Watch how vandals demolished a robotaxi in Los Angeles

(Patria) - Robotaxis can be viewed in several ways. On one hand, they are a symbol of technological progress and show that computers can now drive vehicles almost perfectly and navigate traffic chaos among many other human-driven vehicles.

However, for some, they represent all that is negative in today's society - technology that will one day take people's jobs and further enrich the wealthy, writes Zimo.hr.

Although the computers that operate such vehicles are extremely advanced, it is clear that they also make mistakes. As Ruth Porat from Waymo recently commented, people will often forgive mistakes made by human drivers, but the same does not apply to robotaxis and technology.

A crowd surrounded and destroyed a Waymo autonomous vehicle outside the Beverly Center in Los Angeles at approximately 1am on Saturday morning. Video credit: https://t.co/kb3OhhSO5r pic.twitter.com/WQb6QlXL5s

— cryptogon (@cryptogon) January 25, 2025

One such situation occurred at the end of 2023, when a woman ended up under the wheels of a Cruise robotaxi, which subsequently faced public and regulatory backlash, leading it to withdraw from the market.

Waymo, a company part of Google's Alphabet, has not been involved in accidents with serious injuries or fatalities so far. However, there have been challenging situations and certain problems.

What some people think about driverless cars on the roads has been shown on more than one occasion by graffiti painted on them, and the situation culminated a year ago when a Waymo car was set on fire.

Their robotaxi was attacked by vandals last weekend in Los Angeles on La Cienega Boulevard.

Although there are no specific details, meaning it is unknown whether the robotaxi did something to provoke people's anger, the video that appeared on social media shows vandals demolishing a Waymo car stopped at a traffic light.

The front doors were completely torn off and thrown onto the hood, along with some electric scooters, and the vehicle's windows were smashed and a tire was punctured.

The footage, later published on YouTube, shows several people surrounding the vehicle, hitting and destroying it, while some people stand aside and film everything with their mobile phones.

The Los Angeles Police Department stated that they received a report of an attack on a robotaxi around 4 AM and that no one was injured in the incident, but no arrests have been made so far.

Waymo says they are cooperating with investigators.

"While these situations are rare, we take them extremely seriously and remain committed to improving road safety," said company spokesperson Julia Ilina.

The only fortunate aspect of the entire situation is that no one was in the Waymo car at the time of the attack. However, these are certainly situations that Google should pay attention to, even though it seems that such attacks are almost impossible to prevent at times.