A self-driving taxi operated by Waymo drove into an active fire scene in Hollywood, California, after apparently taking a wrong turn past emergency barriers, according to a report aired Tuesday by KABC-TV, as reported by The Gateway Pundit.
The incident occurred on Melrose Avenue, where the area had been blocked off by the Los Angeles Fire Department.
Video footage showed the autonomous vehicle passing emergency flares and entering the restricted zone. At least one passenger was visible in the back seat of the vehicle, according to the report.
A driverless Waymo robotaxi reportedly ignored road flares and emergency blockades and drove straight into an active fire scene in Los Angeles.
First responders had the area shut down.
The car didn’t care.Witnesses say the autonomous vehicle sat inside the fire zone for nearly… pic.twitter.com/Jkqa2u9JHq
— Tony Lane (@TonyLaneNV) January 2, 2026
Witnesses told the station the self-driving taxi remained inside the fire scene for approximately 10 minutes before making a U-turn and leaving the area.
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The vehicle involved was a Waymo robotaxi. Waymo is owned by Alphabet, the parent company of Google.
The Hollywood incident adds to a growing list of unusual and sometimes dangerous encounters involving autonomous vehicles operating in major U.S. cities.
In September, a Waymo vehicle was pulled over in San Bruno, California, after making an illegal U-turn directly in front of police officers conducting a DUI checkpoint.
The San Bruno Police Department addressed the stop in a post on social media platform X.
“Since there was no human driver, a ticket couldn’t be issued (our citation books don’t have a box for ‘robot’),” the department wrote. “Hopefully the reprogramming will keep it from making any more illegal moves.”
The department added in a separate post that officers were limited by current state law, noting, “For those who believe that we are being [lenient], there is legislation in the works that will allow officers to issue the company notices.”
Under California law, officers can currently issue moving violations only to human drivers.
Lawmakers attempted to address the issue, but the final version of Assembly Bill 1777 allows only “notices of noncompliance” to be reported to the Department of Motor Vehicles. The law will not take effect until July, leaving enforcement authority in a temporary gap.
Other incidents involving Waymo vehicles have drawn national attention. CBS News reported on Sept. 29 that a Waymo vehicle in Atlanta drove past a stopped school bus with flashing lights activated.
If a human driver had committed the same violation, the penalty would have been a $1,000 fine, the outlet reported.
In another high-profile case that received coverage from The New York Times, a well-known San Francisco cat named Kit Kat was killed on Oct. 27 after being struck by a Waymo taxi, prompting public backlash and renewed calls for tighter regulation of autonomous vehicles.
More recently, a woman gave birth in the back seat of a Waymo taxi while traveling to a hospital in San Francisco. Reports noted that this was not the first childbirth to occur inside one of the company’s autonomous vehicles.
Waymo said its rider support team detected “unusual activity” and contacted 911. When asked how that activity was identified, Alphabet declined to provide additional details.
Waymo currently operates driverless taxi services in five cities: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, Phoenix, and Atlanta, with plans for further expansion.
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