Industry experts agreed that legislation restricting the use of autonomous vehicles on a county-by-county basis would be unwieldy and problematic.
But that’s what Supervisor Jackie Fielder called for today in the wake of a Waymo running over beloved 16th Street store cat KitKat.
Industry experts also agreed that both Waymo’s cars and its management must do better if the company hopes to regain community trust.
Fielder today held a noon press conference outside Randa’s Market, KitKat’s home for the last six years, announcing she will introduce a resolution at the Board of Supervisors calling on state legislators to allow voters to decide if they want autonomous vehicles operating on their streets.
At present, it is the state’s Public Utilities Commission that issues permits for driverless cars to offer transportation services across California cities.
Despite concerns about the performance of both Waymo’s cars and its people, no autonomous vehicle expert contacted by Mission Local said they could support legislation like that Fielder is proposing.
Missy Cummings, the head of George Mason University’s Autonomy and Robotics Center, said it would present a “bureaucratic nightmare” to create county-by-county prohibitions at the voters’ behest.
Cummings, who also consults for the state of California, does think that counties ought to be able to request carve-outs based upon special conditions — an area with a high concentration of homeless encampments, for example — so autonomous vehicles can be geo-fenced out of those zones.
Fielder was joined by representatives of the influential Teamsters union, which recognizes the existential threat autonomous vehicles represent to union drivers’ livelihoods.
“Waymo only follows rules because humans programmed them, not because it cares about our kids,” said Tony Delorio, principal officer of Teamsters Local 665. “If tech companies want to use our streets, they play by our rules, starting with local control.”
KitKat was hit and killed by a Waymo vehicle late in the evening on Oct. 27. After a few days of silence, the company confirmed on Oct. 30 that its car killed KitKat, but claimed that the cat had “darted under” one of their vehicle’s tires as it drove away.
Waymo declined to send any video of the incident. It has not answered further questions about the incident, nor named the recipient of a donation the company pledged to make in honor of KitKat.
Two eyewitnesses said the company’s statement about the cat’s death was misleading: Both said that KitKat stood in front of the car for about seven seconds before quickly moving beneath it.
This raised red flags for industry experts like Cummings. While even very young people understand the concept of “object permanence” — they know that an object that is obscured from view is still present — Cummings noted that robotaxis do not.
Human drivers continue to maim and kill pedestrians in this and every city. At least a dozen pedestrians have been killed in San Francisco in 2025 alone.
The number of animals hit by human-driven cars on U.S. roads each year likely eclipses 1 million; Cummings notes that human drivers hit and kill pets “all the time.”
But, in a situation like the one that killed KitKat, a person would have the ability to see a cat go under a vehicle, understand that it had not disappeared, and check if the animal was still beneath the car before driving away.
“There is no such thing as object permanence with these cars,” she said. While the Waymo involved in this incident all but certainly detected KitKat as he stood in front of the car, it could not detect him when he was beneath the vehicle. Moreover, the Waymo would not be able to rationalize that the cat was still present.
“It’s out of sight, out of mind. Human or animal, anything that falls underneath the car cannot be seen,” Cummings added. “And it’s forgotten about immediately, because [autonomous vehicles] don’t have a memory.”
An event like this, Cummings continued, “was 100 percent foreseeable.”
In fact, on the very day that a Waymo killed KitKat, Waymo CEO Takedra Mawakana told an audience that an autonomous vehicle killing a person was inevitable, and that society would accept this.
Cummings called Mawakana’s speech “hubristic,” and said Waymo failed to adequately pay heed to the details of the 2023 San Francisco incident in which a Cruise autonomous vehicle did not detect a woman pinned beneath the car and dragged her 20 feet at 7 mph.
Cruise’s operational license was revoked by the state of California following that event. Cruise disgorged a hefty settlement to the victim, whom Mission Local was told suffered broken arms, broken legs and a head injury.
Lessons learned?
Industry experts said in interviews that autonomous vehicles do not have sensors beneath the vehicle, because they would quickly become dirty, thereby rendering them inoperable.
Scott Moura, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and the acting director for Berkeley’s Institute of Transportation Studies, notes that this appears to have been a factor in both the 2023 Cruise incident and KitKat’s death on Oct. 29.
Moura sees an opportunity for autonomous-vehicle companies to learn from these incidents. He added that, in general, predicting how an animal may react poses a challenge for this technology.
“The problem is not just detecting the existence of some object or entity that it might crash into, but it’s also predicting how that object behaves, and how it might react to the vehicle’s movements,” he said.
“Streets are social environments, where there’s kind of this social signaling that happens between cars and pedestrians. So, I think, it’s generally a challenge when you’ve got a car interacting with a live animal in this case, and it might be trying to predict how it’s going to behave so it can react to it.”
