A Mob Just Vandalized A Waymo Self-Driving Car And Set It On Fire. The Videos Are Nuts

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What in the actual hell is happening right now in San Francisco’s Chinatown? Why did a mob decide to screw around with a Waymo self-driving car and then set the poor Jaguar I-Pace electric car on fire? I talked with two witnesses and gathered some wild footage. Here’s what I know.

This is breaking news, so bear with me here, but what I have so far is this statement from Waymo about what went down tonight:

At approximately 9 PM on Saturday, February 10th, a fully autonomous Waymo vehicle was navigating on Jackson Street in San Francisco when a crowd surrounded and vandalized the vehicle, breaking the window and throwing a firework inside, which set the vehicle on fire. The vehicle was not transporting any riders and no injuries have been reported. We are working closely with local safety officials to respond to the situation.

Here’s some of the footage popping up on X, formerly known as Twitter. The wildest shots have been posted by Michael Vandi, a software engineer and founder of Addy AI (an AI email assistant), per his social media profile descriptions. Here is his rather shocking footage:

When asked for a synopsis of what he saw, Vandi told me the following over Twitter:

So there were fireworks happening- pretty fun night and folks watching the fireworks. Every now and then traffic would build up and the crowd would make way for it to clear.

There was a small traffic holdup with waymo at the front of it. Then someone in a white hoodie jumped on the hood of the car and literally WWE styel K/O’d the windshield & broke it.

The crowd was shocked. People started paying attention and gathered around. Nothing happened for another 30 seconds until someone else jumped on the hood.

Then a group of people joined in affirming the behavior w/ positive feedback. Clapping etc.

That was when it went WILD. People with skateboards breaking the glass, and others graffitiing the car.

There were 2 groups of people. Folks who encourage it – and others who were just shocked & started filming. No one stood up – i mean there wasn’t anything you could do to stand up to dozens of people.

This went on for like 5 minutes. By this time, a pretty heavy traffic had built up behind the waymo and other cars started finding alternative alleyways to escape.

Then someone with fireworks initially lit it under the car -nothing happened but it was loud enough to disperse the crow including me who didn’t want to be near it anymore and you can see the 3rd and 4th videos were taken from 1/2 a block away zoomed in.

I’m not sure what happened next but it’s my understanding that fireworks was lit (now inside the car) then there was smoke for about 30 seconds before full on flames started.

Flames carried on for a bit say 3 – 4 minutes before SFFD pulled up.

I left the scene once I heard the SFFD sirens

[…]

Also someone shouted “light that shit on fire” that’s what prompted the fireworks i think. But i should point out – it took about 2 minutes from when the person said that before the car was set on fire

There’s also this video posted by @_nathanmarquez_:

But the most shocking footage in my eyes is that which shows the aftermath: A completely destroyed Jaguar I-Pace self-driving car — look at all that melted aluminum shown in this video, courtesy of FriscoLive415 (who also has a YouTube channel):

Franky Francisco with FriscoLive415 shot the footage above; he broke down what he saw on Saturday night, writing me in a Twitter DM:

For the record, here’s what that car should look like — I took this photo just before I was driven around in a Waymo self-driving car; I loved the experience, as you can read here:

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I’ve reached out to the local fire department to learn more beyond the organization’s post on Twitter:

The San Francisco Fire Department’s tweet states: “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.”

It’s not clear who exactly attacked this Waymo in Chinatown on the Lunar New Year, or what their motivation was, but hopefully we’ll learn more before the weekend is over.

This story is breaking news and will be updated as more information arises.

Topshot: FriscoLive415/Twitter (screenshot)

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Jason Torchinsky

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225 thoughts on “A Mob Just Vandalized A Waymo Self-Driving Car And Set It On Fire. The Videos Are Nuts”

      1. I’m sorry I mistook the term mob to mean more than 1. My bad. And I lived in both states and by personal experience I know what gets reported as loopy in FL is accepted as normal for CA.

        1. Wacky behavior is a somewhat constant percentage of all human behavior, so it stand to reason that in area with higher / denser population, the percentage of wacky behavior increases proportionally. There are also more people around to document and distribute it. As a long time California resident however, I can safely say that this kind of behavior is not normal, usual or accepted. Of course current political divisions create seemingly irresistible lenses that make one feel good about one’s assumptions.

          1. As a long time California resident however, I can safely say that this kind of behavior is not normal, usual or accepted.

            Ah. Ahahaha. You must have lived in the nice neighborhoods. I have never seen more burned out cars than I did in Victorville. Also never seen so many police shootouts.

            1. Yeah, I live in a decent neighborhood, but not the best by far. California is a huge state, and yeah, there are some real crap holes, but find me a state that doesn’t have any shady AF crappy cities and towns, unless of course, your sole aim is to generalize a state with a very diverse population of 39.24M because it satiates whatever brand of tribalism you subscribe to.

    2. The “Florida Man” phenomenon is solely due to Florida’s uniquely strong government transparency laws, which means it’s very easy for news outlets to find whatever crazy stories they want.

      In reality, crazy shit happens everywhere.

