{"id":2603,"date":"2025-10-13T23:57:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T23:57:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/2603\/"},"modified":"2025-10-13T23:57:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T23:57:06","slug":"50-waymo-robotaxis-flood-san-francisco-street-in-prank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/2603\/","title":{"rendered":"50 Waymo robotaxis flood San Francisco street in prank"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fifty driverless cars<\/a> converging on a single dead-end street sounds like a software glitch. In reality, it was a coordinated prank.<\/p>\n

Over the summer, Riley Walz<\/a> \u2014 a 23-year-old software engineer and self-described \u201ctech prankster\u201d \u2014 enlisted dozens of participants to order Waymo rides at the same moment on San Francisco\u2019s longest dead-end street.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe plan? At dusk, 50 people went to San Francisco’s longest dead-end street and all ordered a Waymo at the same time,\u201d Walz revealed Sunday<\/a> on X. \u201cThe world\u2019s first: WAYMO DDOS.\u201d<\/p>\n

The term, short for \u201cdistributed denial of service,\u201d refers to a type of cyberattack that overwhelms a system with traffic to disrupt its normal operation \u2014\u00a0in this case, a tongue-in-cheek nod to how dozens of simultaneous requests briefly jammed Waymo\u2019s network.\u00a0<\/p>\n

No one boarded the cars, Walz said. After about 10 minutes, the autonomous vehicles departed and charged each requester a $5 no-show fee.<\/p>\n

\u201cWaymo handled this well,\u201d Walz said, noting that the company temporarily disabled all pickups and drop-offs within a two-block radius until the next morning.<\/p>\n

Online, the stunt drew a mix of fascination and alarm.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNice job I guess? What\u2019d you get out of it?\u201d one user asked. Another warned, \u201cThis would be a felony under the current computer access and abuse laws.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some saw darker implications.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSomeone will figure out how to use this to jam up traffic in targeted urban centers on election day,\u201d another user wrote. Others viewed it as a useful stress test. \u201cThey were not vandalizing the vehicles and they paid the no show fees,\u201d one commenter wrote. \u201cWaymo should be doing this kind of thing itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

The July prank fits neatly into Walz\u2019s pattern of projects that blur the line between satire and systems analysis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A North Beach resident, Walz previously made headlines for creating a viral map that tracked San Francisco\u2019s parking officers<\/a> in real time before city officials shut it down. He also transformed a fake Google Maps listing into a real one-night steakhouse, and built \u201cBop Spotter<\/a>,\u201d an app that uses music app Shazam to log music playing on city streets 24\/7.<\/p>\n

Walz, who co-founded a data company called Numerous.ai, has said his pranks are driven by curiosity, not malice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to follow through on your ideas because if you don\u2019t, you might stop having them,\u201d he told the\u00a0New York Times<\/a> earlier this month.<\/p>\n

Waymo did not immediately comment on the incident.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fifty driverless cars converging on a single dead-end street sounds like a software glitch. In reality, it was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2604,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[184,7,101,103,102,104,106,105,995],"class_list":{"0":"post-2603","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-bay-area","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-san-francisco","11":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","12":"tag-san-francisco-news","13":"tag-sf","14":"tag-sf-headlines","15":"tag-sf-news","16":"tag-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}