Ahmed Banafa, a lecturer at San Jose State University, said that the car likely wasn’t trained properly on how to react if an animal was in front of it. He called for the company to share the footage of the incident with the community to regain the trust that’s been lost following last week’s incident.
“Transparency is the best way for trust,” he said. “They say, ‘we fixed it.’ We don’t know what you mean by ‘fixed it.’ Did you fix it all? Half of it?”
Cummings also thinks Waymo must be more transparent. Did the Waymo vehicle detect that it had struck an object? If it did, did it alert a remote operator? If not, why not? If it did, what did that person do?
“Did they have a computer vision system adequately trained on cats, dogs, small kids — day and night?” she asks. “Computer vision systems are very brittle and Waymo needs to be more forthcoming on what is and is not in the training.”
Approved by the state
The Public Utilities Commission voted in August 2023 to give both Waymo and Cruise the privilege of running taxi services in San Francisco. Among the commissioners who made that vote is John Reynolds, who served as Cruise’s managing counsel from 2019 to 2021.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has vetoed a series of Teamster-backed bills that would require humans in large vehicles and timely reporting of autonomous vehicle accidents.
The governor’s office did not reply to a request for comment.
Last year, Sen. Dave Cortese (D-Santa Clara County) withdrew SB 915, which would’ve created a system for cities and counties to issue permits for autonomous vehicles following opposition from fellow legislators within the Local Government and Transportation committees.
On Tuesday, however, the nearly 70 people outside of Randa’s seemed eager to push autonomous vehicles out of this county — or any county where voters don’t want them.
“If the measure of any society is the way in which it treats those who are the weakest, then KitKat’s death deserves our sorrow, our reverence, and our regret,” said Fielder. “We’re here today because we cannot remain silent while corporations make choices that impact our neighborhoods without our consent.”
At the end of the presser, attendees chanted “KitKat” over and over.
So far during Supervisor Fielder’s term (10 months!), 12 pedestrians and one cyclist have been killed in the city by human drivers. Are we also going to get to vote on banning human-driven cars? Or are only the lives of cats that important?
(Would love to see ML interview some experts on human-driven-car speeding regulation, DUI regulation, etc., next time one of the humans is killed, but not going to hold my breath.)
I’m embarrassed that I voted for this person to represent the District 9
Scientific research has provided evidence the Waymo fleet is already safer than average human drivers. And Waymo vehicles will only get safer over time. In contrast, the human driver population will never substantially improve, because new drivers always must learn for themselves.
Scientific research shows Waymo riders are sociopaths. FTFY.
Waymo riders not so secretly enjoy the unregulated private surveillance state they’re enabling for our society.
Take their privacy away now, unmask them individually and let them see the future they’re advocating for us all up front.
If they knew, they wouldn’t be so smug and stupid about it.
Why does it cost more than a cab? Who does it sell all the surveillance data it collects to?
I’m embarrassed to live in a city with Yuppie Waymo scum.
I’m ashamed that people have such critical thinking problems that enabling an unregulated private surveillance state they believe is somehow progress towards a better future for their kids.
Morons buying convenience without human interaction. I hope their AI spouses give them a few promptings to reconsider.
I’m embarrassed by people making excuses for a crap corporation.
On re-reading, I apologize to the ML team for the snark of that “won’t hold my breath”. The ML team really has gotten better in the past couple of years about treating driver-caused deaths as a problem and not just a fact of life. I hope that trend can continue, including in future coverage of the very legitimate question of Waymo/Zoox/Tesla regulation.
(Oh, and also kudos for getting Dr. Cunningham on the phone for this; I realize probably no one in the comments knows this but she’s legitimately brilliant on this topic and more local papers and politicians should interview her.)
What about “cyclist-caused deaths” like the gentleman who ran a red light and got T-boned? I assume if we’re going to say one is a problem we’re going to treat problems equally? There are zero traffic controls to stop reckless stop sign and red light running cyclists and electric scooter riders which have caused non-zero fatalities. It’s called Vision Zero, right?
DUI regulation = CA law. Scott Wiener didn’t address that did he?
I saw KitKat every day, and he contributed more to my life than any “human”.
What a completely innumerate statement. Rather than regurgitate tech marketing propaganda, before blindly parroting the purported safety of robot cars vs human drivers, fans of statistics and logic would ask:
What are the respective cumulative mileage of humans vs robots?
What % of the robot cars’ total mileage occurs in the middle of the night, when there are far fewer cars and pedestrians out?
What % of the human total mileage occurs in the middle of the night?
What % of the robot cars’ total mileage occurs during rush hours, when most accidents occur?
