SF crowds celebrating Lunar New Year brought the spirit of “Burning Man” back to its streets (where the event started), by using fireworks to publicly destroy a Waymo.
Reports are full of shock and awe.
When I arrived on scene, SFFD was already on scene hosing down the car with water and their chemical extinguishers. The battery appeared to be reigniting multiple times and was smoking like crazy. The live footage…gives a decent idea to how I came on to scene, which was after the attack on the vehicle. The vehicle looked completely “decapitated” and I have never seen a vehicle that damaged up close.
Obviously if more people attended “Burning Man” they would have been suitably prepared and treated this as a more accessible venue, maybe even assumed it was Waymo sponsoring Lunar New Year celebrations.
Publicly donating one of its robots to be destroyed? Can you imagine?
Unfortunately, the sacrifice reads more like San Francisco being like good old San Francisco, and suffering from targeted agitators who really like to blow up a parade.
I mean if you’re foreign military intelligence and you want to know more about the safety of road robots, your troops have been on the ground for years in San Francisco. I certainly run into them, and have seen their work, so it’s curious how they don’t get reported more often for dangerous meddling and experimenting with robots and public safety.
To be clear, putting your life in the hands of a road robot is like throwing away your freedom. You think a company like Waymo is ready and able to fight for your safety, disposable customer? Think again. Riders describe being helpless and terrified.
If we were outside walking we could’ve walked away, run away. If we were driving, we could make sure we locked the door. In this instance, we literally had no control.
Waymo. No control.
In related news, three days ago a Waymo drove into a cyclist.
A cyclist was injured in a collision with a Waymo driverless vehicle in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood on Tuesday afternoon, police said. …”our vehicle applied heavy braking but was not able to avoid the collision”…
Waymo. Not able to avoid the collision.