It’s Time To Ban Self-Driving Cars In San Francisco

A self driving car almost hitting a pedestrian. Photo by James Conrad

San Francisco is probably America’s most undriveable major city. This isn’t news to anyone who has ever found themselves behind the wheel here. There are streets in San Francisco that look like walls, enough traffic to turn a pacifist into a psychopath and cyclists who think they’re invincible. It’s a lot for human drivers to deal with. So why are the streets in SF littered with autonomous vehicles that have no business being there? 

Is SF incapable of turning down a shitty idea if the pitch deck is presented by someone in a Patagonia vest? I have to ask because self-driving cars have been an absolute disaster on the streets of San Francisco. I don’t think anyone with any familiarity with SF would think these would be a net positive for the city. 

In just the last few days, there have been numerous incidents of self-driving vehicles wreaking havoc in the city.

Is SF incapable of turning down a shitty idea if the pitch deck is presented by someone in a Patagonia vest?

The most egregious example is when a self-driving car blocked first responders from assisting victims of a mass shooting in the Mission District where 9 people were shot. There’s even a video of the incident circulating on social media. 

These AI drivers aren’t just assisting in attempted murders, they’re also committing them. 

A self-driving car, literally two days after the mass shooting in the Mission, literally ran over a small dog. It’s like a fucking Stephen King novel. 

“Who ran over my dog!”

“The car.”

“But who was driving the car? Can you give me a description of the driver? What did they look like?”

“They… looked like… the car!” 

There are also the innumerable amount of times where these fucking hunks of shit just stopped in the middle of traffic like like they need to catch their breath. 

San Francisco has enough problems. Every conservative in the city is participating in an endless circle jerk to make San Francisco look like a nightmarish dystopia and we really don’t need to give them anymore fuel. 

A self driving car blocking a fire engine with sirens on driving against traffic

Can we just put common sense above money for once and get rid of the fucking things. San Francisco loves to sniff its own farts and proclaim to everyone that will listen that it’s a progressive utopia. But if that’s the case, why are we allowing the city to be used by shitty startups to train vehicles so they can get proficient enough at driving to take the jobs of millions of people worldwide who drive for a living? That doesn’t sound like progress to me. That sounds like late stage capitalism.

Let’s do better. The City of San Francisco and every small dog in it deserves a life free of getting ran over by a fucking computer that only exists to the make the lives of blue collar Americans worse. Spoiler alert: Their lives already fucking suck. Mission accomplished. You can go home. And if you do go home, take a cab driven by a fucking person. Because we live in a world where that needs to be specified.

Get rid of them. 

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