[HN Gopher] A bus driver killed a man, the city blamed tech
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A bus driver killed a man, the city blamed tech
Author : lxm
Score : 75 points
Date : 2023-09-18 18:04 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theindustry.pw)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theindustry.pw)
| hackernewds wrote:
| > Why would the Fire Chief give an interview shortly afterwards
| in which she indirectly validates this distortion, but then
| insist, weeks later and through a PR agent, that she had never
| did? Maybe because a significant contingent of the city's
| emergency response departments are involved in a concerted,
| union-driven effort to delay the roll-out of AV.
|
| Unions have a history of corruption, and not driving benefits for
| the working class while crushing businesses. It is a travesty
| that the Biden administration is encouraging their proliferation
| in a populist fashion.
| muglug wrote:
| > Unions have a history of corruption
|
| So do many large corporations
|
| > not driving benefits for the working class while crushing
| businesses
|
| This also describes a number of monopolistic companies
|
| > It is a travesty that the Biden administration is encouraging
| their proliferation
|
| The Biden administration also promotes business interests at
| home and abroad.
| trust_bt_verify wrote:
| Where was the biden administration mentioned in The article? Is
| this just a troll account?
| [deleted]
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| Where's the video that contradicts the first responders account?
| Not casting aspersions, I've just looked through this article,
| linked tweets, etc. and I can't find it.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I suspect that you'd need to go to Cruise, for that. I suspect
| they have their own reasons for not publishing it on YT.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| I see, good point. Seems like a shame -- even the publishing
| of an edited video (to leave out any inappropriate content)
| would be the best antidote to lies in the media.
| [deleted]
| more_corn wrote:
| Because the cruise vehicle is sitting in the middle of the
| street blocking the road while an emergency vehicle tries to
| get by?
| jsd1982 wrote:
| Did they _really_ need to call out that the man (victim) was
| homeless? Is that a significant identifier important to the
| story?
| serf wrote:
| No, they could have just described the persons' behavior -- but
| instead they wanted to include the false nuance that is echoed
| in the comments here that because someone is homeless it
| implies and symbolizes their mental state as being broken and
| their judgement as being faulty.
|
| It's about as true as looking at the ballot returns of any
| single state and then declaring all people within that state as
| party affiliates for the elected party -- it's not true but
| it's useful for painting the people involved into hateful and
| simplified stereotypes that do nothing but provide bigots with
| an easy to understand mental model, however false or imprecise
| it might be.
|
| One thing that can be said for sure : If any of us were
| homeless traffic victims I doubt that we'd want "they're
| homeless" as the de-facto explanation as to why a vehicle ran
| us down -- it's not that easy to explain away.
| throe37848 wrote:
| It is just a slur to dehumanise people! Most likely they lived
| in tent or some other structure. So calling them homeless is
| inaccurate.
|
| SF needs better protection for people who live in mobile and
| temporary structures. They increase diversity and prevent
| gentrification! It should be illegal to demolish their home,
| without providing alternative accommodation!
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| Living in a tent is homelessness
| justrealist wrote:
| If you have lived in SF, you understand the context this adds
| to the situation.
| PlunderBunny wrote:
| Then couldn't there be more detail that would allow those of
| us who haven't lived in SF to understand it too?
| bombcar wrote:
| The subtext is that he deserved to die, I assume.
|
| (Which is a bit sarcastic, perhaps, but people generally
| value the homeless less on various axis, whether they want
| to admit it or not, because when you hear "bad thing
| happened to man" you immediately want to know if that man
| could have been you, once you learn he was homeless the
| panic reaction subsides.)
