Last Year Waymo's Autonomous Vehicles Got 589 Parking Tickets in San Francisco (yahoo.com) 39
"Alphabet's Waymo autonomous vehicles are programmed to follow the rules of the road..." notes the Washington Post. But while the cars obey speed limits and properly use their turn signals — they also "routinely violate parking rules."
Waymo vehicles driving themselves received 589 tickets for parking violations in 2024, according to records from San Francisco's Municipal Transportation Agency... The robots incurred $65,065 in fines for violations such as obstructing traffic, disobeying street cleaning restrictions and parking in prohibited areas... [Waymo is responsible for 0.05% of the city's fines, according to statistics from the article.]
Parking violations are one of the few ways to quantify how often self-driving companies' vehicles break the rules of the road... Some parking violations, such as overstaying in a paid spot, cause inconvenience but do not directly endanger other people. Others increase the risk of crashes, said Michael Brooks, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety. Anytime a vehicle is obstructing the flow of traffic, other drivers might be forced to brake suddenly or change lanes, he said, creating risks for drivers, pedestrians or other road users...
San Francisco transit operators lost 2 hours and 12 minutes of service time in 2024 because of Waymo vehicles blocking or colliding with transit vehicles, according to San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency records. Autonomous vehicles have obstructed firefighters responding to emergency scenes in San Francisco, triggering city officials to ask for tougher oversight from state regulators.
The article adds that driverless Waymo vehicles in Los Angeles received 75 more tickets in 2024 — "with $543 in fines still outstanding, according to records from the Los Angeles Department of Transportation."
Parking violations are one of the few ways to quantify how often self-driving companies' vehicles break the rules of the road... Some parking violations, such as overstaying in a paid spot, cause inconvenience but do not directly endanger other people. Others increase the risk of crashes, said Michael Brooks, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety. Anytime a vehicle is obstructing the flow of traffic, other drivers might be forced to brake suddenly or change lanes, he said, creating risks for drivers, pedestrians or other road users...
San Francisco transit operators lost 2 hours and 12 minutes of service time in 2024 because of Waymo vehicles blocking or colliding with transit vehicles, according to San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency records. Autonomous vehicles have obstructed firefighters responding to emergency scenes in San Francisco, triggering city officials to ask for tougher oversight from state regulators.
The article adds that driverless Waymo vehicles in Los Angeles received 75 more tickets in 2024 — "with $543 in fines still outstanding, according to records from the Los Angeles Department of Transportation."
Fine total would've been funnier if it had been (Score:1)
$65,536.
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589 tickets why isn't anyone in jail?
Across their entire fleet that is not a lot of tickets per vehicle (only in aggregate), and Waymo pays the fine(s)? UPS (alone) was getting ~15 tickets per day in San Francisco, and paying over a million dollars in fines a year.
SF Driving (Score:4, Funny)
Systemic public nuisiance? (Score:2)
At what point can a company who's product systemically violates the law be restricted from doing business?
There are public nuisance laws for this purpose.
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Parking violations are not "breaking the law". Breaking the law is explicitly a criminal activity. Pretty much anything where the penalty is a fine means that it's not a criminal activity and therefore not breaking the law. Hell, technically, even simply not paying your speeding/parking tickets isn't breaking the law. There is no law saying you must pay them. Not paying them may lead to other annoying consequences, like a suspended license - which if used while driving is breaking the law. But, that's separ
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Both felonies and infractions are breaking the law, but one is usually more serious than the other.
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They are civil offenses at best, and depending on the city, mostly made-up bullshit. There are maybe two or three legitimate parking violations, and the rest are just made-up garbage. Street sweeping? Bullshit. No overnight parking (esp. residential streets with plenty of space)? Bullshit. 2 hour parking during these days and times, no parking during this time or if the moon is waxing? Bullshit. Obviously, I'm half making that last one up (I hope), but I've seen some ridiculous signs with ridiculous rules a
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It is reasonable to assume that if Waymo is getting a lot of parking tickets, they would also be getting a lot of traffic tickets if SFPD were more aggressive enforcing those laws.
The real problem is that Waymo doesn't release unbiased data, so we have no idea what they are actually doing.
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For anyone who has ever driven in San Francisco, it is practically impossible not to violate one or more of the various parking laws over time. Most of the time there is no one there to cite you, but that does not mean you did not violate the laws, and since the Waymo vehicles are always on the move, sooner or later they will get cited. Quite honestly, only receiving 589 tickets means the San Francisco traffic enforcement should step up their efforts across all the city.
This is a key point. Humans generally have some sort of spider-sense for when parking/law enforcement is around. Most car drivers exceed the speed limit, but they know how far over the limit and in which areas and times the probability of getting a ticket are much lower. A lot of human drivers get away with double parking and other parking violations, but human have the spider-sense to gauge the risk of getting a ticket.
AVs do not have this ability. If it were programmed in directly via rules or indirec
This is very good actually (Score:5, Informative)
If that's across their entire fleet, that means they are better than humans by orders of magnitude. Of course idiots with statistical illiteracy will think "omg 536 parking tickets, that's crazy!" .. It really isn't .. not for a whole fleet of cars, and certainly not when you're doing business in a city like San Francisco which issues 1.2 million parking tickets every year.
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Another point we should make, we shouldn't be expecting perfection from driverless cars .. because we sure as hell aren't expecting perfection from humans. As long as the driverless cars are statistically better than humans .. they're ok. Reality is we most people won't trust driverless unless it is 10x or even 100x safer than a human. However if we start expecting things like "zero tickets" or "zero accidents" .. that's unfair and obviously due to an innate hatred of robots rather than any concern for safe
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However if we start expecting things like "zero tickets" or "zero accidents" .. that's unfair and obviously due to an innate hatred of robots rather than any concern for safety of people.
