A new Los Angeles op-ed on AV safety opens with “there’s nothing wrong with mourning” a cat, then spends the entire piece arguing that mourning should produce exactly zero policy response.
There’s nothing wrong with mourning the death of a neighborhood cat. You’ll have trouble finding someone who likes cats more than I do.
Hey, this guy says some of his best friends are cats, just so you know.
There’s nothing wrong with mourning death, according to the author, as long as the mourning doesn’t prevent more death.
Why?
He’s not saying “don’t be sad about the cat.”
He’s saying: “Accept that corporations killing things you love is the price of progress, and demanding accountability will kill more humans.”
Corporations? Like the ones funding the author, Steven Greenhut, Western region director for the political extremist R Street Institute?
Is Greenhut literally being paid to normalize corporate greed to the degree of cold blooded murder for profits?
R Street receives funding from tech companies and insurers who profit directly from autonomous vehicle liability limitations, the exact policies Greenhut advocates. These aren’t policy recommendations when they’re marketing deliverables for his paycheck. You think he would give up his source of income to care about your kids or your pets being killed by it?
Extreme.
The Escalation Pattern
This is exactly the racist jaywalking playbook.
1920s: “Pedestrians are obstacles to vehicle flow” = criminalize non-whites for walking
2017: “Protesters are obstacles to traffic” = propose zero liability for running over non-white protestors
2025: “Pets are acceptable losses” = normalize corporate immunity for killing dehumanized targets
Each step expands the category of acceptable targets while contracting the zone of accountability.
When Death Starts Normalizing
When Greenhut says drivers aren’t held accountable for hitting animals, he’s stating a current failure of justice as justification for systematizing that failure at corporate scale.
The argument structure is:
- Individual drivers often escape accountability (bad)
- Therefore corporations should definitely escape accountability (worse?)
- This is actually good because…
The Cat Is Doing Political Work
Kit Kat isn’t just a tragic death. Kit Kat is a test case for power.
- If a beloved community fixture can be killed with zero consequences
- If police can document the violation but issue nothing
- If the response is memorialize but don’t regulate
Then the precedent is set: Corporate algorithmic agents can kill without legal consequence. Start with pets (aww, sad, but just animals). Move to cyclists (already happening in multiple Tesla “veering” examples). Expand to pedestrians (as overtly proposed by North Dakota government). Automate at scale (Swasticars).
Swiss Re Data is Dogshit
Greenhut cites “88% reduction in property damage claims” as if it’s safety data.
But as I have explained repeatedly before: No citations = no fault documentation = fewer claims where liability is clear.
If police can’t cite the AV, victims face a “gap in accountability,” and the company controls all evidence… of course property damage claims go down.
Thank you, NOT.
That’s NOT safety.
That’s legal engineering.
Swiss Re makes money when:
- Liability claims are minimized
- Fault is unclear
- Victims can’t prove responsibility
- Payouts are smaller
The 88% reduction in property damage claims could mean AVs are safer, OR (let’s be honest) victims can’t successfully file claims against corporations with armies of lawyers and no driver to hold accountable.
Which interpretation does Swiss Re have financial incentive to heavily promote?
Greenhut presents the dogshit data as if it’s independent verification. It’s marketing for a liability model that profits insurers and manufacturers while leaving victims with “gaps in accountability.”
Woof.
The Big Conclusion Reveals Everything
Greenhut ends his piece with this advice:
When something bad happens, sometimes the best approach is doing nothing.
This is the same logic male authorities used in the 1970s when they told women not to resist rape—advice that feminist activists fought against by teaching self-defense and organizing “Take Back the Night” marches.
Where was Greenhut in 1976?
As anyone learning the lessons of history, such as WWII and the rise of Hitler, knows about the people who said to do nothing… they were the bad guys.
Translation of Greenhut: When corporations kill without accountability, for profit, the best approach is protecting their ability to keep killing, for profit.
Every corporate atrocity in American history was enabled by people like this being paid to argue that corporate accountability would somehow be worse than mass death.
He’s clearly NOT arguing for actual safety (which would require accountability, independent verification, mandatory disclosure).
He’s arguing algorithms should be allowed to kill for profit and without any legal consequences.
And he’s using a dead pet.
Your pet could be next.
Your child on a bike could be after that.
Because that’s what Tesla “veering” documentation shows already. This isn’t speculative. The escalation from pets to cyclists is already documented. Kit Kat directly connects to Allie Huggins (one of many cyclists killed by Tesla hit-and-runs).
The cat’s death isn’t a tragedy Greenhut’s able to move on from, because it’s an obstacle to corporate immunity he needs to neutralize.
That normalization is terrifying: we’ve seen this exact pattern produce ISIS recruitment pipelines, vehicular homicide proposals, and the criminalization of being a pedestrian.
Greenhut wants us to grieve Kit Kat quietly while accepting that no one will answer for corporate death for profit. Greenhut is literally paid by entities that profit from the deadly policy outcomes he advocates.
That acceptance is the foundation for algorithmic murder at scale.
