Self-driving cars are rapidly becoming a familiar sight on American roads. I am generally enthusiastic about new technology, but autonomous vehicles are one area where I remain decidedly unconvinced. Maybe that makes me an unusual member of Generation Z, but I still vastly prefer to drive myself, even knowing that the decision may carry greater safety risks.

A recent incident involving a Waymo vehicle and passengers carrying a firearm offered yet another reason for caution. After detecting the weapon, the autonomous vehicle reportedly pulled itself over and contacted law enforcement. In this particular case, the outcome may well have been appropriate: Those arrested appeared to have been engaged in criminal activity.

But the episode raises a more troubling question. Should a company’s terms of service give it the power to surveil passengers, detect lawful firearm possession, and effectively turn a privately operated vehicle into a rolling informant? 

"Two minors were arrested for possessing a ghost gun in a self-driving car after Waymo reportedly called authorities on them," Colion Noir, an attorney and Second Amendment advocate said in a video posted on X. "The minors were in an autonomous vehicle in San Francisco when police got a report about passengers having a firearm. Officers conducted a high-risk vehicle stop and arrested the pair."

"They were found with an AR-style assault rifle that was a ghost gun, a weapon that lacks a serial number to trace and can be bought in parts and assembled or sometimes 3D printed. Officers also found suspected marijuana and mace spray, the San Francisco Police Department said," he said. "Waymo told the LA Times in a statement that the company pulled the car over after detecting a violation of our terms of service involving a firearm."

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"Where does this policy begin and end? he asked. "Breitbart reports Waymo pulled over after detecting a violation of terms of service regarding firearms. Nothing to do with California gun law. That's their policy. And they had to have had the gun exposed. There's no other way the camera picks it up. Concealed is concealed. But what about the guy who opened carries? He gets in a Waymo. The camera sees the gun on his hip. And now what? It locks the doors, routes him to the police station, pulls over, opens the door and says, get the f**k out. How does that work?"

"It's only a matter of time before this creeps into stuff I can't avoid. Things I have to use, have to drive, have to be a part of. And all of a sudden restricting my rights under the Second Amendment becomes unavoidable."

The situation carries yet another layer of complexity as well. In America’s ever-litigious culture, Waymo wants to avoid being held liable for criminal activity inside one of its vehicles. If the company failed to report a firearm and that failure were later tied to someone’s death, it could face substantial legal exposure. 

But where is the line? As autonomous vehicles become a more common, perhaps eventually dominant, form of transportation, companies will have to balance passenger safety and their own legal liability against riders’ constitutional rights and reasonable expectation of privacy.  A self-driving car, or any new technology that depends on cameras, sensors, microphones, or other forms of constant monitoring, should not become rolling surveillance pods or a de facto arm of law enforcement. After all, there is a serious difference between responding to an imminent danger and building a transportation system that routinely scans, records, and reports its users to authorities. 

That distinction cannot be left to a private terms-of-service agreement, or to whatever a corporate legal department decides is safest for the company. It is another looming question Americans will have to confront as autonomous systems become embedded in more parts of daily life.