What % of humans’ total mileage occurs during rush hours?
What is the ratio of mileage accumulated during low accident periods vs high accident periods mileage for both robots and humans?
What is the % of casualties per 100,000 miles?
What is the % of casualties per 100,000 miles, adjusted for the differing ratios of mileage accumulated during low and high accident times of day for both robots and humans?
Until you can answer these questions, simply barfing up that “robots are safer because drunk drivers!” is statistically baseless.
And can I get an answer to the question why scores of empty google cars drive around
in endless loops in the middle of the night? What significant data about trafficless traffic patterns are they gathering that it is so important to consume more electricity, driving up our power bills even more?
So your argument is whataboutism? Real smart stuff. /s
The negligence was letting KitKat go out into the street in the first place. Every time I adopt a cat from the SFSPCA they say to keep cats inside in the city. And that advice long predates Waymos.
We used to feed many stray cats on our street in Noe and helped rescue several. They’re all gone. Cars and coyotes. Literally never see strays anymore. Keep them indoors.
We see strays all the time on the west side.
Your YIMBY policies pushed them out of your neighborhood, gentrifiers.
ZING.
My cat is indoor/outdoor in this city and has been for a decade … but is behind a gate. I would never let my cat out if she could get to the street.
Bodego cats are a tradition throughout the world to help with pest control and the mental well being of the workers and shoppers. They are at higher risks — it is hard to keep them in their store. However, with cats being put down due to so many shelters being full, it’s better a bit longer but risky life as a bodego cat then a shorter life being put down at a shelter. The increased risk is probably worth the benefit it provides to the community and business. The cat managed to have a longer lifespan then is typical for outdoor cats iirc.
If this was some person’s indoor cat, no one but it’s owner would likely have cared about it’s eventual indoor related/old age death. People care because they developed a relationship to the cat via being a community cat.
Regardless, some people do have indoor/outdoor cats and autonomous vehicles probably should better handle them. There’s also wild animals to consider.
Waymo can’t see animals because apologists don’t force it to.
Period.
Waymo probably did see the cat when it was in front of the car. It’s when it went under the car that the sight of the cat was lost.
That’s just like for a human driver. The difference is that a human driver PROBABLY would realize the cat was still under the car…and might even get out to shoo the cat away.
I’ve seen people speed up many times in this city to hit dogs in the street. Waymo doesn’t.
“I’ve seen people speed up many times in this city to hit dogs in the street. ”
I’m going to call you a liar for that one.
Human drivers are humans and have human considerations, robots don’t care. Waymo is a scourge.
The negligence was about letting Robotaxis go into the street unregulated in the first place, even without so little as a public vote of approval.
Government is not beholden to a for-profit corporation’s whims – unless regulatory capture makes government toothless and nearly irrelevant, *(see SF).
FTFY.
What is the counter-argument to regulating Waymo and all robot vehicles?
Why do apologists pull out every feather in their hat to avoid that topic?
Regulation for drivers exists, it’s enforcement that is shoddy.
Robotaxis currently have neither regulation nor enforcement.
Why is that acceptable for a multi-Billion dollar profit operation?
I see you want to change the subject, but answer this first.
The counter-argument is that they are in fact regulated already by multiple state agencies with various permitting and transparency requirements. Look it up. Enforcement also exists. Look at what happened to Cruise.
Robo surveillance apologists deserve their desired future RIGHT NOW. Let’s show them!
In a word, bullshit. Recent events include a Robotaxi making an illegal U-turn in front of an officer who realize he had no means to even write it a ticket.
Others include rolling through safety caution tape, pushing FIREFIGHTERS into unsafe conditions while trying to help after an accident on scene, NOT SEEING PETS OR OTHER NON-TRAD SHAPES LIKE PEOPLE IN WHEELCHAIRS IN CROSSWALKS, stopping in the middle of streets creating safety and traffic hazards without awareness of anything at all, oh and being apologized for by techie yuppies who have a choice but CHOOSE to serve Google’s surveillance mass-capture for opaque purposes… I could go on, but you’ve already been smote.
And yet for years it survived. Waymos cannot see small animals.
There are no regulations to force a for-profit corporation to do so, so it doesn’t.
Your excuses and obfuscations of the facts at hand nonwithstanding.
Like dogs, cats who are let outdoors without supervision are vulnerable to the DANGERS OF CARS, other animals, cruel humans, and diseases. Negligent cat owners who don’t understand the vital importance of playing with their cats, interacting with them in meaningful ways, and providing them with an interesting, enriched indoor environment say nonsensical things like “But he wants to go outside,” “We live on a very quiet street,” and “It’s cruel to keep her in.” But these are just excuses. Responsible guardianship includes providing our animal companions with safety from the many dangers posed to them when they’re left outdoors alone. If you want your feline friend to have a long, healthy life, the best thing you can do is keep them safe inside with you. PETA.
