Waymo cut short a robotaxi ride in San Mateo after the company determined that two teenage passengers were drinking and firing gel beads from inside the driverless car, according to the San Mateo Police Department.
The department said in a Facebook post that Waymo called police, stopped the vehicle and allowed officers to remove the two passengers safely. Police said the pair were 15 years old and had been shooting Orbeez from the car while drinking alcohol.
That is a tidy bundle of bad decisions even before the autonomous-vehicle part enters the chat. Underage drinking is illegal. Firing projectiles out of a moving vehicle is also the sort of conduct that tends to turn a ride into an incident report. The fact that the car had no human driver did not make it a private mischief pod.
San Mateo police said toy guns, water guns and BB guns can still create real risks because bystanders may not be able to tell what they are seeing. The department also said projectiles fired at speed can cause damage.
Waymo’s rider rules did a lot of work here
Waymo’s published rider policies prohibit alcohol or drug use inside its vehicles, whether or not local law would otherwise allow it. The rules also say riders under 18 must be accompanied by an adult.
The same rules bar passengers from throwing objects from the vehicle and prohibit weapons. A gel bead shooter may be marketed as a toy, but Waymo’s policy does not give riders much room to litigate toy-gun metaphysics from the back seat.
The incident also shows how little privacy riders should expect inside a robotaxi when something goes wrong. Waymo says it may review in-car video in certain circumstances, and that support staff may access live video during a trip in more urgent situations. The company’s documents do not say that every ride is watched live. They do say the cabin can become visible to Waymo when the company decides the situation warrants it.
Police did not say whether the teens were arrested or what, if any, charges they may face. The department said officers detained them after the stopped ride.
Driverless does not mean rule-free
California’s alcohol rules are a little awkward in this corner of transportation. Adult taxi passengers are not covered by the state’s open-container ban in the same way vehicle occupants generally are, while ride-hailing passengers do not get that same carveout. Waymo’s own policy is simpler: no drinking in the car.
This was not the first public account of Waymo escalating passenger behavior to police. A Reddit post last year described two men in Los Angeles being reported for drinking inside a Waymo vehicle. That account is not a police record, but it lines up with the company’s written rule against alcohol use.
The San Mateo case is clearer because police themselves described the sequence: Waymo detected a problem, stopped the robotaxi and called law enforcement. The two teens avoided a human driver. They did not avoid the company operating the car.
This story draws on original reporting from Ars Technica.
