These days, moles and gophers aren’t the only pests you have to worry about tearing up your yard. You also have to watch for Cocos — pink, four-wheeled delivery robots currently metastasizing across cities throughout the US.
East Hollywood resident Kaiya Reel learned this the hard way. According to local news station KTLA, Reel was first alerted to the presence of something in her garden by a loud ruckus. When she came out to investigate, she was surprised to discover a Coco delivery robot struggling to free itself from her fence.
“I came out here and I found the Coco in my garden,” she told KTLA. “It had got my fence caught up in its wheel. It uprooted a whole bunch of [plants] in my garden and then just drove away with the fence attached to it.”
Despite becoming tangled in a mess of fencing and foliage from Reel’s yard, the little robot was determined to make its next delivery, scampering off down the road.
“I chased after it and looked like a total crazy person, running after a robot in the middle of the street and yelling at it,” Reel said. “I was trying to block it and get in its way and it would try to go around me,” she continued, though the robot didn’t heed her calls to stop.
Reel’s neighbor, Roman Henson, corroborated the story to KTLA.
“The robot had driven through the little fence and was dragging it,” Henson said. “We’ve got the Cocos, the Waymos and they’re coming for us.”
The delivery robots have caused a number of problems wherever they’ve been deployed. In Chicago, the little fellas irked residents so bad that they’ve been functionally banned from certain sections of the city. In East Hollywood, KTLA reports that a Coco robot was caught charging headlong into an ambulance, while delivery bots from other companies have blocked mobility scooters and knocked over motorcycles.
“I think the part that worries me is that these companies can come in and dump their technology in our community and there’s no sense of accountability,” Reel told the station. “It just feels like an accident waiting to happen.”
More on robots: Delivery Robot Gets Stuck on Train Tracks, Gets Obliterated by Locomotive
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