Waymo’s self-driving cars may breeze through chaotic urban streets, dodging jaywalkers and downpours, but they never saw Riley Walz coming. A 23-year-old engineer with a mischievous streak pulled off what might be the world’s first real-life “DDoS” attack—only instead of crashing servers, he flooded a dead-end alley with robotaxis.
Picture this: dozens of Waymo’s sleek Jaguar SUVs, crowned with spinning sensors, crawling into a quiet cul-de-sac near Coit Tower. No real riders, just fifty people summoning them at once as part of Walz’s cheeky experiment. Minutes later, the street turned into a parking lot of confused AI, vehicles boxing each other in until Waymo had no choice but to pause operations. The company eventually cleared the mess, but not before shutting down service in the area for hours.
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Irony alert? Walz modeled the stunt after classic cyberattacks where systems buckle under fake traffic. Here, cars became the “malicious requests.” Genius or irritating? Depends who you ask. Most participants got slapped with tiny no-show fees, and the herd of robotaxis dispersed soon enough. But the stunt left a bigger question hanging: if a half-baked prank could bottleneck Waymo’s fleet, what’s stopping someone with worse intentions?
Walz insists he wasn’t trying to wreck things—just poke holes in the hype around flawless AI. Still, experts warn that weaponizing this trick could spell disaster: imagine ambulances stuck behind a wall of empty taxis, or main arteries gridlocked by sabotage.
For now, Waymo’s tech keeps improving. But Walz proved something timeless: even the slickest algorithms aren’t immune to good old human chaos.
Image via Waymo
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