San Francisco Hit Waymo With Hundreds of Traffic Citations in 2024

San Francisco has found a nice new revenue stream: Hitting self-driving Waymos with traffic citations. The city cited Waymo vehicles 589 times in 2024 for a grand total of $65,065 in penalties. The violations ranged from blocking street traffic to parking in prohibited areas. Google-owned Waymo operates 300 vehicles in San Francisco that are available to the public, meaning that they have received less than two tickets a day on average. Waymo told TechCrunch that they are working on the citations, which can occur for various reasons, such as when the vehicles are waiting for their next customer and briefly park in an illegal zone. They also may sometimes stop in commercial loading zones to drop off customers. Self-driving operators, including Waymo and the now-defunct Cruise, have been subject to criticism—and vandalism— over the years for causing minor incidents as their vehicles sometimes behave in perplexing ways, such as inexplicably driving a man in endless circles or speeding o ... Read full article.