A driverless Waymo slipped behind market traffic and ended up inside a Denver farmers market while 160 vendors were still getting ready for shoppers.
The robotaxi reached the South Pearl Street Farmers Market around 8:15 a.m. Sunday, before the booths, food trucks and aisles had finished opening for the day.
“It entered through our food truck area,” Nicole Jarman, the market’s production director, commented.
The street was not completely sealed from vehicles at the time. One side had a “Road Closed” sign, Jarman said, but vendors still needed access from the other side while they unloaded.
The robotaxi appeared to read that flow of vendor cars as permission to keep going.
Jarman said it trailed a vendor vehicle past the sign, reached the 1400 block of South Pearl Street and moved slowly through the market space.
“It’s still load-in, our barricades are moved to the side, so there’s vehicular access, and it followed that traffic, went slow, and then made its way on out at Arkansas and kept going,” she said.
Nobody at the Denver market was injured, and Jarman did not describe a frantic scene.
“It was not anything that made us nervous,” she said.
Waymo said the car had been trying to reach a Pearl Street address, figured out the problem and guided itself out of the market area.
“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,” a company spokesperson said.
The Denver detour joined a string of odd driverless-car episodes involving confused routes, startled passengers, neighborhood complaints and police calls tied to people riding inside the vehicles.
A San Francisco ride in July turned into a panic moment when a Waymo carrying passengers moved toward lit Independence Day fireworks sitting in the street.
Video from the ride captured someone outside waving at the vehicle as the fireworks sat ready to launch.
“No, no, no, don’t go, don’t go, don’t go,” one passenger said off-camera.
The car continued over the flames and sparks as riders questioned what had just happened.
“Our Waymo just drove into a firework,” a passenger said in the clip.
“Are we on fire, dude?” another passenger asked.
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The passengers and vehicle were not reported injured, and Waymo later contacted the riders.
Atlanta residents described a different kind of driverless-car problem in May, when empty Waymos began making repeated loops through neighborhood cul-de-sacs with no passengers inside.
“It’s almost every little cul-de-sac in our area, so I think it’s a problem,” one local told WSB-TV Atlanta’s Steve Gehlbach.
Residents told WSB-TV the cars tended to appear early in the morning, and that the repeated traffic had started only in the prior couple of weeks.
“We had, at one point, eight Waymos that were stuck trying to figure out how to turn around,” a neighbor told WSB-TV.
Dozens of empty Waymos invaded an Atlanta neighborhood and circled a cul-de-sac for hours with no passengers https://t.co/qvziT2fz2T pic.twitter.com/bjdWFddZre
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) May 15, 2026
A narrow London street had its own pre-dawn robotaxi headache when a white SUV-style Waymo-related vehicle got trapped on cobbles near a dead end around 4 a.m.
One resident posted video of the vehicle riding up onto the curb while trying to back out.
The trouble reportedly returned two more times by Wednesday night after the first Sunday incident.
In the first video, the vehicle eased off the pavement, dropped back onto the cobbles and slowly reversed down the street while loud beeping and humming carried through the quiet block.
A resident who filmed from a distance, still picked up the noise as the vehicle backed down the street.
During the second late-night incident, a safety driver stepped outside and checked the vehicle’s clearance while trying to turn around between parked cars.
Other incidents put police at the center of the Waymo story because of what passengers allegedly brought or did inside the cars.
A Waymo ride in San Francisco ended in a police stop around 4 a.m. on September 3 after the company detected what the Los Angeles Times called a “violation of … terms of service involving a firearm.”
The passengers were juveniles, and the Los Angeles Times said Waymo “cooperated fully” with police.
The San Francisco Police Department said it received “a report of two passengers in an autonomous vehicle with a firearm.”
A search uncovered “a loaded, AR-styled assault rifle also known as a ghost gun,” according to the department.
Police also allegedly recovered marijuana and mace spray from one of the suspects, and both juveniles were booked though their names were not released.
San Mateo police were called to another Waymo after the company reported alleged reckless behavior by two riders inside the vehicle.
“Around 2.10pm we got a call from a Waymo rep saying there were two people in their vehicle, and they saw them shooting out of the vehicle,” Jeanine Luna of the San Mateo Police Department told ABC7.
Luna said the Waymo representative also described the passengers as “being intoxicated.”
Waymo sent officers to the stopped vehicle near 20th Avenue and El Camino Real in San Mateo, while the riders were told the car was having “car troubles” as police approached.
Officers treated the encounter as high-risk and arrived with stun guns and a K9 unit.
Inside the vehicle, police recovered a painted-over toy gun and Powerade bottles filled with Orbeez pellets.
Police said the two 15-year-olds had been firing the gel-based pellets from the toy gun, but cooperated during the search and no one was hurt.
