> Jackie Fielder, a progressive San Francisco supervisor who represents the Mission District, has been among the most vocal critics. She introduced a city resolution after Kit Kat’s death that calls for the state Legislature to let voters decide if driverless cars can operate where they live. (Currently, the state regulates autonomous vehicles in California.)
If this had anything to do with safety, this so-called “Progressive” supervisor Jackie Fielder would be investigating what safety features would be feasible on Waymos: emergency stop switches or stop commands, under car cameras, questioning whether the Waymo detected the cat and then just forgot about it when it walked under the car, etc.
Instead, she is using this to secure territory for obviously less safe Uber and Lyft drivers who are represented by the Teamsters. Such a cynical politician.
When a plane crashes no one says “let’s let people decide if planes should be allowed to fly over their houses”, we say “let’s figure out exactly what went wrong and how to make sure it never happens again” and that’s probably why aviation is one of the safest modes of transportation
So what we can infer here is that if Waymo ever kills a person, it’s basically over for them in SF. Your plane analogy is apt, because for us to “get there” with autonomous cars, where it’s anywhere and everywhere, we’ll have to be willing to basically die to some degree. Just like in planes.
I think that this approach could feasibly lead to something far safer than human drivers (from what I’ve seen they already are safer), so it would be human drivers that we would question the need for at that point
>That's true but there's also a separate element here which is there is an obvious need for aviation and not an obvious need for autonomous vehicles.
At least in America, the need for autonomous vehicles is much, MUCH more obvious than for aviation actually unless you're a 20 year old exclusively city person. In most of the country by area, and at least a good hundred million-ish people by population, being able to have [arbitrary point to point mechanized transportation] is a necessity for normal adult life & work. Right now that equates exclusively to having and being able to drive your own vehicle. There are no other options of any kind unless you are extremely wealthy to the point you can employee an exclusive human brain & body not your own for that role. There are no buses. There are no trains. There are no human driven taxis for that matter. Normal family, friends and neighbors can fill in on an occasional/emergency basis and that's a safety net, but you will be heavily restricted. And tens of millions of people, indeed eventually almost all of us, do not have the ability to safely drive themselves. They are either too young, too old, have some sort of disability preventing it, or have made some poor life choices that nonetheless are compounded upon by this.
Right now it can't be helped, it is what it is, our mechanical technological capability ran ahead of our information processing capability so the human brain and body was called upon to fill in and here we are. The law also reflects that, with far more generosity given to poor and dangerous driving because it's by necessity a quasi-right however much it's called a "privilege". But fully public road autonomous vehicles would change all that. Driving yourself would truly become a hobby practice, not a requirement. Major training could be demanded. If someone has any DUI infractions or the like boom, no more driving privilege. You could be 90 with failing eyesight and reflexes and physically incapable even during the day. And it'd all be ok with everyone still having near identical mobility because they could just fall back on having the car itself take them where they need or want to go on their schedule, same as someone driving today.
That'd be just wildly huge and will only get bigger as America follows the rest of the developed world in terms of aging demographics. This is putting aside all sorts of massive improvements in productivity, lives saved, urban/suburban/rural development, electrification, and probably more we haven't considered. Certainly there are pitfalls to be avoided but it blows my mind anyone could possibly not see all this. The car is one of the most important things in American society and consumes EONS of human time. Literally. An eon is a span of one billion years. Hundreds of millions of people have absolute spent a year or more of their lives behind a steering wheel. It adds up. Anything that shifts that is by definition enormous.
Progressives always defend legacy obsolete businesses against competition. They tried to stop Uber and Lyft from replacing cabs and now they do the same with Waymo.
Of course they don't. Political labels don't cross national boundaries easily. Even right next door in Canada "conservative" means nothing like it does in the US.
Another non-US perspective - you can't tell them how to think about their weird political camps.
We saw this play out with Uber. The "progressive" side wants things to be more regulated and frames it in terms of protecting vulnerable people from unchecked corporate power. The "conservative" side does wants less regulation and more competition to keep things from stagnating economically.
The same thing is happening with AI, and with self driving cars.
It's sort of counterintuitive that on the surface, at least in this case, the "conservative" side is the one welcoming change and the "progressive" side rejects it.
