Happy Street 2 Tests

[Bartlett Vallee]

Twopeople 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.

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.

Waymo says it has a permit for 250 cars and it deploys about 100 at any given time. Cruise says it runs 100 in San Francisco during the day and 300 at night. The Department of Motor Vehicles made Cruise cut that number in half after one of its cars collided with a firetruck last week.

The lead-up to the commission's vote prompted the Safe Street Rebel group to start "coning," as they call it. Members have long used street theater shenanigans to gain attention in their fight against cars and to promote public transportation.

Coning driverless cars fits in line with a long history of protests against the impact of the tech industry on San Francisco. Throughout the years, activists have blockaded Google's private commuter buses from picking up employees in the city. And when scooter companies flooded the sidewalks with electric scooters, people threw them into San Francisco Bay.

She points out that when tech companies test their products in the city, residents don't have much say in those decisions: "There's been various iterations of this where it's like, 'Oh, yep, let's try that out in San Francisco again,' with very little input from anyone who lives here."

"We thought that putting cones on these [driverless cars] was a funny image that could captivate people," says one organizer. "One of these self-driving cars with billions of dollars of venture capital investment money and R&D, just being disabled by a common traffic cone."

The cars have run red lights, rear-ended a bus and blocked crosswalks and bike paths. In one incident, dozens of confused cars congregated in a residential cul-de-sac, clogging the street. In another, a Waymo ran over and killed a dog.

Both Cruise and Waymo say their vehicles are far safer than human drivers and compared to humans they've had relatively few incidents. They say they've driven millions of driverless miles without any human fatalities or life-threatening injuries. An Uber self-driving car, operating in full autonomous mode and with a safety driver in the vehicle, killed a pedestrian in Arizona in 2018.

Safe Street Rebel isn't the only group that's had issues with the autonomous vehicles. San Francisco's police and fire departments have also said the cars aren't yet ready for public roads. They've tallied 55 incidents where self-driving cars have gotten in the way of rescue operations in just the past six months.

Ziwen Wan, a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at University of California, Irvine, has studied why driverless cars may be acting this way. He used open source data for his research, so his findings aren't based specifically on Cruise and Waymo. Wan found that ordinary objects on the road can lead to dangerous driving behavior. Part of this, he says, is because the cars are programmed to be overly conservative.

"The software can make the autonomous vehicle behave as conservatively as possible because a safety violation would be very serious," Wan says. "But this may lead to concerns on the other side, like in some cases, even though it's safe it will fail to drive normally."

"The traffic cone protest is an example of how things in the real world can really confound machines, even ones as sophisticated and finely tuned as this," says Margaret O'Mara, a history professor at the University of Washington who studies the tech industry. "It's a reminder that in this very high-tech world, the most low-tech things can literally put a wrench in the machine."

Despite the bumps in the road, both Waymo and Cruise are rapidly expanding their robo-taxi programs throughout the U.S. Waymo is already giving rides in Phoenix and is testing with human safety drivers in Los Angeles and Austin. And Cruise is offering rides in Phoenix and Austin and testing in Dallas, Houston, Miami, Nashville and Charlotte.

August has arrived and we are counting down the days until you arrive, too, Knights. With just a few weeks before the start of the semester, we are sharing important instructions for move-in and on-boarding procedures with you. These details follow our previous communication and provide you with the necessary resources to complete your on-boarding process and guide you through a successful arrival to campus. It includes the following sections of information:

*Fully vaccinated is two weeks after your final dose of your vaccine regardless of the particular type of vaccine received. To be recognized as fully vaccinated and follow the campus guidelines outlined for individuals who fall into that category, please go to update.gannon.edu/vaccinecard to report your vaccination status.

You will select a move-in time based on what works for your personal travel schedule and any help you are bringing with you. For COVID mitigation purposes, we strongly encourage roommates to coordinate and choose different times if possible to avoid crowding in rooms while you unpack. Please limit guests/move-in help to two additional group members. After confirming the best time for your move in, choose one of the following timeframes: 8-9:30 / 9:30-11:30.

You will select a move-in time based on what works for your personal travel schedule and any help you are bringing with you. For COVID mitigation purposes, we strongly encourage roommates to coordinate and choose different times if possible to avoid crowding in rooms while you unpack. Please limit guests/move-in help to two additional group members. After confirming the best time for your move in, choose one of the following timeframes: 8-9:30 / 9:30-11 / 11-1.

Please report to the Peach Street entrance of the Hammermill Center between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. where our Residence Life team will greet you and provide your room key as well as move-in instructions. For COVID mitigation purposes, we strongly encourage roommates to coordinate and choose different times if possible to avoid crowding in rooms while you unpack. Please limit guests/move in help to two additional group members.

*Limited quarantine means you are limited to only attending educational and university obligations and picking up to-go meals until you receive negative test results. Residents will be provided food immediately after their test to limit their exposure outside their room. Masks will be strongly encouraged while in your room if you are not alone and out of your room while attending university obligations.

We are happy to accommodate residents who prefer to complete their test at home prior to move-in. Students who are unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated and wish to complete their test at home prior to arrival on campus, or who are unable to arrive on the designated move-in day listed above, will have the option to complete a COVID-19 PCR test *within three days prior to arrival to campus in place of the Gannon administered test. Rapid tests will not be accepted. PCR test results should be submitted to the portal link below prior to arrival on campus. We also recommend bringing a copy with you upon arrival to ensure a seamless on-boarding experience.

*Within three days prior to arrival to campus provides flexibility in the day/time you are tested and plan to arrive on campus. For example, if you plan to arrive at 1 p.m. on Thursday, you could submit a negative test that was taken any time on the prior Monday or after.

Testing prior to arrival or at the time or returning to campus is encouraged but not required. Surveillance testing for those who are unvaccinated or not *fully vaccinated will begin the week of Aug. 30 regardless of their residency. Please pay close attention to your Gannon email account for further information and instructions.

*Fully vaccinated by United States standards is two weeks after your final dose of your vaccine regardless of the particular type of vaccine received. To be recognized as fully vaccinated at Gannon, you will need to have received a vaccine approved by the World Health Organization and report your vaccination status at update.gannon.edu/vaccinecard.

Unvaccinated global students will need to quarantine for seven days upon their arrival to the United States as well as be tested for COVID-19. If you have signed up for on-campus housing for the year, you will quarantine in your campus space. If you will be living off campus, you must quarantine on your own.

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