Los Angeles Protestors Torch Waymos In Anti-ICE Action

Los Angeles residents took to the streets this past weekend, starting up days of impromptu protests in response to a series of raids on the community by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  The Angelenos faced off with police and the National Guard, who brought their usual complement of rubber bullets, tear gas, and attempted murder-by-vehicle, but the city's residents also faced a new threat: Waymo self-driving taxis. Conveniently for the protesters, those Waymo taxis turned out to be very, very flammable. 

The rideshare service suspended operations in the downtown area of the City of Angels Sunday after protesters torched five of its vehicles, Business Insider reports, though its other 300 or so vehicles remained active in other parts of the sprawling megapolis. Waymo says it doesn't believe its vehicles were targeted specifically, but I'm no so sure. 

As police beat protesters and fired rubber bullets at journalists, they also began issuing threats of retribution past the end of the protests — police helicopters told protesters that, "I have all of you on camera. I'm going to come to your house." So the protesters, logically, started destroying cameras. It just so happens that Waymo taxis are absolutely full of cameras, and Waymo itself is more than happy to supply footage to the LAPD.

Mario Tama/Getty Images

Police are known for disappearing protesters after tensions have died down, but that only works if police know who the protesters are. Logically, destroyed cameras will prevent data from streaming back to data centers or make their onboard storage made unrecoverable, which reduces the risk for people present to be lost in prisons without access to an attorney for days at a time. Essentially, the thinking behind torching Waymos could be that it was one way to guarantee the constitutional rights of protesters are upheld.

Tensions between the public and self-driving taxis is not unknown. Folks have trashed Waymos in the past as well. Last year, folks in San Francisco set a Waymo on fire by throwing fireworks into the empty robotaxi. In 2023, activist immobilized Waymo and Cruise robotaxis using traffic cones on the hood.