guns at the vehicle itself. Like marching in front of the city hall. This petty violence just makes them look bad and doesn't bring anyone to their side.
Automation is not going to go away no matter how they attack it. Other countries will develop it if the US doesn't. Besides, it's a tool like anything else and can be used for good or bad. If people have problems with it taking their jobs, then they need to either figure out something else to do, make sure they own the technology themselves, or can reap its benefits in some other way. And they can do that individually (capitalism) or collectively (socialism).
It's important to remind people that Waymo == Alphabet == Google.
Simply saying "Waymo" without mentioning the true identity of the organization is like referring to Blackwater as "Xe" or "Academi".
"When one local news crew followed Waymo vehicles for 170 miles to critique their driving, a Waymo driver eventually pulled into a police station "because the driver was concerned we might've been harassing them"
Well that's because that is an incredibly strange thing to do. You might even call it harassment. Perhaps they should have told somebody first?
Get back to bussing tables, bitch.
It's fascinating that the protests in sci-fi stories are starting to become reality in so effortlessly and naturally. It is as if those (often US) writers would have known the culture and people they are writing about.
I think we found one of the car harassers here.
Table-ized A.I.
This story, and others like it in the future, show that the average person isn't going to accept so-called 'self driving cars', which is just one of the reasons, aside from technical reasons, they will ultimately fail.
You will soon have laws that specifically protect these vehicles, essentially elevating them to a status similar to people. Obviously the rules change if there are people in them, but if there aren't then they are just property. And I should be able to hinder its progress as much as possible as long as it doesn't cause harm to property or actual people.
I saw this earlier today:
Locally made robots wait tables at Kathmandu restaurant
Note the kids trying to block the robot (~0:26) and even better the little girl who yells at it to go backwards. Maybe if she were to yell just a little louder the robot would "hear" her.
Hopefully those kids will grow tired of it before they grow into adults.
Hah! Street view helps your business and your users. Further, photos from the public street are public property.
Or because they already do test in Mountain View?
I'm surprised this kind of thing hasn't been considered before; it has a huge potential to damage the viability of automated vehicles. This report is just about people being annoyed but you're going to have criminals targeting unmanned vehicles to steal them and/or their cargo. Automated vehicles will be seen as softer targets when they have no people aboard. I expect driverless taxis to suffer much the same issues that things like automated bike hire systems already do. "This is why we can't have nice things."
Don't call it harassment, call it "advertising". Don't call it stalking, call it "targeted attention placement". Don’t call it hostility, call it "active engagement".
If the people at Google don't treat regular Americans with respect, then why should regular Americans treat Google's robots any better?
To wit, has anyone considered the fallout to occur from thousands of radar units blasting people with small amounts of radiation, every day?
Yes, they have, and it's negligible.
You want to know what blasts people with large amounts of harmful radiation every day? The sun. It causes skin cancer in everyone who doesn't die of something else first. If you want to worry about radiation damage, start there.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
To wit, has anyone considered the fallout to occur from thousands of radar units blasting people with small amounts of radiation, every day?
Yup, we've all been blasted with radio waves from thousands of transmitters every day since the early 1920's
Every emergency vehicle and semitruck does so at similar distances when you are out driving.
And before you dismiss all this as "non-ionizing" to DNA, recall the superposition principle, where getting blasted every which way is additive if multiples happen to strike the same spot.
And to date there has been zero cases of any form of cumulative damage found in anyone.
Not to mention lidar systems, of which some self driving cars are only equipped with and lack radar, use normal light. The same light coming from your monitor while reading this, and your home lighting, and the sun.
We have hundreds of thousands of years of results of how light effects the human body, at all wavelengths and in most energy levels, specifically all energy levels you could come into contact with in a normal day.
If you are truly retired, what are you complaining about?
"Protesting only makes sense when you can articulate an alternative." - The alternative is not physically allowing those companies to operate their unaccountable automatons, and they're articulating the fuck out of it.
You're mostly describing your pathetic online "assault" on the actual protests, it's sad that you can't realize that with a little introspection, lol.
Actually, the Luddites had a better reason to smash technology than these people.
