By Shawn Henry 
A driverless Waymo cab somehow wound up smack in the middle of a high-stakes LAPD bust last week, plopping some poor rider uncomfortably close to cops wrestling with a felony suspect. Wild footage hit social media on Monday showing the autonomous oddball creeping toward a semi-blocked downtown LA crossing in the dead of night.
Cops say they’d only partially shut down the road, leaving gaps where regular cars kept rolling. And wouldn’t you know it, the robocar slipped right through one of those openings, landing directly beside officers cuffing a guy after a stolen vehicle chase around 3:40 AM. Talk about bad timing.
Waymo claims the clueless contraption lingered for maybe 15 seconds before noping out of there. Company mouthpieces insist safety’s their jam, saying they’re always tweaking the system to handle urban chaos—especially now that they’re flooding LA streets with these things.
Traffic cones weren’t fully up when the tech-mobile barged in, but cops finished sealing things off right after. LAPD swears the robo-intruder didn’t mess with their takedown, though they’re definitely keeping that direct hotline to Waymo’s folks on speed dial for when things get weird.
This awkward run-in comes as LA’s streets get increasingly jammed with driver-free rides. Waymo flipped the switch on its no-wheelman service here early last year, then threw the doors open to everyone by November 2024. They’re part of a tiny club—just a handful of U.S. cities where you can actually hail a fully autonomous ride. But as these rolling computers multiply, both the company and local cops are still figuring out how the heck to deal when robocars blunder into active crime scenes.
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John