When I moved to San Francisco in 2020, I was stunned by a few things: The natural splendor of the city, the dollhouse aesthetics of its neighborhoods, and the sheer amount of assholes double-parked in active roadways.
It’s like I couldn’t drive through the Mission or the Haight or the Sunset without getting stuck behind somebody completely blocking traffic while waiting for food, picking someone up or, I don’t know, furiously masturbating under the dash. (What else are we to think when someone acts so selfishly?)
I never saw such flagrant double-parking in Los Angeles, where I lived for over a decade. Maybe it was fear of getting punched out by an irate road rager, but I wouldn’t have dared do it on a narrow LA street while ignoring honking drivers behind me.
In San Francisco, though? It’s double-park-apalooza, and it’s only getting worse thanks to Waymos copying their human asshole counterparts.
It’s an epidemic across the city, but especially any areas with limited driving lanes or bottlenecks. Valencia Street (and the Mission generally) is choked by double-parked Waymos; even Muni buses get stuck. I’ve seen AVs blocking traffic outside SoMa nightclubs. I’ve heard frustrated drivers honking at them in North Beach and Chinatown. It’s not just happening at busy hubs of commerce, either: Waymos won’t think twice about blocking a two-lane residential road, including the one outside my house. (Waymo’s comms team did not respond to my questions by press time about why its vehicles constantly park in active traffic lanes.)
But AVs can’t really think for themselves — they just use prior traffic data and information collected on the road to pick from a selection of next steps, with an eye toward the most efficient, safe outcome. In other words, Waymo has no real agency when a car swerves into its path or it needs to nudge through a right on red. It makes the most “rational” choice based on how it was trained, which includes human programming.
Using tools like cameras, radar, LiDAR, and machine learning, ride-hailing AVs already know how to identify other cars that are double-parked, yet chooses to do the same thing when given the option.
We can get a hint about why they do this from examinations of a different curious habit of Waymos: Loitering in time-restricted street parking spots, often outside of random homes that they then return to in the future. As described in a story from The Verge, Waymo claims it can’t fully explain why their cars do this between rides; a spokesperson told the publication that “several elements go into the vehicles’ determination of where to park.” However, the company also confirmed that “local parking regulations” are explicitly a part of that determination.
Then why the hell are they double parking in San Francisco, which is very clearly illegal under the California vehicle code? As AV safety expert Phil Koopman told The Verge, Waymo might not have precise clarity in how its vehicles make parking decisions, but the company knows what inputs are affecting those choices: “They know what data they’re feeding it,” Koopman concluded.
Amid this confusion, people in San Francisco can’t shake the suspicion that Waymos are “getting more aggressive,” including by blocking crosswalks and bike lanes and nudging past pedestrians at right turns. But what I can’t shake is the sinking feeling that human drivers are implicitly to blame. To paraphrase a legendary anti-weed PSA: They learned it from watching us.
Which brings us to those “human asshole counterparts” I mentioned earlier.
In my six years living in San Francisco, I’ve seen a huge increase in rideshare and delivery drivers double-parking whenever they feel it’s most convenient for them or their passengers. And it’s not merely that it’s happening. It’s that the drivers don’t give a shit, no matter if you say something, honk, or stick a middle finger out the window. A recent dead-eyed stare from an Uber driver literally blocking the right turn at Guerrero and 17th streets in the Mission proved to me that, frankly, the issue is only getting worse.
Do I really put the blame on a sea of exhausted, wage-exploited gig workers who have rationally calculated that getting a five-star review is more important than aggravating everyone else on the road? Not really. But it’s impossible to believe that Waymo’s programming isn’t taking advantage of the city turning a blind eye to double parking, and actively reinforcing the fact that human drivers all around them do it, too.
Call me a double-parking doomer, but this situation is out of control, and the fact that Waymos keep doing it all over the city is clearly the consequence of nobody with authority giving a damn.
I have no idea what the fix is. I just know that there is one. Until it arrives, we’ll just have to navigate around it. Or, if you’re like me, needlessly honk in an attempt to feel heard.
