By Simon Romero
CHANDLER,
Ariz. — The assailant slipped out of a park around noon one day in
October, zeroing in on his target, which was idling at a nearby
intersection — a self-driving van operated by Waymo, the driverless-car
company spun out of Google.
He
carried out his attack with an unidentified sharp object, swiftly
slashing one of the tires. The suspect, identified as a white man in his
20s, then melted into the neighborhood on foot.
The
slashing was one of nearly two dozen attacks on driverless vehicles
over the past two years in Chandler, a city near Phoenix where Waymo
started testing its vans in 2017. In ways large and small, the city has
had an early look at public misgivings over the rise of artificial
intelligence, with city officials hearing complaints about everything
from safety to possible job losses.
Some
people have pelted Waymo vans with rocks, according to police reports.
Others have repeatedly tried to run the vehicles off the road. One woman
screamed at one of the vans, telling it to get out of her suburban
neighborhood. A man pulled up alongside a Waymo vehicle and threatened
the employee riding inside with a piece of PVC pipe.
In one of the more harrowing episodes, a man waved a .22-caliber revolver
at a Waymo vehicle and the emergency backup driver at the wheel. He
told the police that he “despises” driverless cars, referring to the killing of a female pedestrian in March in nearby Tempe by a self-driving Uber car.
“There
are other places they can test,” said Erik O’Polka, 37, who was issued a
warning by the police in November after multiple reports that his Jeep
Wrangler had tried to run Waymo vans off the road — in one case, driving
head-on toward one of the self-driving vehicles until it was forced to
come to an abrupt stop.
His wife,
Elizabeth, 35, admitted in an interview that her husband “finds it
entertaining to brake hard” in front of the self-driving vans, and that
she herself “may have forced them to pull over” so she could yell at
them to get out of their neighborhood. The trouble started, the couple
said, when their 10-year-old son was nearly hit by one of the vehicles
while he was playing in a nearby cul-de-sac.
“They
said they need real-world examples, but I don’t want to be their
real-world mistake,” said Mr. O’Polka, who runs his own company
providing information technology to small businesses.
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“They didn’t ask us if we wanted to be part of their beta test,” added his wife, who helps run the business.
At least 21 such attacks have been leveled at Waymo vans in Chandler, as first reported
by The Arizona Republic. Some analysts say they expect more such
behavior as the nation moves into a broader discussion about the
potential for driverless cars to unleash colossal changes in American
society. The debate touches on fears ranging from eliminating jobs for
drivers to ceding control over mobility to autonomous vehicles.
“People
are lashing out justifiably," said Douglas Rushkoff, a media theorist
at City University of New York and author of the book “Throwing Rocks at
the Google Bus.” He likened driverless cars to robotic incarnations of
scabs — workers who refuse to join strikes or who take the place of
those on strike.
“There’s a growing
sense that the giant corporations honing driverless technologies do not
have our best interests at heart,” Mr. Rushkoff said. “Just think about
the humans inside these vehicles, who are essentially training the
artificial intelligence that will replace them.”
The
emergency drivers in the Waymo vans that were attacked in various cases
told the Chandler police that the company preferred not to pursue
prosecution of the assailants.
In
some of their reports, police officers also said Waymo was often
unwilling to provide video of the attacks. In one case, a Waymo employee
told the police they would need a warrant to obtain video recorded by
the company’s vehicles.
Officer
William Johnson of the Chandler Police Department described in a June
report how the driver of a Chrysler PT Cruiser wove between lanes of
traffic while taunting a Waymo van.
A
manager at Waymo showed video images of the incident to Officer Johnson
but did not allow the police to keep them for a more thorough
investigation. According to Officer Johnson’s report, the manager said
that the company did not want to pursue the matter, emphasizing that
Waymo was worried about disruptions of its testing in Chandler.
The
report said Waymo was concerned about the effect the attacks were
having on its emergency drivers, who are intended to remain in
monitoring mode. “The behavior is causing the drivers to resume manual
mode over the automated mode because of concerns about what the driver
of the other vehicle may do,” Officer Johnson wrote.
The
emergency drivers in the Waymo vans that were attacked told the
Chandler police that the company preferred not to pursue prosecution of
the assailants.CreditJason Henry for The New York Times
In
a statement, a Waymo spokeswoman said the attacks involved only a small
fraction of the more than 25,000 miles that the company’s vans log
every day in Arizona.
“Safety is the
core of everything we do, which means that keeping our drivers, our
riders, and the public safe is our top priority,” said Alexis Georgeson,
the Waymo spokeswoman. “Over the past two years, we've found Arizonans
to be welcoming and excited by the potential of this technology to make
our roads safer.”
Ms. Georgeson said
the company took the safety of its emergency drivers seriously and
disputed claims that Waymo was trying to avoid bad publicity by opting
against pursuing criminal charges.
“We
report incidents we deem to pose a danger and we have provided photos
and videos to local law enforcement when reporting these acts of
vandalism or assault,” Ms. Georgeson said. “We support our drivers and
engage in cases where an act of vandalism has been perpetrated against
us.”
The authorities in Chandler and
elsewhere in Arizona remain gladly open to Waymo and other
driverless-car companies. Rob Antoniak, the chief operating officer of
Valley Metro, which helps oversee the Phoenix metropolitan area’s
transit system, said on Twitter that Arizona was still welcoming autonomous cars with “open arms” despite the attacks on Waymo vans.
“Don't
let individual criminals throwing rocks or slashing tires derail
efforts to drive the future of transportation,” Mr. Antoniak said.
But the official welcome mat has failed to persuade the naysayers.
One
of them, Charles Pinkham, 37, was standing in the street in front of a
Waymo vehicle in Chandler one evening in August when he was approached
by the police.
“Pinkham was heavily
intoxicated, and his demeanor varied from calm to belligerent and
agitated during my contact with him,” Officer Richard Rimbach wrote in
his report. “He stated he was sick and tired of the Waymo vehicles
driving in his neighborhood, and apparently thought the best idea to
resolve this was to stand in front of these vehicles.”
It
worked, apparently. The Waymo employee inside the van, Candice Dunson,
opted against filing charges and told the police that the company
preferred to stop routing vehicles to the area.
Mr. Pinkham got a warning. The van moved on.
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