ES version is available. Content is displayed in original English for accuracy.
Advertisement
Advertisement
⚡ Community Insights
Discussion Sentiment
44% Positive
Analyzed from 7778 words in the discussion.
Trending Topics
#bike#lane#lanes#waymo#cars#car#don#cyclists#traffic#off
Discussion (212 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
Given that human drivers stop in bike lanes, Waymo then has a tradeoff:
1) Be the only ones to follow the letter of the law, break a lot of people's expectations, and catch backlash for disrupting traffic.
2) Follow the most common expectation, even if wrong, and incrementally add to the problem.
IMO, cyclists shouldn't lobby Waymo directly, but should lobby cities to actually enforce the rules on everyone. Then Waymo would fall in line naturally. And if they're inclined to take direct action against Waymo's they should also act against Uber and DoorDash drivers who are a far bigger problem by volume (and wait time for deliveries).
that was among the promises of self-driving cars. Because of ultimately superior sensor suite and reaction time they can be safer than humans, in particular they would never "not see a bicyclist", they wouldn't cut impatiently, etc. . Instead that superiority is used these days to drive more "efficiently", to beat/cut the human drivers in a way not every regular human would be capable of. At least that is my anecdotal observation during the last several months (and these several months experience totally differs from the more than 15 years of having Waymo cars around in MV when they were i'd say among the safest to be around)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46199294
From the more recent - saw again a Waymo cutting like a ninja into a left turn lane at the same intersection as before, and at the other intersection a Waymo car missing the point to get in line for the right turn behind several cars already waiting in line in the bike lane, drives forward on green and makes the right turn as the second layer of the cake in parallel with those cars from the bike lane.
I think all that aggressiveness/"efficiency" comes as a result of the push to increase the customer satisfaction. All these years before driving actual passengers, Waymo (and i guess others) could allow themselves to be the safest, most courteous drivers on the road. Not anymore as such "inefficient" granma-style driving obviously would conflict with the passengers satisfaction.
If you compare that to a country like the Netherlands, which is not only strict, but provides “solutions” so breaking the law isn’t necessary in the first place (they use explicit drop off and pickup locations instead of American chaos).
Like the Netherlands, it is (A) not possible to park in bike paths without going intentionally out of your way, and (B) there are reasonable alternatives, such as specific “loading zones” for passengers on nearly every block, on major roads. On minor neighborhood roads, you can just block the road for a few seconds and it doesn’t matter
The US is happy creating laws for everything that are impossible to follow, but only selectively enforced. It makes it so everyone always must break the law to exist in society, but will only face repercussions at the discretion of a police officer.
It means that there are effectively no laws, because everyone has slightly different definitions of when something is “right” or not, and the police only enforce the most egregious cases, but they can also target you specifically for some other reason (discrimination, bias, etc) with no repercussions, since you were breaking the law after all.
In a few years they'll get to put together a committee to discuss "learnings" and maybe they'll fix it if there are enough complaints, or maybe they'll just spend their time elsewhere as usual.
It's just that other drivers get pissed off if you block a car lane when there's a bike lane next to it. That needs to be trained away by enforcing the rules.
The problem is street-side parking.
Also, of course bikers don’t follow car rules. Those rules are nonsensical for cyclists.
As much as I might disagree with that, it’s crazy to expect Waymo to obey a law that doesn’t even exist.
https://highwaycode.org.uk/rule-140/
> Cycle lanes. These are shown by road markings and signs. You MUST NOT drive or park in a cycle lane marked by a solid white line during its times of operation. Do not drive or park in a cycle lane marked by a broken white line unless it is unavoidable. You MUST NOT park in any cycle lane whilst waiting restrictions apply. Law: Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984: Sections 5 & 8
Here's a cycle lane with a broken white line: https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5159626,-0.1020373,3a,75y,17...
You shouldn't enter, stop or park here unless it is "unavoidable". You're a taxi driver dropping off a passenger? That's not "unavoidable".
Here's a cycle lane with an unbroken line: https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5162184,-0.1047894,3a,75y,15...
The latter, no you CAN'T enter it to drop people off, no matter who you are. It is literally illegal to do so.
Yes, they should do that. The fact that others don't follow it is completely irrelevant.
I'm sorry if it doesn't help them meet their quarterly targets, but I don't think it's unreasonable for a Company to follow the fucking law when it comes to human safety.
And if they can't, they should be dissolved and the directors prosecuted.
If they truly can't grow without compromising people's safety and breaking the laws put in place to prevent them, then they shouldn't exist. End of.
This shouldn't even be a discussion. Because someone kills a person, everyone else now needs to kill someone otherwise it breaks expectations? Madness...