Personally I don’t think Jackie Fielder should be let outdoors either, what a sick opportunist she is.
Fielder excels at telling us what she does not like, distracting from the business of broadening a political appeal to bring a majority of working voters along.
Zohran Mamdani, on the other hand, shared his vision for what a working people-centered NYC government would look like, and that carried the day with most voters.
Let’s get our priorities right here. The animals are part of nature; cars are not. the animals were here before we were: cars were not.
The only way to make the city safe is to remove the deadly heavy machinery from our streets.
Felis catus has been domesticated for 10000 years.
Domestic animals are not part of nature.
We love our two cats. They get to hang out on the front steps, confined by the gate. Sometimes they take advantage of the back door being open to start to explore the garden. But the moment they see that we know they’re outside, they scurry inside quickly knowing they’re at risk.
We do not use our cats as political props.
Disagree. Waymo can be improved to see pets.
The issue is they aren’t required to try, and apologists for the company are paid to do so because that’s how YIMBY tech operates – it’s a lawless cult.
Genuinely, how do you propose Waymo magically learn to detect small animals? Because as already explained in the article, sensors (literally how Waymo ‘sees’ anything around it to begin with) on the bottom of the car to catch smaller beings would eventually get dirty and be rendered useless anyway. Meanwhile, human drivers CAN consistently do things to save pets, such as not speeding down the street at night or checking their cars in winter before starting them to make sure there aren’t any cats. Just taking a second, just to be safe, doesn’t ever fail like how low sensors could. And with human drivers already responsible for almost all animal deaths, doesn’t it make sense to argue for changes there? After all, the goal is to try to protect animals…right? 🤨
GENUINELY do you even care?
You are supporting GOOGLE.
Their AI KILLS CIVILIANS DAILY.
DO YOU CARE?
They run on software which can be updated to see literally anything at all, if it’s a priority.
Apologists be damned.
But all the Waymo apologists say it’s perfect already, why would we regulate perfection?
/sarcasm
Waymo has a responsibility to society that includes avoiding pets.
Only an apologist / whataboutist argument tries to avoid this fact.
This is exactly the performative politics (combined with agenda of pay-to-pay union donors) that SF is sick of. The “for science” crowd doesn’t mention the number of animals killed (5M) by human drivers annually (Joe does..). I wish Fielder could find a fraction of this energy to deal with the human fentanyl overdoses and street conditions in her district.
Fielder, please concentrate on the god dam mess at 16/Mission which is a disaster every day but you do nothing about it.
Sick of her jumping into the limelight for photo opps, we residents need you to clean up the plazas: enough of the illegal vendors and drug sales which she supports! Get rid of them, that is your job.
RIP KitKat. 16th St is a wild one even w/out Wamos. If it wasn’t a Waymo, he could have eaten some fentanyl thanks to Jackie fielder.
And don’t forget 24th and Mission, it’s almost impossible to walk there due to the illegal street vendors. I’m surprised that the disability right folks have not gotten involved in this.
I support regulating robotaxis and making them safer for pets.
You don’t? Then you’re an apologist, frankly.
The Waymo crowd doesn’t care about living things, only bullsh1t statistics for profit.
Craven and Unserious. Please grow up. Walk two blocks down the street and see the work that really needs to get done. Shameful.
This is about the fact that Waymos are not able to see animals.
I wonder how well a human driver would have done in this situation? What if they had been looking down at their phone to text for a brief moment? https://www.reddit.com/r/waymo/s/nqGWmwZYvn
A human driver can be held accountable and ticketed for the infraction of looking at their phone while driving.
A Waymo cannot. A Waymo can be programmed to do better, but without regulation will not. Apologists (ahem) prevent actual discussions about improving what they claim to be perfect already, but which clearly is not.
So what? It’s just a cat. Human driers probably kill millions of animals each year.
This attitude = supporting deregulated corporate robots.
You are mindless, so what?
I’d be shocked if the majority of human drivers on Valencia would bother to check even after seeing the cat in front of the car. I see many (not all) Lyft, Uber, DoorDash drivers driving like maniacs and throwing trash out their windows, not caring about the community or our city. Horrible that a cat was killed, but a real stretch to say waymo made it worse. 🙁
I’m in the depths of the Peten jungle in Campeche, Mexico. Driving from Chetumal inland, we saw signs that threatened a potential MEX$200,000 multa, fine, for throwing litter from a car. That’s a fine of USD$10,000.
Mexico’s turned the corner on ecology over the past few decades. We had a peccary hanging out near the back deck of our cabaña yesterday and visit Calakmul today.