        1. I’ve wondered. Although I’m quite aware that I neither look nor seem anywhere near old enough to have experienced this firsthand (don’t even say it), the old trope up through the ’70s and ’80s was that California was where all the crazy people were and weird things happened. You know – someone shook the country and all the loose nuts rolled to the bottom-left corner, or “California – the land of fruits and nuts”, etc. Carson’s monologues were strewn with them. At the time, certainly through the ’70s and into the ’80s, California was this place where you could go to remake yourself, and it still had that classic “Golden State” aura that lured everyone from upwardly-mobile Midwesterners to dissatisfied dropouts to build or at least try to build a pleasant, easy, more satisfying life. The balance between wages and living costs was decent, even after the housing inflation that took off in the ’70s started to eat into it. But the post-’87 crash and disappearance of many defense and other industrial plants chipped at that, and when Southern California housing prices recovered from the severe early ’90s slump and accelerated in the 2000s bubble, and the dreamscape was more and more expensive and more and more crowded (by American standards, anyway), the gold flaked off.

          So, where to go? Texas is a good place for those upwardly-mobile Midwesterners, I guess, and so is North Carolina, but the weather and the vibe are different than postwar California. Florida has always been a resort and retirement destination, has always been a real estate scam the likes of which even LA never saw, and otherwise was the ideal kind of place for all of those who were a little (or a lot) lost. Hence the rows and rows of pain clinics for the seniors and the drifters, and the rehab clinics when the latter got sentenced to one.

          California now has kind of a New York story, with lots of overseas immigrants and domestic migrants in specialized industries moving to a challenging environment to work their asses off for a shot at grand-scale success, but a generation or two ago itwas all about the good life, if at any moment ready to devolve into The Day of the Locust. Florida, with its gated communities and office parks and its bath salts that have nothing to do with a relaxing day at the spa and its stand-your-ground law that even lets an elderly man who went out to his car to get his gun and come back into a theater to shoot and kill a man who threw popcorn at him go free, is that new destination for those grasping at and often failing to reach that American Dream. And more than a few of those people are batshit crazy.

          1. Nice.
            I lived in LA (great experience, not exactly thirsting to live there again), and I used to say that California was America’s drain – thus, we got all the dregs, but we were also the escape route for all the interesting people west of the Mississippi.
            I don’t know if the problem is that the supply of interesting people has dried up or if they’re simply going elsewhere.

        2. I spent most of my life growing up in Florida and it is 1000% the humidity. I’ve been so much chiller than when I lived there, but when the humidity rises where I live now my fuse gets so much shorter.

          In Florida I had been threatened with being shot 3 times while driving and been followed back to my house another 3. No where else in the country has this happened to me even once.

    3. Out-of-towners. San Francisco residents are, for the most part, very cool people.

      The ‘homeless’ (lazy drug addicts) are from out of state, having left behind winter climates where they would otherwise freeze to death.

      1. Not having evidence to the contrary I’ll accept that. Florida and Texas have the same problem so maybe they all are effected to a degree. But I have lived in all three and maybe Era was a factor but CA seemed to have them at all ages while Texas seemed middle aged and Florida seemed older aged. I guess we need a cops themed reality show of all 3 to be sure.

  5. This wasn’t a statement or even a comment on society. This was a bunch of yahoos being cool by breakin’ all the rules. A ‘victimless’ stunt because no one was in the Waymo to get hurt. A target of opportunity. 100% uncool and criminal, but not the harbinger of doom some might see.

    Yes, large groups of youts (sic) congregate and do stupid shit, but that’s not new. I’m fairly certain soccer hooliganism wasn’t too different. I also believe the police aren’t as motivated to police such gatherings as they used to be lest they be seen as oppressors. Finally, social media wildly increases the spontaneity of these gatherings when bored people see a post about a group of people seemingly having fun they aren’t having and decide to go there too. Exponentialize from there and you have a rowdy mob in about an hour or less. Toss in a little inebriation and you’ve got a real recipe for success (or something).

    1. People did the same thing to bird/lime scooters. There’s a little more to it than just wanton vandalism, as these vehicles are operated by a class of business that has legitimately made things much worse for area residents.

      2. We have Lime scooters in my city and I regularly see them dropped in places that make no sense, like the middle of a field where there is nothing anyone would have been travelling to. I have wondered more than once if that’s done by annoyed people trying to drive these companies out by putting their “products” in a place no one will ever buy them.

        1. Shhh you’re going to make Mercedes sad.

          Although… She does have a habit of dipping into just about any clean body of water. So maybe this could be a side hustle? “Mercedes Smart Car Rescue” out of Rotterdam.

      4. And I am sure this didn’t improve travel times one bit. Let’s be honest this as a reaction is skin to cutting off a finger because it has a splinter.

    2. I wonder if the fumes don’t hinder an asthmatic or other susceptible person. If Noone got injured and didn’t report it. If any crimes or fires weren’t reached in a timely manner because reacting to this avoidable mess. Any firemen inhale toxins or hurt putting the fire out. People being put out by traffic jams and eventual road repairs. The whole victimless thing only works if it never happens. Anyone familiar with the butterfly effect?

      1. The reason for the apostrophes around ‘victimless’ was because it was exactly not that. I was just saying that the idiots on the streets saw no one in the Waymo and stopped thinking. I’m certain they wouldn’t not have done that if there were passengers. Just my read on the situation. I am wrong about 49.00089 percent of the time so make of it what you will.

        In essence, I was being sarcastic. I would expect you to be an expert on such. If not, I’m going to start suggesting a moniker change to Mr Literal. 😀

        1. I apologize I missed it my bad. The literal moniker won’t work because my tendency to over extrapolate a situation to ludicrous proportions. I now wholehearted support your comment.

      2. The fumes would hinder ANY person if directly inhaled. I worked at an electric car company in SF and took time to learn the risks.

