Occupy this

Occupy Austin must occupy somewhere else: Police clear City Hall overnight

October, 2011: Occupy Austin at City Hall
Photo by Dan Solomon
The new City of Austin policy disallowing use of the City Hall Plaza between10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m.

Occupy Austin, a relatively peaceful protest group camping at City Hall since October, is now breaking city policy, and Austin police began the task of clearing out the campers on Friday night at 10 p.m.. According to news reports and Twitter posts at #occupyaustin, over a dozen police officers moved in and informed protestors they had to move out by 10:30 p.m. or face arrest.

Immediately the Twitter-verse went into action with protestors either asking for reinforcements:

"ALERT: EVICTION IMMINENT. Anyone on steps after 10:30 may be arrested. PLEASE MOBILIZE TO CITY HALL IMMEDIATELY."

or help moving:

"Anyone with a truck please come to city hall ASAP to help load our stuff up! Please hurry!"

Several live UStream and a Livestream feeds went up at 10:30 p.m. from City Hall and showed a quiet and relatively peaceful if loud eviction with protestors milling about, police standing by and downtown visitors watching. There were of course the hold-outs but most of the protestors chose to comply and take the protest somewhere else for the rest of the night.

At 10:45 p.m. police announced that the plaza was to be cleared and any stragglers would be arrested for criminal trespass.

The eviction was made possible by a change in city hall usage policy that took effect Feb. 2^nd. The policy does not allow any overnight camping on the City Hall plaza and further bans use of the plaza between 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. unless a public city meeting is going on.

At its height Occupy Austin included several hundred protestors at City Hall but that number had dwindled to just dozens in recent weeks. City officials estimate that cleaning plaza and maintaining a police presence over the last four months had cost Austin taxpayers over $800,000.

The waning of patience from the City follows that of others around the country. Early reports from the scene suggest several protestors were arrested but no violence or injury as of 11:30 p.m.

The bulk of those remaining began a march downtown. As of midnight they were occupying the party district along Sixth Street.

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Defensive Driving

Austin-based Tesla faces new probe focused on remote driving feature

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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating 2.6 million Teslas.

Federal regulators have opened an investigation into 2.6 million Teslas after reports of crashes involving the use of company technology that allows drivers to remotely command their vehicle to return to them, or move to another location, using a phone app.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also said Tuesday, January 7 that Austin-based Tesla did not report any of the accidents. Tesla is under order to report crashes on “publicly accessible roads” involving vehicles being operated through its autonomous driving technology.

The new investigation follows another probe launched in October looking into the company's “Full Self-Driving” system after getting reports of crashes in low-visibility conditions, including one that killed a pedestrian. That investigation covers 2.4 million Teslas from the 2016 through 2024 model years.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.

One driver filed a complaint after a crash while using Tesla's “Actually Smart Summon” technology and NHTSA is looking into another three similar incidents based on media reports, the NHTSA said. The agency is looking into 12 total incidents reported by users of the technology.

Each of the vehicles failed to detect posts and other parked vehicles, according to the NHTSA.

Regulators say the vehicles struck objects because the users had "too little reaction time to avoid a crash, either with the available line of sight or releasing the phone app button, which stops the vehicle’s movement.”

Shares of Tesla Inc. slid more than 4 percent in late afternoon trading Tuesday.

Musk has complained that U.S. regulations are too onerous and are holding back the development of self-driving cars. Ethics experts are worried that once President-elect Donald Trump takes office, Musk will push him to ease oversight of Tesla, which just suffered its first decline in annual sales in more than a decade.

Musk donated an estimated $250 million to Trump's presidential campaign and is a frequent guest at Trump's Mar-a-Lago, vetting cabinet nominees and meeting with foreign heads of state. Trump has put Musk in charge of an advisory group, the Department of Government Efficiency, that will recommend where to cut government expenses and staff at federal agencies and reduce regulation.

The NHTSA said it will look into the top speed that Teslas can reach when users deploy its “summons” technology, as well as restrictions on public roads and line of sights requirements. It also said it expects to check for any “connectivity delays" with the app that could result in increased stopping distance.

Tesla’s Model 3 owner’s manual says that its “summons” feature is designed for use only in parking lots and driveways on private property and is disabled on public roads.

The new probe covers 2016-2025 Model S and X vehicles, 2017-2025 Model 3, 2020-2025 Model Y equipped with Tesla's Full Self-Driving driver assistance system.

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