Attacking self driving cars in the sense that the attack means physically damaging the cars is stupid, counterproductive and against the law.
Attacking self driving cars in the sense of demanding that self driving cars meet rigorous safety tests [that self driving cars have not yet met] is wise and necessary.
There have been too many instances where self driving cars have had "accidents".
The sun was too bright or a pedestrian was in the road.
A self driving car must be able to react to ALL possibilities and can not assume the other driver or pedestrian will obey the laws.
Too many times while driving when i had the right of way i have had to jam on my brakes to avoid hitting a child or pedestrian or a driver doing something wrong.
Comparison of accident rates between self driving cars and all drivers is a flawed comparison.
Compare accident rates between self driving cars and sober attentive [no cell phones or texting drivers].
Get the drunk and texting/cell phone driver off the road.
That there are drivers now driving who should not be on the road is not an argument for self driving cars.
99
@david But that's the point. Self-driving cars don't get drunk or fiddle with cell phones. Some people will never, ever stop driving drunk or distracted, no matter what we do.
53
If we stop treating drunk or distracted driving as a minor offense but assess stiff penalties for violators we would substantially reduce that irresponsible behavior.
36
A lot of people are missing the point in this comment section. They seem to think that not wanting Google to experiment with the lives of your kids so it can make a profit is the same as not wanting driverless cars to exist — being a Luddite.
I'm all for driverless cars — once Google and the other corporations pushing them have spent the billions needed to design and test them properly — on their own dime and time — not by putting the public at risk.
Just because Google managed to talk the Republican governor of Arizona into letting it experiment on his population, doesn't, in fact, make such experimentation OK.
197
in fact, these driverless cars have gone through millions of miles of testing, experimentation, and safety checks. in many cases, there is still a driver present in case of unexpected circumstances. by comparison, think about the requirements for a human to get a driver's license.
28
@Philip S. Wenz - How is Google going to properly test their driverless vehicles, unless they do so in a real world situation?
26
@adm3
Google should have a defined and stringent set of hurdles that must be achieved before their car is tested in the "real" world.
Moreover, what is the "real" world? Is it possible to simulate the "real" world of snow-covered Vermont back roads or whizzing Chicago traffic on the dry flatlands of Arizona?
15
They can have my car when they pry my cold dead fingers off the steering wheel.
It is the business of the future to be dangerous!
Is this what it comes to? Actually it is to be expected. The villagers with their pitchforks will bring down the monster.
Let us go back to the good old days: say one million B.C.E.
7
The Luddites never left America, they continue to try to hold us back. It only makes them look ridiculous.
11
I'm curious about the word "attack," rather than "vandalize." Can you attack something inanimate? Do we have to change the meaning of "sentience" to include inanimate things that carry out commands? Will we eventually? If you decide you can "attack" a car, what shift in your mental landscape does that portend? Just wondering. Don't know the answers. Wait! I'll ask Siri! Or Alexa! Or the silverware! No... I hate forks. Not Steve writing. The wife.
19
With all the texting idiots on the road, give me the driverless car roadway any day. And for those worried about losing their jobs to technology, find another way to make a living. Times change. I no longer do what I did 20 years ago, because the job was eliminated. It’s progress. Adapt, move, get assistance. Enough with the coal-lovers mentality. Throwing rocks at cars, or having road rage at these cars? C’mon! (Side note hilarity - two of the road ragers are in the technology business.) And the parents worried about their kids? I’d rather walk across the street in front of a driverless car than a texting human driver.
22
So who is the safer driver? Human or computer?
There are over 3.5 million truck drivers in the US (American Trucking Association figure). Many of these people will be unemployable after. But this is just the beginning. First truck drivers, then cooks, then engineers. If we don’t nip this in the bud and put our foot down, artificial intelligence will destroy human beings as a species. We need to fight this as hard as we can. Vandalizing these cars is not enough. We need to take control over technology before it takes over control of us. We need to be very careful about tech that destroys jobs for millions of people. People need to wake up before it’s too late. Your children and their children could be slaves forever if you don’t fight back now. Literally
9
There is no proof that robot cars -so called autonomous driving- will produce safer streets for pedestrians or the passengers. In the process, innocent people are being used a guinea pigs in this project seeking an answer to a question nobody outside of Silicon Valley or Wall Street has asked.
Most of our roads are not well market urban streets in a warm climate like Arizona- far more are poorly striped beat up back streets and rural byways that are rutted with depressions from heavy trucks. These kinds of roads present special challenges such as hydroplaning during and after heavy rain or the melt off of frozen precipitation.
When people are killed by these devices who gets sued and who goes to jail for manslaughter? Should it be the the CEO of the company that made the device or should it be the idiot public officials that signed off on this poorly thought out approval?
I do not advocate for people destroying property, but I understand where the frustration and fear comes from. Autonomous driving is a "solution" in search of a problem.
21
How much you want to bet that the U.S. invented this technology with our tax dollars from NASA and military spending? And then dumped it into the private sector as the hare brained goops like McConnell and Paul Ryan hang around breaking unions deriding organized labor making it impossible for the people to take advantage of what they've already paid for?
11
Funny how simple minded people react to forward motion. Reminds me how they threw rocks at the cart or when they tried to burn the stagecoach and how they shot at the iron horse. You can’t stop progress you either get on board or get run over the choice is yours to make.
7
What problem are "driverless cars" meant to solve? Is there some shortage of adults with drivers licenses lately? Who is legally liable when one of these things has an "oopsie"? Until these questions are answered, get them off the street.
23
This is crazy. I’d rather encounter a self-driving car than a drunk, texting, or senile driver. I’m getting up in years and I hope someday a self-driving cat will help me age at home.
12
First the Arizonians shot the driverless cars. And I did not speak up because I was not a driverless car.
Then the Arizonians shot the drones from the sky. And I did not speak up because I was not a drone.
Etc. etc....
Just when you think that the angry half of America could not possibly do anything more lamebrained, they rise up to prove they will not disappoint.
'Attack of the Killer Arizonians' coming to Netflix soon.
5
Just reading today's local news 1/1/2019, how many people died in car accidents with a lot caused by intoxicated drivers, one, a father charged with murder of his 9 year old daughter for driving intoxicated.
Autonomous cars would eliminate these accidents. Wake up people...most accidents are caused by impaired drivers, i.e. intoxication, fatigue, sleepiness, texting, medical condition, vision impairedness… I can go on and on
11
Why should something that benefits a corporation and it's investors be allowed to "experiment" with this in a town? Who was paid off to let it happen? I would guess no one got to vote on it.
Who is this benefiting? Its not like we're at war and this is the big new weapon we've all been waiting for....all Technology is not beneficial, as we should all know by now.
And I'm very disappointed at the NYT for presenting these people as crazies and drunks. One couple very nearly saw their son run over in their neighborhood.
20
and yet these 'attackers', guardians of our civilization, spend endless time on their cell phones
3
Wielding knives and rocks is not exactly an appropriate protest against driverless cars, but exactly how does one appropriately protest this kind of expert driven stupidity? Driverless car engineering reminds me of a phrase from a quirky guy named Thorstein Veblen, who referred to what he called “trained incapacity.” By virtue of their training some people become incapable of understanding the world around them. Why don’t driverless car engineers understand the basic human need for an individual to feel in control of her or his own safety in a car?
Or, for that matter, when walking around a neighborhood where there are a bunch of driverless cars? All the jaw-boning in the world isn’t going to get rid of our basic human need to know that our self-control is important to our safety.
Specialization can and often does give rise to stupidity regarding larger human questions. Of course this wouldn’t be a problem if one could just get rid of those pesky human beings.....
8
Using our public highways to "test" these vehicles puts all of us who don't want them, at risk. The only way a "driverless" car is safe is if it is on a track. Trusting technology over humans is a huge, ignorant mistake.
11
Attacking and destroying property is a serious Crime , this article is right on the edge of promoting that which is CRIMINAL in Itself...just re read this line “People are lashing out justifiably," said Douglas Rushkoff, a media theorist at City University of New York and author of the book “Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus.” He likened driverless cars to robotic incarnations of scabs — workers who refuse to join strikes or who take the place of those on strike. IT IS NOT JUSTIFIABLY/ its a Criminal act Period!
4
I gotta think that when Charles Pinkham stood in front of a Waymo van, “heavily intoxicated” it probably wasn’t about the self driving vans at that point.
4
All of these folks are well past the age of behaving like spoiled children.
Their behavior is ridiculous as are they. Worse, they are putting others at risk for injury or death.
Ok, they don't like the new technology and don't like being used as guinea pigs. How many maintain a Facebook page? Far more intrusive technology.
Grow up. folks. There are better, more grown up ways to get your point across.
3
What next—elevators without elevator operators?
12
It is truly frightening to see how crazy people in the United States have become. I am constantly amazed.
2
This rush to hand our lives over to FAANG. Yet we're always hearing about hackers disrupting systems, installing ransomware, and stealing identities. Why do we want to set ourselves up for a catastrophe?
11
Let's just go back to horses and buggies, the we'd create new jobs for people to walk the streets and clean up after them. Technology doesn't go away and will accelerate in its affect on our lives. That's a good thing, people who fight it are ridiculous and will lose the fight.
2
Instead of developing swifter, swankier automated individual carbon-using/spewing vehicles for rich Americans, why not spend some of your time and clearly superior intellect on something like a simple, sustainable, and accessible system to help sick or injured kids and adults and pregnant and post-partum women in rural areas of developing countries (and our own) get safely and speedily to medical clinics and hospital?
9
The only reason these corporations can do this is the moronic American voter keeps voting Republican and by doing so gives away all their rights among them the right to regulate how and when these tests occur. We, through our consistent voting for Republicans, have sold our souls to big business. At least with driverless cars the elderly and the infirm will still be able to get around as opposed to the myriad health problems we will all face from the pollution being unleashed by the rollback of EPA regulations.
15
I am from Tempe AZ where a woman was killed by an autonomous Uber vehicle. The push for self driving vehicles seems fueled by greed. They serve no good purpose other than taking jobs away. Imagine a huge self driving truck carrying gasoline barreling down the freeway! I don’t see Uber here now but I see very many Waymo vehicles. Same problem, different company. Drivers can be lulled into a false sense of security that the vehicle knows what to do. Obviously it doesn’t. Many times a day I see Waymo drivers aimlessly driving around neighborhoods, streets and around parking lots, stopping in front of stores, just idling and in the way, not parked. The windows of the vehicles are dark so it is difficult to see what is going on in the driver’s seat. This adds another lack of transparency about the dangers these vehicles represent. The woman killed by the Uber driver was killed due to the reckless negligence of that driver. The video of the accident leaves no doubt that the driver was not doing her job. In fact, it appeared that she was asleep. Asked why the “autonomous” vehicle hadn’t stopped anyway, word from Uber was that (of course!) they hadn’t programmed the vehicle so carefully that it would “stop for a paper bag.” The following day it was reported that Uber settled with the woman’s family. Yes, get to them while they’re grieving and before any questions are answered. This apparent indifference to the human consequences of the driverless car signals “Humans Beware!”
16
Pinkham was heavily intoxicated in public, and all he received was a warning?
However, inner-city children are caught with a marijuana joint in their pockets, and they are all usually summarily arrested and prosecuted.
What am I missing?
3
Driverless cars are run by computers. We have made great strides with computer technology in most cases bettering our lives. But, the Achilles Heal of computer technology is that it can be hacked!!!!
We’ve seen the effect of hackers getting into everything from huge company databases to steal private information, to hacking into political organizations and huge social media to effect elections. At least nobody was killed.
Now imagine widespread hacking into driverless cars to, in fact, weaponize them. We’ve seen the carnage from drivers mowing down dozens on crowded streets. Now imagine a hacker who can control a few hundred driverless cars!! Mayhem, murder and misery!
No matter what the benefits of driverless cars may prove to be, if they are hackable by those up to no good, a huge looming disaster cannot be ignored! The question is, is it worth the risk?
14
I’m dismayed at the reflexive anti-corporate scaremongering and shortsighted Luddite comments here. These violent protesters ought to be arrested. This technology is going to save millions of lives each year. Period. And one day it might be yours or someone you know. Put your emotions in check and consider just maybe that your fears might be irrational.
2
More than 50,000 people die in automobile accidents every year. All driven by humans. Humans target robot vans because they are identifiable. Call me when robot vans kill 50,000 a year.
2
You gotta love it!
Now we need someone to create AI robots to carry out the attacks on driverless cars.
Amend the Constitution.
Arnold Schwarzenegger for President.
1
Charles Pinkham, heavily intoxicated attacks a driverless Uber vehicle. After his dastardly deed, he calls an Uber to take him home because he is too drunk to drive. He is picked up by, you guessed it, a driverless Uber. Kind of like a modern O. Henry story.
I'm guessing those who attacked the Waymo autonomous vehicles never rode as passengers with an 88-year-old at the wheel.
2
Techism - the latest prejudice exhibited by ignorant people reacting fearfully to what they do not understand and are unwilling to learn due to deep seated emotional reactions superseding rational thought.
2
Funny but maybe this idea of self driving should be put on ballot.
8
...proving, once again, that humans are far more dangerous than machines.
2
Thank you, heroes of Chandler for taking citizen action against the corporate abuse of using you as guinea pigs for their crack pot scheme. I'll do the same if my local NY governments get bribed...entranced...seduced by false claims that these technologies are possible or will reduce number of human error accidents.
How about investing in automatic blocks of incompetent/inebriated drivers from even starting a car? Or strengthening vision tests for drivers license renewal? Or marking lanes better for night/rain driving? Restoring sufficient street lighting? You know, common sense solutions we taxpayers need to support. But they aren't sexy and tech corporations can't make billions on them....
13
"The behavior is causing the drivers to resume manual mode over the automated mode because of concerns about what the driver of the other vehicle may do,”
Isn't that the core challenge of driving on our congested roads, independent of whether a vehicle is supposedly autonomous?
9
I don't condone the attacks. But it does show that driverless car technology is being shoved down our throats by tech companies desperate to win the race to develop the standards and architecture of the new systems.
The hunt for profits, growth, and new markets will far outweighs what the public wants or needs, especially now that our tech giants have become the most powerful entities on earth after governments. So whether you're in Chandler or anywhere else you better get used to the idea.
10
It is difficult to identify all the ways in which these cars will change our everyday lives. One area that came to my mind is the hotel industry and traveling. Many people will forgo a hotel stay and simply sleep in their car as they drive through the night. Instead of flying and using up precious waking hours, people will drive and sleep overnight to their destinations
3
I am not a fan of driverless cars because there's supposed to always be a human ready to take the wheel in the event of emergencies, but the human will (1) probably be watching a video when the emergency arises, or (2) will be an incompetent driver because of not having much experience.
10
As the old adage goes "You can't stop progress". Well that depends on what you define as progress. I question whether the AK47 and nuclear weapons represent progress. I do not agree with the argument that the AV will make driving safer. It will make driving safer only when everyone is riding in a AV. As long as there are drivers who prefers to drive their own car human error will cause accidents. This transition will take a long time. The AV is not the only solution to reducing traffic fatalities. Cars are not designed for maximum safety (no deaths) they are designed for maximum profit. An Indy race car is designed for maximum safety a Honda Accord is not. My primary issue is the millions of people who drive for a living that will be eventually put out of work. The factories are all but closing in the US and now you are killing one of the most reliable industries for work, the driver in the transportation industry. I know I can hear you now " its progress". If these engineers really want to make some progress use their intellect to solve a problem that mankind has been plagued with for over 100 years that kill over 500,000 people every year in the US alone, a cure for cancer.
As for seniors losing their ability to drive. How will people who cannot figure out how to send a text on a iPhone program a AV to their daughters house? They are better off using an Uber.
7
Fully autonomous vehicles will certainly slash the over 30,000 traffic deaths annually. Sadly, Americans will not accept 100 deaths caused by autonomous vehicles even if it saves over 30,000. 30,000! My gosh, that's the same as 200 airliner crashes. It's shocking when there's even a single airliner crash these days. How would Americans feel about some sort of change in the law so that there's over 16 domestic airliners crashing every month? Well, that's our death rate in human driven cars. Can't accept 100 deaths to save 30,000? That is simply irrational.
2
A potential solution to a problem we don't have, foisted upon us (along with extreme costs) by Silicon Valley, home of hubris and a 'tech will solve every problem, even if we don't have one' culture. If the goal is reduce highway fatalities, focus on drunk driving and driver education; if the goal is to help those who can't get around, expand shuttle service; if the goal is to reduce traffic, add trains. Many alternatives exist if we think it through.
13
Geez, everybody is sure worked up about this. Calm down. For one thing, it's not like driverless cars will be mandatory. They'll be like electric cars are now-expensive and only for the few. You don't have to buy one if you don't like them. And, for another thing, even if you have one, you can still drive it. You're not at the mercy of the car. When you're on a nice clear road with minimal traffic, sit back and let the car take over. When you're in the crowded city, with lots of cars and pedestrians, take control if it makes you feel safer. Attacking the cars won't make them go away, people. They're just cars.
2
This reminds me of something I saw in a movie regarding the origin of the word sabotage. Apparently in the beginning of the industrial revolution in France, workers would fling their wooden shoes called "sabo" into the machinery in order to break them. Hence the term "sabotage" came into use. The reason they wanted to break the machines was in protest to the use of machines. The machines had replaced the artisans and people were left out in the cold to fend for themselves - so to speak.
This is what disruption looks like. It isn't always pretty. Local residents are protesting their role as UNPAID lab rats in a private company's experiment writ large. I don't blame them. Google/Waymo should compensate residents for their unwitting participation in this experiment. It is good business in the long run.
4
Not too keen on driverless cars either but do these people think of those they might harm or kill while trying to stop these cars?
I am reminded of the Luddites of the early 1800s who--fearing innovations would take away their jobs--smashed the new machine looms. I'm not quite sure, however, how a self-driving car will threaten people's jobs. Lives, possibly, but jobs?
2
In my mind, the biggest problem with driverless vehicle is potential hackability. Those with the most incentive to stop hacking, e.g. banks and governments, have been unable to crack the problem. Why would things be any different here? The potential for mayhem is just too great to allow widespread use of these vehicles without first making all networks absolutely hack proof.
12
The same thing happened when the horse and buggy mechanics saw the first Model A Ford on the road.
There is no way AI can predict and react safely to avoid harm to irrational humans. And unfortunately, not one of us, not one, is safe from making a sudden, irrational move in a moving vehicle, in traffic.
And then, as someone else has commented, there is the problem of poorly planned and maintained roads and streets. If a location does not appear or is misidentified in GPS, it does not exist and your prescription will be delivered to a lamppost three blocks over.
4
"The official welcome mat has failed to persuade the naysayers."
Chandler was a very nice town when I lived there many years ago. I have cousins who presently reside there and we plan on visiting them and taking in the sites this year. But after reading this article, the fact that Arizona allows concealed carry coupled with folks attacking driverless cars with knives and rocks, could it merely be a matter of time before someone crosses that line and starts shooting at these cars? I understand why folks are upset and feel the need to take action. Attacking the car is one thing, but remember there is living, breathing, human bean inside that car. This kind of violent outrage and actions will lead to more serious and possible deadly consequences.
Perhaps that welcome mat should read "Chandler - the new wild west and modern OK Corral."
1
This is mind-boggling. I bet all these people who hate driverless cars have smart phones and cable TV or streaming services and some sort of navigation with them in their cars. Why weren’t they upset when Ma Bell dissolved and when they could take the foil off their TV antennae and when their mapping software began to put paper map makers out of business? And, Mr. Rushkoff can see his way to justifying violence in the name of what is basically Luddite-ism?
Perhaps Waymo doesn't want to share video for fear that other unflattering events might be seen as police review footage.
Better to use the good PR of not prosecuting a few vandals than to potentially expose a host of previously unknown transgressions.
4
So, what would these people do to human drivers who crash or run someone over?
A quick Google search showed TEN pedestrian deaths in ONE week in greater Phoenix area. Which, admittedly, is a big place.
I've noticed that many drivers in this area treat a light that just turns red as suggestions ...
To Mr. O’Polka's wife, who protests,“They didn’t ask us if we wanted to be part of their beta test," we've been Silicon Valley's beta test for a long time now. Addictive cell phones may have caused more road fatalities than driverless cars ever will.
5
When driver-less cars kill 38,000 people (the number people killed while at the wheel last year) then a discussion on the 'danger' these vehicle pose may be appropriate. The real discussion now should be can one of these vehicles save your son or daughter, husband or wife from the distracted, drunk or cognitively impaired driver next to them(not to mention the terrifying teenager in the SUV ). The google cars logged over a million miles with no deaths. No more speeding, tailgating, or vehicular manslaughter sounds good to me (not to mention the traffic delays caused by"accidents").
Good to hear that the folks in Arizona are working hard to make America great again on the technology front. What sad,small-minded behaviour.
Too bad none of them had a pitchfork, axe, or burning torch. Then they could have chased around it to the top level of a parking garage and burned it to the ground, and just before it dies, the self-driving car would say: "I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly and exult in the agony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will sleep in peace, or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell."
1
I will never use those vehicles, and I agree they should be stopped. They will displace a large portion of the economy, and make jobs even more scarce. I despise these technocrats who insist more is better. It's digital colonialism; what will we do when we have no jobs left? Do they even care about the people they're displacing? They will ultimately cause less, not more jobs even with the necessary maintenance. A robotic hand is being developed; once that happens there will really be no need for humans. Combine AI with a robotic hand and unlimited memory.... What then, you greedy technocrats? What about when you have no job? What then? Wouldn't it make more sense to have androids than astronauts? and androids instead of human computer programmers? or doctors? what happens when we reach that point? why rush? why not have a debate? why not think this through? why rush to develop? why rush to kick people out of their jobs? why?
4
It’s more than a driverless vehicle. It’s a camera machine filming your child playing in front of your house, filming you and your car in the garage, tracking your WiFi, your cellphone and any other signal from your house it can record. Assuredly it is recording audio as well.
7
If Waymo persists in testing self-driving vehicles, why don't they just move on to remote areas far from residential communities?
Arizona has three deserts to choose from and the only residents Waymo's self-driving vehicles can terrorize are the lizards, snakes and scorpions.
4
Automobile accidents, i.e., reckless driving is consistently among the top three causes of death or injury in the United States. It has been for more than half century. In that time literally hundreds of thousands of people were killed or maimed by careless, drunk or reckless drivers.
Do we really think that self-driving cars are more of a threat than the woman who is driving while putting on her makeup or the man who is screaming at his call in sports station or the intoxicated teen driving 70 in a 40 mile zone (stereotypes all but true nonetheless).
Self-driving cars need to be tested and compared to human experience. We already have data proving humans are lousy at it. Bots can't be that much worse and will almost certainly be better.
1
Return of the mechanical-loom smashing Luddites.
Any of the advocates here happen to notice the recent airline crashes and malfunctions (some, but not all, recovered by actual living pilots) due to poor programming, incompetent upgrades. and/or equipment malfunctions?
Yeah, what I thought. These "autonomous" cars will need upgrading and maintenance. No doubt, it will be done automatically through some "foolproof" wireless technology, and no doubt, eventually, an error will occur, such as Immediate Hard Right Turn - EXECUTE. The error will be the result of an upgrade and happen, say, after 2,347 miles to all upgraded vehicles, some of which will be in school zones or crowded parking lots.
Here's what Murphy's Law says about this Brave New World: "If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong, and at the worst possible time."
4
Suzanne Moniz is correct. This violent adolescent behavior is a symptom of a dysfunctional community and selfish narcissism.
The yellow vest movement here in France is identical in its violent immaturity and destructive criminal behavior.
The village I chose in Provence as a retired expatriate has residents who behave the way they want to be treated, with respect and courtesy.
I've spend a lot of time both in the hardware and software side of technology. I don't know why many people realize how much driving is a testament to the power of the human brain. The ability to analyze visual information and act on it at high rates of speed in various weather and lighting conditions is something that most drivers take for granted.
There are two issues that must be dealt with when trying to build autonomous vehicles software and sensor technology. In all my years of developing software the only applications that I've seen perfectly with extremely low failure rates are extremely simple in nature. Writing code that can analyze visual and other sensor data and act on it and respond it in milliseconds is daunting. It's the testament to the ego and hubris of engineers attempting to do this. I have yet to see a complex software application that didn't need bug fixes, modifications and enhancements over the course of time. Look how many patches and updates Windows 10 has had since it was introduced. Can you imagine a software failure that causes somebody to be killed by an autonomous vehicle? I can.
Until these issues are resolved, SAFE commercially viable autonomous vehicles are a pipe dream.
I won't even go into the insurance liability issues that often don't get discussed. Are these tech companies willing be liable for loss of life and property damage due to technical failures?
9
They just don't want Silicon's Valley's version of acid rain parachuted into their neighborhood. Just because it's "futuristic tech" funded by venture capitalists doesn't automatically make it great for humanity. I know skepticism isn't the same as pointing a gun, but these are the same people who rightly get angry at all the e-scooters and e-bikes strewn across their neighborhood like discarded mattresses. They're not luddites—they're pedestrians and neighbors who've suddenly seen their communities overtaken by money from distant rich nerds. "Hey Mayor, can we fix the lead in the water?" Well, maybe, but first let's get some of those driverless cars in here...
6
Is it okay if I throw rocks at the vehicles of the human drivers heedlessly speeding down my 25 mph residential street? They aren't helping our mass transit future either, and they are genuinely dangerous. I am not one bit surprised at the anarchistic behavior, but the looney rationalizations are truly depressing.
1
Do this same people throw rocks at Subway trains or railroad trains? do they destroy they neighbors 3d curved flat screen because if you want to see a movie in 3D go to the movies like everyone else.
Autonomous cars make everyone safer. It takes but one poor and/or incapacitated driver on a busy street or highway to make hundreds have a really bad day. I think people should Google the meaning of Luddites.
Right now human driving professionals number over 5 million, of which 75% are middle-class, and many see self-driving cars as yet another attempt by the robber-baron investor class to murder several million mainly middle-class jobs.
How about some of you advocates of self-driving vehicles take a couple years off of work and retrain for another career so that you know what it feels like to have your career destroyed by wealthy investors?
5
So the car companies don’t want to provide the video they are recording. Hmmm, why would that be? How much are they recording? Probably a whole lot more than they want you to know.
6
Just wondering if anyone knows how many deaths are caused by automotive vehicles in an average of the past 20 years vs. how many deaths were caused by horse-drawn carriages when they last dominated American by-ways?
As a 20 year resident of Chandler, I'll provide an educated guess that these suburban busy-body terrorists are largely dedicated republican voters and indeed a healthy portion are Trumpanistas. Personally, I believe the presence of both Waymo's and of Uber's driverless car programs in the local economy is great for jobs and for attracting the type of talent to the area that will help the economy grow exponentially. Nevertheless, these angry republican terrorists should take a break from dangerously harrassing Waymo and take a long, honest look in the mirror at the republican governor they just re-elected, Doug Ducey, who through multiple non-legislated executive orders (example Arizona EO 2015-09), has paved a gilden path for the driverless car industry and its development in Arizona throughout his tenure.
1
The war against the machines has begun. Driverless cars may be due for riot evasion software upgrades. Are there options for crisis navigation?
1
Humans - drunk, distracted or just driving poorly - have killed approximately 3.6 million people from 1899-2013. Self-driving cars are inevitable, and the lives they will save are priceless. Instead of vandalizing private property (functioning legally) and demonizing technological innovation, these folks would be better off channeling their energies into learning skills that will not soon be made obsolete, and working to enact laws and policies to ease the pain from the fast-approaching tsunami of massive dislocations heading our way.
For anyone who actually lives in Arizona, the article missed the obvious question: do Waymo vehicles with their ever advancing AI, as mere agents of a legitimate, proper, and legal corporation, have rights? For example, is a Waymo entitled to make a "threat assessment," determine that its "very existence is in danger" and "stand its ground?" Since conservative jurisprudence has determined that corporations are "persons" and may exercise first amendment rights, what about the second amendment? Is Waymo not entitled to protect itself from these illegal attacks? With the lunatics that are running this country, we are but a hop, skip, and a jump away from armed corporate robots roaming our streets standing their ground. Those that are bringing rocks and knives to this conversation are trying to tell us something and we should listen.