        The SFPD likely has received training on ways to avoid inhaling the fumes considering all the electric vehicles in the area.

        Also, it is very difficult to put these fires out. Fire departments dump water on the fires in order to keep the temperatures down so that more individual cells in the battery do not rupture. Once the cells rupture, oxygen from the air causes them to ignite.

  6. I dont agree with what they did but I wanted to do the same thing when I had my first bad encounter with a Waymo.
    I was behind one in traffic the other day when it decided to panic stop at a clear crosswalk. We were doing 45mph and I was about a car length behind but we are talking a full stop from 45 on a clear road with no warning. I was paying attention but the two cars behind me were not and they had to take evasive maneuvers to avoid a pile up.
    We were all mad, but it felt really deflating to rage at a driverless car.

  8. This is just another example of the numerous sports riots or other spontaneous riots that have broken out at larger gatherings of worked up, excited, inebriated people the world over. Hardly a conspiracy or side effect of the geographic location. The ability to record such events live is about the only new thing here. People can be monsters is the only takeaway to me.

    1. Exactly. I’m reminded of instances of urban unrest in the 2010s triggered by police shootings versus the “shenanigans” of that harvest festival at a largely white college in New Hampshire that was treated as a “boys will be boys” kind of thing even though the amount of property damage was similar.

        1. Ones that stick out in my mind were the 4 Stanley Cup riots in Montreal and Vancouver, the G20 and APEC summit riots in Toronto and Vancouver, various hockey riots in Edmonton. Soccer hooligans in various venues in Europe. Mob stupidity knows no bounds. The APEC and G20 riots involved ‘professional’ rioters while the other were just run of the mill idiots.

        1. Funny on the other hand I was in Daytona for spring break as a college kid wandered into a huge biker week event with biker gangs and ended up having a great weekend never felt safer.

            1. What year? I had no plans just wandered in while they burned a Honda. Drank alot partied alot camped with them they bought Mr breakfast and I got a Harley ride back to hotel and stayed in touch

              1. I think… early ’99? I remember driving our dark green Intrepid- covered with northern road salt- on the sand. People looked at it like it was from Mars.

    1. I was there recently, and couldn’t help but think how eerily similar things seemed to the vibe of the ’70s and those movies.

      While I think the media, as often is the case, distorts things to serve its own purposes, I can’t deny the overall feel of the city was much more gritty and raw than when I was there last (about a decade ago).

        1. In my area, I’ve noticed a marked increase in homeless camps post 2020. Not just in the city, but even in small rural towns. The official numbers on the homeless population are probably an order of magnitude off.

          1. It’s almost like inaccessible housing and structural unemployment from automation have negative effects on polite society.

            Nah… Must be my imagination.

            1. The selling point of the automation is that the gains would be shared. Of course, they never were. Had they been, working people would have 15-20 hour work weeks today without a pay decrease from what they made working 40+ hours a week in the past.

            2. Unemployment and not wanting to work are two different things. Sure a lot of these are mentally challenged but many are drug addicts nor wanting any help but handouts and government payouts. And there are currently many places needing able employees.

              1. Source? The Reagan talking points about welfare queens not wanting to work are getting old. It’s not that people don’t want to work, its that they don’t want to be exploited by huge corporations making billions for shareholders and execs while driving the cost of living up for the rank and file who now have to work several of those exploitative jobs just to make rent.

              2. Keep in mind that I am am an academic physician. One of my duties is being the chair of an addiction medicine program.

                I like you. So I am going to be kind, and point out that your characterization of how substance dependency works is both pejorative and factually incorrect.

                If you want to dive deeper into why people end up on the streets, and what happens when they do, I suggest volunteering at a local homeless shelter. If that is something you feel unable to do for whatever reason, you can get some fair exposure by osmosis by simply watching some ‘Invisible People’ or ‘All Time Media’ videos on YouTube.

                It may give you another perspective.

                Peace.

                1. I thank you for your response, and applaud your endeavors to help your fellow man. I need no more than to look within my family to see the costs of addiction in human terms. They are indeed atrocious. However, the problem is unlike cancer and other diseases where people are suffering from something other than bad choices. They got sick mostly through no fault of their decisions. Addiction, which I agree is more than simple choices, and complex does have a cure and buy in by the addict wanting to be cured is a necessity in being cured. That is why cures have a random successful percentage of effectiveness. Not too mention having a large percentage of reoccurring patients is more lucrative for the provider of the cure. But in many cases it has the poor them mindset excusing everyone here as the victim not just the addict s and not require the addicts too even attempt to try being cured prior to let them off. In addition what studies show arson, theft, and mob mentality are uncontrollable results of addiction. You have no cause and affect here. Everyone here acted and reacted with free choice. Some want them to face no retaliation. Addiction is not nor should it be a get of free card for any of these actions.

              3. Heroin, methamphetamines and fentanyl are the main causes of the “homeless” crisis. It ain’t about a lack of houses – it’s a lack of enough common sense to never start using that crap in the first place.

                1. Well all facts point to doing the described drugs are a very bad idea. However, in today’s society it is bad manners to correctly point out such things. Now it’s Trump and the Republicans fault. Even in California and New York where Republicans never get elected.

            3. I bet your right. But let’s not ignore the effect giving people cartblanche to act in this manner with no consequences. The proletariat of CA is so terrified of losing their control over its people and huge effect over USA that they have surrendered control to counter lost population that they enact policy to entice this demographic population plus illegal immigration to offset hard working tax paying moving elsewhere because of policy that left feeling like Republicans. It’s not like Texas wanted more California’s to move there.

