Robotaxis, they’re just like us! Even next-gen autonomous vehicles can’t avoid parking tickets.
As The Washington Post reports, citing records from San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Agency, Waymo’s robotaxis received 589 parking tickets last year. The cars racked up $65,065 in fines for violations, including obstruction to traffic, failure to follow street cleaning restrictions, and parking in prohibited areas.
Waymo currently operates 300 fully autonomous cars in San Francisco, and their parking violations are less than 1% of the 1.2 million tickets issued city-wide in 2024, the Post notes. However, it also picked up another 75 tickets in Los Angeles, where it’s been operating since November. (We took one for a spin last summer during an invite-only phase.)
Waymo’s cars are designed “to take the safest action available during the few minutes we are picking up or dropping off riders, which is when many of these parking citations occurred,” Waymo tells the Post.
Robotaxis have had a rocky rollout in San Francisco. A collision with a pedestrian ultimately led to the shutdown of GM-owned Cruise. First responders have also expressed frustration with autonomous cars blocking intersections and causing crashes. And let’s not forget the honking.
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Still, the Alphabet-owned company is expanding to four more cities in the Bay Area: Mountain View, Los Altos, Palo Alto, and parts of Sunnyvale. And it recently teamed up with Uber in Austin, Texas, with plans to do the same in Atlanta.
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About Jibin Joseph
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