6
This article isn't about the pros and cons of self-driving vehicles! It is about the mob mentality and lawlessness of a group of people who are opposed to self-driving vehicles. These people have allowed their animal instincts take over and use violence to express their opinion. There are other ways to fight the testing and use of self-driving vehicles. But these ways require the use of the educated human brain.
have you read the book or seen the movie I, Robot? how many times have you had to reboot your computer because of some software glitch? how many times have you had to reload an internet browser page because something wouldn't load right? and what happens when this occurs in a vehicle travelling on the highway at 60 mph? driverless cars no thanks
and for people arguing how necessary it is for older people or people who can no longer drive--thays what uber is for.
5
These protesters against autonomous vehicle testing probably have a valid point about safety issues, but they seem to be ignorant about the basic rules of civil disobedience. If you decide to protest by breaking the law, you must be willing to be arrested - even go to jail. Also, it is best to choose a non-violent form of protest.
1
Pure greed. The bottom line is what counts for Google and other companies. Using science and tech for their greedy purposes, "Driverless cars" included. Better to elect socially conscience representatives to Congress and state legislatures than to slash tires and throw rocks at these cars. Laws can be passed putting a stop to this madness; madness and greed to Google and others to make bigger profits. Eliminate the human driver, you eliminate the #1 cost burden to a company: WAGES, benefits, and other human labor costs. Maybe if legislation doesn't happen, vandalizing these cars enmasse might be the only thing that will make Google and others stop their selfish pursuit of more profits.
3
As not funny as threatening and damaging property is .... this is still a little funny.
This article is clearly designed to make the smugger NYT reader shout “Luddite” at those simple Red-state Arizonans. But to put this in perspective, there are about 8,000 miles of streets in NYC. The article states that the vehicles travel 25,000 miles daily. So I think it would be quite an intrusion to have one of those vehicles drive past your house three times a day rolling the dice on your safety for big tech profit. Add in that poor woman’s death and I’m not so sure who the bad actors are in this scenario.
6
Will police have to protect these automated vehicles?
1
“'The behavior is causing the drivers to resume manual mode over the automated mode because of concerns about what the driver of the other vehicle may do,' Officer Johnson wrote."
In other words, the Waymo drivers themselves don't trust their cars in difficult situations. They should get to the point where they do before seeking to deploy these cars on public rights-of-way.
10
The entire autonomous vehicle acceptability issue is at the heart of it a human factors science problem not a technology optimizaiton problem. It is likely that when robust human factors science is applied to this problem autonomous vehicle technology will be seen as the single largest waste of development funds and expertise in recent history. Yes, there will be pockets of acceptance but in the foreseeable future, this technology can never match the flexibility and problem-solving capability of the human operating system regardless of its many known limitations.
5
All technologies have their pros and cons. They give us more ease, functionality, or other benefits. But they also incur "costs" which differ according to what they replace, the jobs affected, or new risks they may introduce.
Autonomous vehicles will be my primary transportation when I'm no longer able to drive safely. Yet, I fear this technology will put many millions out of work when it comes to fruition.
We have to devise a fair way to transition those whose jobs will be lost to the new technologies that will certainly come.
The people of Chandler also have a point that they're weren't consulted by Waymo when their town was selected as a testing ground. Science and medicine have the requirement of informed consent by participants in any trial or research. Why not here?
Throwing rocks will not forestall technology. No more than French mill workers were able to stop industrialization by throwing their wooden shoes to wreak the machines that were replacing them. (The origin of the word 'saboteur.')
Changes are upon us - let's manage them fairly, intelligently.
4
The only real problem is that no one in office has a clue about what to do with the huge number of people who drive for a living. Their lives are currently endangered every day just driving, but autonomous vehicles will endanger their ability to survive at all without some intervention from government. And I don't see or hear our government planning any happy solutions. In fact I am guessing that a government solution will be to provide enforcement to protect corporations interests, and let the courts deal out-of-work drivers.
5
With self-driving cars, I was initially worried about problems - particularly the empty car problem. Instead of using two cars, a family uses one car which drops off a family member, returns alone and picks up another to effectively double mileage. Or a self driving car drives around the block - or worse, actively seeks to join and worsen a traffic jam - to avoid parking fees. Cheaper to be stuck in traffic than be in a parking building.
However, cars must plan a trip by having a destination before they start and this will solve the problem. Dynamically charge for every mile of road depending on traffic density. This will give an enormous advantage to ride sharing as a single occupant driver would have to bear the whole cost of the precious resource they now monopolize for free.
The end of privacy? We gave that out when we started carrying GPS equipped phones.
worry about things that have happened rather than might happen in a dystopian future.
1
Funny how people process technological advances - focussing on the relatively few accidents highlighted in the news rather than the fact that the frequency of accidents with autonomous vehicles is much lower than for human drivers. Maybe reporters should emphasize this more as well as other benefits like less traffic problems and being able to use one's time more efficiently in the car?
5
Your claim hat autonomous cars have fewer accidents is not supported by facts, it is just a claim fabricated by the companies building them. There is no supporting empirical data.
The fact that these companies are using public roads for their testing is disturbing. How would you like being handed a experimental drug on your next visit to the pharmacist?
1
@rmanson1000 you can't charge AI in court. If accident happens there is noone to blame but "software malefunction". That is a much bigger problem than frequency of accidents.
1
same arguement applies to so called mass shootings. relatively few and far between and in reality not all that many people killed. so why are there so many gun control fanatics and if they are so concerned with any loss of life, why aren't they shouting about driverless vehicles?
1
Why don't these people go to the city council and try to work through their elected representatives? Has our country gone mad that waving guns around and trying to cause accidents is seen as the best solution?
16
@Liz
Corrupt city councils (like those at all levels of government) will not listen to their constituents. They only care about money and power. The only way people can be heard these days is through acts of angry public protests.
@Liz You're kidding of course. Trying to get Congre$$, let alone a city council, to take on Google.
2
Why is Silicon Valley so sure that driverless cars are wanted by the general public? Will it sell? Have they done any significant marketing surveys or are they so in love with the challenge of developing the technology that they haven't bothered?
Remember the Segway? If you look at its Wikipedia page you'll find there predictions made in the year 2000 from some of the biggest names in technology, including Steve Jobs, that it would be the biggest thing since the invention of the personal computer. They spent over $100 million to develop it.
Yet it flopped. It couldn't replace the bicycle.
12
Google Tesla. that'll provide your answer. Look, think of them as your own personal limo to/from work to/from grocery store. I remember when color television was just hitting the suburbs. We didn't hate the first family to buy a color TV, rather we went to their house to watch it. Soon the price dropped to where we all could afford one. Ditto with phone, ditto with private line phone.
AS I get older I recognize the benefit of the transportation options when they take my keys away. I think more will come around when they realize that far few lives will be lost on the highways when distracted humans can just sit back and play with their phones while similar technology drives them around.
8
That's the principal reason I bought a Tesla. future proofing independence and mobility! I retired some years back and PeaPod is not an option here.
Anybody who has ever driven in Phoenix knows there are already too many cars on the roads carrying people. The idea that there will be more cars out there with no one in them makes no sense and only contributes to the problem. There are high occupancy lanes to let cars with 2 or more passengers have an easier route through traffic. If diverless cars continue, there should be NO Passenger lanes created that require these most inefficient vehicles out of everyone else's way.
8
@M.
All these cars report their position every few seconds. Congestion pricing set minute by minute will be so easy there will be no need for passenger lanes. Charging high prices for busy times is going to make ride sharing the cheapest way to go.
I was researching how self-driving cars are programmed, using a set of logical rules, a general set of heuritics, or via data mining, although the lasts seems a stretch at the moment. That said, I was wondering about some of the comic results. As an example, two cars designed by different companies and not having the same set of rules, simultaneously approach a merge, and although they could follow a rule of left yields to right, I was wondering about a race condition where car #1 requires something from car #2, and car #2 requires something from car #1, and they get stuck in an endless loop of waiting.
Another, maybe not so comic, is the different programmatic 'natures' of companies' cars. Say an Uber car was programmed more aggressively than the Waymo car, and if they approached the same intersection, Uber decides, "it is mine, move", and the Uber 'kills' the Waymo vehicle. At some point, standards will need to be set, unless the industry gets there first
Anyway...
6
Will each driverless car be required to take a driver's test? Will their licenses have to be renewed when they reach 65?
10
I'll be 70 in three months, so I don't worry about A.I. taking over. As for the particular bit of it 'planned' for making driverless cars safe to 'navigate' our streets, I can't foresee 'them' getting 'permission' in and around my little hamlet of New York, NY during my lifetime.
Neither a luddite nor a techie am I -- but I ain't even got GPS in my car (and I don't need it). I'll be buying a new car soon, and I just hope I can get one w/o GPS or entertainment screens of any kind. Most of all, I worry not so-much that I won't be able to find such a tech-stripped model as I worry -- and worry I do -- that I won't even be able to get a new car with 'a stick.' (What would one now be … "7-on-the-floor"?)
6
@Thomas Murray
You can still get a stick in some cars. With computer controlled rev-matching to boot for when you heal and toe skills get rusty ;-)
1
Looking at my fellow human beings in traffic every day I have no doubt that robots can easily be programmed to drive safer than the wast majority of "blood and flesh robot" drivers out there. If the demand is that they shall never ever make any mistakes, then they will not make it in this century or the next. The good news is that robots can be programmed to learn from mistakes/challenges faced by other robots - humans keep repeating the mistakes of other humans. Anything that can be done better by machines than by humans- always have (and should) be taken over by the machines. Anything else would be insane. There is a reason we stopped plowing the fields with a horse - and the result is that we no longer need 90% of the population to be engaged in making enough food to ensure our survival. Drivers can move on to do better things with their time than driving. The scary things is that a lot of them already have (texting, talking on phone, etc.) without the help of a robot.
11
As jobs from driving to retail to manufacturing are taken over by machines, those with money won't have any use of most of the citizenry, and there won't be as many people to buy products. The oligarch's will end up with a larger percentage of wealth that is smaller in total as there will be nobody to buy goods.
6
Personally I have been looking forward to the perfection of autonomous cars as a solution for aging seniors who won't have to give up independence when giving up driving. Losing her car, her mobility was devastating for my aging mother. This would have given her more options during her last years. Progress is often met with resistance but these types of assaults seem bizarre. And then again when I read the latest news . . .
12
Love it or hate it, AI is here to stay and its use will grow exponentially in relatively short order. It's a fact of life; no matter how many roadblocks are placed in its way it is coming, exerting enormous power in our lives to an extent previously imagined only by science fiction writers. Science, including AI, is neither good nor evil. It all depends on how we choose to use it.
5
I worry that no one will be good at driving when we need to fall back on it.
And what will be the speed of these cars on highways? Will they max out at 65 mph? Will the trucks still have drivers and still be able to barrel along at 80, pass on the right, and so forth?
A lot of good driving requires anticipation, not just reaction time.I recall a time when I saw a toddler running towards a ball in the street, I slowed down well ahead of time, I doubt the driverless car would be able to interpret that as a human could.
In medicine we have EHR which has prevented some types of errors but opened a door for different types of errors .
If we want safer roads let’s max out at 65, absolutely no passing on the right(enforced strictly in Italy), absolutely must stop for pedestrians at crosswalks(enforced in London), make harsher penalties for distracted driving,
4
@CTMD - If we needed to fall back from AI - I assume you are thinking of some kind of doomsday scenario - what makes you think driving will even a possibility?
As for anticipation, as more driving is automated, it will also become more regular and predictable, as we won't have to deal with the irregularity and craziness of human drivers.
I hope these folks are consistent and universal in their moral crusade, also throwing rocks at the cars of people texting at the wheel, driving while carrying on a conversation, or simply driving SUVs--all behaviors which lead to elevated risks for other road users. That said, if the only acceptable outcome is ZERO accidents, they should be pelting rocks at every single motorized vehicle on the road.
8
Where is the demand for driverless vehicles in the supply/demand equation?
8
On the demand side.
Where's the story here? Years of testing, untold thousands of miles, perhaps millions of interactions with citizens, and a few incidents with angry, irrational cranks is made to sound like an issue. There may be legitimate issues to be discussed about autonomous vehicles. The unstable individuals physically attacking the test cars have issues of an entirely different kind (which were not addressed or mentioned in the article). And I believe that the autonomous car companies do civil society a disservice by not pursuing prosecution of the perpetrators. That policy displays a posture of shame and guilt for their lawful and arguably important work, and legitimizes the crimes of aggression against their property and personnel. Their employees deserve more consideration than their attackers.
8
I find all the talk about AI highly suspicious and not believable. I started writing software since 1973. It seems like every ten years companies are claiming they have AI, but all I see are more and more elaborate rule machines that inevitably rely on human input. Fallible human input. And the ability of computers to “learn” - is actually only within a narrow scope.
6
A thought for those car attackers: in the car-dependent society we have constructed, people with disabilities (including huge numbers of elderly citizens) are effectively prisoners of their own homes much or all of the time. They either cannot or can no longer safely drive a car themselves. These people deserve to engage life and society no less than you do, and they are yearning for functional self-driving vehicles.
12
As a software developer of more 20 years of experience: this is not irrational. I don’t trust self driving cars yet. I’ve never written bug free code, no engineer has, ever. Why should the public suffer needlessly in order to beta test code?
13
I agree with the poster that said the future is in mass transit and biking/walking. I moved from NYC to a suburb and I still can’t get used to driving everywhere after several years. In fact, I hate it. It’s solitary, boring, frustrating. The town I live in has distracted drivers ( aka parents on their phones ) taking their kids to schools that are 2 blocks away. It’s a somewhat congested suburb with a train running through it. If there were bike lanes and shuttles that could take kids from the high school to the train or the center of the town, it would be an amazing place - like many American suburbs I imagine. I’m not sure we should be investing in cars of the future but rather, communities of the future with walking, talking, biking, shopping, and efficient transportation. How nice it would be to see active humans on our streets rather than machines. Even with its flaws, I look forward to living in and getting around NYC again someday.
20
The comments that I have read so far all indicate the inability of people to see any issue in a holistic way. Attempting to address a problem from a particular point of view while not being able to see all of the possible solutions, which is impossible for anyone. This is the basis for the "Law of unintended consequences". Our destruction of the real engine of global life sustainability, diversity, that has driven the evolution of all planetary lifeforms as we now know it, is outpacing any hope of diminishing the resulting disastrous results to all global human civilization. We should be focusing on finding ways for humans to live in the most simple and environmentally harmonious way, consuming the smallest amount of resources possible, which is the opposite of what we are doing now. Small, integrated communities as self reliant as possible, using the great wealth of knowledge we have acquired to achieve this. Instead, we are focused on accumulating as much material wealth as individually possible. As a species we are rapidly advancing our own destruction by refusing to acknowledge what our evolution from the emergence of the first lifeforms on earth has taught us, diversity is the strength all life requires to continue.
5
My father is losing his vision, and has decided to give up his license. Like so many other elderly or disabled people, he is losing a lot of freedom in making this responsible decision. A self-driving car would be a wonderful gift to those among us who can't drive. Don't kill the technology. Work out the flaws.
12
@Nina--I'm not sure the aim is to provide cars for those with limited sight. There must still be a driver able to take the wheel when necessary. "Driverless" is not meant literally, at least I hope not. Surely there will not be toddlers driving themselves to preschool.
The major flaw isn’t the tech, it’s that as companies create it there is virtually no policy attention given to expanding the social safety net to manage the consequences of the people it displaces. Millions of drivers are about to lose their jobs virtually overnight when this goes live and they won’t be any stupider, any less motivated to work, etc. It won’t be their “fault.” And the type of job they would have to segue into that replaced their old line of work — software engineer, really — has a very high barrier to entry, in terms of cost and time commitment, and is also very vulnerable to being replaced by automation in the future, as well.
The gradual march toward AI is going to leave a lot of the world in an economic desert and we have to start preparing and adjusting our attitudes about welfare now.
2
@Nina
How many taxi rides could your father take for the cost and upkeep of a self-driving car?
1
In future times , after self driving technology has been perfected, those people will think about the people in our time and be astounded that we were allowed to own and drive such big machines that killed and injured so many people every year and took up so much space and polluted so much of the air and cost so much money to run.
We are at the beginning of those times.
6
There should be laws to forbid those companies to test their driverless cars at large.
4
Imagine that each of these corporate owned vehicles might one day replace ten, twenty or even thirty of our now personally owned vehicles.
And the taxes these corporations would need to collect per ride to cobble up all the rotting infrastructure neglected by the insufficiency of the taxes collected on our oil burners.
Continuing the long slow burn on the oil infrastructure that gets us where? and Amazon at our doorsteps.
2
This quote says it all: “They said they need real-world examples, but I don’t want to be their real-world mistake,”
Corporations are allowed to experiment on the general population, and people don’t like it.
8
Testing these vehicles is an empirical process. Empirical processes necessarily require failures. I don't want to be a victim of one of these failures.
3
The neighborhood resident worries about the employee who is training the AI who will replace him. I wonder, does she always avoid the self-check out lines at the grocery store?
5
I'm a bit amazed at the comments I've read. Don't people realize it's the same old pattern, new tech that causes shifts in social norms is greeted with exuberant enthusiasm by some and violent opposition by others, the latter get all the ink. AV's are inevitable and will be liberating and vastly safer. Who in their right mind believes crazy humans are preferable to complex computer systems? Don't you want to nap, work or just gaze out at the landscape rather than be locked into driving? I do, especially like the napping part. We are a notoriously sleep deprived culture. People could nap to and from work or wherever they're going and we'd all be healthier and happier. And infinitely safer.
4
You are right. We want that and get a chance to nap while using many forms of public transportation in places like New York City where we live. Many folks living outside of NYC don’t have as many public transportation options unfortunately. We need that in addition to the option of driverless cars. Commenters here keep touting how more efficient AV’s are over human drivers but public transportation (with driverless operators) are more efficient than driverless cars!
2
Not too different from people who have been harassing EV drivers at Tesla's Supercharging stations by parking ICE vehicles across stalls. What sounds like a prank to some threatens and interferes with the real lives of people.
4
There is something fundamental about how we humans are reacting to new technology. Admittedly, the tech has moved ahead of legislation in many way, and of our human brains, but sticks and stones and shouting seem atavistic in the extreme. Welcome back cave people!
3
If you could only knew how technology works from inside... I was a huge fan of self driving tech until I get a job in one of companies developing this technology.
All data produced by car sensors, like LIDAR and camera images etc. processed by real people. This people are mostly srudents from third world countries, working for 1-2$/hour. Cheap workforce. Quality of produced results is so poor, that I wonder how this cars can even drive on their own. That is really scary. After what I've seen, I can't blame those people for resisting to this new tech.
5
I am waiting for the first driverless car being used like a drone driving into a group of kids. Who will be responsible as there is no driver??we need a more open and democratic legitimized process what kind of technology will define our environment. If you din‘t make the public part of this process there will be a lot of trouble.
5
Where are the driverless busses? They may be more readily accepted and could travel at lower average speeds.
Less immediate job losses for taxi and Uber et al drivers.
3
One of the issues is the these Waymo vehicles are suddenly everywhere around here. Every day when you are out and about, you see dozens of these vehicles and this has been the case for months. It seems (at least in Tempe/Chandler) they represent one out of every four cars on the road. They must be conducting millions of miles of testing in this very small geographic area. They greatly increase the traffic and congestion. And they wonder why there is a backlash?
7
While these automated cars sound amazing, it is a false narrative on our supposed glorious future tech enhanced lives. Why? Because in 50 years, climate change will really be crushing all these future tech wonders. Category 6 hurricanes, massive prolonged heat waves, rising seas, lack of drinkable water and lots of fires and a lot less food. These issues are going to be what future you and me will be concerned with, not some fancy self-driving car. Too bad the people working on these cars are not working with just as much enthusiasm to save the current environment. Will you self-driving car save you from a massive wildfire? I think not.
7
And what is different between this and the transition from a horse powered economy to a fossil fuel powered one in the latter part of the 19th century? Nothing. The only constants are our human fear of change and bloody minded intransigence. And the fact that we don't learn much except we keep looking for quick fixes to foundational problems like transportation.
1
It's an easy problem to solve. First, make every self-driving van owned by any corporation matched with a self-managing AI executives and board member. Second, once executive and board member positions (with all of the perks) are eliminated, self-diving vans will be allowed within any company, to eliminate driver jobs. First things first - the high-price jobs should be targeted, as it makes economic sense.
5
Some in Chandler, AZ instinctually believe that human-created problems are best dealt with human resolve. I want to believe them.
1
So-called "driver education" has never been good at producing competent drivers. So, we've had driverless vehicles since the first automobiles became available. These modern ones are just a different kind, and they couldn't possibly be worse than the older type.
Fitting that this experiment wants us all to be "asleep" at the wheel, so to speak, while corporations with robots attempt to steer our world. Good for Chandler residents who recognize they shouldn't be guinea pigs for this unsafe test. We've already had the death in Tempe resulting from a self-driving car -- with an inattentive human tester behind the wheel no less.
6
Vandalism has never been an effective form of protest.
3
It worked recently in Paris
1
What's the most dire problem with driverless vehicles? The same as drones, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and most Y2K Big Business social/economic engineering:They are conceived, planned and executed NOT with the public good in mind but with private profit. Just as the monolithic US automobile and oil industries fueled the economy while destroying our cities and our environment, the new mega-corporations will think nothing of robotically running over what's left of our personal lives just to drive themselves into their gilded, gated easy streets.
5
It may be a myth that the word sabotage comes from the word sabots (wooden shoes) being tossed into the silk weaving machines by the workers in France and the word Luddite may now be an insult, but it is worth remembering in both cases the textile workers were fighting against the destruction of their lives. The weavers in England went from skilled, well paid workers to being poorly paid cogs in the factories. Who needs a truck or bus driver when a machine will do it?
3
We need FEWER vehicles on the road, not MORE.
And certainly NOT driverless.
Let's work toward putting an end to the tyranny of the automobile.
Instead, let's put our money and brain-power into a modern, reliable, high-speed rail system as they exist in the civilized world!
While we're at it let's work on other forms of public transport as well.
10
It would be interesting to talk with people (there aren’t many still alive) who were around over 100 years ago when automobiles began replacing horses and carriages. Were there people who attacked motorized travel? Then or now, I almost feel sorry for them. Almost.
Or just consider people today who refuse to fly, use computers, cell phones and other examples of technology. Fear, willful ignorance, personal insecurity and other factors all drive resistance to change—of all types.
I’m writing a book on AVs and find articles like this, and especially the comments, fascinating. What I’ve learned so far is that fully capable AVs (called level 5 vehicles) are a long way off, perhaps as much as 15-20 years, but lesser versions will arrive much sooner.
The big issue is going to be how AVs fare in mixed environments with the majority of vehicles being human driven and laws not keeping pace with the changes AVs’ presence will require. This is going to get very messy.
I’m 69 and no Luddite. I have been a “car guy” most of my life, done most types of repairs on cars, including engine rebuilds. I’ve done time on race tracks at triple digit speeds. But I also know people who hate to drive. Each to his own. Yet as much as I like to drive myself, There are still times when it would be nice to get into a car, plug my destination into the car’s computer, and let it get me there. I may not live to see all of that, but I’ll see some of it.
2
I think it would be a better allocation of time and talent to develop a self driving government, and autonomous bureaucracy that simply took care of things without bombast or deception. Sensors to feed back public needs and responses, continuous monitoring of efficiency of programs to end wasteful spending, and no more campaigning. A far better shot at utopia than driving around bothering folks while delivering pizza.
2
21st century Luddites, one suspects that most or all of them wouldn't understand that term in this benighted country of superficial moneygrubbers. Yet what will become of the trucking industry once vehicular automation becomes the reality?
1
Wait until there are thousands of these cars in a city, and their software gets hacked by a fifteen year old in Romania and the cars all end up in a Walmart parking lot. What one man can write another can hack. No safety ahead, just different types of danger.
4
@Sixty Plus
You know that all newer model cars are computer already driven right? Drive-by-wire is 100%. The accelerator is not connected to the engine. It goes to the computer which controls the throttle based on various sensor inputs. Steering is electric. Brakes are modulated independently. The human driver is operating a video game nowadays. And cars already have cellular connectivity. The future is here.
As a 75 year old, I and my cohorts do not look forward to the day we can no longer drive. Self Driving Vehicles can't come soon enough.
3
@Scott: Regarding your "What's safer?" question; you're quoting what's been promised about the vehicles. In reality..well, consider the three deaths I've heard of:
1) Vehicle in Arizona detects a woman pushing a bicycle but hits and kills her, anyway;
2) Vehicle does not detect a semi-trailer and runs into it and kills the driver;
3) Vehicle unexpectedly swerves toward a freeway exit, hits the guardrail, and kills the driver.
In all of these cases, a good human driver would have avoided the accident. So, in these cases, the autonomous, or semi-autonomous, car was less safe than a good human driver. And, as the residents in the article are protesting, random innocent peoples' lives should not be put at risk so that Google or Tesla can make billions of dollars.
4
Rocks and knives are not an elegant way to eradicate the irresponsible invention of driverless cars.
The Arizonans should go back in US history to the time of honest gunslingers, brush-up their target shooting, and disable the driverless cars by punching holes in their motors and tires.
2
People attacking driverless cars and trying to run them off the road. The same people who use cell phones and computers and other technologies they were afraid of when they came out too.
1
The original Luddites destroyed automated textile mill equipment in 1811, out of fear of losing their jobs. Automation has eliminated jobs, but has always created new jobs. And if people are afraid of accidents caused by self-driving cars, they should stop and consider that human drivers kill about 37,000 people each year in the USA! Automated vehicles could not do any worse than that.
4
The economic displacement of eliminating driving jobs will make the distressed coal miners and assembly plant workers look like a minor blip on the radar screen. Calling the opponents of this massively disruptive technology Luddites or cranks is quite shortsighted. We as a society ought to be seriously examining the disruptive impact of this technology. Of course that won't happen, but I don't blame the folks running around with axes. Humanity is fighting back.
2
So how many more years in the future before cars driven by people will have their tires slashed by those exasperated by the selfishness of a small group obstinately causing the majority of traffic deaths?
Mr. Rushkoff needs to grow up.
That he got as much ink as he did for this article only emboldens him to support more attacks and violence that will get someone injured.
I would support felony level charges against anyone threatening violence to passengers in the cars, and with all the lack of restraint and the celebrated 'melting into the crowd' possibilities, how is this different from any other terrorism?
If someone was against milking cows and attacked vending machines selling milk, or the refrigerated trucks transporting to groceries, there would be much more enforcement.
Rushkoff needs to realize that, while slow, the coming of driverless cars in not only inevitable, but desirable, considering some of the rides I've had in taxis over the last few years.
2
Just further evidence that people are far more dangerous than robots.
1
Why assume that all car accidents are caused by human error? And why assume, with no evidence, that driverless cars will be safer? When an airplane is involved in an accident the NTSB takes it apart and inspects each part before determining the accident's cause. And often that cause turns out to be mechanical. That, of course, never happens with car accidents - we always assume human error. However, we know of automobile defects - stuck accelerators for example - which caused lots of accidents and which the car makers never took responsibility for until they were forced to.
Driverless technology doesn't eliminate the human factor - it just transfers it to different humans. To the developers of the software; to the manufacturers of the sensors; to those who decide what goes into the algorithms; to the executives who have to make it all profitable, no matter what. Humans do this - many, many humans. And some may be distracted, incompetent, unimaginative, forced to cut corners, or just plain greedy.... How can you eliminate the human factor? How can you make things error free? It is a myth! And if you say, change human nature - well, it will be humans doing that too.
There's an interesting book - Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World, by Meredith Broussard. (This writer has no relationship to the author or publisher.) We Americans have an unquestioning faith in technological solutions for everything. It's time we take a new, hard look at that.
8
People “talk” about danger. With supposedly 25,000 moles per day we should have some real statistics on that?
Are the vans just randomly driving? Delivering?
Adding to traffic with no value?
At 25,000 miles a day we have in theory 5 million miles in 200 days, 10 million in 400 days?
What are the favts, I understand the fear of the future, robots wandering the street but a few facts please.
Human drivers = 5.5M traffic accidents w/ nearly 40k deaths.
Maybe robots are worth a try?
1
First they came after the driverless cars, and I said nothing.
1
According to the Chinese calendar, the pig year begins. For president, the US has an old boar , who thinks of himself as a stallion.Anachronism. Trump is also a reaction to the rapid development of technology and globalization. I suspect many of the Americans will become like the Amish In contrast, however, they will not have the choice of organizing themselves in their isolated communities, and the aggression against artificial intelligence and robots will grow. These are the new Luddites
I would absolutely find a way to safely resist being a guinea pig for Google. Why do you think Waymo isn't inclined to push for prosecution and is in fact hiding evidence? It doesn't want to any form of resistance to spread. Let all the driverless car boosters volunteer their space for testing.