            4. A big part of it is that we’ve basically drastically underbuilt on housing since 2008. The cost-of-living pressures had been building for a while, but 2020 kind of brought it all to a head.

            1. They’re everywhere. I was one of them for a period as well.

              In the present, I see a lot of people living out of their cars. The parking lots near the riverboat casinos frequently are packed with people camping out of their cars during the night. It’s one of the few places the police won’t bother them.

      2. I’ll agree with the concept but I have to point out the MSM is holding onto its life by their fingernails. I think the Internet has surpassed the media in relation to idiots hear my voice and obey me without thinking.
        It’s also interesting that America Football has far fewer riots here than European Futball overseas. Not my base of knowledge but maybe someone has an idea why?

  11. I would like to point out, that given the level of crime in the slum formerly known as the City Of San Francisco, you have no immediate reason to believe that the reason for the attack on the car had anything to do with its make or model.

    3. Since San Francisco has some of the lowest crime rates of any large city in the country, I assume you’re getting your information from the voices in your head. You also don’t know anything about San Francisco if you think it was ever anything but a gritty city with big city problems. Tech bro fantasies aside, it never was and never will be your stilling suburban fascist Xanadu.

      2. It takes some effort to pack that level of bad information and – let’s not mince words here – downright bigoted assumptions (“stilling suburban fascist Xanadu”? Pray tell, are all suburbs fascist, or are you just assuming the individual who posted upthread is fascist? And why are you assuming the upthread poster wants fascism? Because he disagrees with you? Because he views San Francisco negatively?). If you’re going to use such hyperbolically loaded rhetoric and/or accuse others of harboring such awfulness, you should make some effort to ensure you have your ducks in a row.

        I lived in California for nigh-on two decades and still spend a considerable amount of time in the Bay Area. Mission Street, particularly, has gotten far worse in the past 4 years than it was before.

        As for data and statistics, which are things we should all appreciate, the FBI happily publishes its Uniform Crime Report every year, for which we can reasonably compare large cities. Part of the methodological problem with crime comparisons is that not every state draws the line in the same place for the same crimes or calls them by the same name, and not every prosecutor prosecutes certain types of crime with equal fervor. Nevertheless, it’s still the best place to view data aggregation. Unfortunately, you’ll have to apply your own filters – but this might also give you an opportunity to examine the data rather than take my word for it. Link here.

        Filter by San Francisco PD and you’ll see roughly 13,500 vehicle thefts within SFPD’s area of jurisdiction, which covers about 800,000 people (notably, this is not San Francisco County Sheriff; this is just San Francisco, the municipal PD), in 2022. Industry data sources here as well if you’re curious. SF routinely hits the top 10 for vehicle theft among major (population over 500,000) cities.

        You can compare this to any major city and see that SF is not faring particularly well on a per-capita basis for auto theft. Or drug OD deaths, wherein it tops the charts (you can look at WISQARS as well, which also regrettably does not support parameterized URL’s and thus cannot be linked to the precise data set from here).

        SF admittedly has a lower rate of some types of violent crime than other major cities, but that’s damning with very faint praise. It’s roughly comparable to New York and better than LA’s homicide rates

        There’s a reason people are moving out of San Francisco at a fairly steady clip, and it in large part has to do with the problems SF has seen in the past 4 years. It’s always had grit, to be sure, but it’s also gotten a lot worse recently.

        1. Yeah, if you’ve read the uniform crime report then you know that what I said was exactly correct. Yes, SF’s violent crime rate is comparable to New York — one of the safest big cities in America. And similar to LA, which has a homicide rate that has dropped by 3/4ths. Yes, is has some of the lowest crime rates of any large city in America, and I could cherry pick my categories just like you did to paint a rosy picture. But as I said, it’s a big, gritty city, it’s always been a big, gritty city, and every thirty years or so there’s a whole new round of doom spiral stories for the rubes. I grew up there, and everyone was sure that San Francisco was on the road to hell in the 1970s and 80s – political assassinations, terror groups, death cults, serial killers, drugs everywhere, and, oh yeah, a massive deadly plague. I’ve heard this bullshit all my life. But you know what’s really interesting about this city that people are, according to you, fleeing? It’s still one of the most expensive cities in the world because everyone wants to live there.

          1. according to you, fleeing

            Well, me. And the Census Bureau. An easy-to-read article here:

            The U.S. Census estimates the 2022 population of the City and County of San Francisco to be 808,437, representing a loss of 65,000 people and 7.5% compared to 2020. The city’s population dropped by 7.2% between 2020 and 2021, but only by 0.3% from 2021 to 2022.

            What you said, by the way, isn’t “exactly correct”, or even akin to it. You said SF had one of the lowest crime rates. Words matter here, because it actually doesn’t. SF has a lower violent crime rate than some major cities, but it also has one of the highest property crime rates in the nation.

            for the rubes

            Are you able to complete a paragraph without commentary dripping with disdain?

            It’s still one of the most expensive cities in the world because everyone wants to live there

            You might want to consider avoiding reductionism where you can, because it’s a non-sensical argument to state that everybody wants to move to a place whose population is in decline. There are reasons for the cost of living to be that high there that are not demand-related.

            Again, different places suit different people. But making factual claims – that SF has a high property crime rate, that people are leaving, etc. – does not make the person stating such facts, unpleasant as they may be, fascist, rube-ish, or anything like unto it, and you’d do well to recognize the gaps in your own arguments before insulting others.

