Several of Waymo’s autonomous vehicles were seen stuck in the middle of San Francisco streets following a significant power outage that took out the city’s traffic lights. Waymo responded to the power outage by suspending its ride-hailing services in the city, but images and videos on social media showed the self-driving taxis stopped at intersections with hazard lights on.
“We have temporarily suspended our ride-hailing services in the San Francisco Bay Area due to the widespread power outage,” Suzanne Philion, a spokesperson for Waymo, told Engadget in an email. “Our teams are working diligently and in close coordination with city officials, and we are hopeful to bring our services back online soon.”
We’ve managed to create a society where people are upset about technology doing the work that people used to do. We’ve just completely lost the plot haven’t we
Or, we managed to create a society where people are upset about new, unregulated, and, according to the article in question, potentially dangerous technology being implemented with little regard to the public good.
I agree with those things, but I believe the person I was responding to was complaining about putting cab drivers out of work. I just think it’s unfortunate that we can’t simply take care of each other, that people are only valued based on what they produce, and therefore any threat to that production is viewed as negative. We’re more productive than ever and we work more than ever. Our ancestors would be baffled if they could see us
That was me, and my point was that we already had a suitable, regulated, and relatively safe system in place, ie taxis, so there’s no need for innovation that will needlessly endanger people.