When the immigration raids on Latino communities began in June, a burning, graffiti-ed Waymo in the streets of Downtown Los Angeles quickly became a symbol of the L.A. protests.
Hundreds of videos and images surfaced across social media of driverless vehicles spraypainted with messages, such as “FUCK ICE” and “ANIMO RAZA!!!”, and set ablaze on Los Angeles Street between Alameda and Arcadia.
For better or worse, the burning Waymo effigy was transformed into a resistance symbol—a flaming middle finger to tech overlords, AI, and the police surveillance state.
To disgruntled demonstrators and anti-capitalists alike, Alphabet-owned Waymo represents the automation of a labor force that’s increasingly leaving workers behind for company profit.
The act of vandalizing driverless vehicles also gives the impression of a “victimless” crime. When free of passengers, there’s no driver whose life or livelihood could be put at risk—only faceless tech oligarchs with seemingly endless capital and nothing to lose.
On the flip side, however, autonomous vehicles can’t be held accountable if something goes wrong. When a Waymo blows past a stop sign or illegally stops in a red zone, by design, there is no driver present to take responsibility.
And, of course, when it comes to self-driving vehicles, things inevitably do go wrong.
Last year, a passenger on his way home to Los Angeles was trapped in a malfunctioning Waymo as it drove around a parking lot in endless circles.
In April, Citizen App shared a video on Instagram of the Los Angeles Police Department responding to an incident of a Waymo driving in the wrong direction on a busy street.
And in May, Waymo recalled 1,200 robotaxis from its fleet of 1,500 to address more than a dozen instances of its vehicles colliding with gates and other “clearly visible” barriers.
Fed-up Santa Monica residents have even started sabotaging noisy Waymos from accessing the company’s local charging station, physically obstructing them with cones, cars, and their own bodies.
But what happens when a self-driving vehicle gets pulled over in Los Angeles?
How do you ticket a driver for a traffic safety violation if said driver does not exist?
This was a question several Angelenos had after a TikTok user shared a video of the Beverly Hills Police Department (BHPD) pulling over a Waymo on Rodeo Drive. Though the whole incident wasn’t caught on camera, a BHPD officer claimed that the autonomous vehicle made an illegal left turn.
Sergeant Rodney Solorzano, who was present at the scene, explained that an officer would call a Waymo representative to “let them know what’s going on” so they could fix any potential technical issues.
But, in all likelihood, the Waymo car probably wasn’t cited with a moving traffic violation.
“Personally, I’ve never given a Waymo a ticket,” Solorzano said.
In California, Robotaxis currently occupy a legal gray area.
Autonomous vehicles are immune to receiving moving traffic violations because the state requires citations to be issued to a human driver.
However, this will change on July 1, 2026, when a new state law goes into effect.
Assembly Bill 1777, which passed in 2024, will allow notices of “autonomous vehicle noncompliance” to be issued to self-driving vehicles.
The law also requires autonomous vehicles to maintain a dedicated telephone line that allows emergency response officials to communicate with a remote human operator.
Driverless vehicles can, however, be cited for parking violations.
Waymo vehicles received a whopping 589 parking tickets in the City of San Francisco in 2024. In contrast, Los Angeles only issued 75 parking tickets to Waymos last year.
Recently, the Department of Transportation closed a 14-month investigation into 22 traffic safety violations by Waymo vehicles, including 17 collisions.
The agency did not take any punitive action.
Despite government complacency, the general public’s frustration over AI-driven tech seems to be on the rise.
Besides the burning Waymos in DTLA and Santa Monica residents’ feud with self-driving cars, there’s the recent trend of people adopting “clanker” as a derogatory term for AI.
The slang word, borrowed from Star Wars: The Clone Wars, has been described as “a new slur for robots.”
On social media, “clanker” is being applied to everything from unhelpful customer service chatbots to delivery robots congesting public sidewalks.
Unfortunately for AI haters, there’s no respite from unchecked tech in sight.
Until the laws regulating AI-driven technology catch up, the robot cars employed by Big Tech currently operate as part of a new, privileged class of pseudo-citizens immune to rules of the road.
In the meantime, Waymo and the rest of the clankers are seemingly off the hook for traffic safety violations, other drivers and pedestrians be damned.