  12. If you have spent any time walking around this area the only surprising thing about this is the scale of the event. People break into cars in the street with pedestrians walking right past them. SF is pretty much bedlam in a lot of places.

          1. Indeed.

            There are also people that just love to manipulate entire societies into squandering non-renewable resources to the detriment of the environment and to the livability of public spaces, even using government to force their agenda on a population. The auto industry in the USA is just such an entity. They tore down a well-developed light-rail system during the great depression in order to force an increase in spending via car ownership.

            There are also obscenely rich people that love to feed off of the rest of the world, spy on everyone, tax them, and forcibly send people of various nations to kill each other in unnecessary wars for profit. These people also tend to like rape, animal cruelty, and pedophilia, too, but they’re good at either hiding it or making it acceptable behavior within their social circles. Some of the latter category has been exposed in recent years, but generally suffers no consequences.

                1. I guess we differ on that. I find this appalling. Disgusting even.

                  Had this been an actual protest I could have at least understood the motivations but this is just mindless wanton destruction.

                    1. More like making a mockery of the concept. But they are causing a pathetic degree of chaos and destruction, so there’s that.

    2. Funny how an event can be “lovable scamps having a li’l too much fun” or “horrifying thuggish harbinger of a vile future” entirely depending on the city and the appearance of the participants.

      1. So true. A lot of it is what narrative the establishment and/or media wants to paint surrounding the event, and how effectively dissident opinions or even outright facts that contradict the presented narrative can be cancelled on social media.

  14. This is hardly the only example of a mob flipping or torching a vehicle in the street, but the crazy part to me is how casual and low stakes this encounter was.

    Most of the time you see that sort of dramatic vandalism, you have a legitimate riot on your hands. The mob is angry- They are protesting something unjust, human rights are at stake, a civil war is brewing, etc. These were people just celebrating the lunar new year with fireworks.

    I can’t help but think that the presence of a *driver* would have eliminated this instance. It takes a certain amount of commitment and confrontation to drag a person from their car and torch it, that I just don’t see from these half-assed rioters.

    This is one of the main reasons I don’t really take autonomous solutions to transit seriously. When things go wrong, (they always do) it’s incredibly vital to have a human operator/ trained representative of your organization on hand to deal with the situation/assist the customer, etc.

    1. “This is one of the main reasons I don’t really take autonomous solutions to transit seriously. When things go wrong, (they always do) it’s incredibly vital to have a human operator/ trained representative of your organization on hand to deal with the situation/assist the customer, etc.”

      ATMs prove automated services can work just fine even when they are prime targets for abuse. IMO automated transport is harder but no less achievable given enough time and tech.

      1. That’s a great analogy

        I remember when ATMs first came out, it wasn’t uncommon for a machine to short-change you, or simply not work. And there was a ton of public handwringing over the idea of basically a small bank vault being placed unprotected in public.

        Now, they’re part of the fabric of our lives and it’s notable when they don’t work.

        (though I miss those days of free withdrawals absolutely anywhere!)

        1. I miss the early stories of people trying to steal them—including the one in which some good ol’ boys chained one to their bumper hitch and then left said bumper complete with license plate at the scene when the scheme failed 😉

          1. Ha! I do get reimbursed, but whenever I see the fees, I can’t help but think of the days of tech enamorization that always comes at the beginning, before every possible thing gets monetized.

            1. I don’t think anyone’s made a secret of monetizing autonomous taxis. My only fear is they will expect a tip for simply doing their damn job like humans do.

          2. What shitty bank are you using?

            ShitiBank® – now with ShitiRewards®. Earn ShitiRewards® with every transaction you make for credit against fees for overdrafts, ATM use, below-minimum balances and many other ways you use your accounts.

            Remember: ShitiBank®. Because we can.

        3. Man, I don’t remember free withdrawals, just “withdrawals only from your own bank’s machines.” The credit union network is great though – any 7-11, nearly any credit union, any ATM in a gov’t building.

        4. I’m not sure it’s the best analogy. First off ATMs are always bolted firmly to the ground in a well protected place, either physically inside a building or under surveillance in public places. Their automation is very binary:

          Authenticate bank account > Dispense cash.

          All of their security exploits can generally be countered with traditional protections, both digital, physical and surveillance.

          I’m really talking about any sort of service that require more complex and open ended customer experiences.

          2. Definitely thoughtful points. I guess the way I read Cheap Bastard’s comment was just that tech will eventually make automated cars workable, even if it’s not there yet.

            When ATMs first came out, the surveillance part wasn’t a given like it is now. I remember plenty of them inside buildings, hidden off in some side corridor. While there could have been sophisticated cameras watching, I do kinda doubt it just b/c that technology wasn’t that evolved yet.

            And it wasn’t that long ago that the idea of having purely automated computing functionality (without a “technician” monitoring everything) like ATMs offer was considered unworkable.

            1. There were cameras — either black-and-white CCTV cameras being watched live by security guards in a sort of video panopticon (likely with no recording) or recording on slow-speed (read:low-res and grainy even for 1960s/70s) VTR’s. (Not VCRs; those were still to come — VTR’s were reel-to-reel machines. The industrial ones were about the size of a 1960s/70s open-reel tape recorder, using 3/4-inch tape.) They got replaced later with a format called U-matic and later on (finally…) VHS.

              Some old banks used closed-circuit video cameras that recorded to film, taking still shots from the video feed at regular intervals. The tech has really come a long way. Nowadays we have tiny high-resolution cameras that are easy to conceal, that record to the cloud or a high-capacity digital storage system.

