Self-driving taxi companies are slowly taking over the streets of cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix where they can often be found driving in circles, blocking first responders and, occasionally, giving people lifts around town. The presence of these cars on the streets has irked some residents, and now a group in LA has attacked an empty Waymo self-driving taxi, ripping off its door and smashing windows.
The group of vandals attacked a Waymo cab outside the Beverly Center in Los Angeles on Saturday, reports the LA Times. The cab was reportedly stopped at a red light when the group of people surrounded it and began kicking, hitting and jumping all over the car. Nobody was in the vehicle at the time, the LA Times adds:
Waymo spokeswoman Julia Ilina said the company was working closely with officials investigating the incident. “While these sorts of events are rare, we take them extremely seriously and remain committed to improving road safety and mobility in the cities where we operate,” she said in a statement.
Video posted online showed a man kicking the side of the white Jaguar while another man in a ski mask stood on its roof. The front passenger side door had been torn off, the windshield and windows were shattered and at least one tire was flattened.
The attack mirrors a similar incident in San Francisco last year, which saw a group vandalize and set another autonomous taxi on fire in the Californian city. In Texas, test cars for autonomous vehicle startups have also been targeted, showing that tensions between regular people and autonomous vehicles are rising.
The attacks put autonomous vehicle makers in a sticky situation as questions are asked about how the cars should respond to such incidents. If a regular car with a human driver were in such a situation, they would likely drive away as the best form of “affirmative defence,” as Forbes puts it. Autonomous cars don’t do that, and instead stop in their tracks when incidents arise:
In the recent incident the AV has almost no choice but to put up with the vandalism. If an injury had occurred on retreat it could result in great harm to the industry and strain public approval given that this was protection of property not life in this particular instance.
As such, the site calls for better legal framework to protect autonomous vehicles from attacks on the streets they patrol. Measures such as sharing footage from the cars with law enforcement, bans on people caught vandalizing such cars and even increased police presence in AV testing sites have all been floated by Forbes.
There are also calls for tougher penalties for anyone caught attacking AVs. As it stands, the state of California takes a varying approach to punishing vandalism depending on the severity of the actions. If the damage is valued at less than $400 then it’s a misdemeanor, above that figure and it’s considered a felony.
The cost of a new windshield for an I-Pace sits around $1,200, meaning that the group responsible for this latest act could be facing some tough penalties.
