Comment by seadan83 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by seadan83 | Hacker News Reader

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> And brag to their friends "I made a thousand people late for work!"

Seems like the protestors are not required for this to happen:

> The city’s transportation agencies documented several incidents where driverless cars disrupted Muni service. During the night of Sept. 23, five Cruise cars blocked traffic lanes on Mission Street in Bernal Heights, stalling a Muni bus for 45 minutes. On at least three different occasions, Cruise cars stopped on Muni light-rail tracks, halting service.

Meanwhile, these additional things are happening:

> San Francisco firefighters were battling a two-alarm apartment blaze on the corner of Hayes and Divisadero streets during a recent Sunday morning when a driverless Cruise car entered the active firefighting scene and nearly ran over fire hoses on the street.

> Firefighters at the scene stood in front of the car to try to get it to stop, but the autonomous vehicle came to a halt only after one of them smashed the Cruise car’s front window amid the chaotic effort to put out a fire that displaced 25 people, according to city transportation officials.

> A Cruise vehicle came to a stop after nearly colliding with a Muni N-Judah train at the intersection of Carl and Cole streets. The Cruise car blocked light-rail tracks in both directions for close to seven minutes.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2023/self-driving-cars/

> A passenger in a driverless Cruise vehicle suffered injuries on Thursday after the vehicle was struck by a San Francisco fire truck that was responding to an emergency call.

> Now, the California Department of Motor Vehicles has requested the autonomous vehicle company cut its San Francisco fleet in half, following this latest incident. Cruise told KTVU the company will comply with that request.

https://www.ktvu.com/news/cruise-robotaxi-with-passenger-cra...

There have been three human-driven car crashes on my busy street within a 10 second walk from my front door just in the last year. A multi car collision woke me up last night at 4 am. All three crashes completely closed the road for several hours. I've even seen a human driver trying to outrun the police, ignoring their instructions to stop.

Clearly, the rollout of human drivers isn't working and we should start blocking roads until the government bans them.

> Clearly, the rollout of human drivers isn't working and we should start blocking roads until the government bans them.

You have my full support for both this and cutting back on self-driving cars.

Let me know how that works out over the next 5-10 days, after the food runs out, and you realize you can’t get food, or even hope to flee your urban anarcho-hellscape after the train system fails for lack of maintenance workers or parts.

There are a whole lot more human driven vehicles on the streets than autonomous.

For how small these autonomous fleets are we shouldn't be hearing about any such events if they were actually superior to human drivers. This tech clearly isn't ready, and the cities they're operating in are being used as training grounds while putting everyone there at risk.

Unless the public and media is biased and swayed by hysteria. But of course it can’t be exaggerated, just like terrorism, child kidnapping and the threat of white techies getting murdered by street people.

Cruise has been in my hood for years. I’ll take them anyday over humans.

So all the incidents they listed are fake?

Did anyone ask?

Humans causing issues is way less interesting to news media and as a result doesn't get the airtime.

It used to be fairly common that some idiot would drive their car into a Muni tunnel and put that part of the system out of service for hours. For some reason I haven't heard of something like that in quite a few years, though.

I have my issues with this "live testing" that Cruise et al. are doing, but let's not pretend that these sorts of things are any worse than what human drivers have done, and continue to do.

What is your point? That the cars themselves sometimes block traffic, therefore it's okay for protestors to stop them and block traffic?

Being inconvenienced by a protest is your responsibility as a citizen of a democratic republic. If you don’t engage with democracy, democracy engages with you.

I won't be held hostage by asocial freaks who piss and moan when they don't get their way. Let's democratic republic these people into the prison they so yearn for, you may join them if you want.

I think you’re thinking of a people’s democratic republic.

Protests are not democracy. Voting, freedom of speech, and peaceful assembly, sure, in the US at least.

But that's not really the situation here either.

What is the point of peaceful assembly if not to protest something?

If you're counting peaceful assembly as a tool of democracy, you might as well be saying peaceful protest, of which merely blocking traffic is included, since inconveniencing people is not violent.

There are many cases of people dying from blocked emergency vehicles, with these sort of obstructions.

I’m certain if you were in an ambulance, dying if a heart attack, you would look out your window to see the non violent protest, give a thumbs up, easily make peace with leaving you family behind, and breathe your last breath with a smile, knowing you were part of “democracy”.

My point was that it was peaceful/non-violent. Again, obstructing traffic is not violent. If people die because emergency vehicles couldn't pass, that still isn't violent.

> My point was that it was peaceful/non-violent.

Which is why I look forward to legislation that puts some thought into the consequences [1], since it's very easily to peacefully kill someone.

[1] https://www.texastribune.org/2021/05/05/texas-protesters-hig...

Cool scenario, they have trolleys and switches in SF too. Do you feel the same about people driving to work who cause ordinary traffic that happens to cause an ambulance to arrive too late? Breathe your last breath with a smile, knowing you were part of “capitalism.”

> Do you feel the same

I do, for those that caused any sort of gridlock that prevented them from being able to follow the law of moving out of the way of emergency vehicles.

Personally, I hope democracy spreads: https://www.texastribune.org/2021/05/05/texas-protesters-hig...

> Protests are not democracy. Voting, freedom of speech, and peaceful assembly, sure, in the US at least.

If not "peaceful assembly", how are you defining "protests"?

Stopping a lawful vehicle with a traffic cone isn't protest. Harassment is not protest. Vandalism is not protest. Halting traffic for 60 seconds might be protest; halting traffic for 60 minutes definitely isn't.

Even civil disobedience, where someone deliberately violates the law, is predicated on being _peaceful_. (And IMO also on the willingness, if not the desire, to accept the legal consequences.)

IMO, media outlets have pushed this idea that violence is protest, but that's pretty new (and of course limited to issues where they agree).

The point of the protests is to bring attention to the fact corps are running dangerous automated vehicles into the middle of active fire scenes and stuff. Were you aware of that without the protests? Maybe they work.

That's literally the point of a protest.

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