5
Not surprised to see this, only surprised it is the first article to systematically detail the hostile responses to driverless cars that I have seen.
1
Driverless cars don't solve the environmental dilemma of pollution nor do they lessen the need for more roads.
Why aren't these tech companies working on the larger issues?
9
I'd not want to have my local streets as a testing ground. That's a valid point, but one you would express at a Government meeting, not threatening the (non) drivers.
The anti car folks don't get that for many, no, grandma isn't biking to the store in Billings, MT. Also, for many people, we like car culture, and except for city dwellers, it gives more than it takes.....Brooklyn Bicycle Guys should realize that their no car fantasy does not apply outside the confines of the City....
I"ve driven the assist systems in most major cars....they can barely find lines.....there's a LONG way to go before this is common tech...a LONG way.
6
As much as I would love to have a vehicle that would drive itself, leaving me free to nap, enjoy a glass of wine, or read the Times, I have more than just a few questions. For starters, how will autonomous vehicles deal with wintertime mountain driving? Will they be able to judge the road surface by appearance as well as an experienced human driver? Will they be able to use a local's knowledge of which curves tend to keep their ice when the rest of the road is clear, and where the deer cluster at twilight? Will they know when to pass that human-operated car with Louisiana plates coming down from Monarch Pass at 20 mph with eight cars stacked up behind it, or how to deal with snow-covered 1-lane rural roads with two-way traffic? How about ground blizzards with sudden loss of vision?
9
Not minimizing the concerns of those complaining about being in an experiment that they did not choose, essentially being guinea pigs, we are subject to this on a daily basis but we are enured to those risks. With the current administration's loosening of environmental standards, we are subject to microparticles and mercury, and increased levels of noxious and harmful elements, destroying both the planet and our health. The services people receive in their cars and homes via IoT and automation open them up to hacking risks. Doctors routinely experiment on patients, administering placebos, and in the worst cases, prescribing medications for off-label uses. The list goes on and on how we are experimented on regularly.
3
It is interesting that many posters here assume that driverless cars will become flawlessly driven. They make sense for long distant trips on the interstate, but for driving around town, I think they have some significant obstacles to overcome. I am not interested in having to deal with driverless cars that aren't quite up to the task, mo matter how cool or cutting edge they may be.
4
@Renegator
They can be 1,000x less likely to have have an accident than a human and still have some. Does that count as an improvement?
1
@Daphne
Is that number factual or based on optimism?
Luddites.
6
They're testing them in traffic,yet they will never function in normal traffic situations. The system will only work on dedicated road ways with dedicated time frames to eliminate the traffic variables. Driverless vehicles like trucks are taking freight from point to point on interstates during late hours on dedicated runs .The system will only be successful on dedicated roadways where everybody knows where they are and how to avoid ,like trains.That is why downtown areas in some cities are going driverless,or one might say restricting drivers of autos ,by law.
2
If a machine can perform the task with grater safety, reliability, accuracy and control then a human, the human, has no business staying at the wheel. The technology for driverless cars will improve. So will our acceptance.
I wonder will an autonomous vehicle lower our insurance auto insurance bill?
Statistically, mile per mile, these cars are safer than cars piloted by drivers. Personally, I look forward to having one when I'm older and shouldn't drive. I wish my 92 dad had one...
14
@Paul
No so. In CA so far, in deaths per miles driven, driverless cars have a ten times higher rate.
2
@James Where did you come by that statistic? I'd like to read it if you would provide the source
While it's clear that many have misgivings concerning this technology, I anticipate OWNING such a vehicle someday as my driving skills erode. I expect the ability to be flexibly mobile without the requirement of calling a cab or Uber will be a key benefit in my later years.
4
Lock 'em up. We are a nation of laws.
BTW, Chandler has none of the hoops, hurdles and potholes that Uber has to overcome in Pittsburgh. The test is how cars are affected by bad weather, freezing and thawing, and negotiating hills and winding roads.
7
At age 74, I have perhaps, with luck, 10 years of safe driving still ahead of me - very possibly less. I live in a semi-urban, residential neighborhood where a car is essential to shopping or, really doing anything outside the home. I hope that by the time I need to hang up my keys, self driving cars will have proved themselves and be an option I can use - allowing me to remain in my much loved home of half a life time.
19
@Tobias Grace
Even now I find the comparatively basic autonomous functions of my car helpful. Lane keeping, smart cruise control, slow speed following, blind spot monitoring, etc...
When AIDS first appeared back in the early 80s, people treated patients infected with HIV with extreme indignity. So attacking autonomous vehicles doesn't surprise me at all.
12
Technological advances will simply occur, and the problem is less with the technology than with the employment structure we have, one guided by corporations, with little input from the stakeholders affected by the decisions made. For all the conservative swipes at European capitalism, the stakeholder model works - here, shareholder only care about their asset values, completely divorced from decisions and from human welfare.
11
Although I can understand the feelings behind some of this behavior, and I am as skeptical of the tech monopolies goals and effects, being a Luddite is probably not the best way to handle the problem. Working in technology for the past 25 years, there has always been a need to stay ahead of the crushing wave you ride, to usurp the wave, to become the thing about to crush you. Typically, that means staying ahead of technology, to use it to automate yourself out of one's current role, and into a new one. That is not an option for most people.
How can we help? It seems obvious that driverless cars can be a major enhancement over humans driving cars themselves, and I don't doubt that automation will ultimately be safer than human drivers, but how can we position technology to enhance our lives, while still allowing people to have a decent life? Do we require that all automation has a human handler? Can we make that handler role worthwhile to a person asked to perform it? Will smashing the figurative looms resolve this problem? Can we provide education in a broader way to actually help those that might be displaced? Do we need a guaranteed income? Do we need to reign in the plans of the tech giants to monopolize segments? To me, it seems like we need to develop a government that cares about human welfare, education, and security.
10
Maybe one day driverless cars will be able to handle ALL situations, other drivers who do not follow the rules, careless pedestrians, a sensor that does not recognize something because of weather [too bright sunlight or snow].
The technology has not yet been developed to handle all situations.
Until that technology is developed we should be careful about the rush to put driverless cars on the road.
7
@david On the other hand, we have plenty of human drivers who can't handle ALL the situations, and there's no movement to take away their driver's licenses.
11
@david - I think you are right, but the technology cannot overnight usurp human activity. At first, the cars would be used for straightforward driving, in clear traffic, but over time, both the infrastructure and the cars' technology will improve to a point that it can usurp most, if not all, human activity. It is a matter of time, but it does point to the need to some limits on its uses, until it can be proven to be safe, or at least much safer than humans driving.
I'm glad I'm getting old as I enjoy driving and would find riding around in an automated car boring. Yes, right now a 'driver' must pay attention and be prepared to take over, but where is this headed. Down the road will folks really want to pay tens of thousands of dollars for what is really personal public transit, i.e., no different than sitting on a train, but in a private car? Will all of this evolve into "pods" (an idea Musk already uses for rapid transit of the future) with several people riding along?
I can see the benefit of moving from defensive driving (which I generally think means driving as if every other car on the road is being driven by a not-too-bright chimp)to a situation where driverless cars/pods move along highways on their own with pre-determined spaces maintained and no idiotic choices by humans, but again, how boring.
4
@Anne-Marie Hislop Boring , but safe and will save hundreds of thousands of lives around the world lost in accidents every year.
reply to Cathy, from Hopewell junction.
Your understandable fear of new technology has undermined correct reasoning-- the kind of reasoning I saw in my students when I taught Econ 1 at UC Berkeley. You fear that driverless cars will "...bench (drive out) commercial drivers, cabbies, Uber drivers, but remain priced out of reach for the people who need them." That is self-contradictory. If the former happens, it will be because driverless cars will charge/cost LESS than commercial drivers, cabbies, Uber drivers charge, and this will REDUCE prices paid by all users, including "the people who need them". The new services will be competitive with each other, and with the current providers who will remain in the industry, and therefore the price that "the market will bear" will not be the extremely high prices that are charged for UNIQUE life-saving drugs, which have few, if any, competitors. ALL sellers, in every field, charge a price that is set by "what the market will bear"-- but that price depends on how much competition there is in that market.
4
Unless these wealthy companies drive out the competition by losing money until there is no competition. We live in a world with a few large monopolies- and Alphabet (Google) is one of them. Heck, most of The Lyft / Uber drivers already are part time. Is there really that much money to be made?
1
@Ernie Nadel
I am not sure your logic is correct. The vehicles may be priced at a point where they are viable for a commercial enterprise but not for a private individual.
I'm not against technology and attempts to stem it's march forward have always been in vain. Still, that doesn't mean we have to embrace change and there DOES come a time when we have to say ENOUGH. I don't like the idea of driver-less cars roaming the streets and moreover taxis employ thousands and we simply cannot allow for all lower tech jobs to vanish simply because "we can". We've seen too many jobs disappear, starting with check-out lines in stores. What was once a summer job for kids is now done in self-checkouts. I'm against this and equally against these vehicles. Let's enjoy the technology as it makes driving our own cars safer by warning us if we get too close on the highway or change lanes inappropriately but keep these cars with no drivers OFF our roads, thank you very much.
12
At some point down the line, people who can’t drive will be able to get around town in their autonomous vehicle. My daughter has low vision and can’t drive. She will be able to do her errands in an AV. And in a few years when I’m too old to drive I will use an AV, too. And I hope we will be able to call up one of the cars owned by our neighborhood, reducing the cost of ownership substantially.
8
It is out of a dystopian novel set in the future, which is now. Waymo (Big Tech) is faceless, corporate and quasi-monopolistic; they own the algorithms that manage commerce- distribution of services and information- and seek to exploit the dependency they have created. The population is now fully connected to the internet/network, more or less by necessity; minds are colonized; the influence is undue and the tithing accelerates. The driverless vehicle(physical transportation of an old sort, yet reliant on a vast, unseen network, sophisticated beyond comprehension of most who use it) is a particularly symbolic feature in this new landscape. Who or what is actually in control here? Should the forces behind this pending ubiquity be trusted?
14
I think autonomous cars will need to share the road with human driver cars for quite some time. Here is a good example of why: Say I drive my Jeep Wrangler from my Suburban home into the mountains on the weekend and plan on doing some really intense off roading. Be able to autonomously drive an off road trail is orders of magnitude more difficult than on a city street, and it would also remove most of the enjoyment of that sort of driving anyways.
Among outdoor adventurers, as well as those living in rugged terrain and the wildness, I predict manually driven vehicles will stay around far into the future.
6
@Andrew Grossnickle
Offroading kills wildlife. How can one find that enjoyable?
It doesn't sound like there was much of a public decisionmaking process, if any, in Chandler. If the Chandler City Council thought that these autonomous vehicles were such a benefit to their community and the world, they should have made that decision in an open forum with public input. To simply impose the testing by fiat is an invitation to legitimize attacks on the vehicles.
39
If it were up to me, technology companies would give up trying to compete with human drivers and pursue automated rapid transit instead. Think Personal Rapid Transit, where you get in, choose a destination, and the machine takes care of the rest. And the machine would have the environment all to itself.
2
Autonomous cars will improve, but that doesn't address the issue. Will we live in human society or will we be units of little importance as ordinary people were in history, especially in the dark ages? Humans are social animals. The Great Civilizations like Egypt, Ancient Greece, and Rome and probably the Maya and Incas and African Civilizations we don't have records of, all had slavery. Human beings can be slaves or ant-like workers or servants or soldiers or mass murderers or philosophers and scientists and artists. The industrial revolution took away menial, repetitive work. Artificial intelligence as it looks today will take away intellectual work and many freedoms, like the freedom of movement driving gives you, and opportunities that arise from human problem solving and human adventurousness and human curiosity. I think the place for AI is to reduce menial intellectual work, and training people rather than giving up on people and replacing them.
12
@Saint999- yeah, they'll improve decades down the road(no pun intended), with many hundreds or thousands killed in the process.
1
Give it a rest. Spend less time depending on dodging other drivers and more time engaging with people in the car with you.
The genes that built Ned Ludd are apparently alive and well. There are legitimate concerns, such as the displacement of workers that must ensue, with adopting newer technology that does formerly human tasks better than humans can, but raging against the machines is unlikely to prove productive, or to stop their continued rise. Forcing your own nation's businesses to be less efficient can only prove a boon for other nations' growth.
5
In addition to the fact that American drivers won't accept driverless cars because they want to be able to exceed the speed limit and to tailgate, as soon as there are some serious accidents and deaths from these cars, even if they happen at far lower rates than traditional cars with drivers, politicians will pass laws to ban them.
This will happen because it's a very easy populist issue. I believe these cars will be zoned out of existence or, at the very least, there will be areas where it will be illegal to use the driverless features.
We've already had a several taxi drivers in NYC commit suicide because the services like Lyft and Uber have destroyed the value of their medallions. What's going to happen when Lyft and Uber drivers are forced out work by driverless cars?
11
@Martin Brooks
So tough luck for any American without the sight or the youthful reflexes that allow driving?
In the land of freedom, the elderly won't be permitted to make use of this technology, even if serious accidents and deaths happen at far lower rates than with traditional cars and drivers?
2
The vast majority will welcome a future of being free from dealing with distracted and harried drivers.
I remember reading about similar sorts of things, based on similar feelings when automobiles came on the scene and began to replace horses. As has been said many times "and this too shall pass!"
5
@John Shepherd
Yes, but automobiles increased the use of fossil fuels to the extent that many species have suffered and become extinct, as well, the human species "too shall pass!"
3
@John Shepherd except automobiles really have been a disaster — environmentally, socially — so what’s your point.
Very strange behavior, since the technology is coming and will only increase. Embrace it, but if improvements can be made, tell the city — don’t slash tires. This is juvenile.
4
@Bob Krantz
Yes. And look at the damage "horseless carriages" have done to human life abs society. Not just the fatal senseless accidents, but the pollution, tires and discarded cars that will last generations in landfills, massive roadways/highways built instead of public transportation, and an addiction to fossil fuels that has created "interests" in the middle east that are directly responsible for wars, terrorism, wealthy tribal kingdoms led by authoritarian who set human rights back a thousand years...and so much worse.
So. Yeah. I agree. This is much like that. I suggest everyone in favor of this technology should allow this experiment in the neighborhoods where their kids play and go to school, on the highways they drive on everyday. No? I didn't think so.
13
@Misplaced Modifier- nothing compared the death and destruction caused by primitive humans prior to the horseless carriage; hundred thousand years worth.
Some autonomous vehicles will be very welcome: ones for the blind, for elderly people who can no longer drive, for those with disabilities who are unable to drive, and so on. The rest of them though? I'm not so sure.
9
Most educated humans would rather speak to an intelligent human, rather than a robot.
That applies to autos also. We live in communities of people, not robots.
Educated humans need to take responsibility for the planet, not robots.
8
If the car is driver-less you would be able to converse with your intelligent passenger. Today that would put yourself and others at risk due to the distracted driver.
1
I look forward to this technology failing spectacularly in the face of richly deserved anger from, you know, real human beings.
It's hilarious that corporations think they can sell mass implementation of driverless cars based on a highly dubious argument around "safety."
You think the 2nd amendment crowd in this country will go for widespread automated vehicles? Think again.
14
It’s not just there world. We will see this technology flourish in many places.
@Anonymous I do, eventually. And they will be electric as well. The internal combustion engine has outlived its usefulness.
I am a person with a disability, and this story gives me mixed feelings. On the one hand, I share the concerns of Arizona residents about safety, and the concern that self-driving cars may effectively be scabs, replacing human drivers. On the other hand, a self-driving car, if it had the right design, could bring much greater mobility to people with disabilities.
9
So, let me get this straight. Our home is on fire and people inside are debating whether to use a gas or wood stove for a cozy evening?
Cars are not the answer to anything. Period.
15
There's a main point that I think a lot of people miss. These tech companies are beta testing software with tons of bugs, sensor issues, etc., on actual people.
This is cutting a lot of serious corners for the sake of expediency and lower cost that would be deemed completely unacceptable in established industries where the public is put at risk from a product or service.
I would wager the anger from people is not related to technology. It's due to not wanting to be killed or injured for involuntarily being part of beta testing autonomous driving software that makes lots of mistakes.
37
Should they be testing these cars in an area with a more polite and civil driving culture, such as Minnesota?
4
They can't because the cars rely on sensors and cameras that can't handle snow.
1
I don't see how these can ever work on city streets. They would have to be programmed to stop for pedestrians, probably to stop even for people who jumped in front of them. This means they would be trivial to jump in front of to either stop them or vandalize / rob them (or simply gum up traffic). Someone who pushed a shopping cart into the street, or just stood in traffic, could destroy an entire rush hour in downtown DC by creating gridlock. They would also be targets for people seeking to get injured by them to collect insurance payments. Self-driving technology seems very promising for interstate trucking and perhaps movement around modern suburbs designed for cars (like Chandler Arizona, frankly) but I just don't see how the current roads in city centers like DC or Seattle would be workable.
2
How would you solve the problems above today? Drive over the “obstacles”?
People may be afraid that autonomous vehicles will lead to “colossal changes”, but they can rest easy - the things won’t work beyond being a curiosity.
3
I often take a drive downtown, which is about six miles. It’s always crazy busy. I witness many examples of poor and dangerous driving every single time I do it. For driving routes like this autonomous vehicles are a hundred times safer than humans. Speed limits would be observed, crucially, lane discipline would be observed and primitive, macho behavior would be eliminated. What’s not to love? For me, it cannot come soon enough.
5
@Anthony Taylor the technology is invulnerable to hacking I’m sure.
@Anthony Taylor, So you are completely comfortable with turning over your life and your loved ones lives, to a self-driving car to drive you to safety from an approaching hurricane on jam packed roads with other desperate drivers. Okay then.
As an Oncologist, trained at one of the most amazing times in the history of medicine, there is no drug, procedure or counsel that will save more lives and increase the US mortality rate more than driverless cars.
I find it hard to argue against driverless cars when the alternative is lunatics attacking other people, driving under the influence, while texting and generally showing complete disregard for fellow man.
7
Tobacco kills about 450,000 /year in the US.
How many die from traffic accidents.
1
Because of how many workers it displaces. The problem isn't safety it's the cost of technology. What will you do when doctors get replaced? Robotic hands are being developed and once they get good combine them with an AI, internet and a killer memory and you become obsolete. What then? It'd have a lower mortality rate than a human for sure. But what would happen to humans if we all got replaced with AI? Would we survive? Would we have a purpose? It represents an existential issue, not just a safety one. Where would all the lyft/uber/cab drivers go? What would they do, and for how long till they're replaced by another AI?
2
@David, Approximately 35,000 fatalities per year /-, Significantly less than 40-60 years ago. Cars keep getting safer and will continue to become more so. Of course, there are many, many more non fatal accidents.
If America decides to put the brakes on driverless cars, there are plenty of other countries that will happily jump into the lead...
3
It's one thing to release a new I-Phone that may have a few glitches. But they better get the driverless vehicle down perfectly before it is put into public use.
There's no room for glitches here. A top priority must be how to prevent Nice-style terrorist attacks from being carried out by driverless vehicles, or aircraft/drones. The perpetrator need no longer be intent on suicide, just armed with the mindset to kill remotely, anonymously, and probably with less empathy, if that's possible, not being present to witness the carnage. Much "easier", for lack of a better word.
What protocols in these driverless vehicles are in place to prevent programming a truck to plow into a crowd, or deliver explosives? Or even perhaps a whole fleet of vehicles at once? It's not like you can shoot out the driver to stop the vehicle.
These concerns must be considered before driverless vehicles become available. We have already seen drones misused; the potential for misuse with driverless vehicles is even greater. No one should mind if we, for a couple more years, stick with the "analog" vehicle we've had for a century.
We must not rush here, as once this technology becomes available, there's no going back. So, as they say, "Better safe than sorry".
8
And maybe they better get the DRIVERS of cars “down perfectly before putting them into public use” - like enough people haven’t been killed/injured from that?
I just got back from holiday near Mountain View, center of Silicon Valley and Google HQ. The local highways (US 101, 85, 280, 237, 84, 92, plus others) are 6 to 8 lanes and for 3 hours twice daily, creep at less than 5 mph during am and pm rush hours. Of course the brilliant Google engineers are stuck in their giant Google busses stuck in traffic too. If there are self driving cars in these colloasal traffic jams, they aren't doing any good. So self-driving cars will not solve one of the biggest problems in urban areas - TOO MANY CARS! So Waymo & Google, how about some really smart ideas that reduce traffic rather than increase it? (hint- think mass transportation).
18
I can’t wait for all cars to be driverless. I despise American car-worshipping culture which has created endless suburban sprawl, devastated many cities, contributed heavily to climate change and undermined the public-transportation infrastructure. It’s such a relief to be in Europe or China where you have truly 21st century train and bus systems. As for the yahoos who attacks self-driving cars: if your only skill in life is driving, you’ll soon join the unemployed underclass and no rock-throwing will help you to turn the tide.
7
@Mor how will driverless cars make America less car-centric? I don’t see the logic.
3
@Mor, So you have no problem then risking your life by turning over control to a self-driving car to escape from the approaching wildfire? Or perhaps in the aftermath of a earthquake. A human being will always make a better decision, in case of disaster , for their own self preservation, not a machine.
1
I still haven’t figured out why we need these vehicles. Driving is one of my life’s great enjoyments. Leave it alone.
9
I don't know why as a normally easy going guy, I feel the same way now I know I'm not alone.
2
Not to be negative, but concerns about this technology extend beyond safety and a concern for the loss of the thrill of controlling one's own vehicle.
A LOT of workers are going to lose jobs due to this new technology. A LOT of workers. These workers tend not to have college degrees and are disproportionately male. Yes, these soon to be displaced workers sound an awful lot like future Trump voters (or so-called populist voters). If folks think that the decline in auto manufacturing employment has been a tough transition, just wait for this one. It's gonna hit hard and fast and the pain will be distributed unequally.
10
@Joan Johnson correct. Truck driving is one of the largest professions in the United States
Age 68 and will only be able to drive a few more years.
I want Robot cars ASAP.
For now I love gas under $2 and my truck.
Yet I have wanted gas tax to rise to pay for infrastructure for decades.
This whole country needs an upgrade.
3
Does anyone really think the guy or gal Google employs to do so will be able to write code that can differentiate between a pronghorn that cannot jump a roadside fence and a deer that can and is likely to? Able to differentiate between range cattle and fenced cattle? Able to differentiate among dust devils? Able to calculate the likely behavior of the car in front by observing how she has been reacting to the driver in front of her? To not sell information on everywhere you go to anyone who will pay for it?
13
"Pinkham was heavily intoxicated, . . . "
Which is exactly why self-driving cars are needed ASAP.
It's obviously insane that any society would permit bars to have parking lots. This is especially true in a country with no meaningful mass-transit alternatives to the automobile.
It would be interesting to hear what Mothers Against Drunk Driving has to say about self-driving cars.
3
Driverless cars can be hacked, can't they? Does that not present a significant danger?
6
I am reminded of a comic book story from the 60's where an advanced walking and talking computer learns how to clone itself and together they take over the whole country. While the army and police are helpless against them, a boy solves the problem by aiming his slingshot at their vision lenses.
3
While everyone is busy contemplating the driver-less car "nirvana" that supposedly awaits us, I'd like to know this: When a driver-less car breaks down (and it will), who fixes it? Do the passengers get out and wait in the middle of the lane for the police or AAA? Does the car always break down on the shoulder, and not in a traffic lane? (And, BTW, do pigs fly?)
Can you picture a couple of driver-less cars (in a sea of driver-less cars) breaking down in the Queens Midtown Tunnel? What a happy thought, eh?
I can only assume all the people who are going to lose their jobs due to driver-less cars will find NEW jobs: driving tow trucks and getting people to their destinations after the driver-less cars break down. (Or is everyone envisioning driver-less tow trucks?)
Just blue-skying it here, since the future belongs to AI, apparently, and human beings will be dead weight to be carried from Point A to Point B.
11
The vision motivating these attacks is one of automation causing lost jobs for thousands and thousands of commercial drivers. The objective of most technological development, including in particular AI, is to reduce or eliminate the need to employ people. Don't blame Arizona for reactng this way, the same would happen anywhere in America,
7
I feel certain a search of the newspaper archives would reveal similar protests and vandalism against 'horseless carriages' when some saw horse drawn transportation threatened.
It also seems to be causing thoughts similar to those
who feel threatened by 'illegal aliens'. They don't like the look of the vehicles and they are worried about job loss.
That said, whether we should just say 'no' is a valid question and if we can't say 'no' can we control this technology or will it control us? There was an interesting article in the The Atlantic magazine which attributed the demise of cursive writing to the rise of the ball point pen and its replacing the fountain pen. The article suggested there were times we should reject a technology because of its limits to our creativity(my paraphrasing). Is driving a creative, individualist experience? Most people would say no.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/ballpoint-pens-object-lesson-history-handwriting/402205/
1
It is much too early to be turning these things loose on the public. For one thing, there is no reason to think they are safer than a drunk teenager or that the driver monitoring their operation could anticipate and act in time to prevent fatal accidents. WeMo is especially irresponsible in its claims. It's accident statistics omit any accident that it can blame on the "other driver" when there is every reason to believe bizarre behavior of their cars is causing accidents and not being corrected. The claim that these cars will reduce accidents is simply nonsense. So far, they have driven fewer total miles that the average number of miles driven between fatal accidents for human drivers and have killed several people. They belong on test tracks or in simulation until there is some reason to believe they are safe.
4
Great. Just great. Just as we’re finally making progress reclaiming our cities for pedestrians, driverless cars come to perpetuate car culture for another hundred years, destroy the single largest source of employment in the U.S. (trucking), and kill a few people in the beta phase. All for what? So a handful of people in logistics and tech make a buck? If you don’t like driving, here’s a pro-tip: move to a city.
14
Antagonists are not going to stop self driving vehicle adoption anymore than blacksmiths could stop the migration from horses to cars. Unless the technology fails on a large scale in some unforeseen way, that battle has already been lost. People should focus instead on developing innovative twenty first century labor laws, next generation infrastructure design and strong safety regulations. Autonomous technology will likely save ten of thousands of lives during its first decade of widespread use, as well as billions of tons in carbon emissions. Those who behave like antisocial fools and put people at risk deserve nothing less than a stiff jail term.
1
There is no evidence that the cars will be safer than humans.
2
It seems to me that most of the commenters here don't get it yet that even at this very early stage, driverless cars have a far better safety record than human drivers do.
2
@Rob D, And yet the question is, in case of a highway emergency, when your life is on the line, would you rather that you make the choice or leave the decision to the software?
@ Fred Once the systems are perfected, tested and in place ( some years from now) I am virtually positive I will trust the technology. I believe human driver error will be more likely than computer error. The Insurance industry believes the same.
This technology has the potential to save millions of lives worldwide. I really can’t get my head around this violent pushback. I’d be proud to have it tested in my town.
1
Wondering what road rage between two self-driving cars will look like.
2
Such malevolent vehicles should not protected by the laws of the United States. With Google, Apple, et. al, humans are no more respected than monkeys subjected to the pain and suffering to produce the newest cosmetic.
Focus your immense fortunes solving unprofitable, intractable problems, such as pain and suffering, Google.
3
The real problem won't be revealed until there are thousands of these cars out there... and someone hacks one hundred of them in DC and sends them charging simultaneously up the steps of the Capital building.
There's always been plenty of crazy/angry/half-smart persons to go around, why afford them these road-to-dystopia opportunities?
4
An important point not to be overlooked is that residents feel they were not asked to be part of those companies' lab experiments. This is just being done to them, and the consequences are theirs to bear. Who wouldn't object to that?
In addition, those cars' computers can and have been hacked. How would you like to be riding along and suddenly have your car come to a full stop for no apparent reason, or speed up, like being remote controlled by a prankster?
The fact is, where there is money to be made, ruthless pursuit of it by the usual suspects is virtually guaranteed.
Gizmodo.com/the-deadly-recklessness-of-the-driverless-car-industry
11
"They took r jobs!" -Southpark. Technological change is inevitable. Jet airliners sometimes self-correct and dive into oceans but folks still fly during the holidays. You can't stop it. If throwing rocks and slashing tires makes you feel better in the meantime, by all means go for it. I like breaking stuff too. Just know you're not going to stop the slow crawl towards a better tomorrow. Better living through technology, I say. That being said, I don't own a "smart" speaker. I guess I'm slow to change as well. So be it. Our posterity will have a better future and in the end that's worth a few self-driving accidents along the way.
