Town Revolts: Locals Attack Google's Self-Driving Cars With Rocks, Guns and Knives

 Just outside of Phoenix, Arizona, in the town of Chandler,  Google’s self-driving car subsidiary Waymo has been running on-road  tests for their vehicles for the past two years. However, local  residents are not very excited about the project. In fact, local  residents are becoming hostile with the self-driving vehicles. 

Police reports indicate that some local residents have pelted Waymo  cars with rocks in addition to attempting to run them off the road.  While the vehicles are autonomous, a human driver sits inside  for safety purposes. In multiple cases, the human Waymo drivers have  been threatened. Police have documented the drivers being threatened  with things like PVC pipes and knives. 

In one of the more extreme cases,  a local resident even brandished a gun. 

Last month, AZCentral reported  that 69-year-old Roy Leonard Haselton was arrested for waving his gun  at a Waymo driver. Haselton later told reporters he was concerned about  the safety threat posed by the vehicles, citing the death of a woman killed by an autonomous Uber vehicle in nearby Tempe.   

In response to the Haselton case, Waymo suggested it was an isolated  incident and that the community is supportive of the project. “This is a rare circumstance involving a man with  reported illness, and it doesn’t reflect the positive community response  we’ve received from people who are excited and curious about  self-driving technology,” Waymo said in a statement after the incident. 

There have been at least 21 attacks on Waymo vehicles in the town of Chandler since they began operating. 

Waymo has reportedly neglected to press charges for any of the  incidents, in a likely attempt to avoid bad publicity. 

However, Waymo  has denied that they were not pressing charges to avoid controversy. “Safety is the core of everything we do, which  means that keeping our drivers, our riders, and the public safe is our  top priority. Over the past two years, we’ve found Arizonans to be  welcoming and excited by the potential of this technology to make our  roads safer. We report incidents we deem to pose a danger and we have  provided photos and videos to local law enforcement when reporting these  acts of vandalism or assault. We support our drivers and engage in  cases where an act of vandalism has been perpetrated against us,” a statement from the company read. 

According to Waymo, these accounts make up a very small portion of  the 25,000 miles the vehicles travel each day in the area. However, only  the most extreme cases, where people are willing to resort to violence,  result in the police reports to which Waymo has responded. It is indeed  possible that many other residents in town disapprove of the project  but don’t have the urge to act violently.   

The self-driving cars are maneuvered with complex algorithms that  calculate everything from weather conditions, to red lights, to evasive  moves in situations that may result in an accident. Strange ethical questions have appeared in the tweaking of these  algorithms. For example, is it ethical for a car to be programmed to  kill you if it means saving the lives of many other people? That very question is one that researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) are currently considering. UAB researcher Ameen Barghi said:   

“Imagine you are in charge of the switch on a trolley  track. The express is due any minute; but as you glance down the line  you see a school bus, filled with children, stalled at the level  crossing. No problem; that’s why you have this switch. But on the  alternate track there’s more trouble: Your child, who has come to work  with you, has fallen down on the rails and can’t get up. That switch can  save your child or a bus-full of others, but not both. What do you do?”

Barghi continued: 

“Utilitarianism tells us that we should always do  what will produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of  people,” he explained. In other words, if it comes down to a choice  between sending you into a concrete wall or swerving into the path of an  oncoming bus, your car should be programmed to do the former.  Deontology, on the other hand, argues that some values are simply  categorically always true. For example, murder is always wrong, and we  should never do it. Even if shifting the trolley will save five lives,  we shouldn’t do it because we would be actively killing one.”

Autonomous vehicles were in the news again this week,  after a self-driving Tesla ran over a humanoid robot named Promobot at  the CES technology convention in Las Vegas. Many have suggested the  incident was staged as a PR stunt, which is plausible considering Tesla  CEO Elon Musk’s perspective on Artificial Intelligence. However, according to Promobot’s Development Director Oleg Kivokurtsev, the team had nothing to do with the accident. “Of course we are vexed, we brought this robot here from Philadelphia to participate at CES. Now it neither cannot  participate in the event or be recovered. We will conduct an internal  investigation and find out why the robot went to the roadway,” Kivokurtsev said.