Wait a sec, predict how a cat is going to behave?
Please, let me know if anyone, even human drivers, ever figures this one out.
I have, in my entire history of driving, managed to never run over an animal. So I guess it can be done.
Stephen, how can you possibly know that you have never killed an animal?
Well he’s not omniscient, but he can see them and possibly feel/comprehend if he did. A Waymo cannot.
You realize the logical bankruptcy of this statement, right? The reason is that no cat or dog as ever situated itself under your vehicle, not the prowess of your awareness.
Same here.
The issue is a robosurveillance bot that can’t see animals and doesn’t care if it can or not, and nobody is forcing it to, but it also has immunity from accountability and operates for-profit without regulation on our streets as a live beta test with real-world consequences, all at the detriment of SF taxis that have been politically screwed to the extent of a quarter-million each, but who each have a chance of avoiding an animal in the street where a current robot-experiment does not.
Taxis were never good enough in SF. I remember trying to go out with friends via taxi pre-uber. We used to wait outside on the corner of a busy street trying to hail one, only to have someone walk “upstream” and beat us to it. If we called ahead, half the time they’d fail to show up. And often they refused to take us back home at the end of the night if they didn’t want to go that direction. :-/
WAYMO APOLOGISTS WE ARE COMING FOR YOU. KNOW THIS. HUMANS WILL WIN!
“Waaah, human interaction toooo haaard…”
-Millennials.
Waymos are taxis. Just because you didn’t have the basic skills or knowledge to apparently be able to call one to your location on a particular day in the past doesn’t make an unregulated more-expensive version of same (that doubles as a mass surveillance device without oversight there, either) controlled by software (that has proven flawed both client and in car) any less offensive to actual humans able to do the same job, better, for less money. You’re simply a mindless yuppie apologist and I mean that in the most positive, sincere way your generation can still understand.
It is not a crime to run over an animal, so there is no there there.
I would like to see CEOs of autonomous vehicle companies held personally criminally liable for any crimes committed by their company’s autonomous vehicles.
But that’s not going to happen so long as politics is centered around saying what you don’t like and measuring “progressive” by how much money you get for charity nonprofits.
It’s actually a crime to run over an animal if you can avoid it, yes it is.
Weird that there is no mention of banning outdoor cats.
The issue is making Waymo safer for all animals that are allowed outside.
Humans can see them, Waymo can’t. It’s very simple even as the apologist techie crowd twists into pretzels trying to avoid the obvious R-word – regulation.
Cue clown music.
It’s kinda like Life of Brian but instead of “the Shoe!” it’s “the Kat!”.
Jackie and the Teamsters.
Band?
Song sung to the melody of Bennie and the Jets?
Part of the definition of performative – “done with the intention of impressing others or improving one’s own image”.
I guess she’s lining up for a run at The Weiner’s seat and needs “accomplishments” for her mailer.
Carlos Spinoza cues clown music.
And?
You said nothing related to the story and no, she’s not running for Scott Wiener’s seat because she’s about 180 degrees opposite politik, if you pay attention…
Well she’s my supe and I’m all for this. So there’s that.
Just down the street Fielder barreled through resident and Marshall Elementary families to put permanent supportive housing, substance and psych treatment, between the 16th/BART fentanyl mercado and Marshall Elementary.
But tell me again why the tragic death of a cat is more important to our D9 supervisor than the future of homeless, low income, immigrant and students of color.
I keep seeing comments about how KitKat should t have been outside on a busy street, but these commenters are forgetting that KitKat was a sentient being who was very familiar and comfortable with her environment. Robot cars don’t behave like cars. Any urban cat knows that there are a series of events that take place before a car moves: feet approach, doors slam, the chassis sinks as someone sits down, the engine starts. Maybe some music starts playing, or a window rolls down. All of these signals are predictable and take a certain amount of time. Robot taxis don’t do this. They go from silent inert object to silent machine crushing you in the span of seconds.
There are always ways to make machines safer, and Waymo needs to do this.
Cats get killed all the time by cars; They don’t understand them. The idea that somehow cats have a deep understanding of cares and that Waymos are radically different than any other car is just silly.
Except Waymo can’t see them, and drivers often can.
It’s a difference you are hiding from.
@ JH – This is a huge part of the tragic equation. Kit Kat liked to warm himself near and even under cars when he wasn’t visiting folks inside the Roxie or Dalva. He was extremely savvy when it came to pre-botic vehicles. These new silent killers go from rest to high speed without sound or warning. Kit Kat was a victim of the future, sadly. A future without Kit Kat is of less value to me and many people who had the pleasure of meeting him. May he Rest in Peace.
