A Waymo Called Police on Its Own Riders. The Same Fleet Drives L.A.

San Francisco police say officers found a loaded AR-style rifle in the robotaxi and took two juvenile passengers to juvenile hall.

A driverless Waymo pulled itself over in San Francisco's Richmond District shortly before 4 a.m. on Sept. 3, 2026, and the company called police. Officers detained the two juvenile passengers, a boy and a girl, and found a loaded AR-style rifle in the car, the San Francisco Police Department said in a statement first reported by the Los Angeles Times.

Waymo's cars work Los Angeles streets as well as San Francisco's, and the rulebook that ended this ride belongs to the company, not to either city. A rider who opens the door is agreeing to terms of service, and the company says those terms reach a gun in the back seat.

The car stopped after it registered a “violation of our terms of service involving a firearm,” a Waymo spokesperson told the Times. The company alerted emergency services and cooperated with the police, the spokesperson said.

Waymo hasn't said how the car detected the gun.

What followed was a human procedure. Officers ran what the department called a high-risk vehicle stop, searched the car and also turned up suspected marijuana and mace spray, according to the statement. Police described the weapon as an illegal ghost gun and didn't identify the two riders beyond their ages.

It isn't the first time the company has handed riders over. In July, Waymo contacted the San Mateo Police Department after two teenagers were found drinking and firing toy guns in the back of one of its cars, authorities said at the time.

The company is adding ground quickly. The California Public Utilities Commission cleared a wider service map that covers San Diego and Sacramento, plus parts of Orange and Riverside counties, the Times reported.

Paid rides have since opened in San Diego, Denver and Tampa, Fla. Approved in August. Carrying paying riders in September.

Los Angeles County hasn't been uniformly glad to see them. Santa Monica's Waymo charging stations, loud enough to draw a neighborhood backlash, were ordered closed overnight in July. Earlier in the summer a shirtless man in East Hollywood was recorded on top of a Waymo, pulling pieces off it.

Waymo began in 2009 as Google's self-driving car project and spun out of Google in 2016. The company has since grown from a research fleet into a service whose vehicles decide, on rules it writes, when a ride ends early.

The two riders were taken to juvenile hall. Police said the investigation is open and active.

Source: latimes.com, retrieved September 12, 2026.