A bus driver killed a man, the city blamed tech | Hacker News Reader

A bus driver killed a man, the city blamed tech

theindustry.pw

90 pointslxm56 comments

Kind of funny that it is assumed that a human-operated vehicle would be more prompt in getting out of the way. Yesterday, walking in my city I saw an ambulance stuck at an intersection for over a minute because of confused drivers and a police vehicle blocking the road.

I think the fact that the vehicles stop is better. Emergency vehicles can use any lane even for opposite traffic - so go around them.

Meanwhile, Teslas seem to target emergency vehicles for ramming at max speed.

> Kind of funny that it is assumed that a human-operated vehicle would be more prompt in getting out of the way.

Honestly I think it is silly to assume not. People (in general) have a pretty good intuition if EMS is coming their way.

Beyond that, this is a commercial service that is to be rolled out en-masse, it has to be better than the average human or else you will have lawsuits left and right.

> I think the fact that the vehicles stop is better. Emergency vehicles can use any lane even for opposite traffic - so go around them.

That is not a tenable solution.

Agree to disagree. Many people do not realize they should move at all when there are sirens and lights, even directly behind them. And a stationary vehicle is quite predictable. It seems highly unlikely a fleet of self driving vehicles could block all oncoming and opposing lanes of traffic.

But what do I know. I’m just some guy.

I was struck by the anti AV attitude and poor arguments put forth on the original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37371539

From a presumably technical audience it was disappointing to read through those takes.

Did they _really_ need to call out that the man (victim) was homeless? Is that a significant identifier important to the story?

If you have lived in SF, you understand the context this adds to the situation.

Then couldn’t there be more detail that would allow those of us who haven’t lived in SF to understand it too?

Yes. Happy to help you understand. Many homeless in SF are actually very mentally ill. They sometimes jump in front of traffic. This has happened to me a few times driving in SF. So the implication is that the bus driver may not at all have been at fault.

Yeah exactly.

I'm not saying anyone deserved to die; the homeless in SF are basically not autonomous agents anymore. Right or wrong, it shifts it in my mind from "bus driver is at fault" to "nobody is at fault" (except the city that encourages themn to them stay drugged and on the streets).

So being homeless means that we shouldn't investigate fatal crashes? Personally, I don't think they should have to give up the right to not be murdered.

Did I say that?

Yup, you sure did.

Thanks - I guess we don’t know if that’s what happened in this case, but that possibility hadn’t occurred to me.

Yes, and this is fucked up, is what we're saying

The subtext is that he deserved to die, I assume.

(Which is a bit sarcastic, perhaps, but people generally value the homeless less on various axis, whether they want to admit it or not, because when you hear "bad thing happened to man" you immediately want to know if that man could have been you, once you learn he was homeless the panic reaction subsides.)

I don’t live there, could you provide the context in a paragraph or 2?

The subtext is that the individual was not of right mind, either due to sleep deprivation from being unhoused, or the stress itself of being unhoused, or, to be blunt, being on drugs. Not that it, in any way, makes it okay to have run over them, but the implication is that it's possible they got hit because they stepped out/jumped in front of the bus, and that it wasn't the fault of the bus driver. Not saying that's what happened here, but that's the framing that saying they're homeless gives for me.

For additional context, Harrison and 7th isn't located in the best neighborhood, which is to say there are numerous tent cities in that vicinity.

> Not that it, in any way, makes it okay to have run over them, but the implication is that it's possible they got hit because they stepped out/jumped in front of the bus, and that it wasn't the fault of the bus driver

This sounds like this makes it, "in some way", okay to people here. No need for investigation, it must be the dirty homeless.

> Harrison and 7th isn't located in the best neighborhood

checks location

~$10b unicorn Plaid's headquarters. SF is truly an enigma

No, they could have just described the persons' behavior -- but instead they wanted to include the false nuance that is echoed in the comments here that because someone is homeless it implies and symbolizes their mental state as being broken and their judgement as being faulty.

