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.
Autonomous vehicles are one of our era’s defining moonshots. From Google to GM, from Ford to Zoox, Silicon Valley and the auto industry have collectively sunk more than $100 billion into developing vehicles that can navigate everything from endless highways to complex urban grids in all sorts of weather conditions, with the ultimate aim of getting human drivers off the road. Driverless disciples believe the technology will eliminate road fatalities, decrease congestion, and spell the end of those sprawling, oppressive parking lots. They also plan for it to make a lot of money—which, more than $100 billion in, they definitely need it to.
The AV industry, as the average consumer relates to it, has been developing along a two-pronged track. First is the incorporation of “driver assist” technologies in consumer-grade vehicles. These range from fairly mundane features like cruise control and blindspot detection to the controversial Tesla “Autopilot” system. The second, more advanced, pathway to driverlessness is robotaxis. Companies like Waymo and Cruise are designing fleets of AVs that will be able to provide an Uber-like service without a human behind the steering wheel. The vision once again is unfettered profits. The economics of ride-hail are tricky, but eliminating human labor from the equation could make them much more attractive. As Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick told the world at a conference nearly 10 years ago in his signature unapologetic style, “The reason Uber could be expensive is you’re paying for the other dude in the car.”
The other thing about driverless cars is that they are always five years away. It turns out this stuff is really complicated, and even $100 billion and the most powerful egos in Silicon Valley haven’t been able to get it done as fast as they hoped. There are practical problems, there are regulatory problems, there are ethical problems. There are people, the biggest problem of all. People, they are so unpredictable! Some are bad drivers. Some are possibly deranged. Some are central-casting villains whose ill-conceived heists waste time and money and credibility. Some refuse to swallow the Silicon Valley line altogether, oppose our driverless future, and are willing to make that point with a strategically placed traffic cone.
There is a long tradition in urbanism of residents taking matters into their own hands when they feel abandoned by local authorities. It is known variously as tactical, do-it-yourself, pop-up, and even guerrilla urbanism. Examples of tactical urbanism include turning dumpsters into swimming pools, reclaiming parking spots as tiny parks, and painting crosswalks on neglected intersections. These interventions have been described as playful, innovative, and spontaneous. They are typically low-budget and executed by volunteers or activists. All are by definition unsanctioned.
Using traffic cones to disarm a driverless car is textbook tactical urbanism: an intervention by concerned local activists in response to perceived neglect and inaction by local authorities. It’s also brilliant. I challenge you to find a more powerful image of people protesting technology in the recent past than that of the humble orange traffic cone perched atop an inert driverless car. There is the obvious metaphor (a Silicon Valley unicorn, rendered literal and impotent), the terrific color and contrast, the clear juxtaposition of power and wealth with human ingenuity. The financials, should you pause to consider them, are mind-blowing. You can buy a dozen heavy-duty traffic cones on Amazon for about $250, or about $21 per cone. You can use that $21 object to incapacitate a machine that has so far cost many billions of dollars to develop, and will surely consume many billions more.
It is hard to imagine a more effective public awareness campaign for the forthcoming CPUC meeting than the “Week of Cone,” as Safe Street Rebel dubbed it. A vote that had threatened to slip by quietly is suddenly the subject of both traditional press and viral social media chatter. It’s possible nothing changes; it’s also possible that people turn out in force on Thursday to have their say on the future of AVs in San Francisco. Generating a public response, more than just performing flashy stunts, is the essence of tactical urbanism: using creative, unofficial, rebellious tactics to inspire people to engage as stakeholders in their communities and urban landscapes, reminding us to exercise our participatory power even as corporations threaten to buy it up and take it away.