Cats’ brains are the size of small walnuts, and cats did not evolve to see cars as a threat.
Waymo riders brains are even smaller and less evolved.
I support democratic socialist ideas, but this is ridiculous and makes Fielder seem less intelligent. I understand the concerns about monopolies and data collection, but suggesting to ban robot cars because of a cat’s death is just absurd. Also, it’s hard to defend Lyft and Uber drivers when I frequently see them violating traffic laws and behaving poorly on the road. The assertion that human drivers care more about “our kids” while Waymo vehicles follow traffic rules solely because they are programmed to do so is also ridiculous. Following traffic rules enhances safety, regardless of any personal feelings. To me, it’s pretty straightforward, and Waymos are way better than humans at adhering to traffic rules.
While I agree that robot cars still require improvement, it’s nonsensical to pretend that they will disappear from the streets
It’s not “just” the cat’s death, *(you can read, yes?) but that’s the latest exposed flaw in the unregulated robot schema that is just BEGINNING to take the lives of living things via the “go fast and break things” model of robo-killer rollouts for profit.
> “There is no such thing as object permanence with these cars,” [Cummings] said
Waymo researchers beg to differ. They contend that their tracking models “maintain track estimates for objects even when they are occluded”. And that was five years ago. It’s right there on their website: https://waymo.com/research/soda-multi-object-tracking-with-soft-data-association/
Frankly, it sounds like this expert isn’t up-to-date on how this technology actually works.
Fiddler should do a bit of research on how many cats are unalived by regular cars before running her mouth to introduce nonsense legislation to turn down millions in gross receipts taxes SF receives from Waymo.
It is not legislation, it is a toothless resolution urging the state to take action on something that autonomous car lobbyists will go to the mat to keep from happening.
And yet Waymos cannot see pets and you’re avoiding that fact.
Human beings can be held accountable and most are decent people trying to avoid killing things. Waymos are not that.
Where in the penal code are motorists held accountable for killing animals?
Once in Austin, I was bicycling down UT’s West Mall. A young squirrel ran out from a hedge and found itself under my front wheel. It did not turn out well for the squirrel.
After I did my hard time in the Texas Department of Corrections for that heinous crime, I fled Texas for California.
Don’t be absurd, bicyclists never make mistakes.
Bicyclists, make MISTAKES?
They have non-profits to deny that.
Cruise was banned from operation in SF when one if its cars maimed a woman… after being hit by a human driver, who, by the way is still at large after they fled the scene.
A human driver can be apprehended and held accountable. Cruise however LIED ABOUT THE INCIDENT TO POLICE AS A CORPORATE DECISION FOR PROFIT, AND WAS EXILED THUS.
Emphasis on facts mine.
How about we work on “Project Zero” actually achieving zero traffic deaths instead of using this (or any) opportunity to attack technology. As someone who loves to walk around the Mission, I feel WAAAAAY safer around Waymos than other cars.
Project Zero is graft. Waymo is surveillance and AI taking human jobs. You are not safer around unregulated robots than regulated humans. False.
I think this is pretty naked opportunism on the part of Fielder and the Teamsters. Fielder is skeptical of big tech in general, fair enough, but seems like she’d rather hurt tech than help people. The teamsters simply are opposed to automation in general. Both are exploiting this tragedy to drum up support for what they wanted to do anyway. Neither seem all that interested in how Waymo performs compared with the average driver.
Regular human drivers kill 40,000 human beings a year in this country. Whether increasing Waymo’s adoption will make that number bigger or smaller is the only thing I care about when talking about them, and I think it’s the only thing you should care about, too. If they make it smaller then their owners will have earned their profits, and it won’t matter if some jobs get destroyed. If they make it larger then we should get rid of them.
What about cyclists being killed by trucks (1 example: Recology truck on So. Vanness & 16th) . Or bikes killing the elderly (Castro area & Market sidewalk). Shall we have a legislation to address those deaths too?
Cats & other animals, that roam on the streets with cars, get killed, by cars – fact of life. This Supervisor’s proposed legislation/ordinance – whatever the title is – is a waste of tax payer’s $$. If you want a cat to live to be 22 yo, keep it locked inside your house.
Maybe this isn’t really about pedestrians or bikers being killed because Waymo hasn’t done that?
Waymos have run into firefighters at accident scenes.
Apologize to firefighters for your laziness.
I applaud the supervisor for her mindfulness on public safety. However, in my experience the most courteous drivers in this city have been “driverless”. I am disappointed that I’ve requested this supervisor’s help many times on traffic calming measures for my street which should amount to nothing more than a lump of asphalt that makes a speed hump. This could actually save the lives of pets and children but alas, it appears we will have to wait till one is killed before a safety measure will be implemented! I’m not a flag waving supporter of autonomous vehicles but I can’t dispute the obvious fact that those machines are not the ones driving up our residential street well above the speed limit. Until the machines become self aware to destroy us, the humans are the bad actors when it comes to irresponsible driving!