3
How about “Better life through chemistry”; how did that work out?
Rage against the machine is understandable when tech is arguably too little understood (and maybe overseen) relative to its power in societies.
If only we could see mercury poisoning and fascism as clearly as a car.
8
Who decided this technology is “our” future? The corporations and technophiles behind these vehicles pretend such “innovations” are inevitable, like the seasons, but that is a lie; they are not. The adoption of a technology is never value neutral, a mere “tool,” but a political choice with consequences for our communities, as we are quickly finding out with social media. How many times are we going to cede our right to substantive political debate on matters of common interest to a company’s drive for profit?
11
Like the NYT article on "smart homes" (which can be taken over by other people and used against their owners), computer controlled cars, too, can be hacked and taken over. I would rather just have the old fashioned kind of car that is imperious to this kind of foul play and drive myself. And how dare corporate executives make this decision for me without even asking.
8
Silicon Valley wants to make sure you never, ever look away from that screen and driving you wherever you want to go is one way they can make that happen.
9
The illogical nature of human driving will keep autonomous vehicles from being the primary source of travel until humans are removed from the roads. Period. Eos. Try as you may, but unexpected or non-programmable events won't cut it.
2
My wife nailed this story. She thought it sounded like something out of the 1950’s Twilight Zone: People attacking autonomous vehicles. Some people just get scared with all this science and technology around them. So where is Rod Serling?
247
@Steven- so sorry, she's wrong. It's all about the bottom line: cutting costs; making more of a profit. Science and tech are just tools for the greedy corporations to achieve those things. People have a right to be scared and act accordingly, though not in the manner some in Chandler are doing. Stop voting in Republicans and Democrats who wholeheartly support greed. Pretty simple. Those people elected who aren't so greedy can then mandate through legislation puting a stop to this madness. Hope your wife doesn't get hit by or is in a crash with one of those "Technical marvels".
17
@Steven: He's dead, just like the woman who was killed by the driver-less car in 2018 in Arizona.
19
I think people may be losing sight of the longer term danger: Google wants to take over road transportation. It is slick marketing to talk up safety, but the company is not on some holy mission to make roads safer.
They want to make getting in a car something that we are dependent on their company for.
It will only take a generation for theie sainted concern for "safety" to morph into an argument that *only* their driverless cars should be allowed on the road, since they work better without having to share the road with humans. That would be the road that your tax dollars have paid for.
If Google wants to build a transit system, go for it. But drop all the masters of the universe delusions of grandeur and leave the roads to people.
17
I’m sorry, but what do you think we’ve been hostage to for the last 100 years? Car companies which provide vehicles to drive. Without which we’d still be in buggies.
2
People have been sacrificing their freedom for security since the first social contracts were made millions of years ago. Sacrificing our freedom to operate these machines limits our self reliance and autonomy. It also destroys a long, deeply ingrained aspect of American culture. No longer will Johnny save money each summer to buy his first car at 16. Convenient does not always mean good.
6
Waymo employs about 700 Chandler area residents. It provides subsidized transport for 400 residents. It works with major companies in the area providing them transport services. There is about one incident per month involving a dissatisfied resident, totaling about 15 individuals. If the message is supposed to be that Chandler doesn't want to deal with Waymo, the numbers don't measure up.
5
One commentor stated:
"In fact, human drivers kill more than 30,000 Americans a year; driverless cars will be significantly safer."
I would prefer humans become more educated in helping more cultures and civilizations become better humans.
Nineteenth century steamboats, trains and 20th century autos have not helped improve the human condition.
Facebook and other techno-corporations have not helped improve the human condition.
As Gandhi said, " There is more to life than increasing it's speed."
12
Does the technology not exist right now that would restrict the speed of drivered cars to the speed limit? That, I would go for! It would be so relaxing knowing people wouldn’t be flying past at whatever speed they want. Why does it have to be driver or no driver, and not something in between?
10
I live 26 miles from the nearest town. No way is there a service that will pick me up, take me to the gym, swing by the library and the bakery and then back to my rural home. And what about those days I just need to be in the mountains? These autonomous vehicles won’t work for people who prefer a rural lifestyle . Keep them in the metropolitan areas where they may useful to people who have forgotten the pleasure of walking.
11
@ Jacqueline Bush, Residents of Manhattan, NYC walk more than those of anywhere in the USA. Suburbanites, not so much. City dwellers walk all the time.
There are instances and places where self driving cars could be good like in cities. There are cons obviously-when safety requires the driver to do something unexpected then the automated cars are at a loss. Accidents can and have happened due to this and while they are “learning” the number of unexpected incidents would be high.
Also what about rural areas where I want to go off road. What about privacy/control? Will people no longer be able to drive to certain places? People will be ‘freed’ from driving but freedom isn’t free.
I suspect at a certain point insurance companies will charge an high fee for manual cars-and once again only the rich will be free.
10
i would like to see the development of driverless vehicles scaled back to address a simpler problem. namely that of providing public transportation in "thin routes", that is, where smaller "buses" collect riders at more locations with more frequency. Having prescribed, short routes would make the automation simpler, more reliable, and safer. Increased stops and route frequency would better serve ridership, and do so without requiring an impossible number of drivers. Such a system would be much more convenient for many riders, many of them could then choose not to drive their own cars with resulting less traffic and congestion and pollution, and reduced need for parking. And all this could happen sooner as the development challenges would be significantly reduced in the fixed-route systems.
9
Of all the myriad things this technology could be applied to...Why the big rush for self-driving cars? Who put that peculiar choice at the top of the "To Do" list? As a motorcycle rider, I have no great love for cars or the poorly trained people that wait until the last minute to turn in front of me, but again, Why driverless cars?
27
@Jeffery 40,000 traffic deaths per year.
1
As a lot of these opponents age to the point of not being able to drive or get their license renewed, they are going to be very grateful for these self driving vehicles. And the rest of the population is going to be grateful that very marginal drivers are not out there in large numbers. There will be accidents, but as the systems improve, a lot fewer accidents than with human drivers.
15
I will not be grateful handing over control of my life.
3
@Paul
It's not a done deal yet, buddy, so don't hold your breath for our gratitude.
2
Over the last three decades they have largely automated flights by commercial airplanes...where are the Luddites to protest? Do we want robots flying 450 people at 30,000 feet? In the end, there will be many more such protests and certainly at some point it will become politicized leading to states (ie. Iowa when the auto was introduced) passing laws intended to prevent the new technology. For those needing a refresher, in Iowa, the law required that any internal combustion vehicle that came upon a horse drawn carriage on the road must immediately stop and the driver must exist and disassemble the vehicle until the horse and carriage have passed. This was quite the populist legislation as horse blacksmiths and carriage builders were among the most numerous employment categories across small-town America at that time.
9
We've always been passengers on planes. This is about control of one's life. Why the rush to hand over our lives to the powers who control technology?
6
This will likely affect jobs and a myriad other implications; however, imagine never needing to pay a penny for car insurance, not even needing to own a car (just summon one when needed), being dropped at the door (never needing to park in a distant parking lot), taking a fraction of the time to get to work because of high speed travel and traffic optimization, kids getting rides to schools in different their choice school (not limited by bus/transportation issues) or extracurricular activities, environmental benefits as cars can be much lighter and less brakuing/loss of efficiency. Oh--and virtual elimination of traffic thousands of traffic deaths each year.
16
If you would put your young child into a driverless vehicle that is traveling anywhere beyond your lawn or small quiet street, let alone to another city or such, you either are not yet a parent or you don't deserve to be one. Listing the risks to that young one would take up much more than 1500 spaces.
3
@Joel
I highly doubt that it will save you any money. I predict that they will lock you into a subscription service and if anything, you'll pay more.
While I pay for insurance, I haven't made a car loan payment in over twenty years. With on-demand self-driving cars as a service, I'd bet that the corporations will bleed us from cradle to grave.
9
I personally don't care about autonomous vehicles but people in Arizona are the way they are.
They probably don't like the bigbrotherish 24/7 photography which gets turned over to every advertiser that pays and any government agency that asks. It's one thing to voluntarily use Google services but its another to be experimented on and pjotographed without permission. "Representatives" in both parties acquiesce to the whoever pays the biggest bribe. That almost always excludes their affected constituents. As far as I'm concerned the privacy issues have not even begun to be considered and until that happens I can't blame people for being hostile.
19
And insurance companies will then mandate that you purchase a self driving car? And for those of us who like to drive? And for those of us who really like to drive cars with stick shifts? Self driving cars are being forced on us and I don’t like it.
32
@Ozma
The only reason people who really like to drive cars will face problems will be when self driving cars prove to be far less likely to cause accidents.
If a small group's preference for driving causes thousands of preventable deaths a year and tens of thousands of smashed bodies, won't their liking to career at high speed in tons of metal in a public space seem rather selfish?
1
No one, least of all insurance companies, is going to “mandate” that you purchase a driverless car. You mean get lower rates? So what? But the technology is years away from being reliable. And no one is stopping you if you want to drive.
The flaw with these vehicles is that they are programmed to always obey the law. But, most drivers will encounter a situation where they need to do something that is technically against the law, but necessary because of the situation. For instance, the road might be blocked and you have to drive off road to get out of that situation. This is where individual human judgment takes over. These cars cannot be programmed to take these situations into account. They can't program the car to break the law. And this is why I don’t think we will ever see driverless cars take over.
17
They can learn to deal effectively and consistently with emergency situations, better than humans. It’s not a matter of “they can’t break the law”; they can.
1
@Paul
When you say "better than humans" you are expressing an opinion. When a driver violates the law in an emergency situation, that person must be able to defend his/her actions in court. If the court rules that the actions were wrong, the person faces consequences. We are no where close to allowing computers to decide that it's okay to violate our laws. I'm a computer programmer, so I have an understanding of what computers are and are not capable of. Computers compute things, but they never reach an understanding of anything. And that's what separates us from them. Understand?
1
There is great irony in the fact that all the aberrant behavior exhibited by the people of Chandler Arizona will just get factored into the Waymo neural networks, making them all the more robust and effective.
14
I look forward to the day when long haul trucking is driverless...so many terrible collisions are caused by sleep deprived truck drivers.
19
Save your rocks and knives for cars with car alarms that go off in the middle of the night for no apparent reason. These useless and annoying devices that no one pays attention to should be outlawed.
16
@ted Ted, thank you. Please run for Mayor! You have my vote.
Aircraft fly on autopilot. Still by law they are required to have licensed pilots aboard to take over when necessary and to monitor events.
11
@Penseur
And that still didn't save the Lion Air 737 MAX in Indonesia two months ago.
While I am a proponent of this new technology, I sympathize with those people especially after what happened earlier this year. We should be focused on building tighter neighborhoods and redesigning our cities.
5
What next - wooden clogs in the engines?
5
Any kind of clog in an engine is bad. But some swear by wood clogs for walking in and out of a sauna...
So to everyone who hasn't been to the Phoenix area, you should know that the driving culture is really destructive. Not to the point that I would expect my neighbors to be attacking all of those Waymos, but I'm also not surprised.
The driving here is not at frightening as NYC or LA but it still has some of the most reckless, aggressive, selfish drivers. Technically NYC is more dangerous, but we've been labeled the most aggressive.
It's funny because when the Waymos first arrived on the scene they were super cautious and hesitant. But now they've adopted our techniques, cutting people off, making dangerous merges, speeding in the residential areas like they're fleeing a tsunami.
I honestly don't know why Google brought them to Arizona because now the robots are learning to be REALLY bad drivers... unless they wanted to train them in the most aggresive environment. And that lady that was killed in Mesa (I remember watching that on the local news) would be ok if the most conservative city in America knew how to take better care of its homeless.
Oh well, I still love you Mesa (where I learned how to drive) and Chandler and Tempe (where I lived and learned and drove throughout high school). Happy New Year and please stop attacking the Waymo drivers! I don't like them either but my friend's dad drives one of them.
11
'In one of the more harrowing episodes, a man waved a .22-caliber revolver at a Waymo vehicle and the emergency backup driver at the wheel. He told the police that he “despises” driverless cars, referring to the killing of a female pedestrian in March in nearby Tempe by a self-driving Uber car.'
=============
Yet another example of just how lacking in logic and common sense the average American is.
Why isn't this bozo out there waving his proxy manhood at human drivers - or does he believe no human driver has ever killed a pedestrian?
20
@GrumpyOldePhart
AZ registered vehicles (2018) 8,500,000 (Arizona DOT)
AZ fatalities (2017): 1,000 (Arizona DOT)
0.118 fatalities per 1,000 human-driven vehicles
Number of Autonomous vehicles being tested in AZ: 600 (Arizona Central News)
Number of fatalities (2018) from autonomous vehicles in AZ: 1 (Wikipedia)
1.67 fatalities per 1,000 autonomous vehicles (14 times higher than human-driven)
Chicken Little was right.
7
You make us sound like we protest with pitchforks and torches.
5
Luddites.
10
There is no intelligence in these systems that even remotely resembles any aware living thing. These are tools with well defined purposes but no will, no purpose, they only react as they have been programmed. People seem to think that experimental systems that emulate various operations which living things can do is enough to make them fellow prescient beings when they have no awareness at all. At best they can enhance and extend the abilities of humans but on their own they are just unknowing automatons.
The back up drivers cannot afford to let their attention stray. Human nerves have limits which make reaction times infinitely slower than electronic systems. People have only split seconds to notice that an automatic system is not reacting and to override and initiate evasive actions just as human drivers must do without these automated systems. If the back up driver is distracted, they just cannot notice a problem and intervene soon enough to avoid trouble.
This intense effort to introduce driverless cars on public roads is simply inane. It’s as if all of these people are mesmerized by some sci-fi tale and are in a day dream.
19
Have you noticed how many people are texting while driving? Think they’re better than a self-driving car?
1
Might be more effective for the citizen to start a recall of the mayor and city council and replace them with leaders less willing to let an outside corporation use their streets as a testing ground. At least then you let democracy decide what’s right.
19
A few reactions to this.
-Reminds me what an amazingly complex task driving is, that AI cannot quickly adapt to the task.
-Will allow people more time to read books or use their phone than already doing it while driving (see it all the time) will allow. And much like folks can be nervous in a plane, not being at the controls, and yet having the professional driving is wiser.
-Mass transit and bicycles are still better. Roads are costly, and need less pavement expansion when using those. Ironically like when people use escalators/elevators but then a stair machine at the gym, folks drive home to go to the gym. Why not sub in healthy human effort where possible.
3
@Michael E - I believe that the most beneficial use of self-driving vehicles and on-demand transport algorithms such as Uber uses would be in the form of public mass transit. They could make public transport much more convenient and cost-effective.
6
As these self-driving cars are loaded with sensors and cameras of all kinds, I wonder how long it will take before the likenesses of these tire slashers and stone throwers are viewable online.
As an aside: the justification of "nobody asked us if we want them in our neighborhood" might also be applicable to regular cars driven at high speed through our neighborhoods right here in New York City. I rather have self-driving cars going at or below the speed limit and that also stop for pedestrians in my neighborhood than the current mix of speeding, red light-running Ubers, taxis and suburbanites.
18
@Pete in Downtown
If it can be done, it will be done. There is no question but that autonomous cars will become part of the surveillance state. Google's StreetView camera cars drive through your neighborhood every year or two now. Before you know it, their photos will be updated every few minutes.
12
As someone in his 70s, I (and millions like me) may someday count on self-driving cars for transportation.
18
Why not rely on fellow human beings with good driving records?
1
Ask this question first, before any others: why do we need cars without drivers?
One can certainly answer that we need them for the very elderly and those who could not otherwise drive themselves, like the blind. If it were ruled legal to do so, drunks could be taken home much more safely. After that, there aren't many well justified answers of benefits. The idea of greater safety generally is far from proven.
Driverless cars, as a concept, springs from a tech bro's realization: "Hey, we can do this." The supposed justification, safety, came long afterward. Its a sales pitch.
Yes, cars without drivers can be safer in some situations but in doing so they will create some things intolerable to current drivers:
1. You can never speed because the car knows the set limit and will not exceed it. (Studies have shown that most speeding moderately over the posted limit is not dangerous and, in fact, the "consensus speed" is usually safer than the posted limit.)
2. You will always have to wait for "the other car" to pull out. Who goes first? What happens if both cars sit there waiting for the other one to go?
3. How will a car without a driver know it is safe to pull out in front of oncoming traffic? Actual drivers can make a careful calculation. A driverless vehicle must wait until it is perfectly safe.
4. Street robbers would find stopping and robbing such cars very easy, just block the front and the back by standing there.
People are right to resist the whole concept.
31
All of those problems you outline are not insurmountable issues. And as you say, they will be safer. I’m all for it.
7
If all cars were driverless, they could all drive much faster and closer together than human-driven cars safely can. Our roads would be able to handle more traffic more efficiently.
2
@Paul
I did not say they will be safer generally. Safer in some situations. The idea that they will save thousands of lives is a conjecture, unproven. Putting millions of such cars into the system would be a wild and dangerous experiment.
When it comes down to it, here is a fundamental if somewhat exaggerated question: Would you rather be killed by a mistake you've made or by a computer? When you get the answer, let us know.
1
Human drivers are legally liable when they cause and accident. Who is liable when a driverless car gets into an accident? Does Waymo and the other companies have some kind of sweetheart deal with the cities where these cars are being "trained", so that the car companies bear no liability when their cars are involved in an accident? In the US, anybody can sue anybody. Who does a person sue when injured in an accident involving a driverless car?
17
Driverless cars will eventually lead to nearly zero fatalities, minimal traffic jams, more efficient use of the current infrastructure, freedom for people who cannot drive, or do not want to drive, more productive and entertaining activities while the car is driving itself, rare breakdowns and more affordable private and shared vehicles. Cost per passenger mile will plummet.
The downside? It will put millions of people out work, and permanently, in ways you haven’t even imagined. Everyone from mechanics to trauma surgeons to personal injury attorneys will see their income affected.
Few will be allowed to drive amongst the autonomous vehicles, and only with a very exclusive license. Think police, EMS professionals, and military. That’s about it.
You’ve heard the expression “disruptive innovation”? This will be the mother of all disruptive innovation. There is something for everyone to both love “and” hate.
13
Sure. It will “eventually” be safe. But these companies testing driverless cars in cities without the majority consent is not democratic at all. These folks deserve their voices to be heard.
4
How many of the companies such as Waymo are producing these vehicles and testing with private dollars? Are there government programs which supply funding to these companies. If the latter, why don’t people speak up against such funding and then complain about the overpriced American dream called the gas automobile? An disposable overpriced joy for Americans which is so because of the extensive emission regulations, testing and whatever else gets passed from producer to customer. Not to mention the innate need which so many feel is deserving at any cost. These driverless vehicles are now playing purchasing decisions into an area of social responsibility. People don’t want to feel threatened when purchasing freedom is frowned upon. Many Americans find their so called identities stoked by directly purchasing that 50,000 vehicle on a 80,000 salary. This is stupid. Indirectly, The eventual high price of these driverless vehicles will also be passed on to the consumer. So, you are going to have to eventually lobby or protest which product you are not willing to support because you will not be able to afford either. The problem here is not development. The problem is individual consumers coming to terms with what they can and cannot actually afford in transportation and having real actions that support those terms. Until that happens, none of us, especially in rural areas, will be happy with what is either being tested or what is being driven off the lot.
2
Those companies surely get some tax write-offs and credits...
This reminds me of the scene from 2001 A Space Odyssey where the apes were throwing stones at the obelisk.
20
Watch the film again. The obelisk ushered forth a burst in evolution and suddenly the apes learned how to use tools. Fast forward to the future and those apes had built space stations and then sent a ship out to find the next obelisk which in turn rocketed humankind into a new kind of evolution. Change is inevitable.
1
But not when Hal commandeer the spacecraft and its life support functions?
3
I see their vans running all day long from my office in Palo Alto CA. I saw one last Sunday night at 8pm in Mountain View.
3
Several comments claim there will be no unemployment problem due to AI, and those Luddites just need to suck it up and retrain, as has happened the past 200 years. But this rests on unstated and unsubstantiated assumptions:
(1) The future will be basically like the past two centuries, with - somehow - brand new job categories suitable for everyone with merely average (or below-average) intelligence.
(2) Average intelligence will be sufficient for the very-high-tech jobs that remain after driving, factory work, even radiology are automated.
I see no current evidence for those assumptions; if anything, I see the opposite. Unless those assumptions are sound, there may be a massive discontinuity and disruption in the job landscape during the 21st century.
6
@ghsalb - I'll add one more point in support and a point against.
1A - The past wasn't easy. A lot of people lost jobs and suffered greatly as the west transitioned from agricultural to manufacturing economies. When powerlooms replaces hand looms in the UK in the early-mid 1800s, for example, many thousands lost their means of support.
Counterpoint - despite all the technological changes, over the long term, measured in decades, employment has remained relatively constant. New jobs have indeed replaced the old, lost job functions. Human creativity asserts itself. People needing work find things to do. People with new ideas find workers to help them.
I can't find anything going back before 1890 but this gives a picture of the last 130 years. It covers quite a lot of technological change.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_annual_unemployment_rate.svg
3
Sufferings caused from disruptions are simple fact of life. Humans need to adapt without triggering too many consequences.
Is the city of Chandler receiving any compensation from Waymo for the use of its streets as a laboratory? That would have been relevant information to include in this article.
18
Roving bands of vigilante Luddites, dystopia anyone?
8
Will the same Russian bots that wormed their way into our elections now find a way to control our motor vehicles while we think we know where we're going? Isn't this sort of like a James Bond film, where SMERSH or SPECTRE or Dr. No or Hugo Drax takes over control of the airwaves and the travel routes and tells us what we may and may not do?
Wouldn't it be loverly to have something like this, but if you're not scared about the potential for security breaches you're not paying attention.
12
We had 5.4 million vehicle crashes in the US last year, according to the NHSTA. More than 40,000 deaths as a result. All because of humans “in control” behind the wheel, drunk, distracted, sleepy and more.
What’s the problem again with autonomous vehicles?
11
They don’t actually work, and distract resources from technology that does work, like public transportation?
5
Self-driving cars will never take over our roadways, because drivers are voters. And our roads belong to the taxpayers - not the programmers at Google. We can kick these cars off the road, just because. And that's probably what's going to happen.
11
Don’t underestimate the power of lobbyists. Voters seem to matter much less these days. This unfortunate trend may continue far into the future.
1
@Bob
These issues tend to be local. In some cities, like Cleveland, the voters got traffic cameras removed. Call it AI discrimination.
Teach them a lesson, move out of Arizona.
5
@michael Paine
They can come to your neighborhood, right? With no community engagement, no compensation - just using your and your town as a test lab. What do they offer the community they are working in? No thanks for me at least.
6
They offer you the future of driving - specially trained on your neighbourhood and your city. Other cities and countries will be the edge-cases they’ll have to work around. But you will be the standard.
Modern Luddites.
5
@Dundeemundee
Must be luddites or else they would have built a pulse jet powered flow mhd emp generator. Not that difficult.
2
This is what is called ad hominem fallacy. Better known as name-calling. It’s not an argument.
3
It's a profit-based company taking advantage of a regular town with regular people who don't know when they are going to come into contact with AI cars.
Pay up, corporations, all of you. We're not your guinea pigs. You're going to make money and the citizens are going to make what? They're going to get danger and aggravation for a number of years until all the 'bugs' are worked out. And you are going to make money.
Something doesn't look right. Doesn't smell right. Isn't right.
23
Emoji here of two hands clapping!
2
Ridiculous! These companies don't just randomly choose to put their equipment out on the streets. They are permitted to do this by state and local government. These dimwits would be better served by directing their annoyance to the elected officials that approved the testing on their public streets.
6
I’ll bet her husband likes to jam on his breaks in front of real drivers as well. Bunch of nuts.
10
Ah, yes, the area near Phoenix...home of the right wing crazies and a significant group of luddites. I live in Tucson, where sanity prevails.
6
good for them.
5
Yuval Harari's book, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow details how humans are going to be replaced and supplanted by robots, artificial intelligence, machines and algorithms. What will be left for humans to do? Grow ever more obese sitting in front of screens being entertained by some overlord or machine programming? Full on idiocracy?
Harari and others posit that the rich will use bioengineering technology to create a super race of gorgeous highly-intelligent offspring, while the rest of humanity regresses to chattel status and is treated the way livestock is treated today.
What is the point of it all? What will there be for humans to do when machines do all the driving, all the work, all the war-making, all the creating of art and music? What is the point of letting industrial civilization destroy the planet so that everything can be turned to machines?
13
Personally, I don't like rocks and knives as a form of rebellion. Commonly ends up being counter-productive. Yet, fundamentally here, are we possibly seeing the primitive beginnings of a promising anti-tech movement?
Well before Mark Zuckerberg began having childish (but ultimately lucrative) visions of a an online utopia, it was painfully clear to most anyone who was paying attention that the internet was already a dark and disturbing space. It is probably too late to do much that is positive about the ugliness of the internet.
However, there may yet be time to do something positive in order to prevent the worst of the tragedy that is sure to befall us if we let the next phase (AVs) simple roll over us, so to speak.
8
@Bill B Presumably AVs won't drive drunk or text while motoring down the road. So there's that. I stopped biking on city streets because of the craziness. I now ride a stationary bike at a gym. I used to enjoy biking outside. I'd rather live though so the stationary bike is my ride these days.
1
@Economy Biscuits, please don't misunderstand, I am fine with the concept of AVs. However, instead of having them foisted upon us by the greedy, I would much prefer that we plan a bit this time. Do you really want Sheryl Sandberg mapping your future for you?
Also, I do get frustrated with those who simply list the expected safety benefits as carte blanche for industry to do as they please. It's as if all of these benefits can only be implemented in the AV domain when, in reality, there is much that we could do now to make vehicles safer. We should not be using the AV time frames as an excuse to put off doing the things we can implement today in order to save lives.
1
Luddites, regardless of time and place, are afraid of change.
Whether those who destroyed textile machinery in early 19th Century England or those destroy driverless cars in Arizona, they are both basically the same!
Also and just like the textile machinery destroyers, the modern day Luddites will disappear soon!
6
AI is fundamentally different from a textile mill. I don’t know if you have studied to acquire an education, but soon your knowledge, skill, and insight on the future will be replaced by more capable and less expensive concerns.
4
What next?
2
Why aren’t these being tested in Mountain View, California, on the streets around Google headquarters? After all, there’s abundant sunshine and clear driving conditions year-round in Silicon Valley.
It’s almost as if Google execs didn’t want this untested technology driving around _their_ neighborhood.
13
I think the thing that's not being said in theses comments is that, unlike some other tasks now being done autonomously, it can be fun to drive! it's an expression of independence, freedom, exploration, and self-reliance. Why do we need a robot for that? Let them do the boring stuff!
13
I'll take my chances with self driving cars on the road. It seems less a menace than the very many cars driven by people who are driving distracted, intoxicated, recklessly, too fast, too slow, or just plain stupidly.
12
Yes, but the distracted, reckless, intoxicated, too fast, slow, and stupid are PEOPLE ... and should they kill, they will be made to take responsibility, pay a debt, to regret, to try and right a wrong.... but should AI provoke, unnerve, or perhaps kill, there is no thought, no regret, no driver, no directions, no horse even, no effort, no personal responsibility - it is a fundamental human loss of existence.
2
There is zero guarantee that those people will be away from the wheel after self-driving cars are made more available. In fact, many of them won't have the money to purchase one of those vehicles.
1
@Tom From
Dead is dead - I'm no less dead because of being killed or maimed by a human. I'll take the lower odds of being dead, over the remorse of my killer.
2
Gotta love it.
3
"Wielding Rocks and Knives, Arizonans Attack Self-Driving Cars" - my nomination for the headline of the century! I laughed until (liquid) coke came out my nose . . .
7
The Luddites are back!
7
What's the carbon (and other hazmat) footprint of all that idling by "self-driving" cars operated by Wayno (er... Waymo)?
Way too much!
6
Of course atonomous vehicles are not street certified yet, but let's accept Autonomus vehicle is as superior as MS Word(computer-software) over to your type writer.
3
Skynet will deal with these Luddites.