            2. I’m not that old and I remember using ATMs inside a bank, where the teller would stand next to it to supervise and assist with the process. Kinda like a cross between the ‘full-serve’ gas station and those self-checkouts at the grocery store where they still have to come and help if your apples weigh too much.

      2. Autonomous aircraft would be much easier to safely implement than autonomous ground vehicles. There’s a lot less variables and obstacles to deal with in the air…

          1. That would most likely be the consequence of them getting hacked. A very predictable danger of embedding online tech into everything, one predicted in sci fi novels as far back as the 1970s.

              1. Oooh! Which ones?

                My favorite 50s-era sci fi thus far is “The Space Merchants” by Frederik Pihl and C.M. Kornbluth. I’m open to expanding my library.

                1. Start with Asimov’s ‘I Robot’. That’s probably the first major exploration of the possible negative effects of connected automated artififial intelligence. Theodore Sturgeon and Ray Bradbury shoud be explored for these themes too.

                  1. To my shame, I have not read I Robot yet. I have read other Asimov works. I also enjoyed Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 as well as many of his short stories from the era.

                    1. Good stuff man. Some of my finest hours as a human being have been in a comfy chair next to the fire, with a sci-fi paperback in my hand.

                    2. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend Sheep Look Up by John Brunner, published in 1972. That one should be certain to give you the warm and fuzzys while you’re in your comfy chair next to the fire.

                    4. Also by Brunner (A Grandmaster of SF in the same league as Delany, in my opinion) “Shockwave Rider.” Hacking using touch-tone phones, computer worms, laissez-faire economics, all in 1975. Great book!

                  2. Asimov also (later in the series) was (among the) first to address the idea of artificial intelligence being worth of empathy which is just now gaining traction in the genre.

                2. You’ve started well. Nearly anything by Kornbluth (or any of his collabs) will be great as he was one of the most prescient sci fi writers of that era. Shame he died so young.

                  Also, for other 1950’s sci fi, as others have said, Asimov is a must-read for robot/AI related stories. In addition to I, Robot, don’t miss the Elijah Bailey/Daneel Olivaw series. And, of course Arthur C. Clarke wrote some of the best techno sci fi ever.

                  Not specifically AI related but Cordwainer Smith had some of the most unique visions of future humanity, peering tens of thousands of years into the future.

              1. Depends on the aircraft. A one-seater autonomous quadcopter taxi at 800 lbs laden that tops out at 60 mph and would perhaps reach 110 mph in free fall due to drag would be a lot less devastating than a 5,000 lb Tesla getting hacked and then hitting something at the same speed.

                The bottleneck to flying cars hasn’t been technology for more than half a century. It’s instead been the FAA, and as a result, that trope people think of when they imagine the future is probably never going to come to pass. If it does, autonomous flying vehicles would be the most likely, and obvious solution.

                1. I don’t think so. Target buildings are already barricaded against attack by terrorists in explosive packed semis, much less a wimpy Tesla. Those giant concrete planter boxes, staircases and steel ballards aren’t just there for show. Parking lots are designed to minimize run-up speeds too.

                  The only way to protected against attack from the air, aside from clustering buildings is an anti-aircraft system and those are likely to cause more collateral damage than the attack itself.

  16. While I don’t condone the violence, I do understand it. You have a two-ton robot roaming the streets that has killed and injured people in the past, owned by a corporation that has demonstrated its lack of concern for public safety, in a country where the state and national governments allows tech corporations to pretty much do whatever the hell they want to do. I’d say this kind of revolt is inevitable and I think we’ll likely see more of it.

    1. Rampant cost of living crisis and the world is burning around us?

      “Best we can do is a multi-ton taxi for rich people designed to eliminates jobs”

      ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

      I also don’t condone this, but sadly agree. Especially once people realize how easy it is.

        2. You’ve got it backwards…you have to start with a pretty good working car, then work for Uber/Lyft/Doordash, then realize that you are losing money, have to sell the car or live in it and end up in a tent.

          1. The gig economy is a scam to give the voiceless hope. Then after they commit to the lifestyle, the rug is pulled out from under them, and they self-destruct via substance abuse or mental illness.

            Just like it’s designed to do.

    1. I see your Boston Massacre and raise you with Boston Tea Party. The sentient dominance of the silicon army is coming, and we will be regulated to parcels of land full of casinos and other vices to keep us satiated.

      *Palette cleanser before today’s onslaught of the AI/CGI media hype machine that is the Super Bowl.

  19. Do people that have a sudden urge to vandalize in a large city just forget that they are on camera, effectively all the time now? We are beset on all sides by morons.

    2. “Do people that have a sudden urge to vandalize in a large city just forget that they are on camera, effectively all the time now?”

      For the same reason caribou move around in herds and prey fish swim in schools.

            1. The worst jerks are in positions of power, have billions of dollars, and make all the big policy decisions without regard to what the people these decisions are imposed upon against their will actually want. That’s really the root of the problem. The jerks in the video are merely a reaction to the root cause. A predictable one at that.

    4. While carrying tracking devices, many of which run on software developed under the same corporate umbrella as Waymo.

      Subponea’s gonna be a piece of cake.

  20. So how clear are the windows, especially in back? Did these morons know it was empty? As horrible and dangerous as this was, think what a catastrophe it would have been if some poor fare was inside?

    I hope no PD/firefighters were injured dealing with this battery fire. And I hope no one else was injured/lost their home/business waiting for PD/fire that was delayed because they were busy dealing with this situation.

