Waymo now has more than 300 driverless vehicles zipping passengers around San Francisco, but while they follow traffic laws, parking is another matter entirely. According to city records cited by the Washington Post, these rolling robots racked up 589 citations totaling $65,065 in fines last year for parking violations that ranged from blocking traffic to street-cleaning restrictions to parking in prohibited areas.
In fairness to Waymo, getting a parking ticket in San Francisco is aggravatingly easy. The city hands them out like flyers. (Per the San Francisco Standard, the rough number last year was 1.2 million.)
A Waymo spokesman tells The Post that the company is working on solving the problem, but we’d hazard a guess that won’t happen until every car is driverless. Waymo cars sometimes stop in commercial loading zones to drop off riders when the only other option is a congested main road or a spot far from the rider’s destination. They also occasionally “park briefly” between trips if they’re too far from a Waymo facility. They’re the same trade-offs human drivers make all the time, and until we’re out of the picture, Waymo’s vehicles will probably make the same calls – and get the same tickets.