Sorry, but you need to read about the protests against cars when horses started being replaced. This is one (of a number of) normal human reaction(s) to unforeseen changes. And that they didn't foresee it tells you about the kind of person they are.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I don't like Google Recaptcha either. But what in hell does that have to do with their cars?
What people don't like about automated cars is their scrupulously careful driving habits, which puts them in the way of garden-variety asshole motorists. The need for this will gradually go away as fewer and fewer human drivers share the road with them.
I'm less than convinced that radio waves have no effect on cancer frequency...but so do lots of other things, and it can't be a strong effect.
Also there's a question as to whether lidar may contribute to cataract formation. Probably not, and it certainly isn't a strong effect at measured levels, but perhaps over time....
Low level effects are really difficult to detect, particularly as they often only appear when multiple instigators are combined over a long period of time. But they also *usually* aren't that important. E.g. tobacco smoking took centuries to detect, and it's quite possible that the effect was weak enough that it was only successfully detected because it was mixed with other irritants, such as chemicals infused into the cigarette paper. This doesn't mean it isn't a real effect, or that it isn't desirable to eliminate it, but it does mean that it's not worth getting overly emotional about. (As it happens, most lung cancer in the modern world can be directly traced to tobacco, so it's NOW clear that it should be eliminated. But it was a very weak effect, than normally took decades to result in detectable symptoms. And going back a bit probably more lung cancers were caused by wood smoke. Tobacco was rarer and wood smoke was common.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
What are Waymo and others going to do if most people don't have a job and are living in tents?
Welcome to Slashdot, where technology is discussed and viewed in general in a positive light unless there is good reason to be concerned. What I really mean, of course, is what the fuck are you doing on Slashdot. Did you get lost on your way to neoluddites.com?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Waymo is registered and fully owned by Alphabet/Google.
Who gives a fuck. The number of cars in the road not made in the US has been significant since before you were born. Your post wreaks of Trumptardism.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Because if you let people know they're being watched they alter their behavior and corrupt the data collected
Company decisions are made by people and so the same applies to automated systems controlled by those companies
I think Waymo should take this as a learning experience; if their cars act human, than there is no problem. But they don't currently, so people don't like them. Do we not all want these cars to act human and therefore come close to being as safe as one?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I used to ride a bike to school in a suburb of Phoenix. Occasionally drivers would yell or throw stuff at me as they passed.
Later, I delivered pizza in another suburb. I stopped putting on the car topper because people would yell and honk at me. So you see, Phoenix drivers are intolerant of anything on their road that falls outside the norm.
Phoenix is also one of the road rage capitals of the USA. So it isn't just Waymo.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
I don't often do this, but mod this up^^^^^. Anyone who is so clueless as to not know that historical advancement always happens in the face of detractors, and that those detractors are almost always fueled by ignorance didn't pay attention in history class.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I'm pretty sure if you put it to a vote folks wouldn't want the cars on public roads yet. Especially the kinds of conservative folks who frequent Arizona (that's literal conservatives, e.g. folks who are slow to implement change, not to be confused with the colloquial definition of "conservative", e.g. someone who's politically far right wing).
It's purposefully difficult to get a vote on things in most jurisdictions. The rules are complex and require a ton of manual labor in the form of signatures. Generally only people with money can do it, and folks with money want the cars on the road because they're planning on making a killing off them.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
This is yet another case of an underemployed writer looking for something to dramatize for a paycheck.
Unlike most of the whiners here, GP certainly among them given he is clearly a believer in the idea that community always comes before individual rights, I actually live in Phoenix. In fact I live in the area where Waymo cars are the most prevalent. Also, like most Phoenix drivers, I'm a very impatient, aggressive driver in a region notorious for road rage, and where everybody on the freeway proudly tailgates and drives 80 when the speed limit is 65, while the police don't give a shit and will often join you.
The Waymo cars are noticeable in the sense that there's a big disco ball on the top, but other than that, they're quite unremarkable. Moreover, I've yet to hear a single person complain about Waymo cars. Beyond that? They're actually far less annoying than the snowbirds and Canadian wildlings that swarm this place and clog up the freeways by following the stupid speed limit.
You hear that Canada? Nobody cares if you speed unless you are on Indian reservation, where going 56 in a 55 zone will get you a ticket, and the judge decided you're guilty weeks before you ever got to court.
