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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.
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).
I think we found one of the car harassers here.
Table-ized A.I.
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.
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.
No, they were doing a news report on how well the Waymo cars actually drive, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. You can see a summary (including the police stop) here. The basic summary: they're good at stopping for threats, but they suck at lane changes and some turns. Despite being in a tightly geofenced area (aka, the cars are "trained to the test"), they found one left turn which the cars could never manage to take without human intervention.
It's understandable that people would be upset if they see the cars as bad drivers. You don't have to invoke motives that people see them as a "threat to their future" when the people are literally telling you that they're upset with how the cars drive.
Seen on a Japanese food processor: "Not to be used for the other use."
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
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/
"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.
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.
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=-
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.
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.
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 certainly hope that the person got his licenses revoked.
Licenses? We don't need a license to own a firearm in the USA. We can be legally prohibited from owning them, and in some states we are required to get a license to buy them, in some we are required to register our ownership of some of them, and AFAIK in all of them we are required to register our ownership of automatic weapons. But in none of them are we required to do anything special to receive them from a family member, not even here in Californy.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
"... in all of them we are required to register our ownership of automatic weapons"
Automatic weapons actually do require a federal license.
Just another day in Paradise
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..
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