“Coning” AVs is part of a long tradition of tactical urbanism
oversharing.substack.com
oversharing.substack.com
2. There are good reasons to own a car, and in some places a significant number of people may be justified in using one. Blanket targeting everyone would be unfair to those who really need it. By contrast, SUVs don't have any (significant?) utility over a regular car (other than ego boosting maybe...).
But why don't they get that increased cross section by extending the A-pillar in the directions toward and away from the driver and keep its size perpendicular to that the same? That should give a stronger A-pillar without changing how much it blocks. It would slightly reduce the interior volume of the cabin bit that would come from space that normally isn't used.
Each AV will be equipped with a person that will prevent the unicornification or removes the cone after-the-fact.
I do wonder if those cones act as a reusable catalyst, once the car goes in failure mode, you just remove the cone and use it again.
Anyway, there is something more revolutionary than an AV. It’s called not driving. It requires working from home, or decent public transport. Or it requires walkable/bikeable cities. Unfortunately this really solves actual issues but it isn’t as sexy from a technological standpoint I guess.
He got caught bragging on Twitter and then deleted the tweets. You can still find the commentary around it if you search.
This is part of a long tradition of lying for political benefit, not tactical anything.
This isn’t a movement, and you’re not an activist. Your actions will have knock on effects that harm millions, especially the disabled and elderly.
Keep at it, chucklehead. Soon they’ll start requesting CFAA prosecutions. FBI are much less forgiving than SF’s absentee PD.
Harm millions especially disabled and elderly? Cruise and Waymo give zero accessible rides. But what we do have, which already exists, are buses (which all have accessible ramps) and dial-a-ride paratransit. But sorry techies there's no profit motive there.
CFFA? FBI? Okay now you're just being funny :D
That’s what intentionally and maliciously blinding a self-driving car is.
That’s not something affected by local politics. FBI investigates CFAA offenses and SF office of DOJ prosecutes the charges. There is zero doubt the companies involved kicked off that process when the attacks occurred.
This is not speculation. Have fun.
Also imagine the lack of vision in not understanding that automating transport is a prerequisite to massively expanding accessibility.
You have zero ability to think in terms of growth. Short term zero sum mindset is what kills cities.
Umm, no? I don't think that's the point these protests are trying to make.
To be able to focus on something above all else, you first need to be able to unequivocally define what "it" is.
What is safety? It's not always the same thing, which is why the simplistic models of these cars fail to do the right thing in some edge cases where a human would know what to do.
Generally it seems they simply slow down and stop when confused. Which unarguably is very often the safest thing to do.
But then there are the examples where the car stops, blocking emergency vehicles. Clearly not the safe thing to do. Human drivers sometimes do things like drive up into the sidewalk to clear way for an ambulance in a tight spot. Driving onto a sidewalk is nearly always the worst possible thing, but sometimes the right thing to do. It's easy for human drivers to make this judgment.
These are the same people falsifying data that makes autonomous vehicles appear more unsafe than they are.
"New letter from CA state accuses SF officials of data manipulation: In the 4 @Waymo traffic collisions SF cited to prove driverless cars are less safe, 3 were the Waymos being rear-ended and 1 didn't even involve any cars touching, CA says."
Source: https://twitter.com/annatonger/status/1673403230804385813
Regardless, the traffic cone clowning and the falsifying data clowning both are born of the same shortsighted desire to get "progressive" points by attacking evil corporations.
Are they though?
Guarding against vandalism isn’t really the car makers job. Tires have always been easy to slash. That’s why we have laws and penalties for breaking them.
As you suggest, putting tape over cameras is closer to actual vandalism because it could leave tape residue on the lens.
Tortious interference, as the name implies, is a matter of civil courts and could open up the person doing it to being sued, depending on the circumstances under which it happens. It doesn't mean they're breaking any laws.
True.
> It doesn't mean they're breaking any laws.
Yes, it does. Civil law is law (and a larger portion of the law than criminal law is), and torts are as much violations of law as crimes.
That's an arbitrary distinction you could equally apply to any civil or criminal violation of the law; its “the circumstancrs surrounding the act not the act itself” that distinguishes murder from perfectly legal self-defense.
Its the circumstances surrounding picking up an item and walking off with it that distinguish lawful activity from theft.
Which aren't really enforced in many places. Leading to tyre slashing to become a fashionable form of criminal 'activism' in a social media world:
https://twitter.com/T_Extinguishers
(And promoting that sort of behaviour on social media is apparently just fine, destruction of property apparently isn't 'real violence', yet in many other cases, mere words are now considered to be violence)
Really? Since when has making using something more convenient reduced ownership of it?