I ride a motorcycle and feel far safer around Waymos than human drivers.
I love Mission Local but this is a “do better” moment. I think there are more important stories than “Cat Hit By Car”.
Sorry about Kitty, but indoor cats, live longer and don’t have fleas. I think the kitty was too low and the computer, did’nt see it,however I support Waymo, because at least they stop at stop signs, and obey the traffic laws, plus they will allow you to bring, your service animal in the vehicle, and they don’t racially profile you.
The idea that because one thing is dangerous (human drivers), we should be forgiving of another thing that is possibly less dangerous but also unpredictable, experimental, and an energy hog (the AI running the robot cars) is frustrating. More robot cars on the road does not necessarily reduce the number of human-driven cars no matter how much the tech bros say. And as we can see, the number of traffic deaths and injuries continues unabated.
I’m sorry, but what these “experts” are saying is ridiculous. Taxis always used to be regulated city by city, and the only reason TNCs broke with that is that Uber and Lyft had so much money to throw around. By moving regulations to the state level they bought themselves looser regulations. We’ve all suffered the congestion as a result because we have no authority as a city to limit their numbers.
To say that a robotaxi can be geofenced to avoid an area with homeless encampments, but it’s impractical to geofence it out of a county, doesn’t even make sense. I think these “experts” must be too close to the industry they’re commenting on.
Anyway, we live in what’s supposed to be a democracy, right? Let the pro-AV experts make their case, but at the end of the day, let’s vote on it. I fully stand with Supervisor Fielder in her demand. Rest in power, KitKat.
We should limit ALL cars on the road. Buses and public transit would be so much faster if they didn’t have to deal with traffic and double parked cars.
All of the above mentioned, racially profile and Waymo and it’s kind does not.
We should also geofence cyclists from bike lanes around homeless encampments, because who are cyclists to interfere with the spilling of encampment detritus from the sidewalk into the bike lane?
Waymos routinely drive down Sanchez, a designated slow street, where through traffic is not allowed. I watched one creep along behind a man and small child all the way down a block. Really not cool.
come on Mission Local – you know this is ridiculous. Supe Fielder is just using this tragic accident to raise her profile (and maybe raise some teamsters $$$). You do not have to be complicit her shenanigans.
Anybody with a brain (and I’m putting you in this camp) knows that pets running around on streets get hit by cars. And that’s sad. Is Jackie Fielder going to come after every human driver that tragically runs over a pet? The statistics show that Waymos are FAAAAAR safer than human drivers.
You are making the same mistakes here that you made with the Valencia Street center bike lane – leaning into vibes and feelings at the cost of **actual safety**. If every car on the street was a Waymo, SF, the homeless encampments, the slow streets would all be much safer.
Seems like it. It’s a safe issue to stand on: death of a pet by a big tech company product. It’s an empty, performative calling attention to herself.
Waymo is a good service with a good track record. The future of ride share absolutely includes driver-less cars. What amazes me is how quickly and deeply the media has spun this story. The poor animal seemed to have gotten caught under the vehicle at a very bad time and died. It’s a cat. We have worse things to tackle than a pointless animal death by driver-less cars.
“tragic accident” vs “perfect robocars that don’t make mistakes”
Waymo has run into firefighters trying to secure a location multiple, multiple times including hitting emergency vehicles DOZENS of times.
I’ve never hit a single firetruck so I call full BS on your extrapolations.
That’s whataboutism.
The issue is that Waymos can’t see animals and aren’t being made to.
Sure there are good and bad drivers, but Waymo is 1 particular kind of driver under the control of software and that software is flawed.
There are no real statistics on self driving cars. We have limited information from their accident reports and no real independent reporting. So no, the statistics do not show they’re safer.
For your edification, California absolutely collects and records this information: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/autonomous-vehicles/
California collects the information the Alphabet CORPORATION gives to them, after they comb it.
Ask Cruise you corporate tool
I would put my perfect driving record up against Waymos all day and win every time.
I see human drivers do this all the time. Sounds like a car issue not an autonomous car issue.
I see snobby cyclists doing it every minute of every day.
Car are allowed if you live there and have to park.
It’s just a dead alleycat.
Meanwhile, crime is happening in the Mission District every day with human victims. But progressives think stray cats are more important than human beings.
If it were your mother in a wheelchair you would probably be calling for some regulation rather than none, but since it’s not, you’ll just have to apologize for … unnecessary animal deaths? Weird flex Waymo yuppies…
Waymo yuppies can’t interact with human beings.
