A Waymo robotaxi detected a loaded ghost gun inside its cabin, pulled itself over, and called the police, leading to the arrest of two juveniles in San Francisco1,3,5. The episode lands in the same week that Minneapolis proposed requiring a human driver behind the wheel of every autonomous rideshare vehicle2, and as Tesla's Cybercabs were spotted in New York City with steering wheels that were never supposed to exist4,6. ANALYSIS Together, these developments expose a tension at the core of the robotaxi expansion: the same sensor-rich, driverless platforms that cities are being asked to welcome are simultaneously becoming law-enforcement adjuncts and flashpoints for labor and safety regulation.
Why it matters
Autonomous vehicles are no longer a novelty confined to a few test corridors. Waymo expanded into San Diego, Denver, and Tampa earlier this month, and now completes over 500,000 paid rides per week. ◆ As the footprint grows, so does the surface area for political friction: every new city must decide not just whether to allow robotaxis, but what obligations come with the surveillance infrastructure they carry.
The big picture
Just before 4 a.m. on September 3, a Waymo employee received an alert that a gun had been detected inside one of the company's vehicles in San Francisco's Outer Richmond neighborhood. Waymo stopped the ride and notified police, who conducted what SFPD spokesperson Allison Maxie described as a "high-risk vehicle stop". Officers recovered an "AR-styled assault rifle also known as a ghost gun," along with suspected marijuana and mace spray. Two minors, one male and one female, were arrested and booked into the Juvenile Justice Center. A Waymo spokesperson confirmed that a "violation of our terms of service involving a firearm" had been detected.
This was not an isolated case. In July, Waymo employees called the San Mateo Police Department to report that two 15-year-olds were allegedly drinking alcohol and shooting gel blasters while riding in one of its cars. Waymo has not disclosed exactly how its system detected the firearm in the September incident, and ghost guns, which are privately assembled and often lack serial numbers, are particularly difficult for law enforcement to trace.
ANALYSIS The fact that Waymo's in-cabin monitoring flagged a weapon that traditional policing might never have encountered underscores a new dynamic: autonomous vehicle operators are functioning as always-on surveillance nodes embedded in city streets.
Meanwhile, Minneapolis is moving in the opposite direction. A proposal called "Workers Drive Minneapolis" would require any autonomous rideshare company to obtain a city license and keep a licensed human driver within immediate reach of the controls at all times, paid at least the applicable minimum wage. Waymo is already testing in Minneapolis with human safety operators, so the rule would not change current operations, but it would block the transition to fully driverless passenger service.
ANALYSIS The Minneapolis proposal frames the issue explicitly as a labor question, not just a safety one. The ordinance's name, "Workers Drive Minneapolis," signals that the political coalition behind it views driverless expansion as a threat to immigrant rideshare drivers, not merely an engineering risk. That framing is harder for AV companies to counter with crash-rate data alone.
The San Francisco gun incident, by contrast, hands Waymo a powerful safety narrative: the robotaxi's in-cabin monitoring detected a concealed weapon and coordinated a police response without putting a human driver at physical risk. Yet that same capability raises civil-liberties questions about continuous in-cabin monitoring that cities have barely begun to debate.
Tesla's situation adds a third dimension. Its Cybercabs were spotted on Manhattan streets equipped with steering wheels, a component CEO Elon Musk had said would not be part of the vehicle. Tesla has not started the permit application process with the New York State DMV for autonomous vehicle testing. In Austin, only 45 Cybercabs are currently in operation. Zoox, by comparison, has already secured regulatory approval for commercial operation of steering-wheel-free vehicles and has been offering free autonomous driving services in Las Vegas and San Francisco since 2025.
ANALYSIS Tesla's need to add a steering wheel to collect driving data in New York illustrates how far the company remains from the regulatory and technical milestones Waymo and Zoox have already cleared, even as all three face the same city-by-city political gauntlet.
What's next
Minneapolis's proposed ordinance still requires a council vote, but its labor-first framing offers a template other cities could adopt as Waymo enters new markets. Waymo's expansion into San Diego, Denver, and Tampa is already underway, and each city will confront the same dual question the San Francisco incident laid bare: how much surveillance capability should ride along with every fare, and who gets to set the rules?