Videos circulating on social media show a Waymo robotaxi standing across the street with its headlights on, while the rest of the traffic is forced to carefully drive around the car.
More on how notes SF Standard, the car actually blocked the motorcade of Vice President Kamala Harris, who was on her way to the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco.
In the end, Waymo’s robotic car did not move, so to open the road, one of the local police officers had to manually tow the taxi away.
Blocking roads is not new for Waymo: local residents have been rebelling against robotics because they impede the movement of emergency vehicles and in general often provoke traffic jams. The haters of self-driving taxis even organized actions, installing cones on the hoods of cars and thus rendering them inoperablewhile one of the most active slashed tires on 17 Waymo cars (but she forgot about the cameras and was quickly caught).
Until now, self-driving cars have not been subject to traffic fines, but on Friday, the governor of California signed a bill that provides that companies that own self-driving cars can be prosecuted. The sentences will not include fines, but if there are too many of them, the local DMV can revoke the work permit.