It’s a typical Wednesday night in San Francisco, a wet fog coating the street-lit sidewalks of the Lower Haight neighborhood.
In the shadows of Duboce park, eight activists have gathered, bikes in hand. Their mission: to disable as many self-driving cars on the streets of the city as possible over the course of the next few hours. Their weapon of choice? A simple traffic cone, nicked from sidewalks and construction sites as they bike along.
The meet-up has been coordinated by the anti-car activist group Safe Street Rebel, which in recent months has waged a war on the self-driving cars that have dotted San Francisco’s streets since 2022. The group’s actions have been the subject of news articles and videos of their efforts, including detailed instructions on how supporters can disable the cars themselves, have gone viral on TikTok and Twitter.
