Auto: Man vs. Robot as Self-Driving Cars Come Under Attack

The introduction of Google's Waymo self-driving cars in the test city of Chandler, Arizona has sparked a new kind road rage: human versus robot.

In the past two years, there have been at least 21 instances documented by local police involving people harassing Waymo vehicles since the cars began sharing the road with regular drivers in the Phoenix suburb of 240,000.

Those instances include a man waving a pistol at a Waymo vehicle as it passed his driveway, tires slashed while idling in traffic, thrown rocks, and a Jeep that ran a Waymo car off the road six times, according to a review by the Arizona Republic.

Waymo, the self-driving car division that spun out from Google X, has been in Chandler since 2016, perfecting the autonomous vehicle's ability to use an array of cameras and computer programs to start, stop, accelerate, change lanes, turn, and more. During road tests, a person sits in the driver's seat for when safety calls for human intervention.

The vehicles, easily noticeable with clunky hub of Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology on top, are a constant sight in neighborhoods and on the city’s surface streets.