You see this federally in the US. The "conservatives" want to tear down all the institutions, but they'll frame it as a return to traditional values like self sufficiency and freedom. The "progressives" want a return to the Biden era, in the name of people depending on these programs.
How can people not understand this. The entire leftist edifice is carving out more and more pieces for handouts. That’s it. This is arguing for another handout
I guess I'm a bit more generous to them on this point. Ironically, what they are is actually conservatives (in the generic meaning of preserving the status quo, not the American political meaning). What they want is stability and freedom from risk. They have this idea that you should be able to get one job and work it for your entire career, and they often cite the post WWII period as an example of this.
Of course technological progress is anathema to this. Progress is chaos. It causes disruption of entire industries, which TBF does disrupt people's lives. So they enact policies to defend existing industries from competition and fence off who is allowed to do what job with useless credentials and certifications. Essentially trying to preserve the status quo forever. They trade long term progress for short term comfort. The practical economic effect of this is, in fact, a handout to incumbents, and there are plenty of grifters on board for this reason, but it isn't the driving force behind it.
People driving cars kill cats all the time. I would bet much more than self driving cars will. The overall number of cats being killed by cars will probably go down with self driving cars.
Absolutely. And it's not just cat's. Look at the number of deer that get hit by cars every year. And like I said in another post, I saw two dead raccoons by the side of the road yesterday in the space of a few miles. Cats, dogs, deer, raccoons, bobcats, etc. should all be strictly indoor animals.
I always assume that people who say this either don't own cats, bought one from a breeder and raised it indoors from day one, or live in an apartment building where you need to go through multiple doors to get outside.
Most cats that spent some time outdoors will want to be outdoors. In many settings, it's nearly impossible to keep them in because they will try to sneak out every time they get a chance. Package delivery, you coming back with groceries, etc.
And most of the anti-outdoor-cat stats are more or less bullsh-t. The average lifespan of feral cats might be five years. The average lifespan of a cat that has a home but gets to go out is probably pretty close to an indoor cat. And while outdoor cats can kill birds for sport, they're not causing extinction events in most places. They mostly interact with abundant, trash-feeding urban birds. You might not like the killing, but it's an artificial ecosystem we created and that can handle the predation just fine.
>>> They pose a major threat to birds, killing an estimated 2.4 billion birds each year in the U.S. alone, making cats the top source of direct, human-caused bird mortality in the U.S.
Is this the stat you have issue with? Or is the contention that a pet on a city street at 11:40 PM is not highly at risk of being run over by a human driver?
I just want to point out that you called the outdoor cat stats bullshit, and then proceed to make up "probably true because it feels that way" facts to show that.
Maybe the stats are bullshit and maybe they're not, but I don't care. It's beside the point. Cats want to go outside so you should let them, or don't have them in places where they can't like very dense urban areas. Would you spend your whole life indoors if it gave you another 10 years? I think not. Somehow people who would never accept this for themselves have no problem doing it to their cats.
>“A human driver can be held accountable, can hop out, say sorry, can be tracked down by police if it’s a hit-and-run,” Ms. Fielder said in an interview. “Here, there is no one to hold accountable.”
But would a human even suffer consequences in this case? Else in the article mentions:
>The city does not track how many animals are killed by cars each year, but the number is in the hundreds, according to Deb Campbell, a spokeswoman for Animal Care and Control in San Francisco.
and
>Waymo does not dispute that one of its cars killed Kit Kat. The company released a statement saying that when one of its vehicles was picking up passengers, a cat “darted under our vehicle as it was pulling away.”
In other words, it could have easily happened to a human driver, and all the uproar in this case is only because people are being selectively angry against Waymo for... other reasons:
>Still, Kit Kat’s death has given new fuel to detractors. They argue that robot taxis steal riders from public transit, eliminate jobs for people, enrich Silicon Valley executives — and are just plain creepy.
>...
>Ms. Fielder has strong ties to labor unions, including the Teamsters, which has fought for more regulation of autonomous vehicles, largely out of concern for members who could eventually lose their own driving jobs in other sectors.
It's obviously sad that an animal was killed in an accident, but the outrage towards Waymo and media coverage definitely seems disproportionate given statistical context, and I was pleasantly surprised that the article made efforts to point that out rather than dogpiling on Waymo.