    SF has been going downhill for some time – there’s plenty of news reports about it. The more you put up with lawlessness, the more brazen the low-lifes become.

  21. I have little compassion for a company that decided to test an unproven, potentially fatal technology on public streets.
    That being said, lighting a car full of lithium on fire in the middle of a crowd is also a shitty thing to do. Somebody might get hurt. You want to protest robo taxis? Boycott them. Waymo stops making money they’ll stop putting cars on the street. All without anybody accidentally going up in flames.

  22. Is this some weird psychological thing where we don’t see autonomous vehicles as objects that people own? Like it’s ok to destroy it because it’s just a robot? I’m a bit depressed by the thought honestly

    1. My thinking is that since it’s owned by a big corporation with insurance, the crowd does not care. Especially since it’s a potentially dangerous unproven technology with some controversial incidents that have appeared in the news quite a bit lately and the potential to take the jobs of taxi drivers… yeah I can see why the public would hate autonomous cars enough to do this.

      The vandalism could be their way of trying to send a message.

        1. Well, a mob requires a number of people, including an instigator, early followers, late followers, and people who don’t join but also don’t intervene. A number of the people in this mob surely had an opinion about Waymo and robotization, and it could (or could not) have been what tilted them past a certain point.

          1. Given a large enough group sure, AV haters might jump into the monkey parade. That doesn’t mean the instigator wasn’t anything more than a drunk monkey. The jerk with the skateboard looked to be a drunk, stupid monkey rather than an AV hating luddite.

    2. I think it’s a perfectly normal thing to see unoccupied automobiles with a demonstrably poor grasp of how to operate in a city clogging up the streets and menacing the people (on foot, bikes, and in cars) of that city at the invitation of the state when your city doesn’t want them as representatives of an invading power. Every time you see those automobiles, you are reminded that tech billionaires are using you as guinea pigs while simultaneously pricing you out of your home.
      Reading about the interactions San Francisco residents have with these things makes me surprised this doesn’t happen more often.

      1. I wonder if the people who did this may not be SF residents. Chinatown tends to attract tourists/visitors, and it’s getting more and more raucous all the time.

        I was just in SF last month and walked through Chinatown toward North Beach and I was amazed at how crowded it had become, and not the pleasant, hey look you can buy a license plate with your name on it type either.

          1. There’s plenty of immoral actions enabled by the law and existing systems that have directly led to events like this.

            When a small group of wealthy individuals get first dibs on all of the money printed up and can spend it before everyone else suffers the price inflation, which these wealthy individuals then use this money to drive up the price of housing and turn housing into a speculative bubble by buying up as much of it as they can and turning it into investment vehicles, you’re going to end up with vast swathes of the population priced out of a home no matter how hard they work, and homeless people that work jobs but still can’t afford rent.

            Of course, that’s a national problem for which local solutions won’t do a damned thing to fix.

            Ever consider the cost of a basic 1,200 sq ft home in San Francisco?

            In specific to San Francisco, there’s a NIMBY problem. Upper-middle-class homeowners DON’T want affordable housing solutions, because it will kill the artificially-created housing shortage and they fear that will make their home values decrease. And they don’t want poor people to have cheap housing near them. Their acceptable “solutions” amount to kicking the homeless out of the city and bussing them anywhere else(and everywhere else wants to do the same thing), imprisoning the homeless, or letting them die in the gutter. Nor does the local government want to actually fix the homeless problem, because there’s a homeless-industrial complex that the bureaucrats can now use to milk money out of taxpayers.

            Overpriced housing is not accidental. It is the result of carefully-crafted policy decisions with a given end-game in mind: maximizing the flow of money to the well-connected. And this is to the expense of everyone who needs a roof over their head. The people that made these decisions aren’t suffering any consequences, either. They almost never do. They privatize the profits, socialize the losses.

            Non-local and local policy combined, this creates a culture of both desperation and apathy among the lowest tiers of the socio-economic hierarchy. Lots of people are in dire circumstances that are not of their own doing and for which nothing they can do will really fix their situation. They’re relying on luck, no matter how hard they work or how smart they are. After years, many just give up, become drug-addicted, or go mad from years of being treated as less than human, or choose a life of crime when they realize hard work doesn’t get them anywhere.

            It’s little wonder that random crowds of people have idiots in them that just snap.

            Gutting all sorts of zoning regulations and housing codes, drastically curtailing minimum square footage requirements, raising wages at the low-end of the labor force, AND eliminating property taxes on one’s primary dwelling(while shifting the proprty tax extraction to large corporations that buy up homes), would all do a lot to fix this mess by decreasing the cost of shelter, allowing homeless people to pull themselves out of the rut they’ve been put into by society, should they want to do so.

            1. You can talk policy all day long (and I agree with most of what you said), but that’s not what occurred here. Just because a person is homeless/poor/drug addicted etc. doesn’t give them a free pass to do wrong. Shit, these people may be none of the above. Who’s to say?

              When you make excuses for an individual doing heinous acts and blame it on a “system”, you are implicitly endorsing the acts. This applies to everyone involved, whether they are rich, poor, or just a group of selfish assholes.

              There is no valid argument to sugarcoat it.

              1. I’m not trying to sugarcoat anything, nor do I know the specific circumstances of the people in the video.

                My argument boils down to this:

                Cause, meet effect.

