Seen a lot of half baked arguments.
I’ve been in the area and met this cat. First off, this cat started as a stray, and found its way to the corner store that took it in and adopted it for all intents and purposes. Its lived in the same spot for many years, and had always been an exceptionally chill cat. Painting him as a typical outdoor cat is disingenuous and uninformed.
KitKat has been safe and sound for so long without any issues. There’s gotta be literally millions of cars that have driven past in his residency on 16th in the Mission district of SF. And the only time he gets hit is by a waymo? All these human drivers, so many of them absolute shit, and never an occurrence? This cat isn’t sprinting the neighborhood, crossing streets, or hunting for prey; its docile, loves pets, and knows there’s endless food at the liquor store that provides all his needs. He wasn’t your typical outdoor cat that runs from everyone and twitches at unknown sounds; this was an urban dwelling cat that’s been prospering for years.
Waymo promotes and brags to riders how many cameras are inside and out of the car. But it so easily hit something that could fuck the car up if it wasn’t soft squishy flesh. Were animals and small children not in any of its test scenarios? Is it infeasble to install cameras where a typical driver couldn’t usually see?
Not to mention the absolutely rude response waymo has had to this event. Instead of apologizing and pledging improvements and retribution to killing a valued community member; they victim-blamed the dead cat, said they didn’t do anything wrong, and said nothing of mitigating future scenarios.
There’s more I can say about the company and its typical ownership, but I want to keep this to the slaughter at hand and their complete lack of consciousness. Waymo doesn’t care about you or anything that it kills. Once again, its about the bottom line and whatever it can do to turn profit.
Obviously accidents happen, but its the reaction that can truly matter in those cases. They’ve shown that causing great harm in a community means nothing to them. And this is in obvious and outspoken situations. What about the less obvious ways? Whether that be job loss, economic factors, environmental concerns, or blatant safety on our streets. If they’re forced, they’ll make a bullshit apology (aka recognition of events) and then focus on moving forward without addressing people’s grief and anger.
Fuck waymo, fuck their response especially, and fuck anyone saying this cat deserved it by being a lazy sidewalk-laying pillar of joy in the neighborhood.
Rest in Peace KitKat. The community will always love you and remember you for always brightening our days in this endlessly threatening world. The only thing that killed you was the ruthless drive for profit. Your memory will live on in the hearts of many. And as a focal point that citizens must stop allowing corporations from plowing down their neighbors, their voice, and their sunshine in a day’s walk to the store.
3:
when the LA riots happened a few months ago and they were torching waymo cars i was confused why they would do that, now im ok with thoese cars being torched. fuck waymo, RIP kitkat
What I’ve learned working at a startup in stealth mode and having larger projects in the back lot behind the building, is that those cars also do not respect ‘no trespassing’ signs and waymo will wait until it gets to the litigious point to bother to fix their routing.
Don’t want your cat to get hit by a car keep it inside.
That wasn’t anyone’s cat, though. It was a denizen of the neighborhood with no owner. The point you’re trying to make has no target.
Cat
“While our vehicle was stopped to pick up passengers, a nearby cat darted under our vehicle as it was pulling away,” a company spokesperson said.
I’m not super keen on robo-cars, because they’re being rushed out by corporations that want to start raking in the money while using the public to beta test their platform. but let’s be honest here, if the car was driven by a human, they almost certainly would have run over that cat too.
Mmmm. You’re taking “company spokesperson” at face value there.
Let’s be real though, a meeting of highly paid, highly skilled people came up with that response then it was sanitised through three more filters before reaching our eyes.
maybe, but I’m also thinking about myself here. if it were me, would I have noticed the cat?
I don’t like admitting it, but the answer is almost certainly no, unless I happened to catch a glimpse of it in my mirror, which is what I would be looking at while pulling away from the curb. I think a robot-driven car should be able to watch all of its surroundings constantly, but I’m just a human and I can only watch one direction at a time.
And for all that it doesn’t even make sense. Was the car stopped or was it pulling away?
Cripty is a classic bootlicker.
listen, it doesn’t matter how obsessed you are with me, I’m not going to sleep with you. I’m out of your league.
