Waymo's Real Nemesis in SF? Parking Enforcement
Waymo's driverless cars have racked up more than 8,300 parking tickets in San Francisco since the start of 2025, totaling nearly $1 million in fines, up from just 589 tickets ($65k) in all of 2024. The top offense: parking in stands reserved for buses, over 2,000 tickets worth. The company is now averaging over 100 tickets a week, with hotspots like Fisherman's Wharf racking up hundreds of citations each. Waymo says it's working on it, but at its scale, the fines barely register.
Why it matters
This isn't a safety scandal, it's a scale problem: as Waymo expands to 18 California counties and SFO pickups, sloppy curbside behavior multiplies with every new car. A million dollars is pocket change for an Alphabet-backed company, which is exactly the point critics are making.