Wielding Rocks and Knives, Arizonans Attack Self-Driving Cars

[Frank Cannon]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/31/us/waymo-self-driving-cars-arizona-attacks.html

CHANDLER, Ariz. — The assailant slipped out of a park around noon one day in October, zeroing in on his target, which was idling at a nearby intersection — a self-driving van operated by Waymo, the driverless-car company spun out of Google.

He carried out his attack with an unidentified sharp object, swiftly slashing one of the tires. The suspect, identified as a white man in his 20s, then melted into the neighborhood on foot.

The slashing was one of nearly two dozen attacks on driverless vehicles over the past two years in Chandler, a city near Phoenix where Waymo started testing its vans in 2017. In ways large and small, the city has had an early look at public misgivings over the rise of artificial intelligence, with city officials hearing complaints about everything from safety to possible job losses.

Some people have pelted Waymo vans with rocks, according to police reports. Others have repeatedly tried to run the vehicles off the road. One woman screamed at one of the vans, telling it to get out of her suburban neighborhood. A man pulled up alongside a Waymo vehicle and threatened the employee riding inside with a piece of PVC pipe.

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.

“There are other places they can test,” said Erik O’Polka, 37, who was issued a warning by the police in November after multiple reports that his Jeep Wrangler had tried to run Waymo vans off the road — in one case, driving head-on toward one of the self-driving vehicles until it was forced to come to an abrupt stop.

[Frank Cannon]

God Bless America and the fine folks trashing and harassing these rolling garbage cans. I wouldn't want these death traps roaming my neighborhood either. People don't want self driving cars, electric cars or any of these Big Brother population control devices.

[Smokin Joe]

God Bless America and the fine folks trashing and harassing these rolling garbage cans. I wouldn't want these death traps roaming my neighborhood either. People don't want self driving cars, electric cars or any of these Big Brother population control devices.

Sure they want them, or some do.
Unlike cabbies, their hard drives can be erased, records deleted, no muss, no fuss, no 'botched robbery' with nothing taken, and no body to dispose of. The only 'witness' won't show.  If you control them, want someone dead, just blame the computer. no one will get the code out afterwards, not after they peel the car off the front of that cement truck.

All nice and tidy, and it won't even talk about who they were found under the pool table with...

But no, I don't want to be sharing the road with them, either.

[DB]

Sure they want them, or some do.
Unlike cabbies, their hard drives can be erased, records deleted, no muss, no fuss, no 'botched robbery' with nothing taken, and no body to dispose of. The only 'witness' won't show.  If you control them, want someone dead, just blame the computer. no one will get the code out afterwards, not after they peel the car off the front of that cement truck.

All nice and tidy, and it won't even talk about who they were found under the pool table with...

But no, I don't want to be sharing the road with them, either.

The same goes for electronic votes. Votes can be manufactured or erased without a trace...

[Smokin Joe]

The same goes for electronic votes. Votes can be manufactured or erased without a trace...

Yep (bank accounts, too, for that matter--electronic transfer to limbo).
Part of why I still like cash.