5
Autonomous cars will solve some old problems and bring some new ones. In the long run they'll mean fewer crashes, deaths, injuries, & less property damage because the human driver is by far the main cause. It'll be a hard climb, with incidents misused as excuses to dismiss the technology whole, as when the motorcar began to edge out the horse.
The pedestrian killed by Uber's robo-car in Tempe, for example, wasn't much of an "accident": Uber disabled the car's automatic emergency braking functions without even leaving an alarm in place, and the "safety driver" was watching an episode of "The Voice" on her phone when she hit the pedestrian.
More, we can't wave a magic wand and tomorrow all vehicles are autonomous; there'll be a long mix of human-driven cars in traffic with cars having a range of autonomous capabilities. There are thorny ethical questions (should the AV prioritize its owner's safety or that of of the greatest possible number of people?), new concerns (data privacy, hackability…), and complicated structural changes (the chain and hierarchy of liability). There will be disruption (auto insurance industry, parking & traffic ticket revenues). There will be unforeseen issues & unintended consequences. In the long run the problems will be lesser than they are today. None of us wants to resume typewriters and rotary dials or horses as primary transport, and eventually none will long for the good ol' days of more traffic violence.
363
Driverless cars is the right word for these devices. Nobody is in control of them. They operate without any awareness of any kind, they react to predictable circumstances and unexpected circumstances do not affect them.
Human programmers try to provide the programs that they create with a way to react appropriately to what they recognize as signals which have been defined for them. If the program cannot recognize a signal it is noise to the program, meaningless and incapable of indicating what the program should do next.
Now people try to create programs that can learn on their own but these programs cannot understand so they only simulate learning by reacting to signals which the programmer has defined as meaningful. They are algorithms intended to enable programmers to learn about how automated systems might learn. Algorithms are mathematical operations that complete specific and well defined tasks in a finite number of steps. When they have completed a task they must end. If an algorithm does not end it’s simply looping endlessly through the same steps.
With our current technological abilities, driverless cars should be confined to settings where there are no unknown circumstances in their operating environments.
51
Absolutely. If we can go from 40K vehicular deaths per year to say 1K, that would be an enormous improvement.
31
@Daniel Stern
Oh, come on. Waymo and others don't care about improving safety; they care about eliminating workers and jobs. Improving the corporate bottom line is their key concern. But if we eliminate jobs through automation, who will be left to buy all the products? Are they going to program robots to buy consumer goods? Then you have to pay the robots. But at least they won't have to pay their social security, insurance, retirement, other benefits, etc.
43
Please think about the human monitors inside the cars. They've got lives they want to keep and loved ones who want them alive, just like the rest of us. Dangerous stunts and vandalism to protest this technology puts these people at risk.
On the other hand, if you see one of these things parked on the side of the road with no one inside ... well, that's another story.
76
@Sixofone: Oh, wait, the "human monitors" have lives that are important, but the people OUTSIDE the cars - the ones trying to cross the street or run errands - have no importance and no loved ones?
Maybe if Waymo (GOOGLE) valued human life a lot more, it wouldn't be treating real humans on the street as if they're just potential collateral damage.
Remember when Google's motto was "don't be evil"? Apparently they've repealed that slogan.
8
@Sixofone
So if you park your car, I can vandalize it because you are not in it? It’s destruction of property, plain and simple.
This is another variant of the argument against the horseless carriage.
13
@David Gregory do you really believe that traffic deaths will go up with the new autonomous technology?
4
And these people in AZ have a right to be angry -- they are forced to participate in a human-subject research project without being first given the chance to grant, withhold, or withdraw, at any time and without any penalty, their fully-informed consent. They also weren't offered any compensation for their unwitting participation. This is all made worse by the fact that the results of these experiments will benefit and be owned by (possibly patented by) for-profit corporations and their rich investors and, indeed, will likely be charged high prices for the chance to benefit directly from the risks they were essentially forced to take. Even the companies now making oodles of $$$ off of others' human tissue and genetic information (eg, in fees charged for BRCA I and II screening) weren't quite as uneven and unethical.
13
@Person
The streets are public.
4
@Person
I wish I could recommend this comment 100 times. This is the core issue - consent and who benefits?
2
Your point is?
--------------------
Not all roads are public (and many greedy privatization proponents would like to have the rest of us pay them for access.
And it is precisely because most roads still are public, that private for profit companies maybe shouldn't be using them for private, for profit R&D that has a reasonable likelihood of endangering people (and their property) who have not been fully informed of the research, had a good opportunity to have questions answered, to opt in or out (without having to move or stay indoors or not go to work or family or the doctor) and suffer no hardship for opting out.
Instead, Google and Uber and the others can build their own neighborhoods for the families of their own families and use themselves as the variable in their research at this point. Let the execs and others on these projects place their own four year olds and infants in strollers and grandma with a balance problem and brother with a broken leg walk-in on crutches and niece riding her bike with headphones in and blaring and their own significant other suddenly stalling or pulling out of a newly-added blind driveway etc etc
And while they are at it, perhaps they can consult with their buddies at Facebook and Equifax and Marriott Hotels and Sony and Yahoo etc etc about how to lie in order to cover up, for as long as possible, the fact that their oh-so-secure systems were cracked by players nearby and far away...
I tend to like my pretty much computer-free car.
5
A lot of posts with the same theme, and eerily similar in tone (creepy corporate) and content. I love how the word "Luddite" keeps being used like a mantra. Yes, who is anyone to question the bright new future being offered by your (indirect contract) employers. Way to build consensus gang!
5
anybody mention the luddites yet?
3
Anyone bothered to consider the many sci fi films about the dangers to humans and other living things of artificially intelligent drones and other robotic products?
"Just in the movies" you say? Where do you think the scientists/engineers get their ideas (and from whence came some of the fiction writers' ideas and information)?
45 years ago, "FaceTiming" and "Skyping" were the stuff of cheesy cartoon super villains anyone who thought it likely to happen (especially in their lifetime) was considered a kook. But here we are.
Similarly, if someone in 1884 had suggested that in their children's lifetime there would be a weapon that could literally in a second or
two, vaporize entire communities of human beings and cause the leveling of entire metropolitan areas while also poisoning the air, earth, and water with a toxin that could last and harm people for generations down the line, and that it would be inflicted from flying machines capable of traveling hundreds, thousands, of miles, people would have dismissed him as esoteric at best or transfixed by the devil of insanity and had him incarcerated or killed. But you can ask the adults in Hiroshima how all that progress planned out for them....
1
A Medieval society of sort...?
3
I think the Waymo people should take their name off the cars & vans. Make themselves less conspicuous. But I also think these people have a point. Why do they have to test these vehicles in their town. I personally think driverless cars are a pretty stupid idea, esp if you have to have a human monitor riding along anyway.
3
Artificial Intelligence represents the greatest theat to humanity since the atom was split.
7
Amazing that we have arrived to a time where a person can make money writing books about throwing rocks at cars. In my youth my preferred target was the open door on a passing boxcar.
1
Deplorable reactionaries attacking progressive technical acumen.
8
Didn’t Chandler try to outlaw autos back in the day because the noise upset their horses?
10
Chandler residents are exhibiting the old Nimby attitude updated for self driven cars but they are entirely justified. The especially tech savvy residents of Chandler, AZ ( location of giant Intel R&D, chip design and mfr facilities ) know better than most others ( including uppity NYT reporters ) the current status and pitfalls of AI.
Current generation of Silicon Valley giants like Google and its ilk have grown by manipulating bovine, greedy consumers by making false promises ( enticing the masses with "Google will do no evil " and then Monetizing their Search data to sell Ads ).
They have gotten too used to getting a free ride - in this case free Test Tracks on City streets. Google CEO Sundar Pichai ought to just set up his own Test Tracks in our desert ( like real car Co.s like Ford etc have done for years ) complete with realistic features like drunk drivers, suicidal stunt men and sandstorms. After making billions by conning the bovine non tech user masses for years they can well afford it ( and then perhaps even pay up for some of the Patents from Motorola they have used to build their Tensor Flow computers for AI ) !
How bout it Sundar from Nehru Hall ?
6
Spcial media was supposed to further democracy and self expression. Unforeseen was the paranoia, confusion, and fear it created. I wonder if there will be unforeseen dangers from our foray into autonomous vehicles (and such).
8
Nice to see the resistance underway.
Maybe people don’t have to stand by while soulless corporate executives automate their jobs after all.
16
I wonder if these self-driving cars even have an emergency brake, so the car can be stopped if the internal electronics go haywire or if the internet connection goes out as Century Link and Verizon did last week. I recently learned that many new cars no longer have emergency brakes, one of the most basic and simple of safety devices. Instead, the car companies are busy touting all their new alleged "safety features", most of which are noises reminding me of my high school history teacher scolding us.
When a friend recently bought a new Subaru, the saleswoman didn't even know what an emergency brake was, telling me the car had one, when It didn't. She thought the parking brake was the same thing, even though all it does is to put the regular brakes on when you put it in park.
I bring this up because, sadly, we are in a world of "alternative facts" and "fake news", where lies are considered acceptable as marketing slogans, whether for a President or a corporate C.E.O.
6
I find it hard to believe there would be no emergency brakes. I'd like to think common sense was employed in the design!
1
The violent reaction to driverless cars is a symptom of the increasing feeling that government does not look out for citizens. Instead, many feel that government quickly defers to industry without seeking any meaningful input from constituents or doing a serious study first. Two examples are electric scooters and the re-branded taxis summoned through the internet called "ride sharing services." Governments generally failed to see how each of those "innovations" leads to increased congestion, underuse of mass transit, and more dangerous conditions. Most citizens would not want driverless cars tested in their neighborhoods unless a careful campaign of education and public buy-in came first.
12
I don't even like riding in a car with other people driving there's no darn way I would trust a car. I think semi automated is ok like cruise control, self breaking, emergency steering, that's a good thing but 100% and the computers have a hiccup or burnt wire or something dumb going 70mph is a bad idea, the cars arent safe now, look at all the recalls and they already want to make them self driving? All vehicles should be made like nascar cars and you should be able to survive 100mph crash no problem. Also the roads need fixed. Priorities arent in the right places.
8
Anyone who feels warm and fuzzy about Google's autonomous cars should check out an Android phone's object recognition mode in its camera app. Yikes! I wouldn't want Google's cars driving around my kids yet.
5
Dispense with the spin. One of these driverless vans killed a person. A life ended. Period. They cannot make that kind of mistake and hope to recover. Killing a person means "game over" and they should have known that. I hope more residents rise up and drive them out. The company should be fined out of business, as they have become a clear and present danger to their community.
17
@John Oh please. The same was said at the advent of the automobile itself yet Ford, GM etc are still with us today and indeed form one of the nations largest industries employing legions. If we followed your reasoning we'd still be living in caves.
2
@John
Forty THOUSAND people were killed by human drivers last year alone. Millions of lives affected. Period. We cannot make that kind of mistake and hope to recover. Humans can now no longer drive.
I really can't stand this type of appeal to emotion. Show me that automated vehicles are making more mistakes than humans, and you've got a good reason they shouldn't be on the streets.
3
48,000 killed in the US last year by cars with drivers. Do you propose fining all car companies out of existence?
1
Not in terms of safety (a technological challenge), but in terms of societal effect, the failure of many governments to commit to developing a workforce that can survive automation may become one of the most egregious acts of negligence in my lifetime (second only to the corrupt inaction on climate change).
No this... no amount of rock-throwing, tire-slashing or even legislation is going to stop automation. Not will making scary campaign ads about brown people coming to kill us all solve the problem. When the blue collar worker wakes up one day to find that there are cost-efficient machines that can drive a big rig, deliver packages, handle the majority of manufacturing, mine better, lay pavement better, answer phones better, flip a burger better... there is going to be widespread pain.
I am NOT gloating about this. I am dreading it because the McConnells, Trumps, Devoses, etc. of the world will be long dead when the riots start and I will (in all likelihood) be here to watch the devastation of whole states as it becomes apparent that no amount of deportations or nonsense walls is going to solve the problem of a factory that essentially runs itself.
And if anyone thinks that the latest SCOTUS picks are going to be pro-labor, they are completely out of their mind. Education. Regulation. Safety nets. No more tax cuts for billionaire entities. Or we can keep whistling past the graveyard.
11
I live in LA, where it often takes hours to traverse relatively short distances over traffic clogged freeways. It would be pretty hard to convince me that traffic flow couldn't be dramatically improved by automation of passenger and cargo traffic on these freeways. Dramatically fewer accidents (including drunk and drugged driving incidents), streamlining of cargo container traffic flow and prioritization of passenger traffic during rush periods, etc...
Transportation systems in this region of the country are basically dysfunctional and I, for one, am not willing to continue sacrificing hours every day in soul crushing commutes because a bunch of yahoos would prefer to prevent progress rather than help us shape it.
As far as I'm concerned - we have jails for a reason.
6
So when Boeing's "state of the art" systems caused an airliner crash last year, no one made a connection to all of this robotic transportation getting out of control? No, why would they, with profits at stake. I like the "nanosecond" argument. It portrays proponents of this tech as intellectually superior to those against it. Nanoseconds haven't saved the lives of hundreds or thousands, already dying via bad/buggy programming or "hiccups" in a network. Funny, because these are just middle class Americans trying to protect themselves and their children. What happens in the bigger cities and bad neighborhoods? It's not hard to imagine that this Wall Street motivated greed, is checked by the unpredictable expenses of vandalism, violence and theft.
10
@ContraryIan
Yes, there have been a very few crashes caused by airplane automation. There have been far more prevented by automation, and far more that were caused by a pilot incorrectly overriding automation. Air travel has gotten statistically massively safer over time, and much of that improvement is related to automation.
3
Its sad that the residents of Chandler dont support these vehicles. Like it or not autonomous driving is going to be a thing. If not Waymo then something else. Driving these cars away would move away the jobs Waymo could have brought to chandler.
IMO Waymo should just move back their testing to Silicon valley, now that California is more open to driverless cars.
1
@R.S
Waymo ain't bringing any jobs to Chandler, or most anywhere else. That's the whole point.
2
People used to make their livings making swords, carriages, and abaci. Time marches on.
6
The state of Arizona continues degenerate. I left in November 2000. I will be hard-pressed to even drive through it to get to the other side.
The bulk of the citizenry of Arizona is uncaring about their fellow man and are prone to violence about things they know little about. Fox news has irreparably altered their ability to know right from wrong and they lack any natural curiosity about the world at large (which is why they think throwing knives at cars is an answer).
If you ask me, this is the place that should have a wall built around it.
5
@Tinsa well then, why didn't the technology fascists test this at home base (California)?
3
Sabotage.
"Unauthorized stencil urging sabotage and picketing
At the inception of the Industrial Revolution, skilled workers such as the Luddites (1811–1812) used sabotage as a means of negotiation in labor disputes.
Labor unions such as the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) have advocated sabotage as a means of self-defense and direct action against unfair working conditions."
2
honestly, i would trust my safety to a dumb machine driver more than any of the raging road warriors cited in this article --and i say this as a cyclist and driver who has been in the crosshairs of many of these people who think they own the entire road.
7
This may be an issue that unites the rich and poor. The car lovers that I know tend to be rich or working class. I drive a Porsche 981S MT. I daydream about owning a McLaren (and a 911 GT3). The fans of Fast and Furious love their cars. the only people who don't love cars are NYT subscribers. I know a guy paying off a 20% loan (20%!) for a Camaro Zl1. That car is his baby. If you want to understand who wouldn't prefer self-driving cars, go watch any of the Fast & Furious movies. They aren't great movies, but the franchise is massively popular and speaks to deep, abiding love for driving in parts of America.
4
There will always be a contingent preferring personal control of their cars. I enjoy my 5-speed manual 4x4 drive, and even more knowing that there are few potential thieves who could get it started.
1
A non-rhetorical question for all those commenting who believe all technological change should (a priori) be considered for the better, should be considered progress for humanity: if we knew then what we know now, would we have allowed the developement of nuclear weapons?
11
@ Steve F in Oakland
My thoughts, exactly.
Remember to include Mustard gas and the like, though admittedly it is much less destructive to all life on earth and much of the non-animate aspects of earth's surface as well.
4
Remember to include firearms.
4
Some folks "in the know" at the time hypothesized that the first atom bomb would ignite the atmosphere and kill the planet. The detonated it anyway. Once the knowledge was obtained that the atom could be split, it was split. Nothing was going to stop us from making it once we knew we could. Same with these self-driving cars.
History shows us that those blocking the the road to progress shouldn't be surprised if they get sideswiped - or run over.
12
Boeing is also planning on having "pilotless planes" if they could only solve the "Sully problem," that is the pilot who was able to land a plane on the Hudson River in 2009 due to his prior experience and training as an Air Force pilot. Would the future A.I. planes be able to replicate what Sully did?https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/09/boeing_plans_pilotless_passenger_flights/
15
Sully ain’t flying every commercial airliner. At a certain point the AI pilots will be far more safe than a typical human pilot.
5
@Sam C. You have to measure that against being able to stop 9/11 remotely. This is actually a union issue, not a technology issue.
1
@Zach
Tell that to the families of the dead Lion Air passengers on the plane that went down because of its computer automated programming that pilots could not override.
Having faith in computers, when even regular personal computers, screw up, bug up or glitch up on a daily basis, is naive and unintelligent.
5
Sounds like the reaction in a developing country. Let's keep America Great!
(And hey, Waymo, if you get tired of Chandler, saddle up your vehicles and all the workers that you added to your new tech center out there. I'm sure that Plano would welcome you with open arms. )
9
For the same reason that Ford did that with the Model T. Complaints from horses were ignored.
8
“Don't let individual criminals throwing rocks or slashing tires derail efforts to drive the future of transportation,” Mr. Antoniak said.
Or, I guess, a person being run down like an animal by a robot?
22
mr. Turgid
Please compare and contrast for us, the number of miles driven by humans in Chandler versus the number of miles driven by AI.
Then contrast the per capita injuries and fatalities.
I wonder what your analytical data will show.
Not your gut feeling.
7
Was the industrial revolution a negative event? It was to replace workers who toiled to mine, produce and transport.
Who’d trade places with someone from that age? OK, if you were to be a feudal lord, maybe. The rest lived up to 30 years if lucky.
Each jump in knowledge and technology has helped our comfort and safety to leap.
Without scientific and industrial advances we would still succumb early to simple accidents that caused infections. Antibiotics were not available before modern science and technology - not from God, nor from nature.
As productivity per person grows via technology more humans can think and tinker to improve their lots, yours, and mine.
Driverless cars already have an advantage over regular ones for safety per million miles driven. Its close to 8% in the US and probably 30% worldwide. Statistically driverless cars are much safer in 60% of the world.
Number of lives saved will be worth it. People can move economically, with more time to improve food production, education, health delivery, to name a few?
Ahhhh, Hattoacco’s wheel will eliminate my job. But soon I have a better life by carrying more with with less effort, with extra time for my family and to learn more words. Ah, what if I could publish my thoughts? Can I do that with zeros and ones?
But I can't, I have to go and pull cousin Auughx off that unicorns horn.
4
@Kamyab
you need to go deeper and into the lives of those already on the edge that see automation and progress as the continued destruction of their already low wages jobs, limited education and no where to go.
The US has lost the shiny. We need to educate our citizenry but the Koch brothers won't allow it.
4
Stone Age America throws yet another tantrum. The nation that defined the idea of progress for nearly 200 years suddenly wants out? Forget it.
Why not un-invent the wheel, while you're at it? It's about as likely. Meanwhile - Check out the fatalities in 2016, state by state, here: https://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalityfacts/state-by-state-overview
Arizona had 962 deaths in 2016 as a result of road accidents. The same arguments could be applied to humans driving cars, with a lot more hard evidence.
11
@Paul Wallis
AZ registered vehicles (2015) 8,500,000 (1)
AZ fatalities (2017): 1,000 (2)
Number of Self Driving cars in AZ: 600 (3)
Number of fatalities from autonomous vehicles in AZ: 1 (4)
Arizona fatality rates per vehicle:
Non Autonomous (1000 / 8,500,000): 0.118 deaths per 1,000 vehicles
Self-Driving (1/600) : 1.67 deaths per 1,000 vehicles
Conclusion:
Self-driving cars are 14.17 times more likely to cause a fatality than a human driven vehicle
1) https://www.azdot.gov/motor-vehicles/Statistics
2) https://www.azdot.gov/mobile/media/news/2018/07/31/arizona-motor-vehicle-crash-deaths-total-1-000-in-2017
3)https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/tech/2018/03/19/what-you-need-know-self-driving-cars-arizona/438634002/
4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_self-driving_car_fatalities
I lived for a time with no car in a city with superb public transportation : beautiful Paris. I got a one month travel pass, and found it very easy to get from here to there, and a great relief to be without the many annoyances of a car. There is not only the metro, but also an extensive bus system, well described in a small brochure available at every kiosk. The busses stop everywhere, come often, and drive in lanes reserved for them.
I believe that the entire automobile infrastructure in this country will do everything possible to prevent the development of such good public transportation here
64
@Thomas Engelsing MD USAMCR
In the U.S.? Nah, that's never going to happen.
@Thomas Engelsing MD USAMCR
Not only that, our food will never be as good as their food either, even though we have the same ovens, pots and pans. Go figure!
1
The worship of technology is full of pitfalls. Trusting machines is just part of the problem.
And endless stream of traffic studies have shown that just a handful of cars can cause major problems. And that's just what will happen with driverless cars.
8
@Mark Initially that me be the case but eventually driver-less cars will all be synced on a network, synced to traffic lights and receiving traffic data in real time. Then traffic and accidents will be significantly reduced. They are inevitable.
7
Is it all about safety, or money? Tell me these giants like Google only do things for our good will.
3
@Freddy Really? So you think they'll pass a national law forcing everyone to use driverless cars? Doubtful.
1
This is good "training" for the computers in driverless cars. Soon those vehicles will be able to recognize and deal with road rage, drunk pedestrians, kids (and adults) throwing rocks, luddites, etc.
Chandler, unwittingly, has provided a valuable contribution to the future of driverless cars.
6
"Unwittingly" is the key word here. An ethically conducted human subjects research study (which is what these test runs are, even if they claim not to be, and even if, technically, the people aren't the primary subjects but are the ones whose welfare is at stake and whose behavior (whether as drivers, bikers, pedestrians or child roller skaters or skate boarders or two-year-old ball chasers) is the central variable in these companies' R&D.
1
These vandals are heroes. Big Tech has never cared about us and it shows day in and day out with each new harrowing revelation of their anti-consumer business practices. They have no right to do this in communities without the public weighing in.
30
@JM
The streets are public.
Apple just one big tech company is worth nearly a trillion dollars. The largest shareholders? Pension funds. Millions of retired secretaries, school teachers, nurses, police etc.. benefit from big tech.
These road raging, angry citizens taking matters into their own hands sounds like the same sort of people drivers in Miami, LA, Washington DC and almost any other major city in America encounter every day. Autonomous driving cars are not the problem.
11
Perfect story for New Years Eve. How many drunk drivers will kill or injure other drivers and pedestrians tonight?
13
All they have to do is call for a (sober) ride.
Robot vehicles are also a problem because they will likely rob more and more people of the means to make a living. Of course, if you're a high tech million or millionaire or even a "lower income" six-figure salary coder in San Raphael, the livelihoods of taxi and bus and truck drivers, or even Uber or Lyft drivers are probably foreign and forgettable to you.
Me, I like my fellow human beings having a way to make even a very modest living, and I like the human touch.
4
@MSW
Wow!, you have me pegged- I was hoping to hide behind my upscale zip code but you are too observant. I AM a millionaire because I live in California, I AM a high tech coder, and I love all the Uber and Lyft drivers who have turned downtown SF into a virtual parking lot. The future is driver less cars and Uber and Lyft will be the biggest investors in that technology. I personally drive myself everywhere and never use Uber because I find it too expensive. Not sure what kind of "Human Touch" you get from having somebody drive you around?
‘The Arizonan came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his tire irons were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of his switchblade like grains of the sand,
When the hotheads slash tires of self-driving vans.’
(Apologies to Lord Byron)
3
As a visually impaired person whose freedom and mobility has been severely limited since I started losing my eyesight- I look forward to having driverless cars. It means I can finally do the things I used to, regardless of day or night or the weather. I'll no longer be dependent upon family or friends to drive me places and I won't have to pay excessive charges to use a car service like Lyft or Uber.
I'm sure these autonomous vehicles will be much safer than the average person on the road. The fear and anger towards this technology which helps many who can't drive right now is frustrating to me. I'm anxiously waiting for it to be available and these idiots are literally throwing rocks at it. Sigh.
17
"“There are other places they can test,” "
There are, but Arizona basically is so business friendly they don't really care what you do. They test here because California is too burdensome.
Our governor has welcomed them into the city: test close to California, a 1 hour flight, and get access to a large metro area.
Phoenix also has some of the most downright idiotic drivers I have ever encountered, and I just got back from driving San Fran, Sacramento and Los Angeles. Highways are 85-100 mph, people don't signal, people make aggressive turns, most red light fatalities in the country beside Houston.
Testing here is a good idea. It's s smorgasbord of drivers from all over the country.
7
Let's not be deceived yet again by Silicon Valley.
Our future is in mass transit and personal mobility including bicycling and walking.
774
@CJ13 While it'd be great if this was true, the reality of the situation is that nearly all of postwar America was designed in a suburban-style fashion, with the automobile intended as the sole means of transportation. While it's since become clear just how devastating an effect this lifestyle has had on the environment, at the same time there's no realistic way we can either eliminate suburbs together or expand mass transit to them. Over half of the American South lives in a suburban area with literally ZERO access to public transit of any kind, with the exception of public school buses. Further, it would cost hundreds of billions to expand public transit systems to such areas, and given the lack of density in suburban America, there's no feasible way the construction costs for such systems could ever be recouped.
What *is* an entirely realistic possibility, however, is inexpensive autonomous ride service to and from the suburbs. I'm not sure what "deception" you think is going on here, but shared-ride services of this nature are already in early-stage testing (albeit not yet in driverless vehicles), and the likes of Uber and Lyft have the ability to crunch all the Big Data numbers to make such systems feasible from a cost perspective. They could be employed either as a last-mile solution for transporting people to transit stops, or a single method in and of themselves of getting people to and from work.
35
@CJ13
Why will the future not include driverless mass transit AS WELL AS driverless cars run on electrical power alone?
27
@Jeff
Hundreds of $billions, huh? Too bad we just spent over a trillion saving the Iraqis from... themselves. Or, well, something.
Of course, infrastructure and services here at home don't really need the upgrades and modernization anyway, do they? The private sector will provide workarounds. And profits.
36
Having driven through a white-knuckle snowstorm as I left Phoenix today, and having witnessed some scary and extremely unsafe driving decisions, I'm glad that eventually there will be fewer human drivers on the road.
I'm also glad Waymo doesn't kowtow to people who openly admit to frightening behaviors behind the wheel on public streets that no adult with a license to drive a 5,000-lb vehicle should exhibit.
269
@Eryc I'm glad you'll feel safer, but whether you are or not is still open to question. I find the idea of robotic cars in a snowstorm insane. They will not be irrational, nor will they have any ability to cope with human factors.
13
@ContraryIan
Quite the opposite. They will have the ability to cope with situations no human being can cope with - millions of times faster. If the system assessed the situation as too dangerous it will simply stop.
Human judgment is millions of times more fallible when it comes to this kind of thing. Think about this: do you own a modern car? If so it was almost certainly largely built by robots. How does it compare for reliability to the old vehicles mass built largely by human hand? The answer is simple: there is no comparison. Robot built is many many times superior to human built.
22
@Eryc
Well yesterday I drove well over a hundred miles in and after a severe thunderstorm/windstorm on poorly maintained US Highways and Interstates with ponding water from ruts caused by heavy trucks. In many of the areas the stripes were not visible nor would the nature and existence of the ponded water to the vision systems of autonomous car technology.
No technology currently offered for sale from Subaru's Eyesight to Tesla's Autopilot is proven to be adept at black ice, ponding water, poorly maintained roads or faded stripes on this roads. Put Waymo's technology up in Colorado's high country during the winter or down south during a "Frog Strangler" flooding rainstorm and they will be killing people wholesale or ending up in a ditch or upside a tree. I would imagine fog is also a big problem for these systems based upon what I have read.
14
I bet a lot of the road rage is simply because they don’t exceed the speed limit.