> But would a human even suffer consequences in this case?
Criminally, no. Civil liability, probably only up to the price of a cat, and that's if you can prove it wasn't the cat's or its owner's fault.
But I don't think that's what they're talking about. A human can feel bad, genuinely apologize, etc. And by extension, if they cause more serious harm, they are personally liable and might see the inside of a jail cell. A corporation has no feelings and no one is ever going to prison even if a Waymo car runs over a child.
This might be the first time we're putting autonomous tech that's likely to cause a fair number of deaths in plain view, so I think there are legitimate questions around how we want to handle that. Does the corporate liability model need to change? If it doesn't, how long before the first ex-spouse of a Waymo engineer gets "accidentally" ran over by an autonomous car?
>But I don't think that's what they're talking about. A human can feel bad, genuinely apologize, etc.
For this particular case, I don't see this as anything other than performative. Yes, it might make people feel better because someone is sorry, but it's not going to change anything. No taxi driver is going to look under their car after picking up a passenger, on the off chance there's a cat under.
>And by extension, if they cause more serious harm, they are personally liable and might see the inside of a jail cell. A corporation has no feelings and no one is ever going to prison even if a Waymo car runs over a child.
All of this assumes that Waymo is actually at fault, which isn't the case for this accident. It's certainly something worth considering, but using this accident as a rallying cry is massively disingenuous. It's like having a rape happen and then going on a rant about immigrants being rapists, but when it turned out the suspect wasn't actually an immigrant, falling back to "well the potential of immigrants to be rapists is still a serious problem!".
> how long before the first ex-spouse of a Waymo engineer gets "accidentally" ran over by an autonomous car?
This is even more unhinged, and goes from supposing that Waymo might negligent to straight up murder (ie. intentional killing).
You definitely can not. If you hit someone when drunk you are going to prison. However, if you are not drunk and just say "I didn't see them", you'll be fine.
The magician crumpled his hat and the bird was nowhere to be seen. "You crushed it!" Cried the boy. "No, you see" as he opened his coat and the bird flew out. "That's just a different bird that looks the same" protested the boy and his parents shushed him...
Later after the show, they boy returns and witnesses the magician dump a dead bird into the dumpster.
As zizek claims in his new book, progress is not magic. It is always relative to a system and always requires us to ignore dead birds.
Waymo was on a roll in San Francisco. It still is, but it used to be, too. (With apologies to Mitch.) This is utter sensationalism. Fortunately, the state's regulations have liberated the good people of SF from being able to shoot ourselves in our own foot on this particular issue.
Having jobs like uber and Lyft available - self employed on your own time - are terrific stop gaps when people lose thier real job, or need a little extra for thier familly. Doing away with them will create a much worse society.
> Jackie Fielder, a progressive San Francisco supervisor who represents the Mission District, has been among the most vocal critics. She introduced a city resolution after Kit Kat’s death that calls for the state Legislature to let voters decide if driverless cars can operate where they live. (Currently, the state regulates autonomous vehicles in California.)
If this had anything to do with safety, this so-called “Progressive” supervisor Jackie Fielder would be investigating what safety features would be feasible on Waymos: emergency stop switches or stop commands, under car cameras, questioning whether the Waymo detected the cat and then just forgot about it when it walked under the car, etc.
Instead, she is using this to secure territory for obviously less safe Uber and Lyft drivers who are represented by the Teamsters. Such a cynical politician.
When a plane crashes no one says “let’s let people decide if planes should be allowed to fly over their houses”, we say “let’s figure out exactly what went wrong and how to make sure it never happens again” and that’s probably why aviation is one of the safest modes of transportation
We do actually.
There are planes that are certified to fly over populated areas, and those that are not.
So what we can infer here is that if Waymo ever kills a person, it’s basically over for them in SF. Your plane analogy is apt, because for us to “get there” with autonomous cars, where it’s anywhere and everywhere, we’ll have to be willing to basically die to some degree. Just like in planes.
It would childish not to come to terms with that.
That's true but there's also a separate element here which is there is an obvious need for aviation and not an obvious need for autonomous vehicles.
