Waymo caught being a bad neighbor in viral video

Waymo, owned by Google parent company Alphabet, operates part of its fleet of autonomous vehicles in California. Startups Apolo, AutoX, Nuro, WeRide, and Tesla Robotaxi and Zoox also operate in the state.

But with so many options, Californians may be getting autonomous vehicle fatigue. 

Waymo quick facts:

• Founded in 2009.
• Passed the first U.S. state self-driving test in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 2012.
  Source: IEEE Spectrum
• Spun out from Alphabet as a separate subsidiary in 2016.
• As of July 2025, Waymo One is available 24/7 to customers in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and the San Francisco Bay Area.
• The current Waymo fleet features over 1,500 vehicles. By 2026, the company expects to add 2,000 more.

According to Advocates for Highway & Auto Safety, nearly 80% of California voters support requiring a human safety operator in self-driving trucks and delivery vehicles, and just 33% of voters express a favorable general impression of autonomous vehicles. 

Some Californians have even taken to sabotage.

One group of protestors, Safe Street Rebels, has fought against autonomous driving for years. While they are not just anti-autonomous driving (they oppose nearly all driving), they have achieved great success using traffic cones to render the vehicles useless. 

The safety systems on the vehicles recognize traffic cones as being major red flags, so a single cone can disable a Waymo until someone comes and removes it. 

The group has documented hundreds of crash and traffic incidents involving autonomous vehicles over the years and says the vehicles make California streets more dangerous, not safer.

Over the weekend, a viral social media video showed just how much of a nuisance the robotic vehicles can be.

Line of Waymos blocks two lanes of traffic in San Francisco

Waymo has approximately 800 autonomous vehicles operating in the San Francisco Bay Area, according to data the company shared with the San Francisco Examiner in August.

In a viral video from No Safe Words on X (formerly Twitter), it looked like an endless line of them had taken over one city street on Nov. 22.

Related: Waymo pulls ahead of Tesla Robotaxi, Amazon Zoox with latest move

Investigators in the comments figured out that the vehicles were all headed to their charging stations at the same time, creating the bottleneck.

The line of Waymo's wasn't the only instance of the company's vehicles acting like bad neighbors. On Nov. 24, another California city placed restrictions on the company's operations.

Santa Monica demands Waymo cease overnight charging

Waymos have been recorded piling up at Santa Monica charging stations at night in Southern California.

The video, posted by Nic Cruz Patane, showing a seemingly endless line of lifeless robots waiting to be charged, is eerily similar to the video from San Francisco.

However, the city of Santa Monica is taking action to address the issue.

On Nov. 24, the city formally demanded Waymo cease overnight operations at its two local autonomous vehicle charging facilities.

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The move comes after months of noise complaints from nearby residents, according to Santa Monica Daily Press. The directive was unanimously approved in a 6-0 City Council vote Nov. 18, but now the city is demanding that property owners, lessees, and operators immediately stop nighttime operations due to nuisance conditions at the two charging sites.

Residents in the neighborhood have complained about constant noise and disruption from the 24-hour operations, with some deliberately blocking the vehicles' entry and exit. They have been bothered by everything from the legally mandated backup alarms to other vehicle noises that have become incessant.

Some estimate that there are at least 200 vehicles constantly running in and out of the two lots daily.

In a statement, Waymo says it has been listening to community input and is "committed to continuing to operate and invest" in Santa Monica. It says it has adjusted operations at the site in response to community feedback and that it will continue to seek community input.

The company has also petitioned the city to allow it to improve the charging station facilities to better mitigate sound and light pollution.

NHTSA opens investigation into Waymo after robotaxi fails to stop for school bus

Autonomous vehicles have a long way to go to gain the confidence of the public at large, and recent safety issues are making it more challenging.

Earlier this year, Tesla Robotaxi took some heat after a video surfaced of an autonomous Tesla ignoring a school bus stop sign, speeding past the vehicle, and hitting a child dummy in a simulated test.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a Preliminary Evaluation to investigate an estimated 2,000 Waymo 5th-gen automated driving system-equipped vehicles for a similar issue.

The agency is investigating “traffic safety violations relating to stopping when encountering a school bus, particularly when the bus is boarding or offboarding students.”

The investigation arose following a media report that showed the vehicle failed to remain stopped when approaching a school bus that was stopped with its red lights flashing and stop arm deployed.

Activists question the safety of autonomous driving on city streets

While Waymo operates in major cities across the country, and its robotaxi slowly expands its footprint in some of those same cities, some city dwellers do not like the idea of robots operating two-ton vehicles with little oversight.

Advocacy groups are making their voices heard in New York City, where Waymo recently received permission to conduct tests. 

“This was a pilot initiated with very little public input,” Michael Sutherland, a policy researcher with Open Plans, told Gothamist. “From a safety perspective, this is a technology that hasn’t been tested out in incredibly dense cities like New York City.”

Waymo says compared to those with human drivers, its autonomous vehicles have been involved in 88% fewer crashes with serious injuries. 

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