Waymo is a robotaxi service that will have a vehicle come pick you up and bring you where you want to go, without a driver in sight.
These self-driving vehicles aren’t yet perfect, but according to most data, they provide a safer driving experience than human drivers ever could.
There are some people, however, who are not happy with self-driving cars, and especially with self-driving taxi services like this. Some believe that they are a threat to privacy because they have so many cameras onboard.
Others are worried about potential safety concerns. Still others don’t like them because they will eliminate the need for people working jobs like taxi drivers, as well as gig work through Lyft or Uber.
One example of people fighting back against self-driving cars is a video that recently went viral. It shows several people coming up to a Waymo robotaxi so that it can’t move, and then tagging it with graffiti.
In the video, the passenger in the front seat is seen clutching a small poodle.
The event in the video is just one of three incidents that were reported in the Mission District of San Francisco on the evening of September 21st.
A spokesperson for the San Francisco police department gave a statement to Futurism, saying:
“[A]n online police report was filed on behalf of an autonomous vehicle operator. The reporter stated that there were three separate incidents of vandalism on three different autonomous vehicles.”
Waymo is a company owned by Alphabet (the parent company of Google). It is not certain that the graffiti was done as a protest against self-driving vehicles, or just random acts, at this point.
You can see the full video on X.
This is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen pic.twitter.com/EsIzK4UXba
— Justin🦩Boldaji (@justinboldaji) September 24, 2024
I can’t wait for all cars to be self-driving.
That said, it seems like it could still be quite a ways off.
If you enjoyed that story, check out what happened when a guy gave ChatGPT $100 to make as money as possible, and it turned out exactly how you would expect.