13
the impulse behind these incidents [ like the "ICEing" of Tesla Chargers and "coal rolling" ] is because of the perceived assaults on our carbon-based-mass-culture
everybody living on the "grid" finds the acceptable-level-of-risk on the roads a fair exchange for the commerce it enables
people who have never been in a semi-truck, warehouse or factory really don't want to know about their specifics anymore than the working conditions around the world that support our lifestyles
3
What is the matter with Arizona? Driverless cars have been driving around my neighborhood for a decade. No one seems to mind here. Likely why we here in Silicon Valley have had a booming economy for the past decade as well.
6
There are places where sensible humans don't drive, depending on our complexion. Maybe the robots need to take a tip.
1
They're probably the first to dodge in and out of traffic while going well over the speed limit, which is what this is really about.
4
Not a fan of violence. On the other hand, Google and Corporate Tech is going to jam AI down our throats, without a whisper of discussion, without public debate, and I believe to our great detriment. Unregulated tech already cost us a presidential election.
22
@Jersey John Autonomous vehicles don't use "AI" per se -- they mainly use existing technologies such as LIDAR to determine road conditions and respond in a programmed fashion -- nor are "Google and Corporate Tech" jamming anything down people's throats. Google had to seek formal permission from Chandler city officials before being permitted to conduct real-world testing on their streets, and I assume such discussions included ample public debate.
The same goes for any other city or state where an autonomous vehicle operator wishes to operate: they need regulatory permission to do so. (That said, it's possible NHTSA or another federal agency could issue federal mandates on the topic, much like they have in the past for mandating a (thankfully repealed) 55mph national speed limit and minimum drinking age of 21.)
2
@Jeff
"...and I assume such discussions included ample public debate."
Why would you assume that?
And how do you define "ample?"
3
@Jeff
Alexa.... what should I vote on automated cars?
3
Driverless cars and people gone mad! As the camera zooms out on the town of Chandler, Rod Serling appears to tells us of the future innovations and the simple minds of the people in the Twilight Zone.
6
If the attacks on self-driving cars in Arizona are a protest against the continued loss of jobs to automation, as opposed to vandalism committed just for kicks, they constitute a timely warning that businesses which choose to replace employees with A.I., and governments which support such policies, without first providing economic and financial safety nets or substitute employment for those who lose their jobs as a result, do so at their own peril. If this larger issue is not addressed we are going to have waymo’ problems than people getting in the way of or vandalizing self-driving cars.
8
An invention/solution looking for a problem .. technology wanting to make money ..
6
@Richard Guthrie No. There's ABSOLUTELY a problem, namely the 40,000 people killed each year in the U.S. as a result of vehicular crashes (nearly all of which are the result of human error). That's in addition to hundreds of thousands of serious injuries and millions of lesser ones.
This solution has a very realistic likelihood of eliminating the overwhelming majority of said injuries and deaths. The reason is simple: computers aren't susceptible to human error.
4
There ought to be some kind of referendum or public discussion before allowing them into town. I wouldn’t go along with it in my town.
1
@Alyce What does that mean, exactly? If they come to your town what will you do?
5
She would like a referendum, as she wrote—a discussion and debate between himans; you’ve seen “Black Mirror”?
1
Understandable that people do not want to become a rat in a Test lab. Why should they accept the risk? If these companies need a real world lab they should build one or at least ask people if they want to participate in every new medicine test you don’t give the drug to somebody without asking if they like the risk and one is paid for it. Here they abuse other people without asking at their expense.
5
The among first legal automobile laws was to have a flagman walk ahead.
This is coming,but we need to understand how to make it work for us.
2
Generally, new technology is problem solving. So........what problem precisely. are self-driving cars supposed to solve?
1
Traffic congestion is one.
A reduction in pollution via allowing people to own less cars.
Less parking areas needed for AI cars (sorry, but it would take a few paragraphs to explain that one)
Safer vehicles. Humans get distracted way too easily.
3
@george
the problem of business having to pay for labor what else?
2
@george
People who can no longer drive can still get around.
Didn't the people of Chandler, Arizona agree to have these vehicles tested on their streets the last time that they clicked "agree" on the Terms of Service update of their favorite device or web browser? Waymo shouldn't have to bear the brunt of their intolerance, ignorance and probable bigotry just because these backwards people didn't carefully read what they were signing.
4
Tell me what’s safer:
An autonomous vehicle obeying the rules of the road: no going over the speed limit, no tailgating, always yielding to bikes and pedestrians, no aggressive behavior, always making complete stops at intersections...
Or, people yielding knives and guns who are threatened at the very idea of losing their idea of freedom behind the wheel? No one wants to give up their control to the car. Drivers on the roads these days are more dangerous than ever. Think about any time you’ve honked endlessly at someone in front of you because you’re impatient; you’ve gone over the speed limit in a school zone because no kids are around, you think. That rolling through a 4-way stop sign is really a stop; or yelling at a cyclist because they’re slowing you down. How inconvenient to you, driver. There are endless scenarios that show how unsafe and irresponsible drivers are on the roads these days.
You think robot cars are dangerous?
562
@Scott
That's a great scenario in your first paragraph, but what will the vehicle do in those times when highly unusual situations arise, some that it's programmers never thought of, and it has to do something different from, say, obeying all traffic laws? What if a car behind it lost its brakes or steering and the driver was honking, or an onlooker shouting to get out of the way, but your autonomous car has lawfully stopped at a red light by an empty pedestrian cross walk. Is the car going to be able, in a second, "realize" what's happening, assess the situation, and determine that the safest course of action for all involved would be to disobey traffic laws by running the red light and allowing the other troubled car to proceed, perhaps into an open field?
What about if a person living in a wildfire zone owns and come to rely on an autonomous car. Will that car "know" to keep driving through a tunnel of flames rather than stop? Will it be able to "decide" when driving through the flames may be more/less safe than going another route or driving off the road? Will it be programmed to somehow read the passenger's minds and make that kind of soul-wrenching and probably frequently changing decisions? Are you sure the voice command software and equipment would withstand the heat & flame, or flood or whatever, and not leave its passenger(s) stranded when they would have preferred a different way?
41
@ROI What if North Korea invades California and an autonomous vehicle doesn't know how to properly evade IEDs and Bazooka missiles? What if a car is driving down a New York street and a grand piano starts falling straight towards it from ten stories up?
(Point being: no, obviously programmers can't anticipate every conceivable problem in advance. That said, such situations are a one-in-a-million type of thing that would never occur in the overwhelming number of real-life situations.)
48
@Scott - there are other ways to make cars safer then resorting to AVs. In fact AVs have been shown to have killed more people (based on miles traveled). The sad truth is that much of our AV ideas come from waymo and the like, who don't release their data.
19
I live here and let me tell you, those cars are TERRIBLE.
They come to full stops on busy roads after exiting parking lots, disrupt local businesses, and I've personally seen them cause no less than 3 accidents and just drive off.
I love the idea of progress, but I absolutely hate these cars.
384
@Tony - as far as leaving the scene of an accident, that is illegal and the backup driver should have stopped the car. People involved in those accidents should report to the police taking the accident report the cause of the accident and the fact that a vehicle left the scene. It would be very easy to track down the vehicle in question since they are all with GPS and their trips are recorded.
34
@J Jencks Trips may be recorded, but the story indicates Google won't provide the information. They are apparently above the law.
24
@ J Jenkes
No, the car should Know to stop after being involved in an accident, and prevent the humans from choosing to drive away from a hit and run!
In fact, I had thought that one possible social benefit of autonomous vehicles would be that the manufacturers wouldn't allow people or the vehicle to evade the law (and helping the victims) by prevent a run after a hit.
Your comment makes me more concerned than ever, as it suggests that the car won't be able to tell whether it has hit someone or not, and will not respond by stopping itself.
And if a backup driver is needed to ensure safety, then there is zero benefit to disabled people, young or old.
14
The biggest transition has already happened: GPS navigation systems. I remember how strange it was when I first started using them and realized that I was no longer driving my car; the computer was driving me.
The road to self driving cars is going to be a rocky one for sure. There is going to be a long period of semi-autonomous driving, where more and more of the driving experience is automated. Drunk Tesla drivers letting their cars have accidents for them are only the beginning.
But people forget how dangerous conventional driving is. Multiple people die every hour in the US. Yet most of us believe it is worth the risk.
When internal combustion engines came out, the idea of a vehicle driven by explosions surely sounded insane. Even a few decades ago it seemed common to see cars bursting into flames on the side of the road. Lithium ion batteries can spontaneously. Dangerous things can be made relatively safe with appropriate limits, but will never be completely safe.
I have lived in several markets where autonomous vehicles are tested, and my concern is one that hardly anyone mentions: They are too slow and timid. Not just in miles per hour, but especially in making decisions. They can get stuck at a 4 way stop not being ready to make a move for 30 seconds, while everyone else is getting annoyed at them. I betcha the most common accident for a while will be other vehicles colliding with slow or stopped self driving cars that can't keep up with traffic.
8
SF is perhaps unique in the number of 4-way stops it has where other large cities have traffic signals. It took me a few months to feel comfortable driving there. Given the number of these intersections on steep inclines, (and the propensity of SF drivers to make rolling stops) I'd rather have them err on the side of safety.
1
@expat
Oh, so now the public infrastructure has to adapt to them, huh? Do you think Waymo et al will pay those costs, or just hand them over to the public to pay?
Privatized profits, socialized costs. It never seems to change, other than getting worse.
2
As one who, when tailgated, relishes shifting into neutral, removing my foot from the accelerator pedal, and watching the tailgater slowly realize the joke being played on him, I love the guy who brakes hard in front of these things.
Self-driving cars are a solution in search of a problem if ever there was one. Will Silicon Valley pay for the infrastucture these tempermental machines will require? Of course not. Taxpayers will. Maybe once this new technological advance fails to deliver we will come back around to the idea of building for human beings and mass transit.
5
@Christopher Once more, with feeling:
1. The problem for which self-driving cars are the solution is the 40,000+ fatalities and hundreds of thousands of serious injuries caused each year by vehicular crashes -- nearly all of which are caused by human error and, thus, avoidable ... namely by a computer system not susceptible to human error.
2. Autonomous cars don't require any extra infrastructure costs. We don't have to line every road with sensors or something. They're intentionally designed to function fully autonomously, even in environments where every other vehicle around is human-driven.
5
I don't think people are Luddites or afraid of technology, I think people are nervous about a silicon valley culture of "failing quickly" to make progress in a situation where failing means people being injured or killed. If a person is killed by a driverless car, it provides experimental data from that situation, Google gets a fine (maybe?), has to apologize, and the cars are even maybe a bit safer after. That doesn't sound like an incentive for Google to be as safe as possible in somebody's beta test neighborhood.
Charge somebody at the company with vehicular manslaughter every time a pedestrian is killed by one of their cars, and I'll be much more cool with these on the roads.
20
@Oats Sorry, but suggesting executives should be categorically charged with manslaughter each time a pedestrian is killed by an autonomous vehicle sounds awfully Luddite to me. (And btw Waymo's never even had a minor injury, let alone a serious one or a fatality, in its 13 years of R&D for its driverless cars, including tens of millions of miles on public roads.)
Google and every other autonomous vehicle manufacturer should be treated in the same way as every other company that's developed technologies resulting in car-related fatalities. Takata airbags - found in most cars currently on American roads - have killed over 100 people to date by randomly going off for no reason. They've been fined $1 billion by NHTSA and will likely be forced to pay up billions more in the myriad lawsuits they're facing. Driverless cars aren't really any more or less "special" in this context.
2
Privatizing gains and socializing losses. Sounds like modern American capitalism to me.
45
Why should a private mega-corporation be given free access to experiment with people's lives on public roads?
23
I think the answer is obvious. Arm the cars. The car be be advertised as being equiped with "Stand Your Ground" technology.
5
There is nothing shocking here, folks. This is what capitalism looks like; disruption, displacement, replacement. People are registering their displeasure with the wrong people. Corporations are behaving as corporations do. The underlying issue is the abscense of the state. It is the state that is responsible for protecting the people, and to insure that future disruptions, such as job displacement are mitigated by the vigorous hand of government. In the case of the United States, there is only silence. Instead of fixating on poor immigrants, the Federal government should focus on a strategy to help the many thousands who will be displaced by AI. Self-driving vehicles are just the tip of the iceberg.
12
Absent from any news story I’ve ever read about autonomous driving vehicles is that once the technology is perfected, personal auto insurance will be completely unnecessary. Think about it, your credit history and previous driving record will have zero meaning in this new world. What I want to know is will we hold the Googles behind this technology responsible for the inevitable accidents that will still occur? It will be their programming we are putting our faith in after all.
2
@Dave "What I want to know is will we hold the Googles behind this technology responsible for the inevitable accidents that will still occur?"
If it's for a technological flaw they could have reasonably foreseen and prevented: yes. Product failure / liability issues aren't even remotely new to the automotive world. To cite two examples: NHTSA ordered the recall of over 70 million Takata airbags after defective ones were determined to have randomly exploded at times when a vehicle wasn't involved in any sort of collision, resulting in over 100 fatalities in the U.S. alone. Far worse, Takata knew about the problem beforehand and failed to take corrective action until being forced to do so by government regulators. They ended up paying a $1 billion fine, and will likely end up paying billions more in liability cases filed against them for gross negligence.
Back in the '90s over 250 people were killed (and thousands injured) as a result of various Firestone tire models failing on Ford Explorers, then one of the top-selling vehicles in America. The treads on the tires literally detached from them under certain conditions, typically at highway speeds and nearly always resulting in catastrophic collisions; losing one's entire tire tread is far more dangerous than a simple blowout. NHTSA determined that both Firestone and Ford were responsible, and both paid billions in fines and damages. Firestone nearly went bankrupt as a result.
1
Its humorous to watch the luddites fight what they don't understand. They appear at every technological advance throughout history. They will be overwhelmed and driverless cars and trucks will take over the world, for the better. We will all be safer and more efficient
4
Driverless cars should not be seen in isolation. They are a large part of a huge trend to replace human workers with robots. The impulse is mostly economic -- there is little debate about whether we as a people actually want this, or whether it is desirable in any non-economic terms.
And when most of the human jobs are gone, what happens? How do we live? On an allowance from a robotized state? That might be the most benign solution out there. There is a conspicuous silence out there from the digital masters of the universe -- they just want to expand their mega-companies. They claim to contribute to 'progress', but what is that, exactly? Making cute avatars of ourselves while the polar icecap melts?
Change is inevitable, but we as a society have a habit of doing it really thoughtlessly. In a warming world, with withering resources, expanding consumption and increasing populations, we no longer have that luxury.
29
@Malcolm - There is another article in today's NYT, the NY section, about the increased minimum wage. This ties in with the automation issue you raise. You might find it interesting. Check out the comments as well.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/31/nyregion/15-minimum-wage-new-york.html
2
"The behavior is causing the drivers to resume manual mode over the automated mode because of concerns about what the driver of the other vehicle may do."
So what does this say about the capability of autonomous vehicles to deal with unexpected external events when there is no longer a human driver to take over? It doesn't seem that Waymo has a great deal of confidence in its own artificial intelligence.
12
@ERP No, it merely says Waymo's test drivers don't want even the possibility of being held responsible for the death of a crazy person trying to literally drive them off the road. The fact that they're assuming control of the vehicles in such situations says nothing one way or the other about either the vehicles' ability to avoid collisions or the company's confidence in them.
4
@ERP - I'm guessing that the Waymo driver isn't going to sit around and wait to see if the road rage dude is going to whip out a gun and start shooting, a potential threat that is not very meaningful to the driverless car itself.
3
I am visually impaired. I do not have and I do not expect to ever have a driver’s license. Unless we are going to get serious about public transit in this country - and good luck with that - having a self-driving car would be the only way I can be independent.
19
@Loyal Achates
Could you be responsible for the safe operation of a self-driving vehicle, including maintaining situational awareness in the event something goes wrong and a human driver needs to take over?
3
I hear you and agree about the need for and value of accessible, available, and highly efficient public transport. But if your AI car runs down a mom and leaves her survivor two year old with serious neurological and other injuries and in need of life-long 24/7 personal care and assistance, are you prepared to be personally responsible for robbing that child of both a mother and of the child's own personal independence (and likely that of the child's other parent)? Or would you blame it on faulty software or faulty machinery of the car's manufacturers? How likely do you think it is that they would accept the burden of that kind of liability? Having had a
neighbor dragged into a concussion by an Uber driver unsatisfied with the tip offered and hearing about Uber's reluctance to take any responsibility whatsoever (along with all the other bad things Uber reportedly has done) AND watching the tobacco, gun, and talc-using industries spend millions in order to shirk responsibility for the deaths and injuries caused by their products, I say, as you did, "Good luck with that!"
5
@Loyal Achates I am sympathetic with your statement. BUT you need to work for public transportation rather than believe you have the right to so-called independence at the possible cost of other people's lives.
3
I'm skeptical of people who become so quickly enamored with automation and blithely brush off how people experience life today. That said, throwing rocks or slashing tires seems like an inert, flailing gesture.
7
@Bilgewater
I agree. Setting them on fire would be far more effective.
6
I have a problem with the ethics of these cars. From what I’ve read, they will protect the passenger at all costs. If a three year old child runs out in the street, and the only way of avoiding him is to drive into a tree, the car will run over the child rather then risk my life by running into the tree. Personally, I think I’d rather try my luck with the tree. That’s my choice.
2
@Kb I'm sorry, but you're using an extremely unlikely hypothetical to argue against a technology that will indisputably save millions of lives in the long run (and plenty in the near-term as well).
That said, I'm not sure what you've "read," but the most likely outcome of this particular scenario you outlined is no one being injured at all. Unlike humans, computers have no reaction time. A human driver could travel 100 feet or more in the fraction of a second it takes them to hit the brakes after seeing an object obstructing the roadway in front of them. An autonomous vehicle, in contrast, could detect it in a literal nanosecond and either hit the brakes in time to avoid a collision entirely or swerve to a sufficient degree to avoid hitting the little boy *or* any other object.
3
@Kb - interesting point. It suggests that social values need to be factored into the design of the algorithms that control this technology. That could be done if we used our government to impose some basic regulations.
In a way it's a bit like banking regulations intended to outlaw fraud or building codes intended to prevent unscrupulous developers from cutting too many corners.
We can't rely on private industries to define their own ethical guidelines. They will be tempted to act selfishly. We need a degree of social control and this is accomplished through regulation.
2
@Jeff You hope.
Luddites!
And they'll be as successful as the original Luddites.
What will be the next target? The welding robots on assembly lines? The internet sites that allow easier shopping? The internet sites that allow people with anti-anything-they-don't like-beliefs to reinforce those beliefs and plan destructive actions?
2
While I don't agree with the tactics used by these critics of self-driving cars, I do have a lot of concerns about turning over our cars to a network controlled in cyberspace. It seems that every week we hear about a major hack into the network of a large bank, or the government or large social networks, like Facebook. Given how insecure our networks seem to be, do we really want to have the potential for a network of a large fleet of vehicles to be hacked, and potentially used not only as weapons of mass destruction by a terrorist or foreign power, but also as a way of creating mass havoc and panic by shutting down transportation for large swaths of the population? Unless we have completely air-tight cybersecurity, the whole self-driving car thing seems like a truly dangerous idea.
13
@MRW - Excellent point that deserves much more discussion. No doubt the developers of this technology are considering cybersecurity. But the question of the scale of the potential risk raises it to a whole new level.
3
I can see that people in a community might not want their communities to be guinea pigs in a tech experiment.
Think of the medical analogy. New drugs are tested in labs first. When they are deemed potentially effective and safe then human tests are done. But the test subjects are volunteers. They participate willingly, by choice.
Driverless cars need "real world" testing. But the real world test subjects need to be willing participants. Some might argue that the people of Chandler are willing test subjects because the tests were agreed to by their elected representatives. But the incidents described in this article suggests quite strongly that at least some of the voters of Chandler did NOT have this in mind. Maybe a referendum is in order.
5
Another technological breakthrough, designed to maximize profits for corporate interests, while displacing millions of people off already scarce jobs. Are we ever going to learn?
6
We are not ready for self driving cars. I don’t want a future owned by tech companies. I have no trust in Google or Facebook!
14
Why? Why do we need these in the first place - other than great profits for a few corporations?
And why are they allowing this testing without the prior approval of public in that area - public that gets killed or maimed each time the testing goes wrong? Who's risking their lives and limbs and who will benefit from this? It's obvious the two are not the same people.
6
History has shown that technology will march forward irrespective of the opposition of a group of people. The question is just about timing. History also shows that it is better to adapt to that technology rather than fight it. Those who adapt sooner, are able to maximize potential benefits and minimize negative impacts.
1
@John A
Apple's ridiculous camera/eyeglasses? The Concorde? Etc.
I like the idea of testing these vehicles on the streets frequented by the people who design them, so they have the proper incentives to get the technology right.
Despite the best efforts of everyone involved, what I would expect is that these machines will over time become known to be better drivers than humans in clear weather on well-marked roads, but worse than humans in poor weather, crowded streets, and other less-than-ideal circumstances.
Which means the machines will have to be limited to driving only on sunny days on "easy" streets, and/or people will end up modifying their driving behavior to stay far away from them in less-than-ideal conditions because they know the risk is greater.
7
Actually, I believe the safety record of driverless cars is already better than humans — on all surfaces, in all settings, and in all conditions.
Public opinion always lags the facts/stats.
What will change public opinion is better information and higher insurance costs for people who eschew technology that has a better safety record.
Driverless cars suffer from the same perceptual bias we see among people who are afraid of flying (fearing airplane crashes) while perfectly ok with driving (at 200 times the risk of mortality). People aren’t rational. They think if they are in control nothing will go wrong. Which is not the case.
6
@Melissa
There is no evidence that driver less cars are safer than human driven cars. People think that they should be safer but that's not evidence.
2
It has nothing to do with public safety. The large corporations who run the country want to get rid of the millions of jobs of people paid to drive. It's that simple. They'll save billions. As my favorite fictional character, Gordon Gecko, said "It's all about the money. the rest is just conversation."
53
@Joe G. - True, but the technology is developing very fast and it will become effective. I think it's implementation is basically inevitable.
We'd be better off focusing on how we can turn it to maximum benefit of society as a whole, rather than just another way for the rich to get richer.
For example, why not operate public transits systems modeled after the "on demand" services like Lyft, combined with driverless vehicles? Done right this would be vastly more useful, convenient and cost effective than all the public transit systems out there, and would put up a huge competitive challenge to the likes of Uber and eventually Google.
4
Automation has replaced many workers in the last 100 years. Violence is a poor answer. We should strive for better solutions to this issue. AI will replace even more.
1
@J Jencks "For example, why not operate public transits systems modeled after the 'on demand' services like Lyft, combined with driverless vehicles?"
This is a great idea - and it's already been implemented in a number of places. The Denver suburb of Centennial, for instance, partnered with Lyft to offer commuters free rides to the nearest station on their light rail line. There's no reason such endeavors couldn't be significantly expanded once driverless vehicles enter the mainstream.
3
It's absolutely outrageous that Google, Uber et al. are still being allowed to use real streets and real people as unwitting and unwilling guinea pigs--for free! They have more than enough resources to build fake towns in which to test their vehicles in a broad range of conditions. What's next--letting big pharma skip clinical trials and just start trying out their new products on the public, to see what happens?
Another irony is that this technology is maturing at a time when extreme weather conditions brought about by climate change are making driving more challenging than ever, more frequently. It'll be interesting to see what happens when large numbers of people who've ditched their cars for self-driving rides get frequently grounded because the vehicles just can't cope with rain, fog, snow, flooded streets, and so on.
The dream is lofty--I was looking forward to it a few years ago--but the reality increasingly seems like a fool's errand.
51
@Nina Why on earth is it "outrageous" to allow Google to perform real-world testing of its driverless cars? (Uber is another story entirely, admittedly.) Are you even aware of the fact that they tested their cars on private roads and tracks for five years before commencing real-world beta tests? Or that their Chandler field test is the last step they're taking before introducing the service commercially in dozens of cities across the country?
Btw even Waymo's CEO has conceded that it will likely be impossible for autonomous vehicles to function in extreme situations like heavy snow or flooded streets -- but OTOH such situations aren't even remotely the norm, climate change-induced or otherwise, and they're ones in which few human drivers could drive, either (unless they happen to own something like a heavy-duty pickup lifted ten feet off the ground).
Finally, I'm not sure what "dream" you're talking about: Waymo's cars are already HERE -- and as the article notes, they've been operating in the Phoenix area for over two years now. (With zero accidents, by the way.)
5
They don’t even have to build, they can use hundreds of abandoned towns. They should also pay for the test subjects. Their research needs the same standards as any studies on human subjects. What they are doing is unethical.
1
@Nina
The streets are public.
Ironically, people already forgot they were attacking first automobiles 120 years ago.
22
@CarolinaJoe
The thing is, those people were right to be concerned.
Cars have clogged our streets, polluted our air, killed countless people, misdirected our land use and waste many hours of our time. We are now paying for our love of them in so many ways. Most of us don't even question what we have also lost in the last 120 years. We just accept.
2
Or maybe they remember and realize they need to do even more this time...
this is a pipe dream. it will cost billions if not trillions for the infrastructure alone for this to work.
federal, state, county, and cities will not pay for this. ever.
also, i have owned a limo service for 35 years. no one will load or unload their luggage. no one. unless you are cheap and use uber or lyft. their drivers are lazy and have zero customer service skills.
8
@me I'm sorry, but it's obvious you don't understand the basics of the technology here. There is no "infrastructure" required for autonomous vehicles. The ones being tested in Arizona are operating on completely ordinary, run-of-the-mill streets. We don't need to retrofit every road on Earth with sensors or something, if that's what you're thinking.
As such, government costs will basically be zero. If anything, government entities will ultimately *save* money from having a drastically reduced number of vehicles on the road. (Most autonomous vehicles will likely be shared on a subscription-based system of some sort.)
Finally, I understand why your views might be skewed from working as a professional driver, but most folks only take vacations once or twice a year, and if they need help with their bags ... well, we do still have porters at most airports.
3
I empathize, but you have seen many of us a lower to middle end hotels. Many would rather pay less and carry their own luggage. It’s a choice.
1
@me
I cannot wait to get low cost robotic taxi rides. I will be glad to load my own luggage. Existing infrastructure will be fine. I cannot wait until I can let my auto pilot car drive me to and fro so I can use my 15 hours of time behind the wheel for things like reading or texting. Besides it will save tens of thousands of lives and countless millions of dollars when the accident rates drop. If a million autonomous cars cause 1,000 fatal accidents when a million human drivers would have caused 2,000 fatal accidents the autonomous cars are way safer. The day may come when people throw rocks or try to stop the crazy dangerous cars being driven by humans.
1
Beware the paid Online Reputation Management workers posting pro-industry comments onto this story. They will call anyone who has any reservation about Autonomous Vehicles "Luddites."
They were testing these in San Francisco for about a day before that woman was killed in Arizona. https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Uber-crash-sparks-talk-of-tighter-rules-for-12796638.php "A study from the Rand Corp. says widespread use of autonomous cars before they're perfected would save lives, even if they'd still cause crashes, injuries and fatalities."
"Even if they'd cause fatalities." That's quite a statement.
"It's not clear that they're ready yet, but there's no way to get them ready without getting them on the street," said another RAND employee. https://www.kqed.org/science/1921891/california-offering-permits-for-driver-less-car-testing-no-humans-required
13
@FJA - with the resources available to the tech companies they could easily afford to build a fake "test town" with a variety of intersection types, freeway onramps, etc., and even hire people to drive cars in normal but unpredictable ways. Then they could test their driverless vehicles in that setting.
I think the more immediate future of driverless vehicles is in public transit systems. It's already the norm for monorail systems and has been for quite a few years. However, since the USA has an antipathy to public transit we will see the main markets for the technology in other countries, in particular Asia and the isolated, wealthier parts of the Middle East.
1
@FJA Beware of the Unpaid Luddites posting anti-industry comments onto this story, using the example of a single incident -- at the hands of a company infamous for its reckless actions -- as a signal that autonomous vehicles should never, EVER make it onto roads anywhere on Earth.
Also beware misuse of cherry-picked quotes like the one above from the Rand Corporation, which back in the reality-based world means that even not-yet-perfected autonomous vehicles will save many more lives than human-driven ones. (Not to mention that it was stated in the context of Uber: in contrast, Waymo has a perfect safety record over 13 years of testing their vehicles over a vastly larger number of miles.)
