Two 15-year-olds in San Mateo learned this week that a driverless taxi can still tell on you. The pair were drinking alcohol and shooting Orbeez, soft water-filled pellets, out of a moving Waymo on Monday afternoon.
The car's remote monitors spotted it, called 911, and pulled the vehicle over to wait for police, the Associated Press reported.
Officers did not treat it lightly. Video from the scene shows several of them with weapons drawn on the car, backed by a police dog. They removed both teens and searched the vehicle. Police detained the pair but did not arrest them. The cabin cameras had flagged what looked like a real firearm.
The robotaxi that snitched
San Mateo police stopped the car after a Waymo representative contacted them, department spokesperson Jeanine Luna said. Waymo shared the car's location and steered it into a parking lot. The teens were free to leave the whole time. “The occupants were not locked in and had every ability to exit the vehicle,” Luna said.
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According to NBC Bay Area, the Waymo monitor told the teens the car had mechanical trouble. That was an apparent ploy to keep them in place until officers arrived. The police, for their part, saw a bright side. “The Waymo might have been the smartest idea yet, because driving impaired would've made this so much worse,” the department wrote on Facebook.
A car that is always watching
The episode is funny. It is also a small lesson in the bargain of a driverless ride. Waymo's cabin cameras watch for unbuckled seatbelts, smoking, lost items, and cleanliness. The company says staff may review footage after an issue, and in urgent cases watch a live trip. It says it does not use facial recognition to identify riders.
Not everyone found the outcome comforting. The police department's own post drew more than 150 comments, some of them uneasy about a private firm handing its passengers to the authorities. A rider in a car with no driver has no human witness in the seat. What they do have is a company that is watching, and willing to act.
Why your California ride might be free
The timing is awkward for Waymo. In California, it cannot yet charge for rides in its newest car, the Ojai. A state regulator has not finished reviewing the company's application, Wired reports, so those trips may stay free until at least late September.
The reason cuts close to this week's news. The California Public Utilities Commission asked Waymo for more detail on how it handles emergencies. It also asked how the company keeps unaccompanied minors out of its cars. A ride-hail drivers' union had already filed a complaint about Waymo carrying minors without an adult. The San Mateo joyride is a vivid example of the worry.
The Ojai is Waymo's first vehicle built to be a taxi, rather than a retrofitted consumer model. China's Zeekr makes it, and it carries 13 cameras, six radars, and four lidar sensors. Waymo still charges for rides in its Jaguar I-Pace cars, which make up most of the fleet.
Four more cities, and London next
The holdup is a local one. Elsewhere, Waymo is pressing ahead fast. It said on Wednesday it will go fully driverless in San Diego, Las Vegas, Tampa, and Denver. Those rides start with Alphabet staff before opening to the public soon after.
The four join Dallas, Houston, Orlando, and San Antonio, pushing Waymo past ten cities. The company has also begun its first tests abroad, in London. It leads the US robotaxi market by a wide margin, with a fleet that dwarfs Tesla's. That is despite a bumpy year that included a recall of nearly 4,000 cars and a quiet split from Uber in Phoenix.
Why it matters
The San Mateo stop is a light story with a serious core. A driverless car removes the adult in the front seat. In exchange, it adds a set of cameras that never blink, and a firm that will call the police. Regulators in California are now weighing that same trade, one riders will meet in more cities each month.