> not an obvious need for autonomous vehicles
We've grown numb to it, but 40,000 US traffic fatalities is an obvious need.
I think that this approach could feasibly lead to something far safer than human drivers (from what I’ve seen they already are safer), so it would be human drivers that we would question the need for at that point
>That's true but there's also a separate element here which is there is an obvious need for aviation and not an obvious need for autonomous vehicles.
At least in America, the need for autonomous vehicles is much, MUCH more obvious than for aviation actually unless you're a 20 year old exclusively city person. In most of the country by area, and at least a good hundred million-ish people by population, being able to have [arbitrary point to point mechanized transportation] is a necessity for normal adult life & work. Right now that equates exclusively to having and being able to drive your own vehicle. There are no other options of any kind unless you are extremely wealthy to the point you can employee an exclusive human brain & body not your own for that role. There are no buses. There are no trains. There are no human driven taxis for that matter. Normal family, friends and neighbors can fill in on an occasional/emergency basis and that's a safety net, but you will be heavily restricted. And tens of millions of people, indeed eventually almost all of us, do not have the ability to safely drive themselves. They are either too young, too old, have some sort of disability preventing it, or have made some poor life choices that nonetheless are compounded upon by this.
Right now it can't be helped, it is what it is, our mechanical technological capability ran ahead of our information processing capability so the human brain and body was called upon to fill in and here we are. The law also reflects that, with far more generosity given to poor and dangerous driving because it's by necessity a quasi-right however much it's called a "privilege". But fully public road autonomous vehicles would change all that. Driving yourself would truly become a hobby practice, not a requirement. Major training could be demanded. If someone has any DUI infractions or the like boom, no more driving privilege. You could be 90 with failing eyesight and reflexes and physically incapable even during the day. And it'd all be ok with everyone still having near identical mobility because they could just fall back on having the car itself take them where they need or want to go on their schedule, same as someone driving today.
That'd be just wildly huge and will only get bigger as America follows the rest of the developed world in terms of aging demographics. This is putting aside all sorts of massive improvements in productivity, lives saved, urban/suburban/rural development, electrification, and probably more we haven't considered. Certainly there are pitfalls to be avoided but it blows my mind anyone could possibly not see all this. The car is one of the most important things in American society and consumes EONS of human time. Literally. An eon is a span of one billion years. Hundreds of millions of people have absolute spent a year or more of their lives behind a steering wheel. It adds up. Anything that shifts that is by definition enormous.
Progressives always defend legacy obsolete businesses against competition. They tried to stop Uber and Lyft from replacing cabs and now they do the same with Waymo.
Non-US perspective: ”Progressive” and ”conservative” labels don’t make much sense to me these days.
Perhaps you need another way of thinking about these things.
Of course they don't. Political labels don't cross national boundaries easily. Even right next door in Canada "conservative" means nothing like it does in the US.
Yea they do when you have a firm foundation on political theory. However, parties often diverge from their name.
And people often have no idea what the actual principles of an ideology are, they go with whatever their friends/family/bubble says is good.
Another non-US perspective - you can't tell them how to think about their weird political camps.
We saw this play out with Uber. The "progressive" side wants things to be more regulated and frames it in terms of protecting vulnerable people from unchecked corporate power. The "conservative" side does wants less regulation and more competition to keep things from stagnating economically.
The same thing is happening with AI, and with self driving cars.
It's sort of counterintuitive that on the surface, at least in this case, the "conservative" side is the one welcoming change and the "progressive" side rejects it.
You see this federally in the US. The "conservatives" want to tear down all the institutions, but they'll frame it as a return to traditional values like self sufficiency and freedom. The "progressives" want a return to the Biden era, in the name of people depending on these programs.
Many Canadians here, but I guess that makes sense.
To the rest of the world (right or wrong) you are culturally pretty much the same as Americans.
Yes. I know. Your political scene is wildly different.
How can people not understand this. The entire leftist edifice is carving out more and more pieces for handouts. That’s it. This is arguing for another handout
I guess I'm a bit more generous to them on this point. Ironically, what they are is actually conservatives (in the generic meaning of preserving the status quo, not the American political meaning). What they want is stability and freedom from risk. They have this idea that you should be able to get one job and work it for your entire career, and they often cite the post WWII period as an example of this.
