• @[email protected]English
    11•1 year ago

    Safe Street Rebel just does not like it when Cruise and Waymo use their city as a testing ground, hilariously hindering their cars by a cone.

    • Wookie
      7•1 year ago

      Waymo has started to use my neighborhood to park their cars and it’s causing traffic in a freakin residential street. I’ve been thinking of using tape and white paper to cover their cameras

      • @extantEnglish
        2•1 year ago

        Can you draw a traffic cone in chalk on the road?

          • @extantEnglish
            2•1 year ago

            As the other guy pointed out it was a joke, but I’m also curious to see if it would work. I feel like if it’s close enough it would work.

  • @alienanimalsEnglish
    11•1 year ago

    I’d like to see more human-driven cars become immobilized. I don’t want to be inhaling car exhaust regardless of who or what is driving it.

    • @finnieEnglish
      6•1 year ago

      Yeah, being an American is now just being a corporate guinea pig.

    • DudewitbowEnglish
      5•1 year ago

      Its not very common. Its just in very specific jurisdictions with very specific fleet count allowed.

      Within the past 8 or so years, self driving has rapidly improved (not any of the shit tesla calls self driving).

      A lot of the testing happens in california, only because thats where a lot of the startups are as well as existing big corporate are located as they go their due to the existing talent pool required to start it up.

  • Neato
    5•1 year ago

    The lead-up to the commission’s vote prompted the Safe Street Rebel group to start “coning,” as they call it. Members have long used street theater shenanigans to gain attention in their fight against cars and to promote public transportation.

    So they want to decrease cars and increase public transport. Makes sense.

    Coning driverless cars fits in line with a long history of protests against the impact of the tech industry on San Francisco. Throughout the years, activists have blockaded Google’s private commuter buses from picking up employees in the city. And when scooter companies flooded the sidewalks with electric scooters, people threw them into San Francisco Bay.

    Uh, one of their other protests is to block mass transport (not technically public, but better than cars) and destroy items that promote not using cars? I mean I hate that those fucking scooters are littered everywhere, but a simple ordinance that only allows them in certain locations (stations) could fix that.

    “Then there was the burning of Lime scooters in front of a Google bus,” says Manissa Maharawal, an assistant professor at American University who has studied these protests.

    Burning battery-powered devices in front of a bus. I’ve lost all empathy with this group.

    And that doesn’t even address how driverless cars will eventually be far, far safer than drivers, and will cut down on total cars. I understand not wanting your streets to be testing grounds, but that has to happen eventually. Test courses can only do so much to simulate reality. All things eventually are tested on volunteers or the public, like medicine. Perhaps they should be pushing for a referendum as to where to test driverless cars? Because being opposed to all cars is unrealistic. With how America is designed, a small fleet of driverless cars to get places public transportation can’t cover is an ideal future. Redesigning entire cities isn’t a near-term solution.