The Waymo-operated vehicle in San Francisco was met with a “mob” of bipeds… who destroyed it in the city’s Chinatown on Luna New Year.
There are few things as divisive in San Francisco as the discourse around self-driving cars. (The only items with equal zeal are Valencia Street’s center bikeway and the ongoing shock over Noe Valley’s $1.7 toilet.) The autonomous vehicles by Waymo and Cruise — the latter company now only allowed to operate in San Francisco with human-assisted vehicles — are subject to boiling rage… from both sides of the argument.
happening NOW in SF. Waymo car vandalized & lit on fire 🤯@sfchronicle pic.twitter.com/OEZYFiy6mv
— Michael Vandi (@michael_vandi) February 11, 2024
Those who believe self-driving cars have a future will fight tooth-and-nail over their thinking, gazing over at how our country’s failure to increase public transit systems and embrace railways can’t be solved by the very modality of transportation that caused those negligences… which affected the most vulnerable among us. Others make substantiated claims that autonomous technologies are not yet ready for deployment (at the expense of humans, ironically enough) and are organized around investor growth, rather than the idea of bettering efficacy between getting from point A to point B.
But we digress. The real point and news to be made here is that a Waymo-operated vehicle was vandalized and eventually burnt to a crisp over the weekend.
Waymo Vehicle surrounded and then graffiti’d, windows were broken, and firework lit on fire inside the vehicle which ultimately caught the entire vehicle on fire. #SFFD
Photos by Séraphine Hossenlopp pic.twitter.com/aOTqL3Rk8V— SAN FRANCISCO FIRE DEPARTMENT MEDIA (@SFFDPIO) February 11, 2024
According to SFPD, the Waymo car was set on fire by a group — a “mob,” as some outlets reported — of people, occurring during Saturday during Lunar New Year celebrations; no one was inside the car, though officials are vowing to make arrests.
Per one eyewitness account, a “young man” jumped on the hood of the stationary vehicle and then climbed on the windshield — “[those acts] kind of started the whole melee,” says Edwin Carungay to ABC7.
Within a matter of minutes, the car’s windows were all broken, it was covered in graffiti, and then ultimately set on fire; the flames were so hot and intense that is melted the top half of the car; thankfully, the lithium-ion pack, which are incredibly combustible, did not explode — it just fueled the vehicular bonfire.
Public Information Officer Robert Rueca of San Francisco’s police department confirmed in an email to The Verge that police answered the call of the disruption at “approximately” 8:50 p.m.; upon arriving, the car was already on fire; the San Francisco Fire Department was quick to follow and barricaded off the area and put out the fire.
SFPD has noted no arrests have been made yet, but the department is actively investigating the incident. The Waymo vandalization comes just days after one of the company’s vehicles struck a bicyclist in Noe Valley.
Feature Image: Courtesy of X via Séraphine Hossenlopp