The less of a pain it is to take a car somewhere, the more often people will take cars places. It's very slightly possible that there will be fewer total cars all running at a higher utilization, but the mean number of cars on the road at any given time would seem like it would only go up.
Are you saying we should not debate the meaningful impacts here because OP mentioned a related aspect that has little to no impact?
Parking is an extremely major urban land use issue, and its related to, well, not ownership per se but vehicles being possessed and stored by the usual occupant. On-demand use of not-personally-stored (whuch probably means fleet-owned) AV’s is radically freeing for urban land use, and is probably one of the least disruptive ways to transition from car-dependent to not-car-dependent urban design, with on-demand AVs as a bridge technology.
These will be more convenient, but also dramatically more expensive, and _that_ certainly reduces the ownership of things.
> the mean number of cars on the road at any given time would seem like it would only go up
That's orthogonal to the question of level of ownership -- these can both be true simultaneously.
And it may even be the case that the number of cars on the road goes down. The idea would be that if these services are convenient enough for more people to forego owning their own vehicle in favor of using a fleet, the economics on a per-trip basis would change: now, for car owners, owning a car has a high fixed cost and very low marginal cost per trip, so once you've bought the car, registered it, insured it, etc., you're incentivized to use it for as many trips as possible to recoup your investment. Using a fleet service, you would have low/no fixed costs and comparatively higher per-trip costs, meaning that for some trips, it might be cheaper to take transit, bikeshare, etc. A lot would come down to the specifics of pricing, though, so it's hard to predict with any certainty.
*if everyone suddenly wants to buy the amazing new self-serving cars then that could effect the used car market
Yes making them dramatically more expensive would reduce ownership. I suspect they will be expensive at first, but can't think of any reasons they won't get cheaper with time.
>> the mean number of cars on the road at any given time would seem like it would only go up
> That's orthogonal to the question of level of ownership -- these can both be true simultaneously.
It's not orthogonal, but they aren't completely tied together. Per-car utilization would have to go up for them both to be true.
> And it may even be the case that the number of cars on the road goes down. The idea would be that if these services are convenient enough for more people to forego owning their own vehicle in favor of using a fleet, the economics on a per-trip basis would change: ...
Again this seems to presuppose that self-driving cars will require a significantly higher capital outlay (or perhaps that cities not named "New York" will make parking significantly more burdensome, though that could happen without self-driving cars). If a new self-driving car costs a few thousand more than a non-self driving car, and enough people buy new ones that a thriving used market occurs, the outcome would instead be to move people from "Of course I take transit to work; it's only a bit longer and I can read" towards using cars.
Only if you force everyone to use self-driving cars exclusively. No one sane is proposing that.
That’s an increased use not increased ownership argument. The reduced ownership argument is that AVs make on-demand use without ownership easier, reducing the degree to which regular use necessitates ownership.
> It's very slightly possible that there will be fewer total cars all running at a higher utilization, but the mean number of cars on the road at any given time would seem like it would only go up.
Sure, but that's a different issue. On the flip side, casual AV use doesn’t require parking at either end of the users trip (it still needs some place to park when idle and to the extent that is remote you get extra empty travel distance, but that’s still a lot more urban spacr use flexibility than traditional auto usage.
The moment a self-driving car comes on the market, I’m helping them buy one. They don’t have to be perfect. One that gets my relative off the streets will be a get gain for all of us.
Serious protest should involve serious people power, not just a handful of radicals aiming for maximum disruptive impact (usually knowing they'll face zero consequences for it, and may well turn more people against their cause, e.g 'Just Stop Oil' in the UK)
But when you screw around with transport infrastructure, you may be putting lives at risk if emergency vehicles are held up in completely unnecessary traffic jams.
In this case the argument works both ways.
The majority of the time, it's groups doing things like this that lead directly toward what you're calling "serious protests".
Without such groups, nothing would ever really happen. There's an enormous power differential here, and theatrics like this is one of the few ways available to help level the playing field.
I guess, really, my point is a bit broader than "inconveniencing". What seems necessary is attention-getting theatrics that actively angers those who want to maintain the status quo, and the Montgomery bus boycotts were absolutely that.
You can't legitimately say you care about pedestrian and bike safety and then turn around and suddenly try and block AVs because the vibes are wrong.