Waymo, the self-driving car unit of Alphabet, has racked up a significant amount of parking fines and traffic violations in Austin. The Austin school district alone has issued 25 tickets to Waymo since August, which the company has paid on time. Travis Pickford, assistant chief of the Austin ISD Police Department, noted that unlike human drivers who tend not to reoffend after being ticketed, Waymo vehicles continued to incur violations, including illegally passing school buses with deployed stop signs.
These incidents are part of a broader pattern in Austin, where self-driving cars have been observed blocking traffic, ignoring police officers, and posing other safety concerns. The city has documented 230 issues with self-driving cars since 2023. A notable incident involved a Waymo vehicle blocking an ambulance responding to a shooting in March, forcing the ambulance to find an alternative route. Although an officer quickly moved the vehicle, the incident highlighted anxieties about autonomous vehicles.
In January, a Waymo vehicle illegally passed an Austin ISD school bus because a remote assistance agent incorrectly instructed the car it was permissible. Waymo also issued a software recall in November after similar failures to yield to school buses in Atlanta, following an investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Despite meeting with Austin ISD officials in November and updating software, Waymo initially rejected the district's assessment of risk to students and refused to pause operations during school pick-up and drop-off times.
Texas banned cities from regulating autonomous vehicles in 2017 to foster industry growth, with new state regulations not taking effect until May. Waymo, which claims safety is at its core, expanded its services to San Antonio, Dallas, and Houston the week before the Austin shooting incident. While collisions involving self-driving cars are currently rare compared to overall crashes in Travis County, the repeated violations raise questions about the industry's readiness and local control over its operations.
