And now it is Waymo’s turn
With Cruise out of the way, many think this is a great opportunity for Waymo to shine. But they still have quite a few problems themselves. And now they are the focal point of collective ire.
A lot of ink has been spilled and pixels have been pushed about the wanton attack on the Waymo robotaxi on Lunar New Year. Was it sheer urban violence? Was it an attack against big tech? Was it political shenanigans? Was it Waymo driving in the wrong place at the wrong time? Was it lack of ability of autonomous vehicles? Was it a partying mob that’s completely out of control?
Well, yes to all of the above, but not exactly.
It was a combination of people being fed up with up robotaxis flubs, the cars being really vulnerable due to easily getting stuck in place with no human driver for protection, and the desire for viral videos (and news stories). No partying or politics needed, just smartphones.
And it certainly wasn’t a dystopian hellscape of a doom-loop San Francisco kind of story, to the great disappointment of Fox News viewers. Waymo robotaxis were previously attacked in Phoenix a couple dozen times.
Simply put, Waymo robotaxis are now clearly a target, and surely there will be more such incidences to come as long as they ply our public streets and do stupid things.
Earlier that day
February 10th was just another day. But for Waymo it didn’t start out too well. Just a few days after a Waymo collided with a bicyclist, injuring them, their poor driving ability once again interfered with emergency responders:
A bit later in the day another Waymo decided to block things in Chinatown, first day of Lunar New Year, on a very narrow street, Jackson St just below Grant Ave. People in San Francisco are not happy. Quite remarkable foreshadowing.
That evening – the Waymo funeral pyre
A bit before 9pm. Though the intersection of Jackson St and Grant Ave was full of people and fireworks were shooting off, the Waymo insisted on driving down narrow one-way Jackson. Note from the following video that the pickup indicator light at the very top of the vehicle was lit up. Seems like a really poor decision to pick up someone in the middle of a festival! And note that no other cars were before or after the Waymo. This was uniquely a Waymo mistake.
Source: @AnirudhKoul
Here is a map showing that the vehicle was just 50 feet away from all the people and the fireworks, and just 130 feet from where the Waymo stopped, got stuck, and plugged up Jackson St. earlier in the day. At least Waymo now knows to not use narrow one-lane streets, where their failures seem all too frequent.
A crowd of people gathered around the vehicle and it was only a matter of time until the superhero in white set the mood by breaking the windshield while being filmed by their friend. In fact, it is pretty clear from everyone’s phone being out that this was escalated purely for instagrammable clicks and klout, not politics.
One has to look back and say, ‘How did we get to this? If it was me, I would ask what is it that I’m doing that is perceived to be so unappreciated.
Alain Kornhauser, Professor at Princeton University
Safe Street Rebel comment
Given the attention that Safe Street Rebel focused on the foibles of robotaxis simply by disabling them with traffic cones, the media was quite interested in what they had to say.
Safe Street Rebel, an activist organization that made headlines for placing traffic cones on the hoods of robotaxis last year to impede their progress, said the attack on the Waymo was “not a Safe Street Rebel action.”
However, the organization added that it “does speak to popular sentiment towards these dangerous and unneeded contraptions.”
“People are frustrated with them having unfettered access to our streets and the issues that come with that like invasive surveillance technology,” the organization wrote in a direct message to The Standard. “We can’t speak to why this particular incident happened but it didn’t come out of nowhere.”
SF Standard
The Investigation!!!
Lots of articles [2] on how there will be arrests. After all, there were skateboarders!! Well, they didn’t start things, nor light the car on fire, but SKATEBOARDERS!!!
Unfortunately, the government doesn’t care at all if a pedestrian or two are killed. But they start hyperventilating when a multi-billion dollar company’s car is damaged. This wasn’t about interstate or foreign commerce so maybe the US Attorney will revisit those laws they are brutally mangling.
Turns out those Waymos catch on fire pretty easily
Not the first time Waymo drives in the wrong place
Back in July ’22 an errant Waymo drove into the Dolores Hill Bomb event. That was ill advised. Spray paint was of course also involved.
As with the recent incident in Chinatown, Waymo was happy to work closely with the SFPD on the investigation to identify the dastardly perpetrators. But, due to past history of the local police, a local publication ridiculed the notion of the police actually doing anything.
“The autonomous specialist was eventually able to direct the car safely out of the crowd and remove themselves from the situation. We are in close communication with the San Francisco Police Department as they actively investigate this incident.”
Haha, good luck with that SFPD “active investigation,” Waymo spokesperson!
SFist
And another example of Waymos now being a target
Though no one has tried to make Waymo robotaxis a target, they certainly have achieved that status on their own. It is hard to figure out what might solve their problem. Only thing certain is that additional “safety studies” conducted by Waymo will not convince people otherwise.
Another example of Waymo driving poorly
It doesn’t take sportsball fans or a “partying mob” to cause Waymo difficulties. Remember that they can get into big trouble all on their own since Autonomous Vehicle tech is still not quite there.
Waymos just can’t get enough of construction zones
How could their amazing AI miss that this was a construction zone?? And it tries to keep going!?!?
They don’t even know which side of the road to be on
This driving into oncoming traffic for two blocks is rather egregious.
And some really dangerous driving around a transit bus
On February 13, 2024, a Waymo did an incredibly dangerous maneuver in front of a city bus in Phoenix. It was purely by chance that the car driver in the next lane over didn’t run right into the robotaxi. This dangerous behavior was not reported by Waymo to regulators. Instead, we only know about it because the passengers, who was laughing quite nervously, posted this video on YouTube.
Blocking public transit, just like Cruise
And how did two Waymos hit a vehicle being towed?
It took a while for the news to get out but it turns out that on December 11th, 2023, two separate Waymo robotaxis hit a pickup truck being towed. Waymo of course tried to blame it all on the tow truck driver. But they ended up doing a software recall because it was clear that the Waymo vehicles were not predicting what a backwards facing vehicle was going to do next. And of course, neither of the Waymos had passengers at the time, meaning once again, they were not replacing potentially bad human drivers. Instead, they were only adding miles driven via their very expensive zero-occupancy vehicles, and causing two collisions doing so.
This Waymo customer just wants to get the hell out of the car
This person was clearly not happy with Waymo’s “Full Self Driving”. Sounds more like a kidnapping than a nice ride in Google’s finest.
Waymo, the convenient target
Not having a driver definitely did not help here.
More pranks
Coning certainly got a lot of attention, but now people have found out they can befuddle a Waymo just with a Stop sign t-shirt.
Are they really self driving?
Turns out that the Waymo tech is no way ready for real autonomous driving. There is apparently a human monitor for every single vehicle. Their technology appears to have a long way to go, but at least Waymo deals with it, unlike Cruise. But this means that their service is very expensive to operate and is not likely to ever be a viable business.
But at least people are now leaving our buses alone
At least Muni buses are no longer being targeted during big events. This Muni bus got permanently retired after World Series in October 2012.
So thanks Waymo for drawing the ire of sportsball fans and thereby protecting our buses from mayhem!