It's about as true as looking at the ballot returns of any single state and then declaring all people within that state as party affiliates for the elected party -- it's not true but it's useful for painting the people involved into hateful and simplified stereotypes that do nothing but provide bigots with an easy to understand mental model, however false or imprecise it might be.

One thing that can be said for sure : If any of us were homeless traffic victims I doubt that we'd want "they're homeless" as the de-facto explanation as to why a vehicle ran us down -- it's not that easy to explain away.

Maybe because it does take a broken mental state to give up on society and go live out on the streets. I understand that is a progression and it is no ones choice, but it doesn’t change the fact that no one of a sound mental state lives like that.

Where's the video that contradicts the first responders account? Not casting aspersions, I've just looked through this article, linked tweets, etc. and I can't find it.

I found this report [1] from NBC Bay Area, which states that Cruise would not release the video "But NBC Bay Area was able to review a nearly 13 minute video which is purportedly the incident in question. It appears to show what the company describes, including the ambulance managing to squeeze by the stopped Cruise car."

(Reading between the lines: I'm assuming the news station was able to review footage that is not from Cruise (dashcam from a cop car? security camera?), and are being circumspect about even describing their source to protect whoever gave them access)

[1] https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/cruise-pushes-back-cla...

I suspect that you'd need to go to Cruise, for that. I suspect they have their own reasons for not publishing it on YT.

Because the cruise vehicle is sitting in the middle of the street blocking the road while an emergency vehicle tries to get by?

I see, good point. Seems like a shame -- even the publishing of an edited video (to leave out any inappropriate content) would be the best antidote to lies in the media.

> the takeaway for journalists here is clear: be skeptical of your sources, triple-check your facts, and don’t ever assume that your colleagues are doing the same.

That should be the first thing they teach you in Journalism 101, these days.

I get sick of reading news stories that are all the same AP story, with different ads around it.

The sfsrandard article included quotes from the Cruise spokesperson, and correctly attributed the statements they were made by first responders to those first responders.

I don’t see why TheIndustry would take this sanctimonious tone about “lessons for journalists” when they are doing the exact same thing here, just repeating the statements of spokespeople.

I don’t see a lesson for journalists, here. Readers need to correctly parse statements like “according to <some spokesperson>.” When an article describes multiple contradictory statements by different organizations, it should be possible for people to infer that it is too early to make a conclusion.

It’s not journalism anymore, it’s visits to your ad riddled pages. Regardless of what truth you post. That’s what it’s become now. That’s web journalism. “I heard it on TikTok” is next.

There are a few institutions trying to keep it dignified but it’s become a bazaar.

>It’s not journalism anymore,

The "anymore" there means something changed. I don't think there was ever a time in which journalists did not regularly print statements from officials like police and firefighters as fact not worthy of questioning. Sometimes we get into a mindset that everything is getting worse when in reality it is just that we are now more aware of how bad it has always been.

Hey now, telling me I’m more aware sounds an awful lot like “woke” /s. Logic to the illogical. I do think you are right however, I think the standards have dropped as far as what makes above-the-fold news. Maybe that’s a sign that everything is benign and @TerryXPickleCaster is breaking news. Or that we have become desensitized to the war that is raging currently? I very much think they are current news. I also know in this always online world of 25/7 news, you can talk in circles (hi fox), but I do see a decline in journalistic integrity. Questions being asked of officials on camera that should never be asked during a live broadcast. The question to the sheriff of PA over that manhunt. “Little rascals style”. Questions to WH press secretary. Questions to parliamentary figures. It’s like people just want to troll people for jokes instead of asking serious journalistic questions. I know what you’re saying though. There was always the National Inquirer.

There are certain things that are noticeable worse now; sometime in the last decade or so it became respectable to print news articles that boil down to:

"Someone on Twitter said X"

Which is next to useless, you can find someone saying anything on Twitter.

Newspapers have been dedicating space to that sort of thing for literally centuries. Reprinting an angry tweet from some rando isn't much different than printing an angry letter to the editor from some rando.

