Your general luddite argument - preserve way-of-life of the small group at the expense of a larger group.

In this particular case: for many people, Waymo provides a better service (clean, safer driving, etc..) than Uber or Lyft. This threatens livelihood of human Uber/Lyft drivers. If you sympathize with human Uber/Lyft drivers, and don't care about Waymo users, you want to make Waymo worse, hoping that the people will stop riding Waymo and move to Lyft/Uber instead.

One way to do so is to make riding in Waymo unpleasant, and it's certainly unpleasant when people are cutting your car off all the time!

The feeling of dominance over machines may be saving that coworker the expense and hassle of another visit to a therapist.

I think the important part was telling their coworker ironically: now here we are recognizing their movement