Road to nowhere: Prankster sends 50 Waymo driverless taxis to dead-end street in San Francisco

A California prankster has gone viral after sending 50 driverless Waymo vehicles down a dead-end street in San Francisco.

Riley Walz, a young software engineer, announced that he was behind the stunt back in July, which caused the vehicle service to be shut down in the immediate area.

The 23-year-old has also been behind other viral pranks, according to reports, including the hacking of Vice President JD Vance’s Spotify playlist and a website allowing San Francisco residents to track parking enforcement cops in real time.

“The plan? At dusk, 50 people went to San Francisco's longest dead-end street and all ordered a Waymo at the same time,” Walz wrote Tuesday on X. “The world's first: WAYMO DDOS.”

DDoS stands for “distributed denial of service” and refers to a type of cyberattack intending to overwhelm the normal traffic of a server, as was the case with Waymo’s network.

Walz wrote that he felt like he was “back in middle school,” and claimed that the stunt had been a source of hilarity to other drivers in the area.

“We didn't actually get in the cars. They left after about 10 min and charged a $5 no show fee,” he explained on social media.

“Waymo handled this well. I assume this isn't much different than if a big concert had just ended. Eventually, they disabled all rides within a 2 block vicinity until the morning.”

He added: “Everyone was giddy, and when another car showed up there were cheers. Maybe 3 or 4 real drivers - all laughed and just drove around.”

The Independent has contacted Waymo for comment on the stunt.

The Waymo incident is not Walz’s first tech-based prank to cause a stir online. Last month he launched a website that allowed visitors to track the movements of parking attendants and their vehicles.

“I reverse engineered the San Francisco parking ticket system. I can see every ticket seconds after it's written,” Walz wrote at the time. “So I made a website. Find My Friends? AVOID THE PARKING COPS.”

The site was taken down by authorities after just four hours, though Walz later claimed he had found a “workaround” to get it back online.