A Stalled Waymo Blocked Kamala Harris’s Motorcade in San Francisco

In what weirdly feels similar a hostile motion from the tech manufacture itself, a Waymo robotaxi stalled retired successful beforehand of Vice President Kamala Harris’ motorcade successful San Francisco connected Friday night.

Harris has already suffered important hostility from Silicon Valley, wherever a ample aggregate of crypto bros and a fig of influential tech tycoons (including, astir prominently, Elon Musk) person decided to endorse Donald Trump implicit the Democratic candidate. As if to show the strained relations betwixt the tech manufacture and the candidate, 1 of Waymo’s autonomous cars decided, of its ain accord, to laic down successful beforehand of her motorcade and alteration itself into a vehicular postulation cone.

The conveyance was successful the process of making a U-Turn connected California Street successful the city’s Nob Hill vicinity erstwhile it malfunctioned and stopped moving, the San Francisco Standard reports. Harris’s motorcade—which was en way to her hotel—was down the car erstwhile it abruptly halted. It’s unclear however agelong the motorcade was stalled, oregon if the AV was truly a occupation for the vice president astatine all. Eventually, a section constabulary serviceman was forced to leap wrong the driverless car and manually steer it retired of traffic.

HAPPENING NOW: A driverless @Waymo gets stuck making a u-turn arsenic @VP’s motorcade arrived astatine the Fairmont S.F.
An SFPD serviceman had to manually thrust the conveyance out. We’re proceeding this wasn’t the lone one… @abc7newsbayarea pic.twitter.com/uCdiTf9lbB

— LaurenABC7 (@LaurenABC7) September 28, 2024

Gizmodo reached retired to Waymo for comment.

Much of the Harris-related consternation from tech elites seems to stem from the information that, dissimilar Republicans, the Democratic Party has attempted to regulate the tech industry to immoderate degree. Under Joe Biden, the national authorities has cracked down connected the crypto industry’s astir notorious actors and has passed rather tame AI regulations.

This isn’t the archetypal clip a robotaxi has randomly died successful the mediate of a San Francisco intersection. The driverless vehicles, which person go a salient fixture of the metropolis since California approved broader usage of the vehicles past year, person been causing postulation problems for galore months now.

It’s astir apt a bully thing, then, that California Governor Gavin Newsom precocious signed a measure into instrumentality that volition make caller regulations for the robotaxi industry. AB1777 volition necessitate self-driving car manufacturers to comply with a fig of caller stipulations. Most notably, the instrumentality volition let constabulary to mention self-driving car companies for postulation violations connected to their vehicles. (Currently, robotaxis are escaped to obstruct postulation with nary ineligible consequence.) The instrumentality volition spell into effect successful 2026. The Verge reports that Newsom precocious vetoed 2 different autonomous vehicle-related bills—one that would person banned autonomous trucks from operating connected nationalist roads, and different that would person created information reporting requirements for autonomous conveyance companies.