A self-driving Waymo car dodged barricades and ignored signs, driving through the upscale South Pearl Street Farmers Market in Denver around 8:15 a.m. on Sunday.
The market had not opened to the public yet, but vendors setting up tried to direct the car out of the closed area.
“There is no driver or anyone in the car,” Theodore Subbotin, farmers market manager for Hearth Denver, told 9News. “It’s sort of just like, we have to usher it out. Which is hard to do.”
The market was not damaged, but the incident left people puzzled about what to do when a driverless car goes rogue.
“If there’s no driver, there currently isn’t a mechanism within state law for issuing a citation,” a Denver Police Department spokesperson said.
The car drove slowly through the tent-lined path of the market, stopping when it detected people nearby.
Barricades were moved to the side, allowing vendors to unload their things, and Nicole Jarman, the production director of the farmers market, told Fox 31 the Waymo followed the traffic out and kept going.
“Fortunately, (the Waymo) was traveling the correct flow of vendor setup and went slowly, avoiding all obstacles,” Farmers Market and Event Coordinator Marilyn Kahlich told The Denver Post. “No one was hurt, there wasn’t any damage, no one felt in danger.”
The robotaxi service started operating in Denver on September 1.
In a statement to the Daily Beast, a Waymo spokesperson wrote, “The trust and safety of the community is our top priority. We are dedicated to learning from this situation as we continue improving road safety in the cities we serve.”
