If years of activist campaigns, political lobbying, and vandalism couldn’t slow Waymo’s roll, the horrific death of a beloved neighborhood kitty just might.A tabby cat named KitKat has become a cause célèbre for driverless car regulation in California after a Waymo ran him down last week, leaving the neighborhood heartbroken. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the death and ensuing community backlash has inspired district supervisor Jackie Fielder to appeal to the governor and state regulators to reconsider who has the final say on autonomous ride-hail vehicles.Fielder’s push is apparently inspired by a dead bill in state Senate that would shift authority over driverless cars to municipal authorities, effectively giving local residents a more direct say in what is and isn’t allowed on their streets. Per the Chronicle, the local leader is tying KitKat’s death into a broader campaign against autonomous vehicles, which includes concerns about congestion, noise, data privacy, and weakened public transit.“Here in the Mission [district], we will never forget our sweet KitKat, we will always put community before tech oligarchs,” Fielder said in an Instagram reel. “AVs [autonomous vehicles] collect endless amounts of data on us and from a road ridership struggling for public transportation, contribute to traffic congestion, and also drive harmful mining practices in the Global South.”The district supervisor held a press conference on Tuesday at Randa’s Market, the corner store KitKat called home, to announce a resolution she’s introducing to the San Francisco board of directors. If successful, the resolution would issue an official call to state legislators to allow municipal voters to have the final say. View this post on Instagram “If I were the Waymo PR team, I would be hoping that this whole KitKat thing just dies, and that’s not happening,” Fielder said.When driverless cars like Waymo were first unleashed on US roads, they did so largely without the say of residents who would be forced to share the streets with the for-profit experiments. In California, for example, Governor Gavin Newsom — a longtime ally to big tech companies — helped lobby state politicians to fast-track the approval of driverless cars, going over the heads of local lawmakers in cities like San Francisco.Fielder’s challenge to state lawmakers will likely face fierce opposition from politicians like Newsom, who’ve made their bones on cozy relationships with the tech industry’s biggest players.More on Waymo: Waymo CEO Says Society Is Ready for One of Its Cars to Kill SomeoneThe post Waymo Haunted by Killing of Beloved Neighborhood Cat appeared first on Futurism.