Waymo Remotely Traps Drunk Teens Firing Gel Blasters from Robotaxi
Two 15-year-olds turned an autonomous vehicle into a drive-by platform in San Mateo, forgetting that a driverless car is essentially a rolling surveillance hub.
Removing the human driver does not mean nobody is watching. Police in San Mateo, California, detained two 15-year-old boys after Waymo halted their ride and called 911 on its own passengers.
According to police department spokesperson Jeanine Luna [female], Waymo alerted authorities around 2:10 a.m. Company operators watching cabin cameras reported that two underage passengers appeared intoxicated and were leaning out of the vehicle, shooting gel beads from a toy blaster at people and surrounding targets.
Instead of relying on bystanders to complain, Waymo staff tracked the car in real time. Remote operators pulled the autonomous vehicle over, fed live GPS updates to local officers, and reportedly told the teenagers via the in-car system that the taxi had stopped due to a technical malfunction. Officers intercepted the vehicle, finding open alcohol and an Orbeez gel-pellet gun inside.
Local prosecutors are currently determining whether to file criminal charges. The incident highlights the paradox of autonomous transit: passengers trade the immediate friction of a human driver for an interior surrounded by high-resolution sensors and continuous teleoperations.
That surveillance is not always a given for law enforcement. Earlier in San Francisco, an alleged thief used a Waymo car to flee a clothing store burglary in January, but court filings later revealed the company’s internal trip recordings had vanished from servers by April before investigators secured them. In the San Mateo case, live streaming mattered more than archival storage.
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