Back to Home11/15/2025, 2:31:39 PM

Waymo Was on a Roll in San Francisco. Then One of Its Cars Killed a Cat

donohoe

41 points

69 comments

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mixed

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01Story posted
11/15/2025, 2:31:39 PM
3d ago
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02First comment
11/15/2025, 4:16:49 PM
2h after posting
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35 comments in Day 1
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11/15/2025, 5:14:23 PM
3d ago
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Discussion (69 comments)

Showing 35 comments of 69

gruez

3d ago

2 replies

>“A human driver can be held accountable, can hop out, say sorry, can be tracked down by police if it’s a hit-and-run,” Ms. Fielder said in an interview. “Here, there is no one to hold accountable.”

But would a human even suffer consequences in this case? Else in the article mentions:

>The city does not track how many animals are killed by cars each year, but the number is in the hundreds, according to Deb Campbell, a spokeswoman for Animal Care and Control in San Francisco.

and

>Waymo does not dispute that one of its cars killed Kit Kat. The company released a statement saying that when one of its vehicles was picking up passengers, a cat “darted under our vehicle as it was pulling away.”

In other words, it could have easily happened to a human driver, and all the uproar in this case is only because people are being selectively angry against Waymo for... other reasons:

>Still, Kit Kat’s death has given new fuel to detractors. They argue that robot taxis steal riders from public transit, eliminate jobs for people, enrich Silicon Valley executives — and are just plain creepy.

>...

>Ms. Fielder has strong ties to labor unions, including the Teamsters, which has fought for more regulation of autonomous vehicles, largely out of concern for members who could eventually lose their own driving jobs in other sectors.

preston4tw

3d ago

It's obviously sad that an animal was killed in an accident, but the outrage towards Waymo and media coverage definitely seems disproportionate given statistical context, and I was pleasantly surprised that the article made efforts to point that out rather than dogpiling on Waymo.

xnx

3d ago

> But would a human even suffer consequences in this case?

Never. In the US you can drive drunk and speeding and kill a person and walk away with basically an "oopsie".

dboreham

3d ago

1 reply

Everything you read is in service of someone's business model.

IncreasePosts

3d ago

In this case, the business model of a public representative taking a lot of funding from Teamsters who are pissed about autonomous vehicles

yonran

3d ago

2 replies

> Jackie Fielder, a progressive San Francisco supervisor who represents the Mission District, has been among the most vocal critics. She introduced a city resolution after Kit Kat’s death that calls for the state Legislature to let voters decide if driverless cars can operate where they live. (Currently, the state regulates autonomous vehicles in California.)

If this had anything to do with safety, this so-called “Progressive” supervisor Jackie Fielder would be investigating what safety features would be feasible on Waymos: emergency stop switches or stop commands, under car cameras, questioning whether the Waymo detected the cat and then just forgot about it when it walked under the car, etc.

Instead, she is using this to secure territory for obviously less safe Uber and Lyft drivers who are represented by the Teamsters. Such a cynical politician.

terminalshort

3d ago

2 replies

Progressives always defend legacy obsolete businesses against competition. They tried to stop Uber and Lyft from replacing cabs and now they do the same with Waymo.

lysace

3d ago

1 reply

Non-US perspective: ”Progressive” and ”conservative” labels don’t make much sense to me these days.

Perhaps you need another way of thinking about these things.

terminalshort

3d ago

1 reply

Of course they don't. Political labels don't cross national boundaries easily. Even right next door in Canada "conservative" means nothing like it does in the US.

tehjoker

3d ago

1 reply

Yea they do when you have a firm foundation on political theory. However, parties often diverge from their name.

Workaccount2

3d ago

And people often have no idea what the actual principles of an ideology are, they go with whatever their friends/family/bubble says is good.

monero-xmr

3d ago

1 reply

How can people not understand this. The entire leftist edifice is carving out more and more pieces for handouts. That’s it. This is arguing for another handout

terminalshort

3d ago

I guess I'm a bit more generous to them on this point. Ironically, what they are is actually conservatives (in the generic meaning of preserving the status quo, not the American political meaning). What they want is stability and freedom from risk. They have this idea that you should be able to get one job and work it for your entire career, and they often cite the post WWII period as an example of this.

