LOS ANGELES: Two teens who engaged a Waymo car for an afternoon of carousing were busted after the vehicle delivered them to police in the Californian city of San Mateo.
The 15-year-olds allegedly were drinking alcohol and shooting water beads from a toy gun as they rode in the driverless car on July 6, the police’s social media post said. Waymo stopped the car in a parking lot and notified the police, who detained the teens.
Police photos show five officers, one with a dog, surrounding the car at a shopping centre just south of the interchange of El Camino Real and Highway 92.
The police post allowed "there was some ingenuity to this scheme” but said underage drinking and brandishing of even toy guns to strangers are "bad ideas.”
Waymo cars have interior cameras, and the images can be monitored by the company’s employees. In "more urgent circumstances,” the support team "may access live video during a trip,” Waymo’s support page says.
Waymo, the self-driving unit that grew out of Google’s robot-car program, already runs fully driverless paid robotaxi services in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Atlanta and Austin, and has announced expansions including Miami and Washington, DC as it seeks to scale beyond a handful of launch markets. Waymo has also said it planned to begin an expansion into Europe with a robotaxi service in London. – dpa
