They were trapped in a robotaxi while being attacked by an anti-technology man

SAN FRANCISCO — In January, Doug Fulop was driving home after a night out in San Francisco when a man crossed the street in front of his car, backed up and started yelling at him. The man punched the car windows and tried to lift the vehicle. He then shouted that he wanted to kill Fulop and the other two passengers for giving money to a robot.

A taxi driver would have simply walked away. But Fulop’s vehicle didn’t have a driver — it was an autonomous Waymo.

Also read: Passengers don’t close the doors of autonomous taxis, and the company pays people just for that

“We feel helpless,” said Fulop, 37, who works in the technology sector.

Since self-driving cars began roaming the streets of San Francisco nearly four years ago, they have provoked a range of reactions from people, including angry protests against the vehicles.

This has created an unexpected risk for passengers in self-driving cars across the city: being trapped inside the vehicle during an outbreak of anti-robot rage.

Self-driving cars are designed to stop moving if there is a person nearby. Some people may take advantage of this function to harass and threaten passengers.

In 2024, a man in San Francisco attempted to cover the sensors of a self-driving car that had stopped, effectively disabling it, while there were passengers inside. Another video from that year showed three women screaming as a group of vandals spray-painted their self-driving taxi.

Being trapped inside a Waymo during an attack was upsetting, Fulop said. “If he had kept hitting a single window instead of alternating, I’m sure he would have managed to break it eventually,” he said.

The assailant did not appear to be under the influence of drugs or any other substance, but appeared to be overcome with extreme rage toward the self-driving car, Fulop said. It didn’t seem safe to run away, he added, as the man was trying to open the locked doors and saying he wanted to kill the passengers.

They called 911 and Waymo’s support center, Fulop said. The company said it would not manually direct the car to leave the location if someone was nearby, and that passengers would be safe with the doors locked. The car’s software does not allow occupants to take control from the driver’s seat during an incident.

The attack lasted about six minutes. At that point, people around him began encouraging the man, Fulop said. This distracted him, and he moved far enough away from the car that the vehicle could finally drive away.

San Francisco police officers arrived shortly after. A police report analyzed by The New York Times corroborated Fulop’s report.

The San Francisco Police Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Katherine Barna, a spokeswoman for Waymo, said the company’s support team remained on the phone with passengers during the incident, which she said was very unfortunate but a “rare occurrence.”

“We believe our technology can fundamentally improve road safety, provide a safer journey and expand the reach of transportation, making it more accessible,” he said.

Handing the steering wheel to a robot has added bizarre and sometimes worrying quirks to car travel.

Passengers have shared videos of their self-driving cars getting stuck spinning in circles or getting lost in parking lots.

Last week, a video showed a Waymo in Austin, Texas, stopped under a railroad crossing gate, just short of the tracks, as a train passed by at high speed. There were no passengers in the car, Waymo said.

For some, riding in a driverless taxi seems safer than being alone with a driver. In 2024, Amina Green, a San Francisco-based technologist and writer, filmed two men standing in front of her Waymo and harassing her while the car remained parked, waiting for them to get out of the way.

“I felt like I was completely exposed,” she later told Business Insider. Still, Green concluded that Waymo seemed safer than a ride-hailing service, which has had drivers watch YouTube videos while driving or make her uncomfortable in other ways.

Anders Sorman-Nilsson, an author and technology speaker, had a similar experience in Los Angeles in May when, he says, five men on electric bikes surrounded his Waymo, forcing it to stop. The vehicle remained motionless as the men banged on the windows and demanded he open the door.

Sorman-Nilsson said he felt safe inside the vehicle. A driver could have panicked and escalated the situation or caused him to hand over his wallet to the thieves, he said. He felt more at ease knowing that the Waymo’s multiple external cameras were recording the men. After about five minutes, he said, they gave up and left.

Waymo often highlights its safety compared to human drivers. Its data shows a 90% reduction in “accidents with serious injuries or worse” for its cars compared to the average human driver over the same distance, in the cities where it operates. (A different 2023 study indicated that self-driving cars were twice as likely to be involved in rear-end collisions, which Waymo disputed with its own data.)

Waymo has gone from a sci-fi curiosity for tourists in San Francisco to a growing, relevant business. Last year, the annual number of trips tripled to 15 million. The company plans to launch the service in 20 cities this year.

Continued growth will require maintaining public trust. Fulop said he stopped using Waymo for a time after the January attack and would avoid service at night unless the company changed its policy of not intervening when a hostile person threatens passengers.

“As passengers, we deserve better security than this when someone tries to attack us,” he said. “That can’t be the policy, to be stuck there.”