Of course technological progress is anathema to this. Progress is chaos. It causes disruption of entire industries, which TBF does disrupt people's lives. So they enact policies to defend existing industries from competition and fence off who is allowed to do what job with useless credentials and certifications. Essentially trying to preserve the status quo forever. They trade long term progress for short term comfort. The practical economic effect of this is, in fact, a handout to incumbents, and there are plenty of grifters on board for this reason, but it isn't the driving force behind it.

circuit10

3d ago

2 replies

When a plane crashes no one says “let’s let people decide if planes should be allowed to fly over their houses”, we say “let’s figure out exactly what went wrong and how to make sure it never happens again” and that’s probably why aviation is one of the safest modes of transportation

tehjoker

3d ago

2 replies

That's true but there's also a separate element here which is there is an obvious need for aviation and not an obvious need for autonomous vehicles.

xnx

3d ago

> not an obvious need for autonomous vehicles

We've grown numb to it, but 40,000 US traffic fatalities is an obvious need.

circuit10

3d ago

I think that this approach could feasibly lead to something far safer than human drivers (from what I’ve seen they already are safer), so it would be human drivers that we would question the need for at that point

ivape

3d ago

So what we can infer here is that if Waymo ever kills a person, it’s basically over for them in SF. Your plane analogy is apt, because for us to “get there” with autonomous cars, where it’s anywhere and everywhere, we’ll have to be willing to basically die to some degree. Just like in planes.

It would childish not to come to terms with that.

melling

3d ago

1 reply

An opportunity to improve self-driving to be even better than humans, who would likely not have prevented the accident either.

chemotaxis

3d ago

2 replies

I always assume that people who say this either don't own cats, bought one from a breeder and raised it indoors from day one, or live in an apartment building where you need to go through multiple doors to get outside.

Most cats that spent some time outdoors will want to be outdoors. In many settings, it's nearly impossible to keep them in because they will try to sneak out every time they get a chance. Package delivery, you coming back with groceries, etc.

And most of the anti-outdoor-cat stats are more or less bullsh-t. The average lifespan of feral cats might be five years. The average lifespan of a cat that has a home but gets to go out is probably pretty close to an indoor cat. And while outdoor cats can kill birds for sport, they're not causing extinction events in most places. They mostly interact with abundant, trash-feeding urban birds. You might not like the killing, but it's an artificial ecosystem we created and that can handle the predation just fine.

Workaccount2

3d ago

I just want to point out that you called the outdoor cat stats bullshit, and then proceed to make up "probably true because it feels that way" facts to show that.

Not taking a side, but your argument is...weak.

terminalshort

3d ago

Maybe the stats are bullshit and maybe they're not, but I don't care. It's beside the point. Cats want to go outside so you should let them, or don't have them in places where they can't like very dense urban areas. Would you spend your whole life indoors if it gave you another 10 years? I think not. Somehow people who would never accept this for themselves have no problem doing it to their cats.

Workaccount2

3d ago

1 reply

This story reads like the sugar industry calling out vegetables because someone choked on a carrot.

I'm sad for the cat, but this story is still borderline satire.

terminalshort

3d ago

And it will be the same when the first human is killed by a Waymo

whydoineedthis

3d ago

1 reply

Having jobs like uber and Lyft available - self employed on your own time - are terrific stop gaps when people lose thier real job, or need a little extra for thier familly. Doing away with them will create a much worse society.

baggy_trough

3d ago

So will hampering the rollout of self driving cars to further the interests of unions.

klustregrif

3d ago

1 reply

Self driving cars have literally killed people and that didn’t throw a wrench in the operation. But a cat does?!

xnx

3d ago

Uber and GM's self-driving programs were both cancelled due to a fatality and serious injury.

readthenotes1

3d ago

I can't wait until people who want to run red lights and steer into bus stops have to pay exorbitant self-driving fees.

elif

3d ago

The magician crumpled his hat and the bird was nowhere to be seen. "You crushed it!" Cried the boy. "No, you see" as he opened his coat and the bird flew out. "That's just a different bird that looks the same" protested the boy and his parents shushed him...

Later after the show, they boy returns and witnesses the magician dump a dead bird into the dumpster.

As zizek claims in his new book, progress is not magic. It is always relative to a system and always requires us to ignore dead birds.

pclowes

3d ago

This is a farce. Handwringing about a cat while SF drivers kill hundreds per year, and SF policy kills thousands.

theoldgreybeard

3d ago

People driving cars kill cats all the time. I would bet much more than self driving cars will. The overall number of cats being killed by cars will probably go down with self driving cars.

Letting your cat roam outdoors is cruelty.

preston4tw

3d ago

past the paywall: https://archive.ph/Axj2B

carbocation

3d ago

Waymo was on a roll in San Francisco. It still is, but it used to be, too. (With apologies to Mitch.) This is utter sensationalism. Fortunately, the state's regulations have liberated the good people of SF from being able to shoot ourselves in our own foot on this particular issue.

SoftTalker

3d ago

Like I said when I first heard about this, if anybody really cared about that "beloved" cat it would not have been roaming around in the street.

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ID: 45937719Type: storyLast synced: 11/17/2025, 4:10:13 AM

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