Two people dressed in dark colors and wearing masks dart into a busy street on a hill in San Francisco. One of them hauls a big orange traffic cone. They sprint toward a driverless car and quickly set the cone on the hood.
The vehicle’s side lights burst on and start flashing orange. And then, it sits there immobile.
“All right, looks good,” one of them says after making sure no one is inside. “Let’s get out of here.” They hop on e-bikes and pedal off.
All it takes to render the technology-packed self-driving car inoperable is a traffic cone. If all goes according to plan, it will stay there, frozen, until someone comes and removes it.
An anonymous activist group called Safe Street Rebel is responsible for this so-called coning incident and dozens of others over the past few months. The group’s goal is to incapacitate the driverless cars roaming San Francisco’s streets as a protest against the city being used as a testing ground for this emerging technology.
Over the past couple of years, driverless cars have become ubiquitous throughout San Francisco. It began with human safety drivers on board who were there to make sure everything ran smoothly. And then, many cars started operating with no humans at all.
They’re mostly run by Cruise, which is owned by GM, and Waymo, which is owned by Google parent company Alphabet. Both companies have poured billions of dollars into developing these autonomous vehicles. Neither Cruise nor Waymo responded to questions about why the cars can be disabled by traffic cones.
Hellbound and Down 