A startling incident unfolded when a man aggressively targeted a Waymo driverless taxi by repeatedly hurling what seemed to be a rock at its side. This dramatic episode was captured on dashcam footage.
The scene took place as the autonomous vehicle was halted at a red light near Battersea Park in southwest London. A pedestrian approached the vehicle with visible anger, gesticulating and shouting at the occupants inside before proceeding to pound on the window of the electric Jaguar I-PACE Waymo.
In a bid to escape the confrontation, the vehicle attempted to move off, prompting the man to throw an object, likely a rock, at the car. The dashcam audio captured the loud smashing noise produced by the impact.
Faced with the escalating aggression, the Waymo driver made the swift decision to accelerate through the red light to distance the vehicle from the attacker, who appeared to pursue it on foot. The incident highlights the challenges faced by autonomous vehicles and their operators in unpredictable urban environments.
A loud smashing sound can be heard on the audio of the dashcam footage.
The driver of the Waymo car then accelerates through a red light in order to get away from the attacker, who appears to follow on foot.
Taxi driver Arif Uzzamam Mohammad, 48, was driving a passenger to Heathrow Airport just before midday on Saturday when he witnessed the incident.
He said: ‘I don’t know what he was saying, but it seems like ‘call the police, call the police’, something like that.
‘At the same time, he had a medium-sized rock in his hand, he first hit on the windscreen, and after that I think the driver was scared.
This is the moment a man attacked a ‘driverless’ Waymo taxi by lobbing what appears to be a rock at the side of the car
The driver of the Waymo car accelerated through a red light in order to get away from the attacker, who appears to follow on foot
‘He also twice hit the [driver] side.
‘After, when the driver ran through the red light because he was scared, he threw the rock on the [driver] side window, and smashed that one.
‘Then he went behind the car.’
Mr Mohammad said he had no idea why the man might have carried out the attack.
He added: ‘I’m still thinking ‘why did he break that car?’ He came from the right hand side and just started shouting.
‘Why and what, I don’t know if anything happened before. I don’t know.’
The incident comes just weeks after a Waymo taxi ploughed into a taped-off crime scene in Harlesden, north-west London.
As bystanders filmed the police cordon, the white car sped into view, seemingly not noticing the police’s flashing blue lights and the ‘Do Not Cross’ tape stretched across the carriageway at windscreen height.
Two police officers could be seen appearing to engage in conversation with a person sitting in the Waymo before it reversed away.
Waymo insisted the car was under human control at the time.
It said in a statement: ‘Safety is our highest priority at Waymo, and we condemn any form of vandalism.
‘While these sorts of events are rare, we take them extremely seriously. In this situation, an autonomous specialist was behind the wheel and manually drove the vehicle away from the scene.
‘We are working closely with local safety officials to investigate this incident and remain fully committed to improving road safety and mobility in the cities where we operate.’
A Waymo taxi ploughed into a taped-off crime scene in Harlesden, north-west London, in a previous incident
The self-driving cars have been in London since last Autumn, mostly under the control of ‘safety drivers’.
Now, some are being fully controlled by artificial intelligence, with a human sitting in the driver’s seat in case of an emergency.
The company is a subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc and was born from Google’s self-driving car project.
The company says its software, termed the ‘Waymo Driver’, ‘never gets drunk, tired, or distracted.’
The cars use a combination of cameras, radar sensors, and lidar sensors – a 3D scanning technology – in its self-driving vehicles.
It says this means cars can see overlapping fields of view in all directions up to 500 metres away.
When in full service, the vehicles have no human safety driver at all.
The self-driving cars have steering wheels on the left-hand side, as they were originally built for the company’s US operations, where traffic drives on the right.
A spokesperson for the Met Police said: ‘On Saturday, 9 May at 11:56hrs, police were called to reports of criminal damage to a vehicle on Havelock Terrace, Nine Elms.
‘Officers attended and conducted an area search, but were unable to locate the vehicle.
‘A further online report was received by police at 14:47hrs the same day. Enquiries are ongoing to trace the suspect.
‘Anyone with information is asked to contact the police on 101, quoting CAD3171/09MAY26.’
Waymo did not respond when contacted for comment by the Daily Mail.
