He carried out his attack with an unidentified sharp object, swiftly slashing one of the tires. The suspect, identified as a white man in his 20s, then melted into the neighborhood on foot.
The slashing was one of nearly two dozen attacks on driverless vehicles over the past two years in Chandler, a city near Phoenix where Waymo started testing its vans in 2017. The city has had an early look at public misgivings over the rise of artificial intelligence, with city officials hearing complaints about everything from safety to possible job losses.
In one of the more harrowing episodes, a man waved a .22-caliber revolver at a Waymo vehicle and the emergency backup driver at the wheel. He told police that he “despises” driverless cars, referencing the killing of a female pedestrian in March in Tempe by a self-driving Uber car.
“There are other places they can test,” said Erik O’Polka, 37, who was issued a warning by police in November after multiple reports that his Jeep Wrangler had tried to run Waymo vans off the road.
At least 21 such attacks have been leveled at Waymo vans in Chandler, as first reported by The Arizona Republic.
The emergency drivers in the Waymo vans that were attacked in various cases told Chandler police that the company preferred not to pursue prosecution of the assailants.
In a statement, a Waymo spokeswoman said the attacks involved only a small fraction of the more than 25,000 miles that the company’s vans log every day in Arizona.
“Safety is the core of everything we do, which means that keeping our drivers, our riders, and the public safe is our top priority,” said Alexis Georgeson, the Waymo spokeswoman. “Over the past two years, we’ve found Arizonans to be welcoming and excited by the potential of this technology to make our roads safer.”
Georgeson said the company took the safety of its emergency drivers seriously and disputed claims that Waymo was trying to avoid bad publicity by opting against pursuing criminal charges.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.