Of course technological progress is anathema to this. Progress is chaos. It causes disruption of entire industries, which TBF does disrupt people's lives. So they enact policies to defend existing industries from competition and fence off who is allowed to do what job with useless credentials and certifications. Essentially trying to preserve the status quo forever. They trade long term progress for short term comfort. The practical economic effect of this is, in fact, a handout to incumbents, and there are plenty of grifters on board for this reason, but it isn't the driving force behind it.
I agree with your take but it’s just another form of handout, which the rest of society pays for
This story reads like the sugar industry calling out vegetables because someone choked on a carrot.
I'm sad for the cat, but this story is still borderline satire.
And it will be the same when the first human is killed by a Waymo
People driving cars kill cats all the time. I would bet much more than self driving cars will. The overall number of cats being killed by cars will probably go down with self driving cars.
Letting your cat roam outdoors is cruelty.
Fascinating. I’ve viewed imprisoning a cat within a single set of rooms for the entirety of its life as cruelty.
They wish so clearly to roam, to hunt, to mark territory and to meet other cats. A full life excels a maximally long one, no?
By that logic attempting to "own" a cat is the root of the cruelty, no?
Once you've committed that root cruelty, it is more cruel to imprison it in safety or allow it to roam in an environment with known dangers?
Absolutely. And it's not just cat's. Look at the number of deer that get hit by cars every year. And like I said in another post, I saw two dead raccoons by the side of the road yesterday in the space of a few miles. Cats, dogs, deer, raccoons, bobcats, etc. should all be strictly indoor animals.
Like I said when I first heard about this, if anybody really cared about that "beloved" cat it would not have been roaming around in the street.
An opportunity to improve self-driving to be even better than humans, who would likely not have prevented the accident either.
I always assume that people who say this either don't own cats, bought one from a breeder and raised it indoors from day one, or live in an apartment building where you need to go through multiple doors to get outside.
Most cats that spent some time outdoors will want to be outdoors. In many settings, it's nearly impossible to keep them in because they will try to sneak out every time they get a chance. Package delivery, you coming back with groceries, etc.
And most of the anti-outdoor-cat stats are more or less bullsh-t. The average lifespan of feral cats might be five years. The average lifespan of a cat that has a home but gets to go out is probably pretty close to an indoor cat. And while outdoor cats can kill birds for sport, they're not causing extinction events in most places. They mostly interact with abundant, trash-feeding urban birds. You might not like the killing, but it's an artificial ecosystem we created and that can handle the predation just fine.
>>> They pose a major threat to birds, killing an estimated 2.4 billion birds each year in the U.S. alone, making cats the top source of direct, human-caused bird mortality in the U.S.
Is this the stat you have issue with? Or is the contention that a pet on a city street at 11:40 PM is not highly at risk of being run over by a human driver?
https://abcbirds.org/solutions/keep-cats-indoors/
I do own a cat and he runs the neighborhood.
I’ve also known people whose cats got hit by cars. Even driveway accidents.
Is there some reason we don’t want a smarter car that avoids pets and wildlife?
I just want to point out that you called the outdoor cat stats bullshit, and then proceed to make up "probably true because it feels that way" facts to show that.
Not taking a side, but your argument is...weak.
Maybe the stats are bullshit and maybe they're not, but I don't care. It's beside the point. Cats want to go outside so you should let them, or don't have them in places where they can't like very dense urban areas. Would you spend your whole life indoors if it gave you another 10 years? I think not. Somehow people who would never accept this for themselves have no problem doing it to their cats.
>“A human driver can be held accountable, can hop out, say sorry, can be tracked down by police if it’s a hit-and-run,” Ms. Fielder said in an interview. “Here, there is no one to hold accountable.”
But would a human even suffer consequences in this case? Else in the article mentions:
>The city does not track how many animals are killed by cars each year, but the number is in the hundreds, according to Deb Campbell, a spokeswoman for Animal Care and Control in San Francisco.
and
>Waymo does not dispute that one of its cars killed Kit Kat. The company released a statement saying that when one of its vehicles was picking up passengers, a cat “darted under our vehicle as it was pulling away.”