It is not always a hatred of robots that generates the angst. It can also be about the great replacement theory (they are concerned about losing their job (and therefore their self worth) to someone (something) willing/able to do it better or cheaper).
The great replacement theory is just another debunked conspiracy theory. No one of any intelligence believes in it or would take action based on it.
Re: This is very good actually (Score:2)
Re: This is very good actually (Score:2)
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So? Somebody at the DMV signed off on giving a license to a driver that caused an accident, didn't they? They didn't account for the person getting drunk/distracted someday? We have 40,000 people dying in traffic accidents in the USA (worldwide the number is near 1 million) .. we need that solved asap. The only way is, after as thorough testing as possible, put the cars on the roads. Before getting on the roads, there are guaranteed to be situations, the car didn't expect .. that the software developers had
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If that's across their entire fleet, that means they are better than humans by orders of magnitude. Of course idiots with statistical illiteracy will think "omg 536 parking tickets, that's crazy!" .. It really isn't .. not for a whole fleet of cars, and certainly not when you're doing business in a city like San Francisco which issues 1.2 million parking tickets every year.
Last I knew, somewhere near half of the parking violations across the city were for street cleaning violations. I suspect some of the Waymo's tickets were from street cleaning violations, as from the perspective of the agent a vehicle stopping for a pickup and waiting (because the customer not being actually ready for the pickup) is not distinguishable from parking (there is no one in the car while waiting, unlike the Uber/Lyft taxis).
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If that's across their entire fleet, that means they are better than humans by orders of magnitude. Of course idiots with statistical illiteracy will think "omg 536 parking tickets, that's crazy!" .. It really isn't .. not for a whole fleet of cars, and certainly not when you're doing business in a city like San Francisco which issues 1.2 million parking tickets every year.
Last I recall, UPS alone was getting over a dozen parking violation tickets per day an San Francisco, with over a million dollars in fines per year.
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If that's across their entire fleet, that means they are better than humans by orders of magnitude.
There are only ~ 300 Waymo cars operating in San Fransisco. The average human driver isn't getting 2 parking tickets a year.
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If SF indeed issues 1.2 million tickets per year, then 2 tickets per driver per year is actually quite a good estimate. If you consider, that Waymo cars are "out of their home turf" much longer than most other cars, 2 tickets car and per year appears almost good.
PS: I know how SF marks parking rules, and more than once I had to get out of my car and look around to verify, that I could indeed park in some location. I am not at all surprised, that a self driving car can't perform the same level of verificatio
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PS: I know how SF marks parking rules, and more than once I had to get out of my car and look around to verify, that I could indeed park in some location. I am not at all surprised, that a self driving car can't perform the same level of verification.
In San Francisco (well most major cities), even getting out and checking does not ensure you are legally parking. While enforcement has recently been suspended, the new "daylighting law" tickets in San Francisco were being issued even when no markings existed (you were just supposed to know you could not park there; that might work for residents (some of the time), but not for everyone who only occasionally drives into the city, and certainly not for most tourists).
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There are 1.5 million commuters in the Bay Area [bayareatelegraph.com]. It seems reasonable to assume just about all of them hit San Fransisco at least once a year - and most of them probably are in SF multiple times a month, at a minimum. Then you'd have to figure out how many transient visitors there are - Californians from outside the Bay Area, tourists, truckers, etc. etc.
You're almost certainly looking at fewer than one ticket per year per driver.
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How many errands does the "average human driver" do in San Francisco?
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I would say that recognizing a good pickup/drop-off spot is a weakness for Waymo. One time we had a clear space right in front of us, but the car choose to stop half a block down on the other side of the street. Legal drop-off in a busy spot pretty much impossible (for any rideshare) but I suspect human drivers would choose, for example, fire-lanes, rather than double-parking/blocking traffic.
And stopping or parking in a fire lane is also ticketable, so the real issue is not whether one is in violation (and could be issued a ticket), but a perceived degree of the seriousness of the violation. Designated pick-up/drop-off spots (with maximum wait time limits) in cities without an abundance of such might be a solution, but further reducing on-street parking for taxis would be an interesting discussion in many locations. I suppose if the goal (of some) of eliminating the need for personal vehicles
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Not to mention parking violations are meaningless to the passengers, and unlike speed limits, there is no standardization. You would need an additional LLM to "read and understand" the sign. I've seen some of those signs with various parking restriction schedules and some of them I couldn't understand. And then there is temporary parking restrictions, sometimes on handwritten signs. About the only thing related to parking that I would hope out of Waymo is that it doesn't park in handicapped parking, since t
How often did they dispute an alleged violation... (Score:2)
Do the LA thing, use the boot (Score:1)
LA needs to do the LA thing and boot these fine skipping cars. They do it to everyone else.
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The article adds that driverless Waymo vehicles in Los Angeles received 75 more tickets in 2024 â" "with $543 in fines still outstanding, according to records from the Los Angeles Department of Transportation."
Are you saying those parking tickets are moving violations? If they were parked long enough to get a ticket then they were parked long enough to get booted. I'd bet these robot parking violation clear up quick when the cars get stranded and then impounded, and isn't that the point.
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Ban human drivers first, they're the worst. Humans got 1.2 million parking tickets in San Francisco. Why are we allowing humans to drive?
So, what about the three laws of robotics? (Score:1)
Isn't one of those laws to obey the law? There goes my faith in robotics.
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Ha! No signs of autonomous reading then following of rules.
The companies are spending all their time trying to craft something that follows some rules. Only to be erratically messed up again with the next round of changes.