4
@FJA
And how many pedestrians died today after being hit by a car driven by one of their fellow humans? Quite a few I would say. A report by the Governors Highway Safety Association found that there were 5984 pedestrian deaths in 2017 which was an increase over the number of deaths in 2016. The number of pedestrian deaths is expected to continue to rise as both drivers and pedestrians become more distracted while driving and walking. The fact is that autonomous vehicles are safer than vehicles driven by humans.
5
I am sure the residents of this Arizona town despise public transportation too.
You wanted a car culture? You got it.
It's just that there are no guarantees you are going to be in the driver's seat.
6
@Badger Actually, public transit is a huge part of the area they're testing in here. The cars are just terrible at driving.
It is this kind of moronic behavior by the humans why I do look forward to driverless cars. They don’t have road rage, don’t drink and drive, don’t vandalize other vehicles, and don’t engage in reckless driving. There are safety and dependability issues that do need to be worked out properly, but I have little sympathy for the luddites. Humans need to invest in a much better educational system that prepares them for the jobs that actually require some thinking. Neither teaching kids to hold hands and sing Kumbaya, nor teaching them that the world is 6000 years old would do.
33
AI will displace a lot of workers including the ones paid to “think”. Practicing autonomous vehicles on public roads is unethical. It’s like forcing people to take experimental drugs without consent. Scientific rigor is needed to study the safety of these vehicles.
3
@JRoebuck
Scientific rigor?? That is exactly what is being done. These cars have been tested for several years on test tracks and on test streets. They are now in what I would call phase three trials. They need to be tested under real world conditions with real people and that is being done.
Yes, AI will displace a lot of workers and has already. What needs to happen is that we humans need to rethink what it is to live and have a life. Our civilization is undergoing great change. You can either embrace the change and move forward or you can fight it tooth and nail and get left behind.
1
If these people are mad at driverless cars, they are surely livid at those driven by humans, the culprits in the vast majority of auto accidents.
20
Modern driver assistant systems are useful and add safety. What Über and others are after is making more profit at the expense of others. It fits the model.
1
“A pedestrian was struck and killed by a self-driving Uber vehicle at the intersection of Mill Avenue and Curry Road in Tempe, Ariz., in March”.
This statement is not entirely accurate. The fatality occurred at some distance from the intersection in an unlit section of roadway. The unfortunate pedestrian was crossing a multi-lane thoroughfare without benefit of crosswalk and was wearing distinctly dark clothing.
18
And do I remember correctly that the vehicle did not slow down... at ALL? Hmmm
3
On the one hand apprehension over autonomous vehicles (AVs) is understandable. It's an entirely new technology that by necessity requires human drivers to relinquish control over a vehicle that could be going 70mph or more. It will take time for folks to get used to them, hence the reason Waymo is gradually rolling them out initially as ride-hail vehicles - and always with a safety driver up front in the (very) unlikely event they need to take the wheel.
On the other hand there is zero excuse for people to be literally attacking AVs solely because they fear technological advancement. I have to disagree with Douglas Rushkoff that this situation is analogous to people throwing rocks at SF's luxury commuter buses. Neither Waymo's AVs specifically nor AVs generally are intended for "the elite": they're ultimately intended for everyone -- and, moreover, intended to make driving an order of magnitude safer than it is today.
About 40,000 people die each year in the U.S. as a result of car wrecks, and hundreds of thousands more are injured by them. Nearly all are the result of some form of human error. AVs, once perfected, will eliminate the overwhelming majority of both. After all, computers don't text behind the wheel or drive drunk, and they can literally maintain a full 360-degree view of the roadway at all times.
Instead of anger management classes, perhaps the Arizona "AV assailants" could be sentenced to mandatory educational classes about the realities of the technology.
14
@Jeff
A mandatory struggle session with Waymo employees - sounds enlightening!
Although this concern may sound trivial but how do these driverless cars react to a dog in the road? A cat? A deer? A squirrel? Do they run over it, swerve or stop to avoid hitting it? Or far more seriously, a bouncing ball that is inevitably followed by a child or a bicycle shooting out of a driveway? What about those of us who enjoy doing our own leisurely driving? I've read that people will no longer own cars but will schedule when they will need a car. So no-one can make a spontaneous decision to go for a ride on a gorgeous summer day, to take longer shopping than one expected, to linger over a delicious dinner with friends? Do we really want our lives so regimented? To lack spontaneity? Should everything be replaced by machines just to save another nickel? Corporations always claim that what they're doing is in the interest of the people, for the betterment of society when in reality it's only for the betterment of their wallets. Why do we fall for this every time? I don't have a problem with technology but I do have a problem when technology replaces so many with robots. What will lower skill workers do when all their jobs are outsourced to AI? This country has a horrible track record of taking care of those in need. Should we idly stand by while another nail is driven into the coffin of the working class? While thousands more are displaced by machines? Especially when it's not for the betterment of society but for the betterment of the corporate wallet.
27
@sharon - Those questions you started with ... they're obvious and if the very well paid engineers/developers at places like Google haven't thought of them a long time ago then they are obviously not doing their job.
Regarding spontaneity ... I believe that algorithms and driverless tech could make public transit far more convenient and cost effective than it is today. Then the spontaneity issue is no different than having to wait for a bus. The better the tech can be designed and implemented, the smaller the issue will become.
That said, if you want to go someplace more distant, like a spur of the moment trip to a nearby nature reserve or a campground for the weekend, then maybe you "rent" a car, which shows up at your door and takes you wherever you program it.
I can see the above possibilities happening. But I very much doubt they'll be so universal that they eliminate private car ownership completely in our lifetimes. 100 years from now things could be vastly different though, just as they were 100 years ago.
4
@Sharon
The intent is to sell these to regular folks. The only reason people will switch to a pay as you use it model is by preference not because they are forced to. You order up a car it arrives at your destination and parks itself outside and waits until you decide to go out get in and go some where. You many have to pay some time based depreciation-of-the-asset rate but you can limit how much you have to pay for your car to depreciate while your not using it because you can free it up when you know you will not need it for 12 hours until your ready to go to work in the morning or for a week because you will be out of town on vacation. This will increase the driving utilization rate of the automobile fleet so there will need to be a lot fewer cars on the roads or parked. Why should we pay for something that we just let sit around idle most the time. Then there is the fact you will be able to order up what you need when you need it. For most my commutes I need a small sedan or even a smaller monopod. Then on the weekend I can order up the four wheel high clearance backcountry camping SUV, or the huge seats 10 mini van because this is my weekend to drive the kids soccer team around. When I get old and should not be driving but still want to be independent and live in the Country where being able to drive is essentially I can do so without hiring a driver or waiting for friends and relatives to drive me places.
3
@sharon
You should read up on what people thought about cars taking the place of horses, electricity, printed books.....
Part of designing an automotive AI is making it decide what to do when up against a decision of hitting an animal or a person, one person or several, etc. These are decisions that they actually do consider (I'm not involved in the companies, but as a programmer I keep up with the literature).
And your dystopia where humans aren't allowed to drive - you realize that we would have to choose that, right? That's how it works.
1
With roads filled with cellphone-distracted drivers, most cars today are already driverless. At least high-tech cars will be paying attention for the phone zombies, and as a bonus, machines are incapable of road rage.
17
@Pete
And how about the traffic-worsening, now-common practice of the readers and texters: leaving a whole
vehicle-length space between them and the vehicle in
front of them while stopped at a light or while stuck in
creeping traffic so as not to absentmindedly drift into
a rear-end collision while they are reading and texting.
All over the traffic nightmare that is Los Angeles, this practice is making things worse when we thought that wasn't possible.
I don't want driverless cars. I want attentive drivers;
attentive, that is, to driving and not to the demands of social media feeds and work communications.
183
@Paul Connah
Inattentive drivers are a huge problem that law enforcement has ignored. This must change. Fines and suspensions. I commute by bicycle and can tell you over half the drivers of the steel cages during rush hours are paying more attention to their smart phone than to traffic. One easy solution is for ALL smart phones to include a feature (that cannot be defeated by the user) where it is shut down while in a moving vehicle. This is so obvious and necessary it is behind my comprehension why it is not national law.
@Paul Connah "leaving a whole vehicle-length space between them and the vehicle in front of them" Wow, I sure don't want you tailgating me.
The waymo employees in the attacked vehicles have a right to file criminal charges against their attackers and sue for damages. Waymo and google are at significant legal risk for failing to protect employees. If one of their employees is injured by one of these attacks the employee will have a very good case against their employer for failing to keep their workplace safe.
6
Well, I feel more optimistic about 2019 already!
12
If you are against self diving cars in your community write letters and petition your elected representatives and ask them to pass a law against this. Write letters to you local newspaper describing your concerns. Call local radio stations and do the same. You can even write to the CEO of Google and voice your opposition. The laws are not keeping up with this new technology. How is it legal for an autonomous vehicle to be on the road? This defies common sense. This issue needs to be fully vetted.
I think the citizens of Chandler Arizona need to follow the money. Why are your elected officials so willing to turn your public streets, paid for with your tax dollars, over to Google?
11
I wonder if these self-driving cars even have an emergency brake, so the car can be stopped if the electronics light up and say TILT or the internet connection goes out as Century Link and Verizon did last week.
I recently learned that many new cars no longer have emergency brakes, one of the most basic and simple of safety devices. Instead, the car companies are busy touting all their new alleged "safety features", most of which are noises reminding me of my high school history teacher haranguing us.
When a friend recently bought a new Subaru, the saleswoman didn't even know what an emergency brake is, telling me the car had one. It didn't; it simply puts the regular brakes on when you put it in park. I bring this up because we are in a world of "alternative facts" and "fake news", where lies are considered acceptable as marketing slogans, whether for a President or a corporate C.E.O.
8
I was an early adopter of computer technology, but in the nearly 40 years that I've used it, the industry has never managed to make a soundly functioning product. During the past two weeks, for example, I've spent at least 20 hours trying to get my printer to decide to work again (and will spend more time trying to get the print legible), finding the lost emails that Microsoft Outlook has decided to file under totally unrelated threads, and getting the captions restored to my cable TV after they mysteriously vanished. Forty years and silly things keep happening! So why would I want to trust my life to these computerized vehicles, produced by over-eager companies more interested in beating the market than in perfecting their craft?
51
@Locavore Actually, Google has been meticulously testing its AV tech since 2005, and is only now starting to roll it out since all the kinks have finally been worked out. The one "over-eager" party in this space is Uber, which is admittedly recklessly and desperately trying to catch up to Google / Waymo in the autonomous vehicle space. Easy solution there: avoid Uber! If you did some reading on Google's Waymo product, you'd see just how rigorously it's been systematically developed over the past 13 years -- hence the reason they sued Uber for $3 billion for (allegedly) stealing much of their IP (and Google dropped the suit only because pursuing it would've likely forced them to reveal many of their tech specs in open court, according to a recent New Yorker article on the subject).
Speaking of Google, I can't help but wonder if your email problems would disappear if you switched from Microsoft -- which has been consistently producing error-laden software for 35+ years now -- to Gmail, which basically has zero problems or downtown. (Think of it as roughly akin to trading in your AMC Pacer for a 2019 Toyota Camry.) Point being: some companies sweat the details and get it right BEFORE delivering a new product to the masses.
1
@Jeff
Show us the data about Google having worked all the kinks out. Should we just take your word for it? Given that Gmail has no "downtown" as you state? Wow!
1
@Jeff Thanks for the recommendation, Jeff, but I use Gmail for work and hate it. It wouldn't allow me to do functions that I needed to share and preserve certain info. So I'm still a skeptic.
1
Why are they fighting against technological advancements when it's inevitable? If they drive these companies out of their towns, they're going to be behind when the rest of the country starts adopting self driving cares. It might not be now, but the future is with self driving cars. This technology holds out so much promise and we will definitely be more efficient with it. This is why self driving car companies should be allowed to carry out their testing and of course they should be regulated.
4
@Arnoldo Chavez ..........It's not inevitable...I live in this town where this is happening... The powers to be here are not so happy with it....considering prohibiting it.... There are serious issues.. a woman was kill on her bike...It's good to see citizen willing to fight for what they want and how they want to live... rejecting the corporations power over our desires... in the end people will rise up and determine our destiny.. not politicians and corps... Truck drives are the most employed ppl in the country.... I am one....death to the tech that takes that many jobs...
@fred head
One bike rider killed? Is there a report I can read about it? And how many pedestrians and bicyclists died inyour town after being hit by cars driven by humans?
So humans are allowed to recklessly kill their fellow man while driving, but one death by an AV under poor conditions is too much? Interesting.
Yeah, I love sci-fi and to imagine what a self controlled and intelligent robot would be like. But I know enough about electronics and computer science to know how far from any such things that we are. These businesses are undertaking projects which any truly knowledgeable and thoughtful person can assure you are not based upon reason and science but hype. People have been killed by the failures of these systems to cope with unforeseen circumstances simple because they operate without any awareness let alone understanding.
1
I have my doubts that driverless cars will ever happen, especially if they are supposed to coexist with cars driven by humans. The interaction between the two will never be easy and wheats filled with doubt: the human not sure if the behavior of the non human. Then there are huge liability questions (will owners if driverless cars accept all responsibility for potentially deadly accidents due to malfunctioning?), as well as the yet to be calculated but sure to be high infrastructure costs (signal equipment needs to dot the streets scale everywhere).
6
@Alessandro Motter I'd strongly suggest doing some reading on the subject: driverless cars are ALREADY happening (and coexisting with human-driven cars). What, exactly, do you think has been going on in Arizona the past two years? Google / Waymo has been conducting real-world testing of its autonomous vehicle systems, and is planning to introduce them commercially in numerous cities over the next year -- initially with safety drivers behind the wheel, and operating under an Uber-like ride-hail service model, but still. Further, they've already signed contracts for 20,000 Jaguar I-Pace electric SUVs and 60,000 Chrysler Pacificas, in which they'll install their AV tech.
The liability issues have for the most part been worked out by federal authorities (which I say as a lawyer btw): AV companies will be indemnified for liability unless they've acted in a grossly negligent fashion re: their safety. (Owners won't be held accountable unless they somehow interfered in the normal operation of an AV.)
Btw the reason AVs already have broad support among lawmakers is because of the reality that they're certain to SAVE millions of lives in the long run: computers, in a nutshell, aren't susceptible to the human error that's almost entirely responsible for the roughly 40,000 annual vehicle-related fatalities in the U.S. (and many more injuries on top of that).
These criminals and vandals, all of them, are luddites and morons. If any of them are blessed to live to a ripe old age, they will wish for an autonomous transportation option. Our American communities are not set up to facilitate anything other than driving. Options like walking, bike riding, or using effective mass transit are out of the question. We are left with an over reliance on distracted individuals driving cars with gridlock in many settings. For the elderly, this leaves them with a serious dearth of options when they are no longer able to drive. Suddenly, basic tasks such as grocery shopping or going to appointments become monstrous obstacles. For this reason, I look forward to the successful introduction of driverless cars. The technology can enhance car-pooling options and it may alleviate gridlock. I hope they can perfect the technology before I have to surrender my car keys at an old age. If these people want to wield knives and rocks in protest, then let them direct their angst at our nation's stupid elected officials, who have stranded all of us with this over reliance on solo drivers in cars and gridlock.
531
@Sarah
I am a volunteer driving elderly people around, to the doctor, shop, their community meeting etc. This way, they can keep living at home. Most of those people need some helpful interaction with me, such has helping them in and out of the car. A fully automated car would not be able to do that and replace me. The same is probably true for nursing robots. Therefore, the hope that automation will help the elderly is probably overblown.
137
How about changing these suburban patterns into denser, walkable neighborhoods that make them much more livable for everyone? Walking and biking has so many health benefits and those who can‘t get around easily would enjoy more diverse environments as well.
33
@sissifus
Robots also pose a threat because they eat prescription medication that is prescribed for the elderly as a form of fuel. I know that in my community, many elderly residents have purchased a very affordable insurance product (from Old Glory) that covers them in the event that they are attacked by robots. I am seriously considering doing the same if I ever see driverless vehicles in my neighborhood.
7
“Just think about the humans inside these vehicles, who are essentially training the artificial intelligence that will replace them.” Douglas Rushkoff, are you telling us that this guy had a job driving a driverless car before? I get it's an analogy, but come on now. The guy training the car was not a common Uber driver or something.
And to call it "justifiable"?? There is a LIVING being in those cars right now. Get our of your head, dude.
4
Ironically, these luddites who are cutting off and artificially creating emergency situations are doing Waymo a favor. First, they are helping the AI systems learn how to adapt to stupid humans. Second, they are helping to prove that a self-driving car will react better than a human being in an emergency.
12
@joe
Yeah, you probably think the car can administer emergency medical treatment.
@Philip S. Wenz
An automobile is, and always has been, a dangerous instrument because of its size.
F = M x A.
Thousands of people are killed everyday in automobile accidents - lots in the Phoenix area. Yet, we permit autos and assume the risk. Simply, put the benefits to society outweigh costs or damages that result from driving.
The Truth is that all drivers and riders face risks every single day. There's no guinea pig talk about them, or about how we are really play Russian Roulette when we get out on the road. The odds show that self-driving cars are safer.
Given all the wrecks I see all over the Valley, I would have to say that the Waymo vehicles have a much lower probability of being involved in an accident than those driven by a human. Anecdotal, but statistically verifiable.
Yes, there was an unfortunate accident involving a self-driving car in Tempe. Anyone who saw the tape knows that the victim was contributory in negligence.
I believe the enmity towards Waymo and other self-driving companies comes from the fact that driving autos is integral to a person's identity, particularly the male identity. Without a nice car, many a man has nothing going for him And the fact that this automation may eliminate jobs, further eroding the male identity.
I welcome riding in a Waymo. I signed up late and was turned down. My odds for surviving an automobile ride are better with Waymo.
11
@Joe - Rest assured, if there is ONE accident involving a self-driving car, all the major media outlets from Fox to MSNBC will cover it. Of course, the 4.67 million injuries and the 40,100 deaths from human-driving cars in 2017 hardly gather any notice.
40,100 DEATHS ... That is an entire town wiped out each year, due to car accidents, most of which are due to driver error.
4
Let’s replace Congress with artificial intelligence before we give up our streets!
5
Driverless cars provide a mixed blessing.
The people most likely to need them will be the people least likely to afford them, or afford their service.
But that service - transporting people who cannot drive and get the grocery store, who rely on medical transportation, especially the elderly - would restore a huge amount of independence to people limited primarily by age and health.
In my increasingly cynical outlook, I see the cars as most likely to bench commercial drivers, cabbies, Uber drivers, but remain priced out of reach for the people who need them. In fact, I see them as a technology of huge potential that will be used in a way that offers little improvement to society, not unlike life-saving drugs that are priced for "what the market can bear" rather than for what would benefit society.
I'd be hard pressed to want to be the guinea pig community to test then out.
244
@Cathy, "The people most likely to need them will be the people least likely to afford them, or afford their service."
I've seen nothing that tells me what the cost per ride in a driverless car will be. It may very well end up being the same as a ride in an Uber costs, with the difference (no driver to pay) going to Uber as profit.
12
@Cathy Actually, the people most likely to need them will likely be much MORE able to afford them.
The costs of implementing any type of new technology are high, but ultimately plummet as it becomes much more widely disseminated. Just to cite some car-related examples: airbags, antilock brakes and traction control systems were initially "luxury features" that first debuted on German luxury cars in the '80s. By 1994 airbag prices had declined enough that federal authorities mandated that both driver- and passenger-side airbags be included in every new vehicle sold in America. ABS and traction control are now mandatory as well.
The same is all but certain for autonomous vehicles. While yes, they'll ultimately put cabbies and Uber drivers out of work, at the same time they'll eliminate the single-biggest cost related to their use (paying said drivers). Many analysts believe AVs will ultimately operate on a subscription-based system, e.g. you pay a set amount each month for X amount of use, much like you do for internet or cable TV service.
As for transporting seniors around, AVs will ultimately make it cheap enough for many municipalities to provide such services to them at no cost -- and if they can't afford to do so, there's no reason cities couldn't mandate that Google foot the bill for such services in return for operating rights on their roads.
In other words, I think your cynicism is unwarranted, and that AVs are certain to vastly IMPROVE society in scores of ways.
9
@Cathy, my Dad is 97-it takes him 20 minutes with help to get into a car for a Dr. visit as it is, a driverless car would benefit him how?? Your post seems to be based on a complete lack of knowledge about the reality of the elderly/infirmed. Happy New Year tho!
47
Every day I witness human drivers cruising through stop signs, turning right on red without stopping, not yielding to pedestrians, along with many other violations, but it so expected that few people even notice. Why don't these nuts attacking autonomous cars get as worked up about bad human drivers? Likely because they exhibit these bad habits themselves and want to preserve their privilege to drive without regard to safe use around pedestrians and cyclists because it might inconvenience them. And many drivers and car lobbyists object to speed and red light cameras even though data shows they make the roads safer. So when we get serious about road safety then we can worry about the robot cars.
11
I'm all for progress, but what gives a company the right to test dangerous products in a populated neighborhood? is it legal to burn trash, urinate in the street, or drag race in this town? Why not set up a zone with volunteers? There's a corporate arrogance in the tech global giants that is in plain sight here. We have to stop this knee-jerk worship of new technology and consider the social consequences. AI may offer benefits for some, but there needs to be control and oversight. Social media has already been weaponized, and AI will be next if we're not on top of it.
582
@MSB
The benefits to a self driving car outweight the risks, right now and in the future.
There is no benefit to society in burning trask, urinating in public or drag racing.
An automobile with a human driver is an inherently dangerous product. Show me the data that shows a self-driving car is more dangerous?
18
@Joe
However, the burden is being borne by the few and those few did not volunteer and are not being paid for assuming risk. Some have already been hurt -- thus the anger.
Moreover, the developers are doing what they can to keep the rest of us from learning how angry they have made their involuntary test subjects. Clearly, they are afraid of public attention. There would be no argument if we were talking about testing a drug or vaccine on involuntary subjects.
Like you, I believe there is a lot to be gained from driverless technology and, as a 66-year-old, I expect to be a prime beneficiary. Nonetheless, the sponsoring corporations can certainly afford to put more resources into making the testing safer. If the testing were being done , say, in Silicon Valley, they would be more careful.
21
@MSB
It has already been done. The cars have been put on test tracks then put on test streets, then put into test towns. We are at what I would term Phase Three trials. Time
to test under real life conditions. That is what is happening now in Arizona.
18
The technology almost exists to issue citations to anybody who violates the highway code. Once people start getting tickets every time they speed or demonstrate a lack of lane discipline, attacks like this will end. Everyone will be clamoring to ride in self-driving cars
1
Arizonan Luddites all, fighting the inevitable future.
The Luddite backlash in England lasted about 5 years.
It's happened before,so was to be foreseen .
5
@Hochelaga The luddites weren’t against technology. They were reacting against the factory owners who were keeping their new profits for themselves instead of sharing them with the workers as they previously had. Sound familiar?
2
I wonder what an AI car does when it sees bright rear red lights vs dim red rear lights, vs red flashers, vs on coming white lights, vs pedestrians crossing at an intersection at night carrying lights, red or otherwise.
5
A non-rhetorical question for those who believe all technological change should (a priori) be considered for the better, should be considered as progress for humanity: if we knew then what we know now, would we have allowed the developement of nuclear weapons?
“'Safety is the core of everything we do, which means that keeping our drivers, our riders, and the public safe is our top priority,' said Alexis Georgeson, the Waymo spokeswoman." I believe Georgeson could be accused of plagiarism, inasmuch as this was what was said by the tobacco industry C.E.O.s in their testimony before Congress. Of course I might be accused of a bit of cynicism thinking that, in fact, profit is the core of everything they do.
The most significant effect of self-driving cars and drones will be to create massive unemployment among paid assassins and suicide bombers.
In any case, isn't there a conflict of interest, when the Times is using Google to screen comments about one of Google's own projects?
13
What's the point of a driverless car that needs a back-up emergency driver?
7
@Ms. Pea
Well, the point is that is a necessary step in getting to the final outcome: safe, self-piloting vehicles. Personally, I can't wait!
2
@Ms. Pea
Research & Development, and added safety in a technology that is new.
Google is simply doing the reasonable thing.
1
@Ms. Pea, the technology is not perfected, so the human is there to drive the car in the possible event that the tech fails.
The larger question, of course, is will the technology ever be perfect?
5
Three cheers for the rebels in Chandler Arizona standing in their neighborhood streets exposing and blocking this mammoth scam.
Any presumed profit benefit for owners of fleets of driverless vehicles in no way compensates all of us the loss of entry level and semi skilled jobs, not to mention the consequent loss of economic security for families who lose incomes as a result of replacement of driver operated vehicles by driverless vehicles.
22
@allan slipher - I guess then that all work-saving devices should be banned since they replace human endeavor?
3
Throwing rocks at driverless cars is illegal and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I live on a rural country road. We are all pretty laid back out here. The fog lines painted on the road aren’t the greatest, but they’re OK. We’re pretty careful, slow down and pull to the right when cresting a hill. Farm equipment coming from the other side could be over the line. I believe in obeying the law. All you people should definitely do it. But if Waymo sends one of those cars down my road, I will definitely throw a rock at it. If they are going to put AI driverless cars on the road, maybe they should invent AI homeowners who like being treated like guinea pigs.
10
Luddites and their looms. The future is coming if they want it to or not.
4
@B My father’s family in England owns the only hand loomed lace left. Very expensive and much in demand. They’re doing great!
@B
Feel the same way about autonomous drone weaponry?
I find this story a bit humorous. Human drivers are endangering other drivers and pedestrians by abruptly halting, slamming, and destroying automated cars. Human drivers cause more accidents than automated cars and yet this story seem to have proved its point. It makes me wonder how these people have managed so long without having their licenses suspended for reckless endangerment.
4
@George Gu
A bit humorous?! How about hilarious? Yelling at robots . . . yeah, that'll work.
We will have to tax robots. Alternatively we will have a permanent serf underclass and a few aristocratic overlords instead of a democracy.
16
@Federalist We should also tax self-checkout stations, ATMs and any other machines that put people out of work. They deprive our government of the additional income tax revenue needed to assist the people put out of work .
5
So because some of these people are angry that self-driving vehicles are going through their neighborhoods, or claiming a close call with a child (where was the child, in the street unaccompanied?), they deliberately endanger the lives of the backup driver, the passengers, and people in other vehicles.
Sadly, that sounds just about right for their evil of (un)thinking.
5
It is a neighborhood. Parents expect their children will be safe there. Where have you been the last 100 years?
10
@Karen
I hope my kid can play in the street unaccompanied. That's what kids ought to be able to do. A capitalist company driving a wreckless robot down be street or a distracted driver texting on a phone or a drunk driver are all similar offenses to me.
@Cindy L I grew up in a "neighborhood". We were taught to watch out for cars by our parents. We were safe because we listened.
1
The only way self driving cars will be successful is if you can't turn off their system. People are such impatient drivers that they will not be able to stand driving the speed limit, not tailgating and coming to complete stops. It'll make them crazy and off the system will go.
3
what point are the reactive people making by driving dangerously towards and around the driverless(but occupied) cars?
1
I believe that, since these vehicles are so technologically advanced they should all be electric and help to improve air quality. Or do the developers only accept in science when it can make them a profit$?
2
Driverless cars with optional AI defense system, including gun rack and “I shot first” bumper sticker.
3
on second thought, when AI-Robotics slaughter human jobs, 2nd amendment loving crowd will rise and fight back.
As a law and order response
Drone's and T800 will move down the unruly crowd with Gatling guns.
Subject will rise Supreme court and Court anonymously decide AI- Robotics has 2nd amendment rights referring to corporates are person decision.
I should watch again T 1-2-3-4
2
There was another time in history around 1810 when the Luddites did the same thing. Technological advances that displace people and jobs without the requisite plan to provide some of the riches gained by the elite will not result in a very good ending. Society needs to weigh these decisions far more carefully or unsavory elements like our populist prez will use for ill. I don't understand how there is so much greed and an unwillingness to share with those who are displaced.
1
Shame on the writer for his casual and vague allusion to the pedestrian who was killed by a driverless car. And shame on a state that allows further testing without absolute assurance of safety for its citizens. Money of course is involved and people should be incensed at their state government for its negligence.
16
@rocky vermont I wonder how many people were hit by cars today that had drivers.
2
@rocky Vermont. Wait, what? NO vehicle currently on the road provides “absolute assurance of safety”. None.
2
At first I thought this was ahead.ine from the Onion.