Before it was restricted to letters to the editors and maybe "rando on the street" segment, now more and more entire articles are written about posts on twitter/reddit - obviously it's easier for the journalist, but there's no checking, no digging, nothing.

The "here's a random person's opinion" style journalism is not new and isn't a result of Twitter or any social media. Whether that content is in a letter to the editor or in an article about a tweet doesn't matter. Neither required any checking or digging by a journalist. I don't know what distinction you are trying to make between the two, but I don't see much of a difference.

>On August 14, at around 11 pm, a homeless man was crossing a street in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood when he was hit by a bus.

Why does it matter if the man was homeless? "a duplex-owning man was crossing a street" would sound silly so why does the man's lack of home need to be mentioned?

I think the additional context is fine. It's only an issue if you're sensitive to the word "homeless" and see the description as demeaning. Otherwise, it's additional.

> Otherwise, it's additional.

Why didn't they add his hair color, since it's additional? At least they told us his gender...so that's also additional. What about his political views? It's nitpicking minor details, but that's often the problem with marginalized groups. It's subtly reinforced.

They could add his race and it'd electrify the discussion for large swaths of the population!

I’m sure in that case someone sensitive to that particular detail would ask a similar question to yours, because they would feel similarly outraged.

> they would feel similarly outraged.

That's not fair. Charitable interpretation would not ascribe feelings to other posters. Even if it were true, it's irrelevant to the issue I have pointed out.

Let's break it down. Is the "homeless" detail an addition that is specifically due to the Friedman's (or the hosting site's) particular leanings? Is it responsible (staying impartial) to point it out, given the political climate of the area? Is it the slippery slope of an implication that it was "just a homeless man and these things happen to them"? Can Friedman assume that readership with below average intelligence will incorporate the nuance of the tragedy, without the implication?

> I’m sure in that case someone sensitive to that particular detail would ask a similar question to yours

I don't understand why you are sure about this. Good luck with whatever.

Look in this forum. According to all the SV liberals, this means it was definitely the fault of the homeless, and no need for investigation.

To be clear. A cruise vehicle DID block emergency responders’ access to the scene right?

The article is written as some kind of victory lap over misinformation but as far as I can tell, the only information provided is that:

- A man was struck by a Muni bus

- A paramedic on the scene claimed that a Cruise AV delayed transportation to the hospital (not access to the scene)

- Video shows a Cruise vehicle stopped in a traffic lane and not moving to the right (but we don't see the video, so we don't know if that means it blocked anything, or if it was the "wrong" thing to do)

- The new report says that the Fire Chief did not "attribute" the death to the Cruise AV, and specifically calls out that this is in contrast to assumptions made by press outlets in their misinterpretation of the initial paramedic's incident report.

My interpretation is that there is some disagreement over whether the Cruise vehicle actually "blocked" anything, and that the final report determined that it either didn't cause any delay at all, or that whatever delay it caused didn't matter to the outcome, in contrast to the opinion of the paramedic.

The article is written in such a heightened, sensitive way, it's tough to find the actual information, which is unfortunate. It's not journalistic or anything, it's commentary.

Anyone that’s been on the ground in SF, at cafes, beer gardens, barbershops and any housing protest knows that this is just a symptom

A knee jerk boiling over of general disdain of their mismanaged corporate technocracy with a nominal standing committee

Sounds like the same old NIMBYs upset that their rising wealth is tied to people making waves.

I genuinely have no idea what any of that means. What is a symptom what?

a symptom of a disdain towards tech wealth, rapid changes, and mostly inequality viewed through a juvenile and narrow lens from people on the left side of the wealth bell curve there

Big words but a lack of empathy paint a depressing picture

what words would you use to convey the same message, if you were

It's the message that's the problem lol

Its the only reason randoms at the fire department blamed a nearby Cruise for the tragedy

cities are populated by people

this was a chronic failure of empathy after a homeless person got hit by a city bus!

not wanting the message is a you problem

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