Says the guy who is here to defend corporations again.
The only league you are in is the bootlicker competition.
the irony of a liberal calling anyone a bootlicker. since you love landlords so much, you should start charging me rent for all the space I take up in your mind.
A bootlicking Anarchist!? You should be ashamed to be on that instance.
Go defend some more corps simp.
lol says the .worlder. you fit right into that instance. now go hide in the corner and obsess about me some more, you weirdo.
I would have stopped, because I’m not full of shit.
Yet another reason to despise AI. Animals deserve to be safe too. We’ve already taken so much from them as it is.
Ai has a proven track record of causing less accidents, and killing far fewer animals per km traveled than the average driver.
92% fewer accidents involving animals than the average human.
Ai doesn’t drink, get distracted, or smoke meth like the ml mods.
link from the article https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-16/woman-gets-millions-after-getting-dragged-by-self-driving-taxi-in-san-francisco
People get jail time, what do we do with machines?
Public transportation does this too and isn’t controlled by some company trying to make graphs go up
I believe these cars drive on the same roads all day, whereas people are likely to be driving in and out of areas these systems are not familiar with. I suppose a good comparison would be of a taxi driver that only operates in the same area as the driverless cars, if that exists.
And have a nice habit of being turned off before the accident so the AI didn’t cause the accident. Numbers are bullshit.
Then keep the car inside. Outdoor cats are not safe and get killed by cars animals.
Yes, keep the car inside.
So glad I live far away from the tech bros. Must be so annoying living in the bay area.
Used to go to SF for work events.
It felt like a town that once had culture that still wants to peek out, but it almost entirely covered with silicon valley monotony and misanthropic policies. It feels like a city where the people living there are the after thought, and the tablet where you order your coffee while you sit around a room where nobody makes eye contact or speaks to you is the product.
I’m sure there’s a part of the city where humanity still thrives, but it should be a cultural warning to those who are adopting silicon valley cures as anything other than snake oil.
You were probably downtown for a work event. The culture is in the neighborhoods
It’s not, but everyone has their preferences so live where you wanna live
I’ve been to San Francisco and they live like sardines.
It’s not as bad as LA, but they’re trying.
I wish people were as outraged about people getting killed by human drivers. The safety record of these cars has been no less than stellar until now.
Im gonna be real with you. In the lords year 2025 I dont give a flying fuck about more than most people but I do care about every cat. I’d imagine this is a common sentiment.
“But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” – Exodus 21:23-24
“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a supper for a dead cat”.
Rest in peace kitkat
Unpopular opinion: cats are an invasive species in most places, like dogs, and shouldn’t be subject to different regulations than dogs.
Keep them on a leash if you care about them.
Is this a bellwether for how the car will handle a kid? Perhaps. Worth thinking about.
Let cats use them as litter boxes. Cats’ revenge.
Regicide.
A feline queen reigns over my apartment complex. It’s a fair regime.
There is probably an elevated risk of killing cats in any electric vehicle because there are fewer signs that the car is “on” and about to drive.
Idk, I find that at low speeds electric cars are louder than modern internal combustion. They have that SciFi drone sound.
not all of them. there’s a couple in my city that make no noise when driving slowly. they’re so quiet, you can hear their tires popping as they run over small pebbles on the road.
At that speed, the risk of running over anyone is pretty low.
Depending on the year model of the car, it might not make that sound. It wasn’t required on some of the earlier EVs, which could be eerily quiet. I believe it’s required by law on newer models. Pre-2016 Volts has a “pedestrian horn button”; 2016 and newer Volts play a noise continuously as lower speeds. (My Uncle says it sounds like the warp drive hum on the original Star Trek Enterprise.)
Not when parked. A cat would thi k it was a parked car.
Some days ago:
Waymo’s co-CEO has made a bold assertion that society is prepared to accept a death caused by one of the company’s autonomous vehicles.
Yeah, of a person, but this was a cat. We will not stand for this!
People who let their cats roam outside are assholes. As well as being vulnerable to getting run over by cars, cats also kill large numbers of birds and small animals.
You fuck with cats, you fuck with us.
