Crowd in San Francisco sets self-driving vehicle ablaze

San Francisco — A crowd vandalised and set fire to a Waymo self-driving car using fireworks in San Francisco on Saturday, the Alphabet-owned company and authorities said, marking the most destructive attack so far on driverless vehicles in the US.

On Saturday night, a crowd surrounded a white sport utility vehicle that was moving along a street in the city’s Chinatown district, a company spokesperson said.

Michael Vandi, who posted videos of the incident, said people were celebrating China’s Lunar New Year by setting off fireworks. A person jumped onto the Waymo vehicle and broke its windshield. Another person jumped on the car 30 seconds later as some in the crowd clapped in approval, he said.

“That was when it went wild,” he wrote, describing people breaking the glass and others writing on the car. “There were two groups of people. Folks who encourage it — and others who were just shocked and started filming. No-one stood up — I mean there wasn’t anything you could do to stand up to dozens of people.”

His video showed the vehicle engulfed in flames with a huge plume of black smoke.

Waymo said someone threw fireworks into the car, setting it on fire. The fire department posted pictures on social media of the charred remains of the car and said fireworks started the blaze.

“The vehicle was not transporting any riders and no injuries have been reported. We are working closely with local safety officials to respond to the situation,” the company said. It did not say what caused the attack.

The San Francisco police department said it was investigating the cause of the fire and did not say whether arrests had been made. The electric car, a Jaguar I-PACE, is equipped with 29 cameras and other sensors.

“This was a one-off event,” the Waymo spokesperson said, adding it will “continue serving riders during today’s festivities”.

The incident was not the first time people have harassed self-driving cars, but its severity may illustrate growing public hostility after a pedestrian-dragging incident last year involving a vehicle operated by General Motors’ Cruise unit.

On previous occasions in San Francisco and Phoenix, Arizona, groups have disrupted the operations of self-driving vehicles, blocking their path, trying to enter the vehicles and jumping on their hoods. Videos that went viral showed people putting orange traffic cones on top of the vehicles to obstruct their sensors and force them to stop abruptly.

Last week, a driverless Waymo car collided with a cyclist in San Francisco, causing minor injuries.

Waymo offers driverless ride-hailing service in Phoenix and is working to expand the service to Los Angeles and Austin, Texas.

On October 2, 2023, a pedestrian hit by another vehicle was thrown into the path of a self-driving Cruise vehicle and dragged 6m. California subsequently suspended the company’s driverless testing licence, and Cruise pulled all its US self-driving vehicles from testing.

Completely driverless test vehicles, mostly from Cruise and Waymo fleets, travelled nearly 5.3-million kilometres in California in 2023.

Reuters