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Yes. Happy to help you understand. Many homeless in SF are
| actually very mentally ill. They sometimes _jump_ in front
| of traffic. This has happened to me a few times driving in
| SF. So the implication is that the bus driver may not at
| all have been at fault.
| justrealist wrote:
| Yeah exactly.
|
| I'm _not_ saying anyone deserved to die; the homeless in
| SF are basically not autonomous agents anymore. Right or
| wrong, it shifts it in my mind from "bus driver is at
| fault" to "nobody is at fault" (except the city that
| encourages themn to them stay drugged and on the
| streets).
| moate wrote:
| I don't live there, could you provide the context in a
| paragraph or 2?
| fragmede wrote:
| The subtext is that the individual was not of right mind,
| either due to sleep deprivation from being unhoused, or the
| stress itself of being unhoused, or, to be blunt, being on
| drugs. Not that it, in any way, makes it okay to have run
| over them, but the implication is that it's possible they
| got hit because they stepped out/jumped in front of the
| bus, and that it wasn't the fault of the bus driver. Not
| saying that's what happened here, but that's the framing
| that saying they're homeless gives for me.
|
| For additional context, Harrison and 7th isn't located in
| the best neighborhood, which is to say there are numerous
| tent cities in that vicinity.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> the takeaway for journalists here is clear: be skeptical of
| your sources, triple-check your facts, and don't ever assume that
| your colleagues are doing the same._
|
| That should be the first thing they teach you in Journalism 101,
| these days.
|
| I get sick of reading news stories that are _all_ the same AP
| story, with different ads around it.
| [deleted]
| gabereiser wrote:
| It's not journalism anymore, it's visits to your ad riddled
| pages. Regardless of what _truth_ you post. That's what it's
| become now. That's web journalism. "I heard it on TikTok" is
| next.
|
| There are a few institutions trying to keep it dignified but
| it's become a bazaar.
| slg wrote:
| >It's not journalism anymore,
|
| The "anymore" there means something changed. I don't think
| there was ever a time in which journalists did not regularly
| print statements from officials like police and firefighters
| as fact not worthy of questioning. Sometimes we get into a
| mindset that everything is getting worse when in reality it
| is just that we are now more aware of how bad it has always
| been.
| gabereiser wrote:
| Hey now, telling me I'm more aware sounds an awful lot like
| "woke" /s. Logic to the illogical. I do think you are right
| however, I think the standards have dropped as far as what
| makes above-the-fold news. Maybe that's a sign that
| everything is benign and @TerryXPickleCaster is breaking
| news. Or that we have become desensitized to the war that
| is raging currently? I very much think they are current
| news. I also know in this always online world of 25/7 news,
| you can talk in circles (hi fox), but I do see a decline in
| journalistic integrity. Questions being asked of officials
| on camera that should never be asked during a live
| broadcast. The question to the sheriff of PA over that
| manhunt. "Little rascals style". Questions to WH press
| secretary. Questions to parliamentary figures. It's like
| people just want to troll people for jokes instead of
| asking serious journalistic questions. I know what you're
| saying though. There was always the National Inquirer.
| bombcar wrote:
| There are certain things that are noticeable worse now;
| sometime in the last decade or so it became respectable to
| print news articles that boil down to:
|
| "Someone on Twitter said X"
|
| Which is next to useless, you can find someone saying
| anything on Twitter.
| slg wrote:
| Newspapers have been dedicating space to that sort of
| thing for literally centuries. Reprinting an angry tweet
| from some rando isn't much different than printing an
| angry letter to the editor from some rando.
| bombcar wrote:
| Before it was restricted to letters to the editors and
| maybe "rando on the street" segment, now more and more
| entire articles are written about posts on twitter/reddit
| - obviously it's easier for the journalist, but there's
| no checking, no digging, nothing.
| slg wrote:
| The "here's a random person's opinion" style journalism
| is not new and isn't a result of Twitter or any social
| media. Whether that content is in a letter to the editor
| or in an article about a tweet doesn't matter. Neither
| required any checking or digging by a journalist. I don't
| know what distinction you are trying to make between the
| two, but I don't see much of a difference.
| bee_rider wrote:
| The sfsrandard article included quotes from the Cruise
| spokesperson, and correctly attributed the statements they were
| made by first responders to those first responders.
|
| I don't see why TheIndustry would take this sanctimonious tone
| about "lessons for journalists" when they are doing the exact
| same thing here, just repeating the statements of spokespeople.