They’re even bad for drivers as they are more detrimental to traffic than personal car ownership. They take up space on the road even when they aren’t being used to transport anyone.
I think we should spend less time worrying about ride share policy and spend more time working on the root cause of the need to drive so often.
Achieving this goal is not something that necessitates giving up single family homes, or suburbs, or small towns, or the ability to own a personal car, or anything like that.
Anecdote: I take transit way more in San Francisco with Waymo. Because booking is deterministic (it says 20 minutes, it will be there in 20 minutes, even if it’s a short ride), I can connect with the loose network of city and regional rail systems in a way that was tedious with human drivers.
(I lived in New York for 10 years, and eagerly take the subway there.)
Seriously, Waymos follow at a respectful distance and overtake me safely. They stop at stop signs. Sometimes they even stop and wait for me to make a decision about which way I'm heading.
Taxis and Waymos stop in areas that are explicitly marked not to stop or park.
Both human-driven and robo-driven taxis are financially incentivised to spend as much time as possible carrying fare paying passengers and as little as possible driving empty to pick someone up.
Anyway, I agree that walking, cycling, and public transit, are all IMHO preferable to any form of taxi.
This is nonsense. Even in places with great public transport a lot of people own cars because taxi's and Uber's are unreliable or unavailable. Given Waymo should be available at any time of day and not pick + choose rides as randomly a lot of car owners should be able to give them up.
The expectations are that if you are driving for profit then you are held to a higher standard. Waymo wants to publicly excuse it's way out of this expectation for their own convenience. The way any common sociopath or selfish child would.
Slow down and stop breaking things.
So to flip it around.....it's not Waymo's fault that they stop in bike lanes, but the fault of traffic enforcement? Is anyone forcing waymos to stop in bike lanes?
There’s a related issue that will become apparent as more cars drive themselves and take responsibility for their actions: speed limits. If traffic engineers want cars to drive 75mph, they should set a speed limit of 75mph.
Like you said - if traffic engineers wanted people to stop there they wouldn't have made it a bike lane.
Plenty of drives dont use bike lanes. So, no, this is false issue. Waymo can simply act like literal majority of the drivers.
Or just keep hating on AI. Why let the truth stop you from having a good time?
It works both ways.
One party to this is a high-inertia, potentially high-velocity metal box that, in an impact with the other party, typically results in an property insurance claim.
The other is a low-inertia flesh bag that, in an impact with the other party, results in a medical insurance claim, and possibly a funeral.
I spent a decade cycling for commute in a capital city in Australia. I’m also a tradesman, so I’m well aware that some people actually work on the road.
By being a pedestrian or cyclist, you’re literally in other people’s workplace.
Delivery drivers, construction workers, breakdown services, road maintenance, electricians, crane operators, cars for hire, emergency services, light rail operators.
As a pedestrian or cyclists, or motorbike rider, you’re particularly vulnerable.
Sometimes you need to get out of the way.
Share the road.
Dylan Taylor, a beloved Menlo-Atherton High School football coach, was killed last year in one of these collisions:
https://www.almanacnews.com/atherton/2025/05/08/m-a-athletic...
(Scroll down to the comment by "T R" which describes better than the article itself what likely happened.)
Unfortunately, I've almost never seen a driver follow this law. Everyone studiously avoids the bike lane and then cuts across it.
The bike lane marker changes from a solid white stripe to a dashed line as you approach an intersection. This is supposed to be a hint to merge into the bike lane. It isn't working.
I post a reminder on Nextdoor once or twice a year about this. I'm taking the opportunity to also post it here for my California neighbors.
It would be interesting to see if the Waymo Driver follows this law. My bet is that it does.
The San Francisco Bike Coalition has an excellent page on this topic:
https://sfbike.org/news/bike-lanes-and-right-turns/
I would bet you an arbitrary sum of money that 51% of cyclists are not rude and don't act like they own the road. (Same for drivers.)
https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/salience-bias
Where I live, the pro-cyclist mayor (whose husband owns a bike rental shop, by pure coincidence) closed a road for cars without consultation, now the firemen along with residents are protesting because emergency and delivery vehicles can't access a large part of the city (car parked can't get out!). This is the average behavior you can expect from militant cyclists, from my experience.
in california, which is where the incident in TFA occurred.
It’s a now third-hand paraphrase from an SF bike advocate who says he heard it from some unnamed representative of Waymo.
If someone has something more direct, happy to read it, since this seems to be clickbait napalm at the moment.
While it’s annoying in the moment to pedal around a parked car, I’m fine with it. However, having a Waymo dropping off clear of the bike lane sounds good, until the exiting passenger accidentally doors a cyclist who isn’t prepared for that possibility.
