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Death of beloved neighborhood cat sparks outrage against robotaxis in San Francisco
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2025
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Technology
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The human passengers weren't responsible for driving the vehicle, their lack of awareness is a feature of getting a taxi ride?
I meant that the Waymo didn't see it, neither did the passengers, so the cat could've been difficult to detect.
Not an excuse.
A small animal not being visible to a human or robotic driver is absolutely a viable excuse. It's sad that the cat died, but it's first an foremost the fault of the owners for letting their cat out.
I don't like the tech bro world and I'm not a fan of driverless vehicles, but this didn't happen because it was driverless and the outcome would be the same if their were a person behind the wheel.
You can definitely argue against cars being on the road in general, but I was on a bike ride with a buddy the other day, and he hit a squirrel that ran between us and then under his bike. Sometimes bad things happen especially when dealing with animals, and blaming a computer blindly is dumb AF.
I mean ok we can keep cats indoor, what about making techbros indoor only too though? They kill a lot of innocent people with the tools they make.
Hard to keep cars indoors
Garage?
How about you keep your mice and birds inside? Vermin
LOL, that's not really how mice and small birds work.
Oh? Exactly how do you know? Are you Dr.Doolittle?
I'd say, we cannot determine definitively.
Doesn't take a lot of observation to see that small rodents are in fear of just about every encounter, largely because that's what keeps them alive.
He's just posting reddit cat hate talking points.
i remember when i was out smoking pork butts with the stupid cat. i think she was inbred and had some issues. so i'm in a hammock and she was sitting there on the ground by me, almost loafing but her front paws out in front of her. a small rat ran right up on her paws, right below her mouth. she was all "wait, fuck!" and picked the rat up in her mouth, and she ran up to me so proud, but then she did not know what to do with it.
only time she caught anything larger than a cold. the doofus.
I lost a beloved cat a few months ago that ran into the road. My security camera caught the whole thing.
"What if?" Is its own torment for us, but analytically, she simply wasn't visible and there was nothing the driver could/should have done to prevent the horrible outcome.
There are in life no-win situations. It hurts, but it's an adult realization. Cats go under cars to hide - to avoid being seen - and can't grasp danger the same as humans.
I feel for the cat but this would happen with a human driver too. No one is going to check under their car after picking up passengers. It'd add minutes to each stop and these people are paid by the mile and stop. Adding minutes or hours each day is money lost. So no one will do this.