An angry mob has destroyed a Waymo self-driving taxi in San Francisco.
“Waymo Vehicle surrounded and then graffiti’d [sic], windows were broken, and firework lit on fire inside the vehicle which ultimately caught the entire vehicle on fire,” reads a Xeet from the San Francisco Fire Department. Nobody was in the car at the time.
That account is consistent with footage of the event such as that below.
It is not clear, however, why the mob decided to destroy the car. A Waymo vehicle recently hit a cyclist in the city. The rider walked away with scratches and Waymo claimed the incident occurred because the rider emerged from behind a large truck and its car could not react in time to avoid the collision once it detected the bike.
Footage of the incident does not suggest angry cyclists were enacting revenge.
Self-driving cars were a not uncommon sight on San Francisco’s streets until the Cruise robotaxi business parked its entire fleet after incidents including one that saw a woman hit and dragged for six meters (20 feet) under a driverless car, another robocar becoming stuck in wet cement and ten cars grinding to a halt after their wireless connections failed.
Waymo, the brand that adopted Google’s autonomous car efforts, has also had its problems – but in early 2023 it celebrated one million miles of autonomous operations without a fatality. There have, however, been 20 “contact incidents” – half of which involved human drivers hitting Waymo cars.
The latest incident took place just eight blocks from The Register‘s San Francisco eyrie. As the conflagration occurred on a Saturday night, no vultures were in danger. ®