I suppose I’d rather suffer the inconvenience of going around a parked car than risk the devastation of being doored.
Note that Waymos will alert you if a cyclist is approaching so you don't door them. Not saying it's perfect, you can still open the door if you want, but they are very consistent about this.
Whereas in the bike lane, you can slow down a bit anticipating that a door may open.
Waymo does at least warn the occupants if there's a vehicle or bicycle approaching.
The best option would actually be to have some indicators on the taxi which shows which doors are "hot" and expected to open. A taxi with closed doors is always a huge risk and will always need to be passed outside the dooring range.
However I agree that there isn't an obvious solution without making major improvements to infrastructure - right now where the bike lane is just paint everyone parks in it (Uber, taxis, delivery drivers, etc.).
If you can't do that safely, then you have no business riding in the first place.
Looking behind you is not optional, as you seem to suggest it is. And if it is actually a "small risk", then you are going way too fast.
Again -- if you don't have the environmental awareness to go around a parked car, then you shouldn't be riding a bicycle in the first place. Full stop.
With literal decades of near daily bike riding behind me I've rarely had to maneuver a bike or a car around a parked car in regular (not US) traffic flow.
Something car drivers and pedestrians do, usually.
In San Francisco, the vehicles often pull into bike lanes to pick up and drop off passengers — because that’s what they’re programmed to do, according to advocates who’ve asked the company for an explanation.
Waymo has told advocates that expecting it to respect bike lanes is “too high a bar” because customers expect to be dropped off in them, said Christopher White, executive director of the San Francisco Bike Coalition.
“People always point out that unlike human driven cars, the AVs stop at lights and obey the speed limit. However, they are really only as good and effective and safe as they are programmed to be,” White said. “Waymos pull over into bike lanes all the time for pickups and drop-offs and that’s neither legal nor safe but the companies say that is a normal practice and that’s what customers expect.”
Can't find a Waymo article about this, but Lyft and Uber (let alone trad taxis) also do this. I'm not sure that this is a particularly autonomous-car-shaped sin.
> The Google-owned company, which officially launched its self-driving fleet in London earlier this month, has told cycling campaigners that it is “normal practice” for their taxis to veer into and block cycle lanes
> According to the Highway Code, motorists “must not drive or park in a cycle lane marked by a solid white line during its times of operation” or block a bike lane marked by a broken white line “unless it is unavoidable”.
Better would be for Waymo to adapt themselves to the locale and instead program it to find safer pickup/dropoff points, rather than blocking and endangering bike traffic.
> “Waymo claims they’re far safer in the US than traditional taxi services. But whether that is still the case on London’s infamously complex, congested and contested streets, remains to be seen.”
Yeah I think it'd probably actually be easier to prevent Waymo from doing this. Once you change the programming, they all stop doing it.
FWIW after ~150 Waymo rides I don't think I've had a car pick me up or drop me off in a bike lane. This must depend highly on exactly where you ride to/from.
It depends on expectations. If the pitch is (and, let's face it - it is) that automs will be less violent, then this is a problem. If we're OK with them just adopting the existing levels of misery and death visited upon our communities by cars, then the upside is far less than we've been sold.
I can't tell if you intend this a real analogy or if you are overcome with rage when thinking about motor vehicles
I had to commute by foot for two years into a city, and I have to say I understand the rage. Cars nearly killed me a dozen times and I was always more safe than the law required of me as a pedestrian. Most drivers don’t understand their power with today’s massive cars.
While perhaps drop-offs are often relatively quick (though perhaps more risky; see the dooring accident description in the article), I'm also really annoyed by Waymos waiting and blocking for pick-ups, which can be multiple minutes.
I didn't say that.
I'm saying that the toll of traffic violence is unacceptable - tens of thousands of unanticipated and often gruesome fatalities, along with much larger numbers of injuries and traumatic experiences. So we look to autonomous vehicles to be better-behaved - particularly in terms of speed and attention, but also in the little things, like lawful/traditional engagement with lanes for smaller conveyances.
I'm an avid cyclist and I kinda hate bike lanes; I don't blame cars for not knowing how to treat them. I much prefer either a shared lane with a slow pace or a totally separated trail for bikes.
But at the end of the day, the standard for autonomous vehicles isn't parity with the negligence and aggression that cars currently foist upon society, it's much higher.
There’s quite a difference between violent and illegal and they shouldn’t be confused.
B) even if in this one aspect they remain status quo, overall it would still be an improvement.
What next?