|
| I don't see a lesson for journalists, here. Readers need to
| correctly parse statements like "according to <some
| spokesperson>." When an article describes multiple
| contradictory statements by different organizations, it should
| be possible for people to infer that it is too early to make a
| conclusion.
| djohnston wrote:
| I was struck by the anti AV attitude and poor arguments put forth
| on the original post:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37371539
|
| From a presumably technical audience it was disappointing to read
| through those takes.
| hnis4fascists wrote:
| [dead]
| hnisforfascists wrote:
| [dead]
| more_corn wrote:
| To be clear. A cruise vehicle DID block emergency responders'
| access to the scene right?
| partdavid wrote:
| The article is written as some kind of victory lap over
| misinformation but as far as I can tell, the only information
| provided is that:
|
| - A man was struck by a Muni bus
|
| - A paramedic on the scene claimed that a Cruise AV delayed
| transportation to the hospital (not access to the scene)
|
| - Video shows a Cruise vehicle stopped in a traffic lane and
| not moving to the right (but we don't see the video, so we
| don't know if that means it blocked anything, or if it was the
| "wrong" thing to do)
|
| - The new report says that the Fire Chief did not "attribute"
| the death to the Cruise AV, and specifically calls out that
| this is in contrast to assumptions made by press outlets in
| their misinterpretation of the initial paramedic's incident
| report.
|
| My interpretation is that there is some disagreement over
| whether the Cruise vehicle actually "blocked" anything, and
| that the final report determined that it either didn't cause
| any delay at all, or that whatever delay it caused didn't
| matter to the outcome, in contrast to the opinion of the
| paramedic.
|
| The article is written in such a heightened, sensitive way,
| it's tough to find the actual information, which is
| unfortunate. It's not journalistic or anything, it's
| commentary.
| xigency wrote:
| Kind of funny that it is assumed that a human-operated vehicle
| would be more prompt in getting out of the way. Yesterday,
| walking in my city I saw an ambulance stuck at an intersection
| for over a minute because of confused drivers and a police
| vehicle blocking the road.
|
| I think the fact that the vehicles stop is better. Emergency
| vehicles can use any lane even for opposite traffic - so go
| around them.
|
| Meanwhile, Teslas seem to target emergency vehicles for ramming
| at max speed.
| [deleted]
| hnis4fascists wrote:
| [dead]
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Anyone that's been on the ground in SF, at cafes, beer gardens,
| barbershops and any housing protest knows that this is just a
| symptom
|
| A knee jerk boiling over of general disdain of their mismanaged
| corporate technocracy with a nominal standing committee
| xigency wrote:
| Sounds like the same old NIMBYs upset that their rising wealth
| is tied to people making waves.
| tqi wrote:
| I genuinely have no idea what any of that means. What is a
| symptom what?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| a symptom of a disdain towards tech wealth, rapid changes,
| and mostly inequality viewed through a juvenile and narrow
| lens from people on the left side of the wealth bell curve
| there
| alasdair_ wrote:
| >On August 14, at around 11 pm, a homeless man was crossing a
| street in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood when he
| was hit by a bus.
|
| Why does it matter if the man was homeless? "a duplex-owning man
| was crossing a street" would sound silly so why does the man's
| lack of home need to be mentioned?
| [deleted]
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| I think the additional context is fine. It's only an issue if
| you're sensitive to the word "homeless" and see the description
| as demeaning. Otherwise, it's additional.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > Otherwise, it's additional.
|
| Why didn't they add his hair color, since it's additional? At
| least they told us his gender...so that's also additional.
| What about his political views? It's nitpicking minor
| details, but that's often the problem with marginalized
| groups. It's subtly reinforced.
| bombcar wrote:
| They could add his race and it'd electrify the discussion
| for large swaths of the population!
| signatoremo wrote:
| I'm sure in that case someone sensitive to that particular
| detail would ask a similar question to yours, because they
| would feel similarly outraged.
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(page generated 2023-09-18 23:02 UTC)