They can only kill pets for more money than cabbies cost.
They prefer that.
Meanwhile Performative-Only Fielder will be silent on this human fatality .. Why do people want someone like this to represent them ?https://sfstandard.com/2025/11/16/waymo-records-fatal-shooting-mission/
Humane associations do not adopt out cats to people that say they will let them go outside for any reason. It’s standard practice. Cats are in danger on any busy street in this city. SHAME on the owners. They don’t deserve to own a cat if they are letting it outside.
Bureaucratic nightmare??? Oh please. Let the voters of each county decide. At the rate things are going, our sidewalks will soon be clogged with delivery bots as well. I am so sick of this garbage.
Voters don’t decide all laws. That is not our system.
But I agree that most people would vote street robots straight to hell.
Sidewalk robots, like any abandoned property in the right of way, can be tipped over.
I love this understated framing: “no autonomous vehicle expert contacted by Mission Local said they could support legislation”
Like, no cocaine fiends are in favor of drug legislation.
A funny thing happens when you apply that to the Teamsters…
This!
Bureaucratic Nightmare? Or democracy? God forbid you people take the bus…
We regulate the bus. A lot.
I think we agree? If there are no more waumls in sf then we can take the bus? Yes? Bus good!
Bus regulated, Taxis regulated, Robots unregulated.
That’s the point.
For me, the message of this article is the ineffectiveness of Supervisor Fielder’s call for county legislation restricting robotaxis.
I’m so sad for KitKat, an to think the corrupt PUC has the approval control over allowing them on the City Streets is even more distressing!
“Regain community trust”
These are people who have a longstanding political and economic agenda against Waymo. There is no trust to “re”gain.
Waymo is a google product.
Anyone who trusts Google in 2025 IS A MORON.
I think a lot of commenters here are missing the point. Of course we should always keep our cats inside, but sometimes they get out. I know that’s not the case with Kit Kat, but for example, a few years ago we adopted a cat that was semi-feral. He was born from a feral mom in our friend’s barn and we took him in. It was so hard to keep him inside because he was so used to being outside. Eventually he escaped and got hit by a car. The fact that Kit Kat was run over because the Waymo could not detect it is a warning sign. A woman was already dragged by a Waymo and ended up with all her limbs broken. Is that not a horrific incident in itself to warn us? Next it will be a small child. These AV companies are only helping the rich folks that own them get richer, while taking away jobs from live human beings who desperately need to work. With all the layoffs happening in this day and age, I prefer to support human workers rather than rich AV owners. AV & AI technologies can be helpful and at the same time super dangerous. I didn’t vote for Jackie Fielder, but I agree with her on this one. Regulation is necessary to ensure the safety and livelihoods of human beings on so many levels, as well as to prevent robots from taking jobs from much more deserving human beings. This is a no brainer for me.
Sir or madam —
Of note, the woman was dragged by a Cruise, not a Waymo.
Joe
You are correct. A Waymo is still an AV though.
Assh0le vehicle. Confirmed.
I love using Waymo. It is absolutely nice to get an undisturbed ride. I find it to be expensive though. Waymo’s driving bother me less than Uber & Lift drivers. Those drivers do make sudden stops, w/o consideration for the driver behind them. They also chose to drop/pickup passengers, while blocking traffic, when driveways are available.
Waymos stop in the middle of streets without consideration and take several minutes to (never) even notice the problem they caused behind them.
Lyft/Uber at least has the possibility of you asking the driver to drop off at a more safe location.. robot apologists, sigh.
Maybe humanity IS dumb enough to welcome AI in to kill them.
My guy, you can’t say the woman hit by a Cruise was a warning sign that a Waymo would hit a cat… Uber’s first attempt at AV killed a woman in Arizona. These companies train their AV differently. One failing doesn’t mean all of them are doomed (or else Waymo, which has been testing on streets for years, would have killed a person by now). What happened to KitKat is devastating but is the goal to stop animals from being hit by AV or to stop animals from being hit by cars in general? Because you will never get the latter. And this being the only case—at least that I’ve heard of—of Waymo killing an animal, tells me that this isn’t a major concern. At least not in the way human drivers hitting animals should be a concern.
Agree, on keeping your pets inside. I’m trying to get a job with Waymo and Zoox as mapper, or the human that sits in the car programming it. I love Muni and Taxi drivers, but hey! I need the money, and if you can’t lick them-Join them. Oh! And I will teach them to watch out for cats-LOL
Agree, on keeping robocars unregulated and pets and wild animals in jeopardy for corporate profit. FTFY.
You COULD choose to force them to fix it, but you won’t try.
That would be anathema!