In a bizarre (or hilarious) late-night episode that underscored public unease with autonomous vehicles, several men climbed onto stalled Waymo robotaxis in San Francisco’s Marina District and began attacking them.
They then started sitting and climbing on them, and are one point began doing back flips off the driverless cars while a crowd cheered.
City police eventually cleared the scene, but the incident highlights growing tensions over deployments of robotaxis in urban areas.
So what happened?
Roughly around 2 a.m. last Sunday, ABC7 Bay Area captured unsettling footage of three Waymo vehicles immobilized at the intersection of Fillmore and Greenwich streets.
Dozens gathered around as individuals sat atop the cars and gestured at their sensors. ABC7 reported that no visible damage was done and no passengers were inside.
One onlooker, captured in the video, was seen doing a back flip off of the robotaxi.
Selika Josiah Talbott, a veteran federal advisor in autonomous vehicle regulation, called the behavior “shocking and horrifying,” warning that such stunts teach AI systems that crowds are aggressive, skewing their behavior in future deployments.
“It’s also still dangerous. The leaps that these kids were doing … had it been their head hitting the ground, it’s just incredibly dangerous and illegal,” Talbott told ABC7. She urged that “law enforcement must take these incidents seriously … at least in the beginning to send a message.”
Waymo and the Bay Area have a long history
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