Assuming we can’t significantly reduce car usage (and noting that you can still prioritize bike/pedestrian-friendliness and assume this), we really need regular car equivalents to bus stops. For Waymo or human rideshare drivers, or just non-transactional human families, say, dropping grandma off at a brunch restaurant. And significant fines + license points for anyone who stops anywhere outside them, like they do now, once established. The idea is no different than frequent trash cans and significant littering fines, really.
(I’m just spitballing here and am open to being wrong, just putting the idea out there as someone who’s noticed how much worse driving in cities has become over time.)
Unfortunately, with the rise of bike lanes, those spots are not quite dangerous, as the delivery person has to cross the lane to access the sidewalk and bicycles refuse to slow down, as usual.
https://electrek.co/2025/08/04/tesla-withheld-data-lied-misd...
Maybe just run over cyclists & pedestrians too while you're at it because it makes the code simpler?
Kinda had it with these shitty big tech companies that feel they don't need to respect local laws when they're not convenient.
This should be excepted fork that goal. If this is accepted, what would be the next thing to be deemed unrealistic?
This can done with carve outs/ gaps for public service buses, a somewhat cheap implementation are Pop-Up bikelanes but concrete barriers of 10-15 cm also do the job well.
I'm sure they just get away with it because of the low chance of 'getting caught', getting a ticket.
But in fact the evidence is in the GPS logs, so they should be either required to stop doing something illegal, or prosecuted using that data.
I live in a city with bike lanes. But some of them are one-lane (well, one vehicle lane, one bike lane), one-way streets. If a car or taxi or delivery vehicle or anything at all is going to pull over, it's necessarily going to be in the bike lane. (It's either that, or stop literally all traffic on the street.)
As a cyclist, I quickly stopped getting mad at it. I just, you know, go around it. Most streets don't have bike lanes. So turning into the regular lane is not a problem. Even when I drive a car, sometimes I'll have to drive around a car stopped in a regular lane. Such is life.
Obviously if Waymo is pulling over into a bike lane when there's no other place to pull over, it's fine. The highway code in the article literally says it's allowed when it is "unavoidable".
Without seeing examples of where Waymo is actually pulling over, and if there are safer alternatives it should be using instead, I can't judge whether it's misbehaving or not.
A lot of streets simply don't have separate shoulders to pull over on. Or if they do, they're 100% occupied by on-street parking. The bike lane is effectively doing double-duty as the shoulder. Is Waymo supposed to drop you off 5 blocks away after circling for 20 minutes looking for an available parking spot, just to stop for 30 seconds to let you out?
(Submitted title was "Waymo says expecting driverless taxis to stay out of bike lanes is unrealistic", but this leaves out the reason they give.)
So the solution is either make it impossible for a car to drive into the bike lane through barriers, or just allow cars into the bike lanes anyways.
Cyclists here regularly ignore red lights and also go the wrong way on streets and even in bike lanes.
https://transport.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2021-11/collisio...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CyclingMikey
Would cities be willing to give up on the parking fines revenue they are generating right now? How should cities be incentivized to change with the changing mobilities needs of the people living inside dense cities?
I have a fuzzy memory of lanes being shared in the UK. Overlapping bike, parking, bus stops, etc. Not claiming that's better, only that's what I recall.
I don't recall what Amsterdam does, but the bike lanes were mostly separated, so I imagine they have dedicated short-term parking. They also have a good light rail system in the city, so much less need for taxis.
There is going to be more of this though.
In London you really have to force your way out at junctions. This is not legal, but without it a waymon might never make progress.
I don’t see this being solved.
It relies on human eye contact to work.
Weirdly, the U.S.-nationwide enemy behind the curtain here is AAA, the driver’s association that’s spent member fees for decades lobbying against automated ticketing systems that would force everyone, not just Waymo, to start honoring the traffic laws it avoids. How crass of Waymo to so brazenly exploit that, but certainly their argument lacks fault from a corporate non-person’s “you can’t hurt me in any way that matters” viewpoint.
I want Waymo to succeed but you don't do that by bending over to the passengers' whim!
But also not present reality.
Share the road.
It works both ways.
The YouTube Channel "Not Just Bikes" calls these abominations 'Painted Bicycle Gutters'. They should be completely abolished in favor of multiuse pathways.
Asking companies nicely to stop being dickbags is never going to work. You have to regulate them - directly via new and targeted laws, or indirectly via accountability for existing laws. If Waymo started getting tickets for obstructing bike lanes every time it happened, they’d stop immediately.
This is why I’m generally in favor of citizen reward schemes like NYC does for some violations. Give citizens a slice of the fine, and you’ll both reduce bad behavior and improve civic engagement, all without creating creepy mass surveillance systems like Flock.
