Autonomous Vehicle Attacked by Furious Pedestrian

They went ham on that thing.

Way to Go

People in Tempe, Arizona apparently really hate Waymo's autonomous, self-driving vehicles — so much so that a pedestrian attacked a vehicle with at least one passenger inside earlier this week.

A pedestrian ran out in front of the vehicle in the early morning hours on Tuesday while it was in self-driving mode, the Verge reported on Thursday. Waymo spokesperson Nick Smith told the pub the person was "erratic" and injured the safety driver after the drive manually came to a stop. The pedestrian attacked the hood of the Waymo car and punctured the windshield. Police apprehended the person and took them to a treatment facility.

Before the news hit, though, one Twitter netizen grabbed footage of the destroyed car that shows just how bad the damage was. Although it's not clear exactly what the pedestrian used or how they managed it, there's a giant hole in the windshield's middle, shown below.

Drive Right

It's not uncommon to hear stories about autonomous vehicles accidentally creating havoc, and they've even been known to take human lives in deadly accidents. Now it seems a rash of attacks are going in the complete opposition direction, with pedestrians causing mayhem for riders and drivers in self-driving vehicles.

It's hard to grasp the logic behind violence even if it's not difficult to understand why people don't like self-driving cars. Surely even the most staunchly anti-autonomous folks understand that attacking vehicles with people inside isn't a great way to, you know, ensure people in vehicles are safe?

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