Don't protest self-driving cars, protest the laws you feel shouldn't apply to you. After all, there are plenty of other reasons jaywalking laws might become more strictly enforced.

The term "jaywalking" was a slur invented by car companies to steal rights from pedestrians. If cars can't avoid people, the cars need to be separated by physical barriers or removed.

This is in no way contradicting my point.

A pedestrian may illegally have entered a road, but still have right-of-way, and self driving cars will need to account for that.

However, protesting self driving cars will not change whether walking in the street is legal, since it already is not.

Therefore, whether you do so and get fined by police is entirely up to their discretion, which could change at any time for any reason.

If you want it to be legal, protest the illegality, not the car company.

If I'm not mistaken, car makers first lobbied to outlaw jaywalking. So if it's anything like the past, protesting self-driving cars and protesting the laws will amount to the same thing.

The laws are already on the books. Police could choose to apply heavier enforcement regardless of whether or not self driving cars become a thing.

If the law itself is unjust or inappropriate, protest the law.

Lol or perhaps jaywalking laws should be loosened if they're not being applied anyways in most cities.

It depends on the city. My nearest metro does enforce them... at locations for which a particularly large number of people are wont to illegally cross, such as around the University.

Otherwise, enforcement is spotty at best, because the police have better things to do, such as ticket parked cars with expired tabs or meters.

If there were a sudden uptick in pedestrian-car collisions, you can bet they'll crack down.

None of the above addresses whether the law SHOULD be on the books, which is what people should put their efforts towards changing, if they feel is unjust. Protesting car companies that make self driving cars because they don't like an already existing set of laws is just misguided at best, and intellectually dishonest at worst.

They already aren't built for pedestrians in most of the world. I'd be happy just removing the chance that I get killed by a car because the driver wasn't feeling good that day.

That said... I think passengers in self-driving cars will learn to be more patient and we can allow self-driving cars to yield to pedestrians more often.