                Lawlessness and/or immoral behavior at the top of the socio-economic hierarchy will yield lawlessness and/or immoral behavior all throught the society in all facets. Nothing new though. History is replete with examples going back thousands of years spanning multiple civilizations.

                Ours isn’t special.

                1. So the answer is just to shrug shoulders and say, “shit happens” according to your argument? That seems pretty defeatist and what partially led SF to the issues it has now. Cause and effect, indeed.

                  1. I think the open-air drug markets, defunding of police, and no-bail policies are doing exactly what they were intended to do, seeing that these policies are also coupled with de-facto decriminalization of theft under $950, a lack of public restroom availability for the homeless, and an intentional refusal to address the fact that shelter is so obscenely overpriced for working people that there are some working multiple jobs but still priced out of a roof over their head.

                    Is it really any surprise that small business owners are fleeing?

                    Hegelian dialect in action. Problem, reaction, solution.

                    Stop the constant money printing and housing speculation, decrease the share of money/wealth flowing to the elite of society so that everyone can have some of the pie and not just a small sliver of the population, take the financial elite out of government policy decisions, shift the tax burdens away from working people and onto speculative parasites and old money, and then perhaps the open-air drug markets, the lack of police, and no-bail policies may turn out to become net benefits to society, instead of obvious problems, because there won’t be hordes of desperate people everywhere looking for a lick.

                    As it is, the current dystopian path we are on is increasing drug addiction, mental illness, and overall amoral/immoral behavior. These things are symptoms of the root cause, and not the root cause itself.

            2. “eliminating property taxes on one’s primary dwelling(while shifting the property tax extraction to large corporations that buy up homes)”
              That’s an excellent idea!
              Some retirees are forced to sell their homes simply because they can no longer afford the property tax.

              1. Some retirees are forced to sell their homes simply because they can no longer afford the property tax.

                Not in San Francisco, or for that matter anywhere in California, because of Proposition 13. If anything, the fact that real property taxes can only increase by 1.5 percent per year unless something triggers a reassessment (either a sale or a substantial alteration, which is one reason why so many unpermitted additions and remodelings have been done) keeps older people from downsizing because purchasing a new property that’s maybe half the actual value could trigger a huge jump in property taxes on current market values. Which further constrains supply.

                1. Varies greatly by location. East coast, some counties have approved multiple increases that are more than 2X the state allowable increase, by just petitioning the state, that rubber stamps it. All without any voter input.

            3. Once again you bring up excellent points most overlook. I have watched local housing codes raise the price of a home by at least $15k in just two revisions and for questionable results. The most egregious being the fire sprinkler requirement in a residential home, yes it would help but the chances of a fire are low compared to the chance it will spring a leak and flood your house + the cost.
              Locally this is second only to the federal government refusing to sell/allow development on land of little importance driving up land prices.

    4. Not limited to autonomous vehicles but literally anything that’s unattended is seen as up for grabs to steal or vandalize. I work in infrastructure maintenance in a large Florida City and bridges, street signs, Lime Scooters, lamp posts, the sides of buildings on a nightly basis are damaged, destroyed or stolen just because they’re there. One of the most common examples is the bike repair stations along a popular bike trail constantly having the tools snapped off and stolen. In many cases the EV chargers are falling victim to a-holes that are smashing or breaking the charging plugs. These “victimless” crimes have real effects on someone the need them to safely get somewhere and can very quickly turn into someone becoming a victim to another crime.

      1. People are easily manipulated into committing atrocities against each other too. Especially if the person convincing them has an expensive suit, a military uniform, a law enforcement badge, or a lab coat.

        Further cementing their status as dumb, panicky, dangerous animals.

        1. I should have put ” “. It’s the recruitment speech from MIB. But yeah, more often than not, summoning a mob doesn’t end well. Now any idiot with a social media following can do it. It’s called CRITICAL thinking for a reason.

  24. In the upper right video of the first block, the nonchalance of the guy with black hoodie& white hat is weird. Maybe that’s not the right word, but flipping the skateboard at the car behind him…maybe he’s seeking attention/approval of the crowd? Sort of wish the board had rebounded a bit better that one time giving him a good whack.

    I’m not thrilled that the public is being subjected to ai that clearly isn’t ready to deal with a live world in 3D, but smashing things just for fun ain’t right either.

    You don’t mess with someone’s ride—do we extend that to corporations? I think so: casual destruction of things not yours is just juvenile.

    1. Yeah skateboard hoodie guy’s smashing looks very weird. Like he’s barely aware of his own surroundings and just kinda awkwardly flailing, not really comprehending how to effectively hit the car.

      I blame drugs.

      Also, while I certainly wouldn’t condone vandalism/destructive violence like this, I kinda get it in this instance. It’s not right, but I can understand why a crowd would be angry enough at big tech companies testing these things in the public to send a message by destroying them. The company will be barely affected anyway, there’s no way the car wasn’t insured.

      1. I blame drugs.

        ‘Dem blues, man. ‘Dem blues.

        In a year or two, I think all of San Fran is going to look a lot like the Kensington neighborhood of Philly.

        1. Also I gotta say, from reading your comments on this article and many articles, you’re one of the most consistently thoughtful and insightful commenters on this website. It is appreciated.

            1. I’d add to Austin’s comment that I, at least, also appreciate your measured tone and relatable explanations. To me, while I may not always agree 100%, I always read your remarks because they are worth consideration.

              sorry to be all fanboy

    3. And novels such as Neuromancer by William Gibson, Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson, and Sheep Look Up by John Brunner. The latter is especially poignant given how long ago it was written.

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