A tense scene.
Waymo Trouble
A viral video shows several people menacingly cornering a stopped Waymo robotaxi on the street and tagging it with graffiti, while a front seat passenger clutches a small beige poodle — a scene that’s both comical and dystopian in its strangeness.
While it’s not clear exactly when the incident happened, it seems to have taken place on 18th Street in the Mission District of San Francisco, verified by checking the Google Street View of the area.
The robotaxi business recently expanded service in Fog City, which has played host to numerous troubling confrontations between autonomous vehicles and angry pedestrians such as tires getting slashed and cars being set on fire.
Futurism asked the San Francisco Police Department and Waymo for information about the filmed incident, but our questions weren’t immediately returned on Wednesday.
Road Rage
This incident and others like it belie the sunny techno-optimism that Waymo and tech evangelists project. Robotaxis are popular among a certain set, if you go by tweets from tech-happy passengers, but they’re a source of controversy among others.
Waymo, owned by Google parent company Alphabet, and other robotaxi businesses are seen by some as potential privacy violations on wheels due to the numerous cameras onboard.
Some have also called for the prohibition of robotaxis in San Francisco because they see them as bad for workers who drive taxis for a living and a road safety hazard.
Indeed, there have been incidents of robotaxis committing alarming street violations like driving against incoming traffic. Federal investigators are looking at more than 20 incidents involving Waymo vehicles as of May this year.
On that subject, Waymo rival Cruise has had a rockier rollout, with its fleet of vehicles getting abruptly pulled from the streets of San Francisco last year. It drove into controversy when a Cruise robotaxi dragged a woman after a car crash.
That traffic victim reached an $8 million settlement with Cruise this year, underlining the dangers that robotaxis may poise to pedestrians.
More on robotaxis: Waymo Giving 100,000 Robotaxi Rides Per Week but Not Making Any Money
