Support truly
independent journalism
The driverless car company Waymo has sued two San Francisco Bay Area residents for allegedly attacking and damaging their robotaxis, court documents show.
In a pair of lawsuits first reported by Wired, the Silicon Valley firm – which is owned by Google and YouTube's parent company Alphabet – asked a San Francisco judge for a total of around $271,000 in damages from the two defendants.
One suit accused San Francisco resident Ronaile Burton of slashing and damaging the tires of 19 Waymo robo-taxis between June 24 and June 26, demanding around $22,000 in compensation and $66,000 in punitive damages.
The other lawsuit accused Oakland Tesla owner Konstantine Nikka-Sher Piterman of intentionally ramming his electric vehicle into the back of a Waymo autonomous vehicle (AV), and threatening the Waymo representative who arrived to deal with the incident.
The company wants Piterman to pay around $46,000 in compensation and $137,000 in damages, as well as remove a post on X (formerly Twitter) claiming that "this Waymo just rekt me", which Waymo says was defamatory.
Neither defendant has responded to the lawsuits yet, but Burton has pled not guilty to criminal vandalism charges stemming from the same alleged incidents.
The Independent has asked Piterman for comment via X and phone call. Burton could not be reached because he is currently in prison, and the civil court documents list no lawyer for him.
The lawsuits come after a spate of attacks on Waymo cars in San Francisco, ranging from safety activists placing traffic cones on the cars' hoods to disable them to a laughing, cheering mob who surrounded and torched a Waymo vehicle in Chinatown this February.
Opponents claim that AVs have been foisted on the public without proper investigations into their safety or their impact on jobs, and that their driverless nature makes it hard to hold them accountable for safety breaches.
Waymo is currently under investigation by federal highway regulators over 22 reports of its autonomous cars crashing or committing potential traffic law violations.
Now Waymo appears to be fighting back. Its lawsuit against Piterman claims that he intentionally "drove through a stop sign" and "rapidly accelerated" in order to rear-end a Waymo AV, before ramming it a second time when it tried to pull over.
Afterward, the lawsuit alleges, Piterman claimed on X that Waymo had caused the accident, although by Waymo's own admission, his post was viewed only 352 times.
"Plaintiff is the first autonomous ride-hailing service and it prides itself on providing safety to its patrons," the company's lawyers wrote in their complaint against Piterman.
"Due to being the first autonomous ride-hailing service, Plaintiff is particularly sensitive to reputational critiques relating to safety... [its] business success is contingent on attracting new customers who will be receptive to a non-traditional self-driving transportation approach.
"Defendant’s false statements that one of Plaintiff’s vehicles 'rekt' the vehicle he was operating, potentially injuring him, falsely conveys that Plaintiff’s vehicles are not safe and that they cause accidents resulting in injuries."
In response to the charges against Burton, his lawyer said he was "in need of help and not jail" and that prosecutors were "prioritizing punishing poor people at the behest of corporations".
The cases continue.
