We need consent to allow people to do possibly dangerous things on the road? Because I see legal things that are incredibly dangerous done on the road every day and nobody asked for my consent.
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Yes - someone individually acting irresponsibly is exactly the same as huge corporations lobby to remove safety regulations on their products.
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Okay, I’ll grant that it’s not good that this is being deregulated.
Somehow I still think it’s very stupid to run autonomous or any car off the road no matter how upset you are with this deregulation.
That’s just a stupid and dangerous thing to do.
It’s not okay to run people off the road when you’re upset about what the corporation is doing. You need to talk with your representatives in your state legislature about that. You need to gather people and make political statements.
Running cars off the road isn’t going to solve any problems.
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I don’t know who here is arguing in support of running cars off the road?
I will observe that it’s an obvious consequence of not working with communities that you will have resistance.
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Poor defenseless driverless cars being pursued by killer humans, that’s a switch!
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All demolition derbies will be held on the track!
Of course - the Carradine exception applies.
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A man pulled up alongside a Waymo vehicle and threatened the employee riding inside with a piece of PVC pipe.
…
a man waved a .22-caliber revolver at … the emergency backup driver at the wheel
…
test driver Michael Palos saw something startling as he sat behind the wheel — a bearded man in shorts aiming a handgun at him as he passed the man’s driveway
So… they aren’t so much attacking/threatening “driverless cars” but the (backup) drivers of those cars? (It would be pretty silly to threaten an empty car…) I was all ready to sympathize with the neighbors, but once you start threatening human beings I’ve got zero sympathy. Also, deliberately trying to cause a car accident seriously isn’t cool either, especially when your issue is that you don’t think the car will respond safely. So yeah, fuck these people.
Also: conflating Waymo with Uber’s bullshit isn’t helpful. What Uber did was fucked up. Someone(s) at Uber should be held criminally liable for that accident (and not the backup driver) - my understanding is that the system was set up such that it registered that someone was in front of the car but not only didn’t stop, but did nothing to alert the backup driver (who had also apparently been lulled into false security by the system mostly stopping when appropriate). That’s a recipe for backup driver inattentiveness and inability to respond in time, leading directly (and very avoidably) to disaster.
Or more accurately, a tech reporter can empathize with waving a gun at the driver/passenger of a “driverless” car? That’s even closer to home…
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I’m in exactly the same boat as a non-driver for vision issues, but frankly I wouldn’t hold your breath on true driverless vehicles being available soon (or maybe ever). Vehicles that can drive by themselves on highways, yeah sure. But ones that can really drive themselves 100% of the time including parking, one way streets, construction, detours, etc – well…
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There have been accidents in the area involving the autonomous vans.
Crashes, not accidents.
Tho as the very first post here points out, that particular link points to an example where the self-driving van, being operated in manual mode at the time by a test driver, was in no way at fault…
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The old shirtless white guy in Arizona waving his gun around is supposed to be the good guy?
Did y’all get bought out by the NRA or something?
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They don’t want driverless cars. They’re afraid they’ll be killed by a car driven by a robot, and they prefer strongly to be killed by a human. It isn’t the same when a robot runs you down; it’s so impersonal.
Fortunately, their odds are good. It’s a bit of a bloodbath with the humans; they’re killing about a hundred people a day, just in the U.S. Just be patient, small-calibre-handgun guy; your number is coming up soon!
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What does “suitability” mean in this context? Do you consider our current, human-piloted fleet suitable? You’re aware that they kill about a hundred people a day, just in the U.S., right? How many fatalities per mile would a system have to rack up to be considered unsuitable?
Most of the people who object to robot cars seem unaware of what we have now.
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Two words, “limo tint”.
The duly elected officials representing the local population did consent.
If the local population disagrees with that then they need to elect some representatives who will revoke that consent.
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That seems to be working out well for them.
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Which is an entirely different problem. 
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People putting up a building often have to get community buy in - guy’s trying to take over every street in the country- nah.
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Especially since they are not, in fact, “driverless”. There is a back up driver, a real human, this whack job was brandishing his gun at.
Edit: I see Shuck has addressed this point.
BB has also implicitly endorsed stealing electric scooters and re purposing their parts or changing out the the controller to use it as an electric scooter as a “protest” against their presence in cities.
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We live in a representative democracy. The people of Arizona elected the officials who issued permits for the tests. That is consent.
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