Waymo Called Police on Teen Riders, Raising Privacy Concerns

Police in San Mateo, California, apprehended two 15-year-old teenagers from a Waymo driverless robotaxi last week after the autonomous vehicle company alerted authorities to suspected criminal activity, reigniting a national debate about privacy, surveillance, and the role of self-driving cars in law enforcement.

The teens were allegedly drinking alcohol and shooting Orbeez gel beads from toy guns out the windows of the vehicle on July 6, according to the San Mateo Police Department. Waymo’s internal camera and sensor systems detected the behavior, triggered a safety response, disabled the vehicle remotely, and contacted police.

A High-Risk Stop for Teenagers

San Mateo Police conducted a high-risk traffic stop with weapons drawn and a police dog, according to department spokesperson Jeanine Luna. “Being that the vehicle was disabled (the occupants had every right to exit the vehicle before police arrival, but they did not), a high-risk traffic stop was conducted to ensure the safety of all involved,” Luna told NPR. The teens were not arrested and were released to their parents, but potential charges are still pending depending on what the interior video footage shows.

In a Facebook post that quickly went viral, the department wrote: “Parents do you know where your teens are? @waymo does!”

The Surveillance Question

Waymo’s vehicles are equipped with up to 29 cameras with high dynamic range and thermal stability, plus microphones and other sensors, providing all-around monitoring of both passengers and surroundings. While the company says this technology is designed for safety, privacy experts argue the incident highlights a troubling expansion of surveillance.

“There already exist laws that govern duty to report or even duty to protect for carriers such as Waymo,” said Alessandro Acquisti, a professor of information technology at the MIT Sloan School of Management, in an interview with NPR. “The privacy problems arise when and if driverless carrier companies used such laws or ethical obligations as a pretext for blanket, indiscriminate accumulation of identifiable data for unspecified future purposes.”

Irina Raicu, director of the Internet Ethics program at Santa Clara University, noted that passengers may not fully grasp the extent of monitoring inside robotaxis. “There’s something about being in a car without another person that makes you think it’s private,” she told NPR. “With all these recording devices, we don’t see them, [and] they’re not these obvious things being stuck in our faces.”

A Growing Pattern

This is not an isolated incident. In 2025, the Los Angeles Police Department published video footage obtained from a Waymo vehicle as part of a hit-and-run investigation, marking the footage with a “Waymo Confidential” watermark, as 404 Media reported. During the same year, protesters in Los Angeles vandalized Waymo vehicles amid concerns that video recorded by the cars could be used by police against immigration enforcement activists.

Google, Waymo’s parent company, received nearly 290,000 requests from governments worldwide in the first six months of 2025 for disclosure of user information across all its platforms, including Waymo. In more than 80% of those requests, some information was disclosed, according to the company’s transparency report.

Public Hesitation and Expert Optimism

The incident comes as a Pew Research Center survey published this month found that only 5% of Americans have ever ridden in a driverless car, while 71% said they would feel uncomfortable doing so. Just 7% said they would be “extremely or very comfortable” riding in one.

Despite these numbers, experts remain optimistic that the technology can be redesigned with stronger privacy protections. “I would immediately challenge the notion that people have to be monitored,” Acquisti said, noting that privacy-preserving technologies exist and can be installed.

Raicu echoed that sentiment: “Driverless cars are coming, but they don’t have to come in this particular incarnation. They’re still being designed and redesigned. It’s early days.”

What’s Next

The San Mateo incident marks the first known case of Waymo proactively contacting police about passenger behavior, setting a potential precedent for how autonomous vehicle companies handle onboard surveillance. As robotaxi fleets expand across U.S. cities, the tension between passenger safety and privacy rights is likely to intensify, raising urgent questions about informed consent, data retention policies, and the appropriate role of AV companies in law enforcement.

For now, the teens’ case remains open pending review of the interior video footage. But the broader conversation about privacy in the age of autonomous vehicles is just getting started.