3
These people ARE criminals. But even though it’s not something I would do, I thank them. Because AI is not a joke. In 50 years, life will have become drastically altered. I am glad that I’m a senior and won’t be alive to see it.
4
@Annie Eliot, MD
Being criminal in an insane and unjust society is sometimes ok.
“Safety is the core of everything we do, which means that keeping our drivers, our riders, and the public safe is our top priority,” said Alexis Georgeson, the Waymo spokeswoman.
Nonsense, the core of everything done in tech today is profit and power.
20
@ANDY
Yup. In the psycho tech capitalism, profit > accountability.
No one ever called Arizonans nutso right? Mostly I guess because nobody knows much about them. Are there many of them? Now we know a little bit anyway... maybe we should let them sort this out for themselves without being bothered by civilization. Call in the anthropologists. Did they leave the corpse on the road? (Kidding... But not completely....)
These guys are no different than thugs attacking medical workers who provide vaccinations in islamic Pakistan. Self driving cars will make transportation safer and less stressful as driverless dishwashers and washing machines and lawn mowers have done for those tasks.
5
@IdoltrousInfidelwow.. putting millions of drivers put of work to save money for trucking corporations is good... maybe a robot would replace ur job.. how would u feel aBOUT THAT?
In the next century, machines will write histories about fragile, erratic carbon-based life forms. They will celebrate the untimely demise of same, and celebrate the bright new future that awaits them.
6
Ironic that the guy going bonkers about the Waymo vans works in IT. Apparently he keeps the computers running smoothly, you know, the computers that took the place of human workers.
And the other guy waving his gun around, you won't find a Waymo van doing that kind of frightening behavior. I'm a lot more worried about these angry humans than I am of self driving cars.
Want jobs? learn how to build and fix the robots.
194
@Johnny
I believe when times come , Supreme court vests AI-Robots their 2nd amendment rights too.
10
"Ironic that the guy going bonkers about the Waymo vans works in IT."
Not at all. He probably knows just how dangerously unreliable software can be.
45
@Johnny
We who work or have worked in IT know more about its problems that the target consumers of its products.
You must be like all the others who line up to buy the newest thing - just like a monkey enamored of shiny metal knives.
6
Consider the following.
On a side street there is a house with a secluded driveway.
Children living in that house are known to jump out unexpectantly onto the road.
When driving past that house I will slow down pass a double line so i am furthur away from house.
I only temporarily cross the double line if i can see far enough ahead to let me do this cross temporarily. Otherwise i stop and wait.
What would a self driving car do in this case.
No the kids should not be in the road but they are.
30
@david
My experience in that situation ,many drivers drive over children as if they are pigeon, while they are chatting or texting with phone.
3
@david Faster reaction time for one.
3
@david you are one conscientious individual. But how many others drive while talking, texting and traveling at unsafe speeds near this same area? Additionally, software will never drive while intoxicated or under the influence of something. I think you'd be shocked at how many people are arrested every weekend for unsafe behavior, and those are only the ones that are caught.
3
Every year in the US there are over 35,000 fatalities due to motor vehicle accidents, and over 2.5 MILLION injuries! I seriously doubt that humans are better drivers than automated systems. The evidence shows otherwise.
IMO complaining about self driving vehicles is short sighted and narrow minded. Yes, jobs will be lost, but lives will be saved. The issue of jobs needs to be taken separately from the consideration of self driving vehicles.
As for being used as a local test lab, I didn’t see any actual data on accident rates in the area. I assume that the self driving cars had better driving records then the people complaining about them.
12
Automated systems represent human thinking not some kind of super intelligence that exceeds human intelligence.
3
Whom do you think ought to be held to account if and, more likely, whenever, an automated vehicle causes danger, damage, injury, or death? The passenger (which one? What if a minor or cognitive or physically impaired adult), the "driver" (who is??), the software company(its) or hardware companies, the mechanics, the person(s) or governments or NGOs who hack into individual or groups of vehicles (who will have the burden of proof on that)?
I've known people who were killed because the driver nodded off for a few seconds on the highway, who died skidding on ice and not being able to regain control of the wheel, who drove themselves into a tree, who drove over a neighbor's small dog (thank goodness not a small child!), who backed straight into another's parked vehicle, who drove inebriated onto a block worth of concrete curbed median, and have heard of people driving into homes and businesses (and into crowds of people). I also know blind people, people with quadriplegia, poor night vision, and neurological disorders that making driving unsafe or unwise. So I am sympathetic to the potential value of "self-driving" cars (though I'm not sure why they have to retain the same shape and mechanisms as ordinary vehicles). But I also can foresee a quagmire in terms of liability and corporate passing-the-buck impunity, and related ripples of human and environmental suffering.
5
@MSW they should suffer the same consequences, including incarceration. There should be no corporate limited liability allowed.
The elimination of jobs by robotics, AI, and tech advances is inevitable, and not just in the USA.
This is a serious issue that isn't far down the road, and little is heard about it. Raising the minimum wage is necessary - nobody working the equivalent of full-time should live in poverty - but that helps only those with jobs.
Without preparation and innovative governmental policies, strong reactions to worker displacement are unavoidable. It's unfortunate our government seems reactive only - we still haven't reacted to climate change in any meaningful way. It seems that the house has to be on fire and about to go over a cliff before our government can marshal the will to address a problem.
The issue is manifest. Can the progressives at least raise awareness and begin discussions?
13
@Jim Hugenschmidt-"The elimination of jobs by robotics, AI, and tech advances is inevitable, and not just in the USA."
Due to the emasculation of unions over the past 40 years. Toss in billions of people amusing themselves to death and you have the perfect recipe to destroy the middle class.
4
@Fighting Sioux exactly right; let’s do more and offer a square deal for the workers we still have.
4
The path of development of cars is crazy. I recently drove new cars, looking for one to buy after my very old car reached the end of life.
My old car had a big rear window that I could see well out of. The new cars have tIny rear windows partly blocked by high back seats and partly compensated for by rear view video. Only a lunatic would design cars this way.
Another example, giant side view mirrors so you can see in the blind spots without turning your head, but which block your seeing the location of curbs.
This nonsense has crept up on people or happens because drivers are too young to remember safer cars.
83
@kat, "This nonsense has crept up on people or happens because drivers are too young to remember safer cars."
You mean like when cars didn't have side-view mirrors at all? When they didn't have seat belts?
1
@Andy I used to own and drive a '55 Ford as my one and only vehicle. It didn't have a side-view mirror ('55 was the last year when they were optional, and mine didn't have one) and it also lacked seat belts -- again, an option that mine didn't have. It also had manual steering, so it took a very noticeable effort to steer. It had a "wrap-around" windshield and the visibility was outstanding. That car ran perfectly and I drove it safely, including on interstate highways, for a few years as a reliable, safe vehicle. Any other questions?
Many times what these people are angry about aren't the perceived risks of AI or driverless vehicles. It is the fact that computer algorithms that behave in a predictable manner expose their own erratic and sometimes less than law-abiding ways. Things that, before, may not have mattered or caused people to look the other way with a nod and a wink aren't so easily programmed and often must be learned using large datasets. That's why these vehicles are out there - to get a taste of the breadth of human folly and fallibility so they can better react to our own stupid selves.
3
@SBR- Who generates the algorithms? Humans! Prone to folly, bias, and good old-fashioned fallibility. Be careful out there.
5
they are a menace to navigation
9
@Custis "Buck " Langhorne
um-mm, people or robots?
1
Fascinating article! Robotics are becoming the new immigrants.
11
@Tony Francis What a great response. But they get to physically assault the robots. Lord knows what they'd do to them if the poor little driver (we can equate to locked up children at the border) wasn't in the car.
1
@Tony Francis Well done Tony.
@Tony Francis except robotics don't die from a lack of water or emergency care.
Surveillance is the big problem with self-driving vehicles. All your trips and destinations will be logged electronically, just as all your mobile calls and credit card transactions are. As long as it isn't against the law to drive your own car, use a burner phone, and pay with cash, I think we'll be okay. As for the other concerns, I'm sure self-driving vehicles will be safer than what we have now. They won't be drunk, sleepy, or distracted. They react to situations much more quickly than humans. They also drive more efficiently and that will help on the ecological side of things.
3
@lhuber- Too late. Every move you make today is tracked, recorded, and sold to an advertiser. I'm sorry Ray Bradbury is not here to enjoy this.
1
And if you walk around most cities, there are cameras. it's ok when we need them to keep us safe or catch a criminal but not ok when we drive or talk on a cell phone?? can't have our cake and eat it too.
1
This tells us that there will be a civil war. There will be.
Remember Americans have over 42% of the worlds guns.
4
@Barbara And we’ve shown the rest of the world just how well we’ve managed with all those guns:
3
I don't feel sorry for the car.
10
The NSA loves camera-loaded driverless vehicles. I mean, what spy agency wouldn't?
8
That’s not smart way to interact with AI.... oh but humans are adept at throwing stones at others anyways. What happens when the waymo equip the AI with defense for self protection, or uploads the video of attack directly to your insurance company or police deptt?
4
@vs
Wow, doxed by an autonomous vehicles . . .
reckless drivers need to be ticketed, fined, and if necessary their licenses suspended. why is this behavior any different. I expect waymo to help make the streets safer by turning over any such video evidence to the police. The woman who drastically minimizes her husband Erik's violent behavior needs a wake up call, and Erik needs to have to rely on the courtesy of friends, or even call Waymo, for a while.
4
Um, where is the editing on this? The first thing I thought when I saw the headline was about that poor woman killed by a driverless car tested in AZ. But it’s not referenced in the headline. It’s not in the story summary on your home page. Or in the story’s lead. No, just community violence in response to artificial intelligence—this is a weighty trend story about people’s enduring fear of the future.
A person was killed! Killed because a company wanted to test a product on the community rather than paying for more testing in artificial environments, and the government said go for it. And surprise—the death is what the crazy violent guy in your lead anecdote, a member of that community, says was on his mind. It’s almost as if he thought institutions like government and the press get lost in the clouds and don’t have people’s backs, you know? The guy’s crazy, but he and his fellow Arizonans deserve better.
7
@Ariel I wonder -- actually I don't, this is just rhetorical -- whether this crazy violent guy has ever spent one moment worrying about and throwing tantrums about the havoc drunk drivers or texting drivers do.
3
@Ariel,
Car manufacturers have always tested their cars on public roads. Usually they are put out as production cars, sold to the public and recalled when people are killed - well except for the ford pinto which burst into flames if you said rear end collision near it. It may not be true, but Ford is reputed to have chosen to pay out on the death and injury rather than recall the car. The video of the Uber accident throws doubt on whether a driver in a normal car would have done any better (as do the Tempe police ). I wonder how much effort was put into sensors for detecting bicycles. Is 360 deg IR worth a try? Arizona law requires bicycles to have a reasonably powerful front light after dark and the bike in question does not seem to be so equipped. Why the accident victim was listed as a pedestrian and not a cyclist in some publications is difficult to fathom.
I expect to see similar incidents when the robots step up to babysit grandpa.
6
Joe Arpio isn’t concerned with driverless cars taking Arizona jobs or killing innocent Arizona pedestrians so they must be ok.
Now if these vehicles are made in Mexico....,
7
@JPLA
Sheriff Joe is not involved in driverless vehicle testing . . . but rather, Governor Doug Ducey who was an eager proponent and rolled out the red carpet for Uber and Waymo when California balked at providing approvals for driverless vehicle testing there last year. We now have one avoidable pedestrian fatality in Tempe as a result of the careless embrace of real road vehicle testing here as opposed to pedestrian safe controlled road vehicle testing. I can understand why numerous Chandler residents are justifiably upset about Waymo's operations on public right-of-way in their community.
1
If we don't stop this invasion of robots ... if we don't stop it right now, we're going to see:
-- Robots building cars.
-- Robots performing surgery.
-- Robot pharmacists.
-- Robots building furniture.
-- Robot bellhops.
-- Robot waiters.
-- Robot farm workers.
-- Robot government job screeners.
-- Robot librarians.
-- Robot farmers.
-- Robot tour guides.
A word to the wise. You have been warned. And when this happens, it'll be all over.
[But, sir, we already have these, mostly in Japan.]
What!
7
You're a day late and many dollars short! Most of those robots exist here too.
Go to Japan and you’ll see human beings, particularly the elderly, doing jobs that are barely necessary or easily automated: waving light wands on construction sites, directing people in train stations etc. Other businesses are overstaffed by our standards, with 3 or 4 people doing what 1 or 2 would do here. Japan loves tech but puts people first.
4
@Jim Muncy
One day the Supreme Court will declare that robots are entities with the right to vote and influence elections. Citizens United was a prelude.
2
Los Angelenos should do the same to Lime and Bird scooters.
6
Ahh Chandler, where Jorts are fashion forward and meth is sprinkled on one's corn flakes.
6
This article seemed slanted to portray the "anti-driverless car" people as drunks or crazies.
Do a search in the NYT's archives for articles on driverless cars. People have been injured and killed, the electronics that powers them can be hacked and most of all: WHY? Who is benefiting? Who is getting rich here? THAT is what you should be digging into.
20
Ok. I would argue that these people are already the type that harass others, tailgate, swerve at people.
15
Waiting for someone to trot out “buggy whip” manufacturers after calling those of us skeptical of AI “luddites”. To which I’ve retorted:
“After a good hacking destroys the power grid and sends all the autonomous cars, trucks, planes, and ships to the bottom of the ocean, thanks to you wise folks at Google... yes, the buggy whip manufacturers will indeed be doing fine. It only took a little over a century to end up back behind a horse! Thanks for all the tech!”
4
A solution in search of a problem.
7
@latweek
People get injured or die every day due to intoxicated or distracted drivers. I think that is a problem that needs a solution. I take the bus for work and easily observe lots of drivers holding their phones while driving. That is illegal here but it doesn't stop all those idiots.
Or how about the elderly who cannot drive safely or drive at all at night due to poor eyesight.
1
If irate citizens keep attacking driverless cars and trucks, what choice do driverless cars and trucks have but to adopt transformer-like capabilities so at the first sign of a an aggressor they can turn into a towering automatons annihilating with extreme prejudice any humans who dares to interfere with the execution of their assigned rounds.
6
@Leigh Funny - I do think this solution will appeal to the right and the left! Different reasons of course, but maybe we can finally find some common ground. (Trump doesn't know about anything that's happened in the last 30 years, so we can also get him out of the equation.) I AM ON BOARD!
1
Replacing natural ignorance with artificial intelligence, what a concept!
4
@John
There was a time when machines started taking over assembly lines. People said that there is no way they will have the dexterity and feel of manufacturing and assembling complex parts. Cars are now built mostly with machines and humans assist but the machines do the heavy work.
Give it time and you will see that machines will do a better job of driving (with their numerous sensors and processing power). They are getting the experience on the roads and that experience is easily copied to other vehicles (unlike humans where each person starts learning from zero).
1
One issue you didn't mention that might account for some of the resistance: Waymo's cars have sometimes proven rather annoying to share the road with.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/waymo-alleged-self-driving-car-problems-report/
4
How many of these “assailants” are part of the Trump base?
8
Rocks and knives?
A pitchfork and a torch by any other name.
4
If one of these contraptions almost mowed down your ten year old, you’d be angry too.
15
@Boris Job I noted a distinct lack of detail about where the child was and whether the parents were with him.
4
@Boris Job Not as angry as I am when the vehicle is driven by a human, which happens over and over and over again...
1
The Waymo we saw in Palo Alto was driving like a drunk old lady, lurching slowly down the street.
12
This irritating clickbait. The crime has a name - vandalism.
5
It's like monkeys banging on a computer with a thigh bone.
9
Can't help but believe these reactionaries must be Trumpglodytes.
5
Obviously, the citizens of Chandler, AZ, are a primitive and warlike tribe. That's pretty much all of Arizona.
7
Thanks for the article. I'm buying some google stock next Wednesday. Put all those hostile, ignorant, tech-hating people out of a job. They are probably too stupid to be able to work in the automotive repair industry.
1
As a lifelong car enthusiast these news make me smile... I also “hate” driverless cars as they want to deprive me of a finely honed skill that brings me great enjoyment, but as long as they leave me the freedom to enjoy “real” driving on a beautiful mountain road, I appreciate their usefulness in city traffic and congested highway driving.
And anyway, these people’s behavior is just plain stupid.
3
@Andy I agree - stupid people and stupid behavior .
But I'm of an age where I hope I'll have a self driving car option while my folks had to learn the live without being able to go to the grocery store.
Hurry up world - I figure I got 15 years. :)
Rage against the machine.
9
These locals are complaining about self driving cars, but their fears and complaints precisely mirror the historical gripes about “those dirty foreigners”.
If they could lynch a car, it sounds like some of these folks would do exactly that.
It makes for a compelling case for the idea that racism is not, in fact, personal, that it doesn’t even require humans. It just requires an “other” that is perceived as a threat to one’s identity or station.
9
People will never really blame and always forgive people killing people with cars. They will kill at 100x the death rate of autonomous vehicles. On the other hand, People will always blame algorithms and computers for making a single mistake. It’s human nature to think the human is perfect.
7
We can't even get right low intelligence affairs like Facebook and bots. I would feel a lot more reassured if humans could conquer the challenges we already have before overlaying a whole new set of problems. I know, I know, IA is suppose to solve all of our problems just like the "paperless office" was supposed to be created by computers. Gee, that was a funny one.
And how about when your ver 1.1 AI in your car is no longer supported and you need to upgrade. You think a new iPad every four years is expensive, just you wait.
9
Of the hundreds of thousands of miles these autonomous cars are driven daily, can you tell me how many accidents, injuries, deaths they have caused? And how many accidents, injuries, deaths do people driven cars cause on a daily basis?
4
@CanDo Actually, yes: Waymo's safety record is nearly perfect. No one has ever been seriously injured or killed in one of their vehicles, and the only collisions they've been involved in came about due to driver error -- in the *other* vehicle, that is. (The Waymo test mules have been in a couple of unavoidable collisions where the other car was at fault.)
The biggest irony here is that Phoenix has the highest per-capita number of pedestrian fatalities - all due to human-driven vehicles - in the nation: as of September over 70 people had been killed in the Phoenix area in 2018 alone, and I assume many more on top of that sustained serious injuries after being hit by cars.
2
On the one hand, playing chicken, trying to force vehicles off the road, and other high-school games are all good tests of the software controlling the Waymo vehicles. If the can log a few million miles without accidents, they may be ready to handle driving in NY or Boston.
On the other hand, there are lots of ways to spoof a self-driving car (https://xkcd.com/1958/). The good folks of Chandler really aren’t using their imagination.
2
Perhaps if robots of all sorts, not just self-driving cars, were taxed at a rate equal to humans doing the same job they would not be quite so appealing.
10
@RGG What on earth are you talking about? People aren't taxed for driving cars! Owners of cars sometimes pay property taxes, but that's true whether the cars are self-driving or not. Of course, cab and Lyft drivers are taxed on their earnings, but then so are the owners of self-driving cars (and they deduct the wages paid to back-up drivers who are then taxed). What is the tax you're thinking about?
@Howard
In the most simple terms, let's say a robot has taken over the work or 3 people, leaving them unemployed and eliminating all the taxes they had been paying, i.e., local, state and federal, payroll, social security, medicare and any other they had been required to pay. If the owner of the robot was required to continue contributing to the same extent as the laid-off worker had been he would still recoup the benefit of wages no longer paid but without blowing holes in the social safety net. After all, these laid-off American workers are still with us.
We need more public transportation not driverless cars. These robots only benefit companies
32
@Annie Public Transportation "could" work in urban areas (don't count on it ever being funded though). What about in the sticks? People who can't drive (IE old people who can still vote thank you) still need some options. I'm in the sticks... I want my self driving car options. (I'm no where near the 1% - hoping for a 10 year old self driving car that still works when I get to that point)
“They didn’t ask us if we wanted to be part of their beta test."
Whoa, sounds like the Karmic Justice League is out in force in Chandler AZ, latter-day Luddites attacking a nameless-faceless enemy albeit one on four wheels.
One thing's for sure, 2019 will bring Waymo troubles!
3
I sympathize with the people impeding, attacking, or otherwise interfering with the automatic cars. These cars aren’t going to make our lives better, and the companies that are manufacturing them aren’t doing so with the best interests of the public in mind.
5
@Don Think of the disabled and elderly who are trapped in their houses and apartments because they are unable to drive. You think self-driving cars won't radically improve their lives? Or is your concern for the "public" really a concern for yourself?
1
@Howard
I’ll be dead by then, so no, I’m not concerned about myself, unless perhaps I’m run over by a driverless car before my time comes. No, I’m concerned about all the people who make their livings driving. It is a mistake to think that more jobs will be created by driverless vehicles than are lost. If that were true there would be no economic incentive for creating driverless cars.
Self-driving cars are an enormous waste of intellectual and material capital. Their chief purpose is to allow people to play with their phones while in a car--so that Facebook can sell more personal data to big companies or Russian trolls. The automakers have now put touchscreens into their cars, so obviously no one is encouraged to drive "safely"--an advertisement, as it were, for autonomous vehicles. Too much has been invested for any turning-back: but this is no great leap for humankind.
12
I get it. I support the assailants. Why does anyone think driverless vehicles will end well? Social media has been just great, eh?
10
What a shame that luddites like the people in this Arizona town are ruining progress for the majority of the residents. Maybe they would be happier if horse and wagons were put in their neighborhoods.
The vehicles that are being tested are marvels of safety and technology. I wish google and other self driving companies success in their testing.
5
The most significant effect of both driverless cars and drones will be to create huge unemployment among paid assassins and suicide bombers.
4
Attacks on self-driving cars? This is just the beginning of a major upheaval in American society marked by rebellion against government, technology, job loss and those perceived as elitists. I fear It's going to become much, much worse. The "R" word might come to mean something other than recession.
1
These people don't seem to be bothered by the much more likely prospect that they'll be hit by a car with a human driver. Their behavior is irrational.
3
A Luddite, member of any of the bands of English workers who destroyed machinery, especially in cotton and woollen mills, which they believed was threatening their jobs (1811–16).
Nothing new.
3
@Paul. Gee. I get exactly the same narrative when I Google Luddite also.
1
Only OEMs should be allowed to sell an autonomous vehicle. Ride share services that are basically app makers have no business tampering with a vehicle to bolt on an autonomous system. This needs to be regulated.
2
Today's cars are generally loaded with automated safety equipment, mainly sensors that detect too-rapid approaches to stopped cars, pedestrians in crosswalks, wide angle detectors of oncoming traffic in the thoroughfares of parking lots, alarms to warn of drifting out of lane or too close to another vehicle alongside. The list goes on and on, and gets longer every year.
In effect, from a safety standpoint cars are approaching full automation anyway, so why take a driver out of the picture? The advantage a human driver has is "situational awareness", something that can probably never duplicated by artificial intelligence.
Ask yourselves this. Now often have you approached a crossroad where another vehicle seems to be waiting for you to pass ahead before pulling out, and "something warns you" that he's going to surprise you by jumping into the crossing?
What is that "something"? Probably it's an accumulation of tip-offs such as the way his head is moving, a slow creeping forward, talking to a passenger, and even more subtle hints that you've come to recognize.
If a programmer were to insist that he could design programs and systems capable of interpreting such things and acting on them, ask him what he's smoking.
8
The book “Who moved my cheese?” comes to mind...
2
I'm cringing at this article since I live in this area and see these vehicles on the streets almost every day. Personally I'm proud we have them, glad we are helping develop this new technology.
I can assure NY Times readers that most Arizonans love having Waymo here doing their testing. The few nutters acting out and damaging vehicles should be charged with property crimes.
7
What a shortsighted bunch these people with the attack dog mentality towards driverless cars. I am sure there was controversy coming from horse carriage owners too in the early 1900’s. Perhaps we go back to Outhouses, Kerosene, Abacuses and the Palm Pilot.
I for one look forward to increased safety, autonomy and enjoyment from the development of this technology. When we finally took my dad’s keys away (he drove the car through the garage, not into it) he was in tears - he said that his freedom had just been taken away.
6
Violence is perhaps the only thing that will stop the march of tech to dominance over industries and lives they destroying as people and jobs become redundant. Personally I’ve had quite enough of the Uber’s, Airbnb, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Starbucks and their ilk, not to mention Walmart’s etc., themselves becoming redundant: time to get back to human interaction and a sharing of the wealth, monopolies and AI are destroying what little is left of civilization. Throwing rocks at autonomous automobiles is perhaps just the beginning of a long overdue revolt against these winner take all dwebs.
7
@Ted Analogous to my comment there is an excellent article by Rana Foroohar in today’s F.T. On the possible future role of central bankers and their switching from everything for Wall Street to something for Main Street. With an astonishing 75 out of 3,000 counties accounting for 50% of the job growth almost all on the coasts its long overdue that the Fed give a nod to the rest of the country, hopefully the era of Greenspan is over.
1
This reminds me of the somewhat common trope in science fiction where intelligent robots are forced to demand rights to protect themselves from belligerent humans. See, for example, “I, Robot.”
1
Self driving cars should eventually become safer than those driven by humans. It is a sorry reflection on those who do violent acts against the law who are silent about the tens of thousands of road deaths that take place every year in America.
2
“'Safety is the core of everything we do, which means that keeping our drivers, our riders, and the public safe is our top priority,' said Alexis Georgeson, the Waymo spokeswoman."
I believe Georgeson could be accused of plagiarism, inasmuch as this was what was said by the tobacco industry C.E.O.s in their testimony before Congress.
Of course I might be accused of a bit of cynicism thinking that, in fact, profit is the core of everything they do.
5
Luddites come to mind. But then I think that the luddites of this world always seem to be pushed aside by the relentless compulsion to invent the new thing, no matter how right they may turn out to be about all these new things and where they might take us. Being somewhat of a luddite myself this thinking tends to annoy me to no end and I feel the curmudgeon in me straining for release. Against my better judgement, I empathize with these drunks making their stand before these diabolical robot cars. Still, I want their convenience even more. Such is life.
1
In the context of the 25,000-miles-per-day Waymo program in Chandler these incidents are hardly material. They become even less relevant when you consider the many other autonomous car projects underway by Waymo competitors in Pittsburgh, Miami, and a number of other US cities. A fatality like the one that occurred in Tempe AZ in the spring would be another matter altogether. But this stuff is more entertainment than substance. BTW, all incidents in this story appeared elsewhere almost two weeks ago. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Seems fair, honestly.
If self-driving cars can kill people, and the companies simply apologize and pay a settlement, then people should be allowed to kill self-driving cars as well.
8
> Wielding Rocks and Knives, Arizonans
> Attack Self-Driving Cars
I was truly taken back by the title of this article!
Felt like I was browsing a sci-fi site.
2
We should by now have data to support or reject the claim that robots are safer drivers than humans. Most humans are remarkably poor at driving and 55,000 people are killed in traffic every year as a result. If the robots kill humans at a lower level per mile driven - then let them drive.
2
“There's a growing sense that the giant corporations honing driverless technologies do not have our best interests at heart,”
"The authorities in Chandler and elsewhere in Arizona remain gladly open to Waymo and other driverless-car companies."
Obviously, the corporations and their politicians "do not have our best interests at heart”.
From Consumer Reports:
"Our Nation’s first driverless car legislation, which will impact the safety of all road users for the foreseeable future, should not be rushed through Congress behind closed doors and without careful consideration and a full debate. But that is exactly what industry lobbyists and other proponents of the AV START Act (S. 1885) are trying to do by seeking to attach it to a must-pass bill in the waning hours of the 115th Congress."
https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/press_release/flawed-driverless-car-bill-would-endanger-road-users-and-should-not-be-allowed-to-hitch-a-ride-on-must-pass-end-of-year-legislation/
4
This news item struck me is eerie and quite disturbing. I could see this as a scene in a science-fiction movie. Man against the machine kind of thing. But I think it’s also an image of human beings taking out their anger and rage against an inanimate object. Much more sensible would be a protest or political action, or some kind of march. Somehow throwing rocks at a car without a driver is just creepy
2
I would bet that a very large percent of these Waymo wreckers are also Trump voters.
1
Question for those of you anti automation folks: You seem to think you can win a war against the future. I know of only two places that was tried -- The Dark Ages and the Amish. Do you find either of those choices appealing?
@Craig Willison: The Dark Ages are long over, but the Amish? They are THRIVING! I live about an hour from the biggest Amish community in the world.
They are very happy and prosperous people, who laugh at our dependence on technology.
They will outlast us.
1