That said, the guy may have been homeless. You see, the homeless here can get aggressive on occasion if you don't tip them a dollar for standing at the side of the freeway ramps while you mind your business. I could see this guy getting pissed because I don't think self driving cars are good tippers.
"Historical development" sounds like chowderhead thinking. No, I really mean it. History looks back, at big trends, and usually long after events have happened. History doesn't "develop" because some company decides to deploy a bunch of hardware into a community.
The idea of "advancement" itself is usually the province of some mean bossy fuck saying things are going to go HIS way becaust the plan is committed to ink. The communists tried to pull that shit. The NAZIs tried to pull that shit. Intellectuals try it again and again with "urban renewal" fascism.
Freedom means letting things wander in their way, and giving people control over their lives and their communities. Yeah, weird, I know.
Your comic book style characterization of those you dislike is very comic-booky. Why not go out onto the sidewalk and go get a latte to calm down with. Careful not to step on a panhandler or in any human shit.
"If the US unemployment rate included everyone who says they want a job, it would be nearly double" According to the November 2016 data, over 5.5 million Americans said they want a job, but don’t have one, and are not considered a part of the labor force. If these people were included in the unemployment rate, it would jump to 8.2%.
https://qz.com/877432/the-us-unemployment-rate-measure-is-deceptive-and-doesnt-need-to-be/
https://smartasset.com/career/problems-with-the-unemployment-rate
https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/06/19/the-problem-with-the-labor-departments-unemployment-indicators
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-the-unemployment-rate-is-so-misleading-2013-03-08
The cars aren't people dumbfuck
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
“The self-driving vans use radar, lidar and cameras to navigate, so they capture footage of all interactions that usually is clear enough to identify people and read license plates”
And of course Google/Waymo discards all those photographs and videos as soon as it’s no longer needed for navigation... right?
#DeleteChrome
I am fairly certain that all those people are men...
I remember reading something a while ago (maybe it was in Wired?) about how AI may displace disproportionately male jobs, as women tend to have service jobs that are harder to automate.
Ignoring their discontent for av's, in a scenario where someone is approaching your vehicle with a weapon coming head on.
Human driver: You might freeze and panic, or you might hit the gas and get out of there, even if getting out of there means hitting the assailant.
Automated driver: The car will just sit there even though your life is being threatened.
So before Google, people would pay you royalties for photos they took of your house?
Correct, in some countries a picture of your house is not necessarily permitted, especially for commercial purposes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_panorama
When you realize something won't fight back, your immediate reaction is to try to abuse the hell out of it.
...is their scrupulously careful driving habits
So "confused and indecisive" is now referred to as "scrupulously careful."
Duly noted.
Getting "blasted" by non-ionising radiation repeatedly in the same spot still makes it non-ioning radiation and still has no effect on your DNA.
But given you're worried about ABS emissions maybe you should put the tinfoil hat away and go checkin to a hotel where the staff have white coats and the walls are made of pillows.
When trains and steam-driven spinning mules etc were invented, there were also Luddites who couldn't cope with progress.
Even the most positive people supporting self driving are asking is the technology ready yet to go beyond the test stages. Their saying maybe Waymo is rushing things a bit too much.
Lets vote the 9 year old fuckwit and that jeep driver out of our city, we don't need cunts and nuts in here.
Just go out and beat the crap out of locals who put people in danger by throwing sharp garbage on the roads. No, remember, the laws don't apply to you, remember, which is why you professed putting nails on the road, despite that being illegal. So if the law doesn't apply to you, neither does the ones about GBH and murder.
Some time later when the community realises that they benefit from the law too, they will decide not to be assholes like you.
Because you're the first ones to whinge when the police ignore the law and beat the shit out of you because someone wealthy told them to. Seems like you only want the laws against YOU doing lawbreaking to not apply. You never said that. I took it to mean NO laws apply to you. So I broke someone's arms for pissing in my fuel tank. Oddly enough they no longer thought the law didn't apply to them. So I terrorised them into silence.
Don't feel good about it, but the situation was sunk to begin with by that asshole's actions.
We don't need horses now, and we don't need people in the future.
