Folks in San Francisco are not pleased with the self-driving cars taking over their streets, and now they seem to be taking action. A new TikTok trend shows San Francisco citizens disabling robo-taxis using the humble and widely available traffic cone.
It’s safe to say Google’s Waymo and GM’s Cruise seem to have worn out their welcome in the Bay Area. The snafus have been numerous; stalled cars have randomly blocked traffic on busy nights, blocked buses, interfered with first responders and even knowingly hit a dog. Despite the self-driving cars not proving any better than human drivers (and occasionally proving much worse), the two companies are trying to expand both their operating hours and territory.
An anti-car activist organization called Safe Street Rebel seeks to return the streets to the people posted this compilation of folks placing traffic cones on the hoods of self-driving cars, disabling the vehicles.
Safe Street Rebel have some very legitimate complaints about the self-driving cars, including concerns about pollution, traffic, mining issues (all of the self-driving cars are EVs) and accountability. They note that self-driving cars don’t get tickets when they commit moving violations, for instance. Stalled self-driving cars blocking buses and bike lanes contributes to the weight of such testing shifting on to poorer people, or those who choose not to have a car at all.
The activist group insists that people should only put cones on the hoods of cars with no passengers inside. The cone debilitates the self-driving car in such a way that it does no damage to the vehicle, but it does disable the car until a tech can physically arrive to remove the cone. Waymo told Road & Track it is taking the incidents very seriously.
A spokesperson for Waymo told Road & Track that “[n]ot only is this understanding of how AVs operate incorrect, but this is vandalism and encourages unsafe and disrespectful behavior on our roadways. We will notify law enforcement of any unwanted or unsafe interference of our vehicles on public roadways.”
Seriously guys, you don’t want to go around touching and messing with things that aren’t yours, so maybe don’t do this. It would be a dumb reason to get arrested when there are so many good ones. Instead, as Safe Street Rebel notes, there will be a California Public Utilities Commission meeting July 13 at 11 a.m., and it is the perfect venue for citizens to voice their concerns.