It’s a sad and embarrassing first. In Los Angeles, a man tried to steal a self-driving car. However, he was unable to put his plan into action. Instead, he had to sit idly by in the locked vehicle of the start-up Waymo.
Waymo is a thorn in the side of many
While self-driving cabs are anything but common in our part of the world, it’s hard to imagine the streets of the Californian cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco without them. The name Waymo plays a major role here. The subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet sends its self-driving vehicles from A to B and collects all kinds of relevant data in the process, which is of great importance for future self-driving cars. But the project does not only have friends. Just a few weeks ago, there was an incident in San Francisco in which celebrating passers-by unceremoniously set fire to a vehicle from the Waymo fleet.
Theft is futile
Now the company has reported the next incident. However, this one is said to have taken place in Los Angeles. According to the LA Times report, a 34-year-old man is said to have hijacked one of the self-driving cars without further ado. He took advantage of the brief window of opportunity in which the previous passenger had just left the vehicle and gained access to the interior. But the plan went badly wrong. The car quickly turned itself upside down after the passenger was analyzed as unauthorized. In the end, it simply came to a standstill. Naturally, the support team noticed this too.
As the vehicle was in the intersection area, they wanted to get it back on course as quickly as possible. Accordingly, the stowaway was asked to get out of the car again. But he didn’t even think about it. As a last resort, the Waymo employees then decided to call the police. The officers immediately pulled the man out of the vehicle and arrested him. It couldn’t have gone any worse for the thief. In the aftermath, Waymo is likely to be criticized again. After all, there was once again a high risk of accidents in this situation.