I was not aware that waymo or anyone else has passed a written/actual driving test. Worse, do they pass the test with each rev of the software. Uber proved u break the law and ask forgiveness later.
And hence why autonomous cars will never happpen. They are too easily bamboozled.
You hate it when someone unfamiliar with the area is sharing the road with you, don't you?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
I am not sure if you're being ironic, because what you said just there is doing the same thing he was. Latte?
So now that they are replacing people instead of replacing horses, imagine how much worse it will be. Maybe so much worse that the technology won't survive until it is put on a closed course to have the kinds worked out for ten years.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Dying from drowning in the bath also kills everyone who doesn't die of something else first.
How long has Waymo been testing on public roads now? Well over a year. And they can't even do some of the turns properly yet. It was rushed out from the start. These companies are saying that people are so obsolete and that they are so hungry to make money from the fact that people are obsolete that they are going to put some ridiculous tech on the road that doesn't even work right and may never work right. Yeah, I can understand why people are pissed.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
On my window signs I put IR leds. They are invisible to normal sight but make large white splotches on camera. On street view it shows my street until front of business half the road is white out and entire business is white out
Soon people less affluent will be able to gain access to cheaper transportation, and those Teslas are coming down in price and the middle class can now afford them. This is an outrage that deserves protest.
I'm gonna pull in front and lock up my brakes. Just to test its abilities. In a rear end collision the car the rear end the other is always at fault. I'll say I was braking for a squirrel in the road.
I rejoice in it... we are coming for your jobs, your well being, your culture, and your young. .. writhe for my enjoyment
technology, miscegenation, and change in general will rot your society, and erase your heritage...
resistance is futile...
Please
No.. I hate sharing the road with those unfamiliar with sane driving habits. I don't care if it's a computer or a distracted human.
indecisiveness causes accidents. If you have right of way, go. If you don't, fucking wait.
But they are controlled by people, by means of ota firmware updates and policies decided and Implemented by people that define and control the cars behavior.
And so to capture a situation for what it is, you try not to tip off what your observing.
> It causes skin cancer in everyone who doesn't die of something else first.
Technically, everything kills everyone who doesn't die of something else first.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Robots are not people.
Why not just use tinfoil, and save on your electric bill?
Your post wreaks of Trumptardism.
First, learn what words mean and use the correct one in sentences next time. Second, fuck you and your leftist bullshit.
no wonder your generation is fucked and I have a $12.2M retirement fund and can retire at 50 :)
Hmmm, I wonder if one might be connected to the other? Maybe the younger generation is fucked because the older one has stolen and hoarded all the money and assets. When you lot die things might look up a bit.
The man's wife told reporters he'd been diagnosed with dementia
what kind of excuse is that? if he's got dementia, he shouldn't even be allowed to be near a f-ing gun. And that's why regular people shouldn't have guns..
...is their scrupulously careful driving habits
So "confused and indecisive" is
now referred to as "scrupulously careful."
Duly noted.
How many times did you get beaten in school for using this sort of tactic in an argument? Not nearly enough.
Great, just another thing to avoid.
You hate it when someone unfamiliar with the area is sharing the road with you, don't you?
As others have said, only when they are causing problems. My exwife used to yell at me to slow down when we were looking for a street (preGPS). I would tell her that I have traffic behind me and I'm not going to drive half the speed limit like she does when she's reading street signs.
Wonder why nobody harasses Uber's self-driving vehicles? Just ask the woman who was jaywalking while carrying her bicycle in the path of an oncoming Uber autonomous car. Oh, wait, ...
Sorry, do you actually believe that, or are you just repeating some obscure meme?
"Scrupulously careful driving habits" do not begin to describe the problems with automated cars.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Imagine our surprise that you don't know the definition of the word "people."
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I'm observing that you don't know the difference between "your" and "you're."
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Yet you were able to infer correctly when I meant. And so the language was sufficient to communicate the idea.
If you don't arbitrarily cut off how far you follow the influences. indirect influences Injustice critical to the outcome in advance as direct influences.
Correction. indirect influences are just as critical to outcomes has direct influence and to negate to enumerate them is naive at best and incompetent information gathering at its worst. The vehicle is just a proxy for the composited will of the people who programmed it.
But the principle of avoiding affecting what you are observing, maintains across all competent observation