The Self-Driving Cars Wearing a Cone of Shame

There’s a brilliant activist campaign to stop San Francisco’s autonomous vehicles in their tracks.

BY ALISON GRISWOLD

JULY 11, 202310:45 AM

It looks like a sad unicorn (which, in a way, it is). Screengrab from TikTok/Safe Street Rebel

 

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This article is adapted from Oversharing, a newsletter about the sharing economy.

Self-driving cars have met their match in the form of the humble traffic cone.

If you’re on TikTok, you may have seen what I’m talking about: a viral video of San Francisco activists disabling autonomous Cruise and Waymo vehicles by placing bright orange traffic cones on their hoods.

The cones immobilize the autonomous vehicles by forcing them into “shutdown mode” with their hazard lights on, “until the cone is removed or a company technician comes to reset the car’s system,” the San Francisco Standard reported. Safe Street Rebel, the group behind the stunt, unleashed the cones last week ahead of a vote scheduled for Thursday by the California Public Utilities Commission that could allow Cruise and Waymo robotaxis unimpeded access to public streets in the city as the next phase of their development. Right now, Cruise (which is owned by General Motors) and Waymo (part of Alphabet, né Google) are offering limited service in San Francisco—a trial rollout that has caused enough actual chaos in the city to justify locals’ mistrust. “We want to either have [autonomous vehicles] not on the city streets at all or very limited,” one Rebel told the Standard. “It’s like the state has decided that these things are going to be deployed in San Francisco without the consent of the city or the people in it.”

 

Speaking to the Standard, an unnamed Waymo spokesperson called the coning “vandalism” that “encourages unsafe and disrespectful behavior on our roadways.” Hannah Lindow, a Cruise spokesperson who at least attached her name to her statement, told the publication that “intentionally obstructing vehicles gets in the way of those efforts and risks creating traffic congestion for local residents.” The SFMTA, San Francisco’s municipal transportation agency, said on Twitter on Friday that it “does not endorse ANY actions that may increase the number of disabled AVs on San Francisco streets,” and encouraged people to attend this week’s CPUC meeting.