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Google Street View Car Drive Through Tomatina Festival Goes Horribly Wrong

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Google Street View Car at Tomatina Festival

Image: Ainhoa via Twitter

Apparently, it isn’t a good idea to send a camera-laden car through a crowd of rowdy Spaniards armed with over 100 tons of tomatoes.

Google learned this important lesson after sending one of its Street View cars to capture “the magic and color” of the 70th annual Tomatina Festival in eastern Spain, during which revelers pelt each other with literally tons of tomatoes. Google had its car alternately pelted by tomatoes of course, but the car was also climbed on by partiers, had its windows smashed, had its mirrors broken, and had its cameras damaged.

It turns out the color of the festival is “Tomato Red” and the magic is “alcohol.”

The plan was for the Street View to travel the length of the festival once before it began, then again once the battle was under way. The first trip went without incident, with the car slipping gently through the crowd.

On its return trip though, this happened:

Finally leading to this:

Despite the damage, the Google representatives brushed off the incident, calling the damage minor and emphasizing that nobody was injured.

Perhaps the icing on the tomato cake, here, is that Google doesn’t know yet whether any of the pictures of the event are usable.

News Source: The Guardian