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A Waymo robo-taxi was vandalized and then set on fire by a mob Saturday evening in San Francisco’s Chinatown district. The incident is the latest encounter between driverless vehicles and the public in San Francisco, a city where autonomous vehicle makers have spent years testing the technology on public roads.
Saturday night’s incident, which was filmed and shared on social media, does not appear to be a coordinated effort. Instead, the video shows a crowd becoming increasingly agitated and violent once the driverless vehicle is surrounded.
A Waymo The spokesperson confirmed there were no passengers in the driverless vehicle at the time. The company press release:
Around 9 p.m. on Saturday, February 10, a fully autonomous Waymo vehicle was traveling through San Francisco when a crowd surrounded and vandalized the vehicle, breaking the window and throwing fireworks inside, which set the vehicle on fire . The vehicle was not carrying any passengers and no injuries were reported. We are working closely with local security officials to respond to the situation.
This is not the first time that San Francisco citizens have operated a driverless vehicle. And it probably won’t be the last.
Last summer, a decentralized group of street safety activists in San Francisco disabled robotaxis across the city by place a traffic cone on the hood of a vehicle.
“Cone Week,” as the group called this viral prank on Twitter and TikTok, was a form of protest against the spread of robotaxi services in the city. The protest took place ahead of a California Public Utilities Commission hearing, during which Cruise and Waymo received the final permit required to commercially operate robotaxi services in San Francisco.
There have also been videos showing people attacking the Cruise robotaxis. But with Cruise suspended at the moment not operating in the city, Waymo is the only driverless robotaxi service – and the most visible symbol of autonomous technology in the city.
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