Los Angeles residents took to the streets this previous weekend, beginning up days of impromptu protests in response to a sequence of raids on the group by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Angelenos confronted off with police and the Nationwide Guard, who introduced their traditional complement of rubber bullets, tear fuel, and tried murder-by-vehicle, however the metropolis’s residents additionally confronted a brand new risk: Waymo self-driving taxis. Conveniently for the protesters, these Waymo taxis turned out to be very, very flammable.
The rideshare service suspended operations within the downtown space of the Metropolis of Angels Sunday after protesters torched 5 of its autos, Enterprise Insider experiences, although its different 300 or so autos remained energetic in different components of the sprawling megapolis. Waymo says it does not imagine its autos have been focused particularly, however I am no so certain.
As police beat protesters and fired rubber bullets at journalists, in addition they started issuing threats of retribution previous the top of the protests — police helicopters informed protesters that, “I’ve all of you on digicam. I’ll come to your home.” So the protesters, logically, began destroying cameras. It simply so occurs that Waymo taxis are completely filled with cameras, and Waymo itself is more than pleased to produce footage to the LAPD.
This picture as a result of it goes onerous as hell
Police are recognized for disappearing protesters after tensions have died down, however that solely works if police know who the protesters are. Logically, destroyed cameras will stop knowledge from streaming again to knowledge facilities or make their onboard storage made unrecoverable, which reduces the danger for individuals current to be misplaced in prisons with out entry to an lawyer for days at a time. Primarily, the pondering behind torching Waymos may very well be that it was one strategy to assure the constitutional rights of protesters are upheld.
Tensions between the general public and self-driving taxis will not be unknown. Of us have trashed Waymos prior to now as nicely. Final 12 months, people in San Francisco set a Waymo on hearth by throwing fireworks into the empty robotaxi. In 2023, activist immobilized Waymo and Cruise robotaxis utilizing site visitors cones on the hood.