Passengers shaken by attacks on robotaxis

In San Francisco, some passengers of autonomous taxis have experienced an unexpected hazard: being stuck in the vehicles when the cars are assaulted, writes Erin Griffith from San Francisco

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Self-driving cars have introduced novel and sometimes worrisome quirks to car travel.

(NYT)

n January, Doug Fulop was riding home from a night out in San Francisco when a man crossed the street in front of his car, doubled back and began screaming at him. The man punched the car’s windows and tried lifting up the vehicle. He then yelled that he wanted to kill Mr Fulop and the other two passengers for giving money to a robot.

A taxi driver would have simply driven away. But Mr Fulop's vehicle had no driver — it was a self-driving Waymo.

“We felt helpless,” said Mr Fulop, 37, who works in the tech industry.

Since autonomous cars started roaming San Francisco streets almost four years ago, they have elicited an array of reactions from humans, including angry protests against the vehicles. That has created an unexpected hazard for passengers of self-driving cars all around the city: being stuck inside the vehicle during an anti-robot rant.

Self-driving cars are designed to stop moving if a person is nearby. People can take advantage of that function to harass and threaten their passengers. In 2024, a San Francisco man tried covering the sensors of a self-driving car that had stopped, effectively disabling it, while passengers were inside. Another video from that year showed three women screaming as a group of vandals tagged their autonomous taxi with spray paint.

It was unsettling to be trapped inside a Waymo during an attack, Mr Fulop said. “If he had kept hammering on one window instead of alternating, I'm sure he would have eventually broken through,” he said.