>“A human driver can be held accountable, can hop out, say sorry, can be tracked down by police if it’s a hit-and-run,” Ms. Fielder said in an interview. “Here, there is no one to hold accountable.”

But would a human even suffer consequences in this case? Else in the article mentions:

>The city does not track how many animals are killed by cars each year, but the number is in the hundreds, according to Deb Campbell, a spokeswoman for Animal Care and Control in San Francisco.

and

>Waymo does not dispute that one of its cars killed Kit Kat. The company released a statement saying that when one of its vehicles was picking up passengers, a cat “darted under our vehicle as it was pulling away.”

In other words, it could have easily happened to a human driver, and all the uproar in this case is only because people are being selectively angry against Waymo for... other reasons:

>Still, Kit Kat’s death has given new fuel to detractors. They argue that robot taxis steal riders from public transit, eliminate jobs for people, enrich Silicon Valley executives — and are just plain creepy.

>...

>Ms. Fielder has strong ties to labor unions, including the Teamsters, which has fought for more regulation of autonomous vehicles, largely out of concern for members who could eventually lose their own driving jobs in other sectors.

It's obviously sad that an animal was killed in an accident, but the outrage towards Waymo and media coverage definitely seems disproportionate given statistical context, and I was pleasantly surprised that the article made efforts to point that out rather than dogpiling on Waymo.

> But would a human even suffer consequences in this case?

Criminally, no. Civil liability, probably only up to the price of a cat, and that's if you can prove it wasn't the cat's or its owner's fault.

But I don't think that's what they're talking about. A human can feel bad, genuinely apologize, etc. And by extension, if they cause more serious harm, they are personally liable and might see the inside of a jail cell. A corporation has no feelings and no one is ever going to prison even if a Waymo car runs over a child.

This might be the first time we're putting autonomous tech that's likely to cause a fair number of deaths in plain view, so I think there are legitimate questions around how we want to handle that. Does the corporate liability model need to change? If it doesn't, how long before the first ex-spouse of a Waymo engineer gets "accidentally" ran over by an autonomous car?

> But would a human even suffer consequences in this case?

Never. In the US you can drive drunk and speeding and kill a person and walk away with basically an "oopsie".

Other very relevant, undisputed context: the accident happened at 11:40 at night