And this is already a solved problem.
The city I live in (Bratislava, Slovakia) has some pedestrian-only zones in the "old town", and if you're in one of them, calling an Uber/Bolt forces you to pick a pickup spot where cars can go...
(arguably this still has issues with Uber/Bolt allowing you to choose bus stops as pickup spots, which is explicitly illegal - only buses can stop on bus stops, but it's still better than driving onto a road which does not allow cars in the first place).
EDIT: i mistakenly thought this was about driving on dedicated bike paths, idk why, but this is still a solved problem, the applications already allow to designate some roads as places which can't be picked as pickup/dropoff points...
And the AI peddlers are amazed why people seem to hate them. That right here is the answer.
it's obviously safer (for cyclists) for taxis or even carpools to drop off and pick up at the far right, ie into the bike lane. i think we can generally consider it to be "parking" not "driving" and thus within the letter of the law as well. (parking is explicitly allowed.)
we know this very well, and that's why there are curb-separated lanes and they tried a center lane on van ness for awhile.
it just generally sucks to share bikes and cars and we have to live with compromises.
If waymos are dropping off in bike lanes, it’s because that’s the behavior in that city
It’s far better that the robots aren’t literal pedants. They act far smarter than a neurodivergent savant trying to do everything literally legal because being unadaptable is not intelligence
And yes, I have numbers. In Seattle, the business receipts from areas with bike lanes declined faster than receipts from areas nearby that do NOT have bike lanes.
Correlation shmorellation.... I bet you were going to cite studies that were showing how bike lanes improved the business and how proprietors were surprised at the percentage of customers on bikes, right?
People who are busy need to get around quickly and aren’t going to tolerate biking around. And it’s especially impractical with kids - not that this stops bike activists from trying to gaslight everyone into saying it’s totally possible and exactly the same effort. The bikes lanes almost always either displace traffic lanes or parking, so driving gets worse. And customers realize they have better things to do and alternative choices on where they spend money.
The bike lanes themselves are of course, often very poorly utilized. So traffic gets worse, businesses suffer, and it’s all for nothing. Now all these cities have left is intentionally crippling driving with low speed limits, speed bumps, and other hostile designs. It’s a way to try and claim that driving is no faster, even though it is trivial to keep driving fast and efficient.
Well if waymo was in my city, I will make sure I ride my bike in the middle of the lane in front of a waymo vehicle. Doing that is legal were I am.
If there isn’t space to overtake, take the middle of the lane or get off the road. It’s 30,0000km since I was last hit by a car, it’s working for me.
People who can’t judge the width of their own vehicle are common, and they commonly buy huge vehicle.
Also, buy a bike radar like a Garmin Varia or similar. They vastly improve your awareness in traffic.
For a long time I thought cyclists were hypocrites because they play the victim when they're on roads while being complete jerks on walking paths. But really, it's not hypocrisy - it's self-entitlement in both cases. It's honestly very consistent behavior.
If cyclists got off the roads every time a car comes by, that would be consistent with their expectations for walking paths.
Can you cite the research to back up your claim? Because I have the research claiming the opposite the cyclists are more compliant with traffic rules than cars [0]. Including in US [1]
[0] https://www.bicycling.com/news/a46443761/science-proves-moto...
[1] https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/biking/cycli...
It wouldn't perhaps be because they're (a) forced to share a space with cars and (b) cars have crumple zones, unlike cyclists?
This is an unconscionable degree of victim-blaming. Psychotic-level.
At least in London the cyclists are absolutely lawless. Yes a lot are injured and some sadly die, but many many many totally ignore the rules (assuming they've even bothered to find out what the rules actually are).
It's only got worse with ebike hire (Lime at al) as people will hop on after drinking, or have never even got a driving license etc so have no actual idea on the rules that car drivers have to prove etc before they're let behind the wheel at all. And when they're done with their lime bike they literally just dump them wherever they're done with it, blocking sidewalks/pavements for everyone.
This antisocial cycling social-ill is very much at a "scourge" stage in London and is getting a lot of press.
> [...] they often have a massively higher rate of fatalities
Higher than what?
Self driving cars are only safer than regular cars in the US because your standards of driving are so bad.
It’s very unlikely to be the case in the UK.
Some business just don’t translate.
Where is my factual error?
US driving is objectively appalling.
road.cc seems to be a cycling news site primarily for U.K.
When I am driving a car or use a rideshare I expect to share the bike lane when turning or getting off.
I wish the title had included these additional words "In some situations..."
I wish drivers (and now leaders of a company) would have more empathy toward people on the road that can be squashed like a bug.