One thing I noticed on Twitter is that Tesla is doing massive damage to AV perception. Waymo has an incredible safety record, and Tesla's should probably land some people in jail. But Tesla's recklessness is driving some of the hate towards Cruise and Waymo.
“Coning” AVs is part of a long tradition of tactical urbanism
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Re: “Coning” AVs is part of a long tradition of tactical urbanism
#32A piece of tape over the cameras is probably enough to immobilize most SDVs. Works on humans too. Guarding against vandalism isn’t really the car makers job. Tires have always been easy to slash. That’s why we have laws and penalties for breaking them.
Is this vandalism, though? No actual damage is done to the car. It's even less invasive than a piece of tape, because the cone is just sitting there. It could even be done without touching the car itself. Just place a few mannequins in front and behind the car, so it can't go anywhere.
Re: “Coning” AVs is part of a long tradition of tactical urbanism
#33One thing I noticed on Twitter is that Tesla is doing massive damage to AV perception. Waymo has an incredible safety record, and Tesla's should probably land some people in jail. But Tesla's recklessness is driving some of the hate towards Cruise and Waymo.
Cruise isn't in the same league as Waymo in terms of quality
Re: “Coning” AVs is part of a long tradition of tactical urbanism
#34This particularly protest is elegant because it's effective exactly to the extent that self-driving cars are not adaptable—it highlights the brittleness of the system by getting a substantial effect from a small nudge.
It was a political stunt by an aide to one of SF's supervisors. It did not arise organically from people upset about self driving cars. I don't think there was anything elegant about it. Just politics as usual in SF where the progressives battle the über-progressives over meaningless issues like re-naming schools while homeless people die on the street, the Tenderloin is an open sewer, and downtown withers away. It really hurts to see what has happened to my hometown over the past decade. I blame district elections and a weak mayor, both of which have contributed to a government that is incapable of doing much of anything. I suppose ultimately the voters are to blame.
Re: “Coning” AVs is part of a long tradition of tactical urbanism
#35Luddites abound in San Francisco. Coning AVs is part of a long tradition of Luddites, just like smashing looms.
That's being too kind to them. Luddites didn't actively try to maintain a state of affairs that resulted in 30,000 deaths per year in their country alone. These idiots are doing just that.
Re: “Coning” AVs is part of a long tradition of tactical urbanism
#36This is one of the dumbest "tactics" I've had to witness. These are the same people falsifying data that makes autonomous vehicles appear more unsafe than they are. "New letter from CA state accuses SF officials of data manipulation: In the 4 @Waymo traffic collisions SF cited to prove driverless cars are less safe, 3 were the Waymos being rear-ended and 1 didn't even involve any cars touching, CA says." Source: http…
I really doubt the people putting cones on cars are "the same people" as officials for SF transportation agencies.
this is SF. It would not surprise me.
Re: “Coning” AVs is part of a long tradition of tactical urbanism
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
> reduce car ownership Really? Since when has making using something more convenient reduced ownership of it? The less of a pain it is to take a car somewhere, the more often people will take cars places. It's very slightly possible that there will be fewer total cars all running at a higher utilization, but the mean number of cars on the road at any given time would seem like it would only go up.
> Really? Since when has making using something more convenient reduced ownership of it? These will be more convenient, but also dramatically more expensive, and _that_ certainly reduces the ownership of things. > the mean number of cars on the road at any given time would seem like it would only go up That's orthogonal to the question of level of ownership -- these can both be true simultaneously. And it may even be…
> These will be more convenient, but also dramatically more expensive, and _that_ certainly reduces the ownership of things.
Yes making them dramatically more expensive would reduce ownership. I suspect they will be expensive at first, but can't think of any reasons they won't get cheaper with time.
>> the mean number of cars on the road at any given time would seem like it would only go up
> That's orthogonal to the question of level of ownership -- these can both be true simultaneously.
It's not orthogonal, but they aren't completely tied together. Per-car utilization would have to go up for them both to be true.
> And it may even be the case that the number of cars on the road goes down. The idea would be that if these services are convenient enough for more people to forego owning their own vehicle in favor of using a fleet, the economics on a per-trip basis would change: ...
Again this seems to presuppose that self-driving cars will require a significantly higher capital outlay (or perhaps that cities not named "New York" will make parking significantly more burdensome, though that could happen without self-driving cars). If a new self-driving car costs a few thousand more than a non-self driving car, and enough people buy new ones that a thriving used market occurs, the outcome would instead be to move people from "Of course I take transit to work; it's only a bit longer and I can read" towards using cars.
Re: “Coning” AVs is part of a long tradition of tactical urbanism
#38I think the jury is still out on self driving vehicles, but the ever larger trucks and SUV's on our streets are a clear and present danger to life and limb. I'd focus on those in terms of street safety, as well as safe infrastructure for people walking or biking.
There seems to be very little incentive to buy a compact car in the US, especially when the calculus involves _every other driver_ is in 6000 lb death machine, with 400 more horsepower than they need and vision-blocking A-pillars the size of small cars themselves. Oversized vehicles and non-commercial trucks need to be taxed to death.
Re: “Coning” AVs is part of a long tradition of tactical urbanism
#39A piece of tape over the cameras is probably enough to immobilize most SDVs. Works on humans too. Guarding against vandalism isn’t really the car makers job. Tires have always been easy to slash. That’s why we have laws and penalties for breaking them.
Is this vandalism, though? No actual damage is done to the car. It's even less invasive than a piece of tape, because the cone is just sitting there. It could even be done without touching the car itself. Just place a few mannequins in front and behind the car, so it can't go anywhere.
I can't imagine this counting as vandalism in any reasonable world. Vandalism involves actually damaging things. Coning damages nothing.
As you suggest, putting tape over cameras is closer to actual vandalism because it could leave tape residue on the lens.
Re: “Coning” AVs is part of a long tradition of tactical urbanism
#40This is the "anti-nuclear" of urbanism. AVs are safe now and they're only going to get safer. You can't legitimately say you care about pedestrian and bike safety and then turn around and suddenly try and block AVs because the vibes are wrong.
Matters of safety are not the only problem with our urban transportation systems, but the AV companies would like for you to think about it that way. It's single vector sci-fi.
Perhaps, unlike disaffected urban youth (read: trust-fund anarchists), the AV companies are smart enough to address one problem at a time.