Woman’s Waymo ride gets interrupted by an age check. Then she finds out the car has already handed footage to law enforcement 9 times

Content creator Addi (@ihaveahottake) shared a video after her Waymo ride was interrupted by an age check. The car’s speaker asked if she was over 18, and after she confirmed she was, a Waymo representative also asked if she was the account holder. Addi captioned the video, “My Waymo just said I look too young to be riding by myself,” and jokingly added, “Shoutout Sculptra,” referring to an injectable used to make the face look younger.

This is not an isolated event. According to Waymo’s guidelines, riders must be 18 or older to use the app and ride alone. The one exception is in the Phoenix area, where riders aged 14–17 can ride if they have a parent-linked teen account. To enforce this rule, Waymo has been carrying out mid-ride age verification checks, which have become something of a running joke among users, reports Motor1.com.

Seema Amble, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, posted on X after her own mid-ride check, “Is this the new version of getting carded? Should I be flattered?” Another rider joked that she should share her skincare routine after being flagged as potentially underage. Waymo has acknowledged the checks, saying it has “policies in place to help us identify violations of our terms of service, including age eligibility,” and that it is continuing to refine the system.

Waymo’s in-car cameras are just one court order away from being used against riders in a court of law

What raises bigger concerns is what Waymo does with the footage it collects. Waymo vehicles are equipped with cameras facing in all directions, both inside and outside the car. The exterior cameras help the car navigate, while the interior ones are described as a customer support tool. But the footage does not simply stay with the company. 

It is worth noting that Waymo’s camera systems have already caught passengers trying to cheat or game the system, showing just how closely these vehicles monitor what goes on inside them. Waymo has already received at least nine search warrants for vehicle footage from law enforcement in San Francisco and Arizona. Because these requests often come with gag orders, the full extent of how often police have sought the footage is not publicly known. 

Riders do agree to a privacy policy before they get in, and Waymo says it only complies with law enforcement requests when necessary. But anti-surveillance activist Albert Fox Cahn, director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, put it plainly to the Guardian, saying, “Where there’s a camera, it’s just one court order away from being used against you in a court of law.” 

Beyond footage, pickup and drop-off locations are also data points that could end up in law enforcement’s hands. Many riders have shared their unease online after learning about this. “They banned my friend from going on it and she’s 14 💔,” one person wrote. “Literally happened to me the other day, I been using Waymo for almost 2 years now,” said another. 

The situation has sparked a wider conversation about how much data driverless ride services are collecting and who can access it. Some passengers have also reported unexpected surprises inside a Waymo vehicle, adding to the growing list of unusual experiences riders have had with the service.

The case of Addi’s interrupted ride has put a spotlight on something many Waymo users may not have fully considered before stepping into one of these vehicles. While the age checks may seem like a minor inconvenience, they are a reminder that these cars are always watching, always recording, and always connected to systems that can share what they capture with outside parties.