In other words, it could have easily happened to a human driver, and all the uproar in this case is only because people are being selectively angry against Waymo for... other reasons:
>Still, Kit Kat’s death has given new fuel to detractors. They argue that robot taxis steal riders from public transit, eliminate jobs for people, enrich Silicon Valley executives — and are just plain creepy.
>...
>Ms. Fielder has strong ties to labor unions, including the Teamsters, which has fought for more regulation of autonomous vehicles, largely out of concern for members who could eventually lose their own driving jobs in other sectors.
It's obviously sad that an animal was killed in an accident, but the outrage towards Waymo and media coverage definitely seems disproportionate given statistical context, and I was pleasantly surprised that the article made efforts to point that out rather than dogpiling on Waymo.
> But would a human even suffer consequences in this case?
Criminally, no. Civil liability, probably only up to the price of a cat, and that's if you can prove it wasn't the cat's or its owner's fault.
But I don't think that's what they're talking about. A human can feel bad, genuinely apologize, etc. And by extension, if they cause more serious harm, they are personally liable and might see the inside of a jail cell. A corporation has no feelings and no one is ever going to prison even if a Waymo car runs over a child.
This might be the first time we're putting autonomous tech that's likely to cause a fair number of deaths in plain view, so I think there are legitimate questions around how we want to handle that. Does the corporate liability model need to change? If it doesn't, how long before the first ex-spouse of a Waymo engineer gets "accidentally" ran over by an autonomous car?
>But I don't think that's what they're talking about. A human can feel bad, genuinely apologize, etc.
For this particular case, I don't see this as anything other than performative. Yes, it might make people feel better because someone is sorry, but it's not going to change anything. No taxi driver is going to look under their car after picking up a passenger, on the off chance there's a cat under.
>And by extension, if they cause more serious harm, they are personally liable and might see the inside of a jail cell. A corporation has no feelings and no one is ever going to prison even if a Waymo car runs over a child.
All of this assumes that Waymo is actually at fault, which isn't the case for this accident. It's certainly something worth considering, but using this accident as a rallying cry is massively disingenuous. It's like having a rape happen and then going on a rant about immigrants being rapists, but when it turned out the suspect wasn't actually an immigrant, falling back to "well the potential of immigrants to be rapists is still a serious problem!".
> how long before the first ex-spouse of a Waymo engineer gets "accidentally" ran over by an autonomous car?
This is even more unhinged, and goes from supposing that Waymo might negligent to straight up murder (ie. intentional killing).
Other very relevant, undisputed context: the accident happened at 11:40 at night
> But would a human even suffer consequences in this case?
Never. In the US you can drive drunk and speeding and kill a person and walk away with basically an "oopsie".
You definitely can not. If you hit someone when drunk you are going to prison. However, if you are not drunk and just say "I didn't see them", you'll be fine.
Self driving cars have literally killed people and that didn’t throw a wrench in the operation. But a cat does?!
Uber and GM's self-driving programs were both cancelled due to a fatality and serious injury.
The magician crumpled his hat and the bird was nowhere to be seen. "You crushed it!" Cried the boy. "No, you see" as he opened his coat and the bird flew out. "That's just a different bird that looks the same" protested the boy and his parents shushed him...
Later after the show, they boy returns and witnesses the magician dump a dead bird into the dumpster.
As zizek claims in his new book, progress is not magic. It is always relative to a system and always requires us to ignore dead birds.
Waymo was on a roll in San Francisco. It still is, but it used to be, too. (With apologies to Mitch.) This is utter sensationalism. Fortunately, the state's regulations have liberated the good people of SF from being able to shoot ourselves in our own foot on this particular issue.
past the paywall: https://archive.ph/Axj2B
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45740161
Having jobs like uber and Lyft available - self employed on your own time - are terrific stop gaps when people lose thier real job, or need a little extra for thier familly. Doing away with them will create a much worse society.
So will hampering the rollout of self driving cars to further the interests of unions.
Everything you read is in service of someone's business model.
In this case, the business model of a public representative taking a lot of funding from Teamsters who are pissed about autonomous vehicles
I can't wait until people who want to run red lights and steer into bus stops have to pay exorbitant self-driving fees.
This is a farce. Handwringing about a cat while SF drivers kill hundreds per year, and SF policy kills thousands.