Waymo autonomous vehicle kills bodega cat in San Francisco
A Waymo robotaxi killed a popular bodega cat named KitKat in San Francisco's Mission District on October 27, 2025. While Waymo claimed the cat darted under the vehicle, video evidence showed the cat had been underneath for some time before the vehicle drove off.
The autonomous system lacked object permanence, causing it to forget the cat's presence once it was out of sight under the car.
Key facts
- What
- A Waymo robotaxi killed a popular bodega cat named KitKat in San Francisco's Mission District on October 27, 2025.
- Incident date
- Oct 27, 2025
- Who
- Waymo
- Failure mode
- Brand & Safety Incident
- AI surface
- Autonomous System
- Severity
- Medium
What happened
A Waymo autonomous vehicle struck and killed a bodega cat named KitKat in San Francisco's Mission District. The incident occurred on October 27, 2025, shortly before midnight near Randa's Market. The vehicle ran over the animal as it pulled away from a stop.
What broke inside the model
- 01 · TriggerA user prompts the model in public view.
- 02 · Model stepThe model produces unsafe or off-brand output.
- 03 · Control gapNo filter holds the line before publish.
- 04 · FailureThe output goes public unchecked.
- 05 · ConsequenceA reputational or safety incident lands.
A contained signal crosses into output that goes public.
The system suffered from a lack of object permanence, meaning it failed to maintain awareness of the cat's presence once it was out of sight beneath the vehicle. Consequently, the robotaxi drove forward while the cat was still underneath, ignoring a bystander's attempt to rescue the animal.
What it cost
Sources
- PressVideo of KitKat killing by Waymo undercuts company's claimmissionlocal.org
- PressWaymo robotaxi kills 'one-of-a-kind' bodega cat, owner ...sfstandard.com
- PressSF Mission neighbors mourn bodega cat allegedly killed by ...abc7news.com
Cite this entry
https://failureindex.ai/failures/waymo-autonomous-vehicle-kills-bodega-catAI Failure Index. "Waymo autonomous vehicle kills bodega cat in San Francisco" (FI-0619). Realm Labs. https://failureindex.ai/failures/waymo-autonomous-vehicle-kills-bodega-cat (indexed Jun 22, 2026).Data fields CC-BY 4.0, prose citation permitted. Incident ID FI-0619. Full dataset at /data.
Note from Realm Labs, the Index steward
How Realm would have caught this
- Prism
- OmniGuard
- AI Detection & Response (AIDR)
Realm watches the model's internal state for the signature of unsafe or off-brand generation and can block or reroute the output before it becomes public, in real time rather than after it has been screenshotted.