Waymo says can't avoid bike lanes because riders want to be dropped off in them

Cities that want to keep cars out of bike lanes should keep all cars out of them, autonomous or not, by ticketing them. But they don't, so taxis and delivery drivers stop in them. That's traffic enforcement's fault.

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).

I think this is a bigger factor for Lyft/uber where the passenger rating impacts the driver directly. Passengers are annoyed anytime their pickup isn’t directly in front of them on the street. They will down rate a driver that pulls into a legal spot farther away then a spot blocking a bike lane directly in front of them.

This is less of an issue for Waymo, because the passenger rating doesn’t mean as much except customer satisfaction with the service as a whole.

I don't really see this as a Waymo story(although they are a bad actor) because this kind of blockage is mostly a combination of urban design, infrastructure and norms. Traffic is experienced individually as "that guy cut me off" or "you parked in the bike lane" or "stop riding on the sidewalk" but the accidents and delays are about the times when two people both end up taking the same risk at a conflict point. Those are things that have to be addressed long before the incident, and some countries have done so, while others have not and prefer to displace it onto "individual responsibility", which doesn't change how people drive, it just favors being the biggest on the road and relying on insurance to cover the rest.

The principal thing that changes in this story is that Waymo centralizes the responsibility for the risk-taking, and therefore is easier to hold accountable than a horde of interchangable gig workers, impulsive teenagers, etc. When a Waymo car actually does damage, they don't enjoy the same cost structure as the rest of us. The probability is high that they reached a utilitarian conclusion on the bike lane issue favoring their current approach as "the best across all key metrics". Those metrics can be changed by enforcement, or by fixing the streets. They can use words like "unrealistic" but they are mostly speaking within a particular legislative and infrastructural reality. That reality can change if we expect it to, but it means going back on the individual-responsibility outlook.

I won't comment on the pick up / drop off situation, but another important scenario is right turns. In California, drivers are legally required to merge into the bike lane when making a right turn. This is for the safety of the bicyclists, to avoid the dreaded "right hook" collision.

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/

Kind of weird article. If you want cars to stay out of bike lanes, make them protected like in here in the Netherlands. But also why do people expect to be taken to a bike lane rather than a parking space?

Also seeing a lot of ignorance about cycling here in the comments. Would recommend some people to watch some Not Just Bikes videos. Building better cycle infrastructure is better for everyone, cars and cyclists included. Less people die, and cars don't have to deal with cyclists on the road. Ex https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8RRE2rDw4k

Waymo didn’t “say” this. Or at least the article this article references doesn’t claim they did.

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.

As a cyclist and a driver it’s not immediately apparent which Waymo behavior I prefer for passenger dropoffs/pickups.

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.

this is a pointer to https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2026/04/22/waymo-is-not-in-the-v...

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 “cars stopping in random places everywhere in any remotely urban area” thing has become a huge problem in general. It’s probably our clearest sign of the fundamental scalability problems of car-centric design.

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.)

We can keep autonomous cars out of bike lanes like we keep normal drivers, keep fining them for every incident. It’s not like they don’t keep the video evidence.

I can't wait to carry a set of orange cones on me at all times so that I can put any misbehaving autonomous cars in Road Jail. After all, expecting cyclists not to resort to vigilantism to keep themselves safe from billion-dollar companies is unrealistic.

>respect cycle lanes is “too high a bar”

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.

I thought the point of driverless cars is that they are supposed to be better than humans.

This should be excepted fork that goal. If this is accepted, what would be the next thing to be deemed unrealistic?

At least here in SF the ideal thing would be that any vehicle dropping off in the bike lane gets fined or ticketed. This includes Waymo, Uber, cabs, personal cars, whatever. In practice it's very rare to get a ticket for this, which is why customers expect it from both Waymo and Uber.

A simple yet almost hard to imemt solution (given the view of an outsider on most U. S. cities respect for bicycles) is to "just" provide actual, hard seperation for the bike lane.

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 think Waymo expecting people to avoid flipping Waymo cars and burning them is unrealistic.

Otherwise, you'd be doored during passenger drop-off.

There's no way to judge this without looking at any particular street.

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.

I've taken a clumsy crack at condensing the title into HN's 80 char limit. Better alternatives are welcome!

(Submitted title was "Waymo says expecting driverless taxis to stay out of bike lanes is unrealistic", but this leaves out the reason they give.)

We know how to keep cars out of bike lanes (curbs, barriers), and we already know that bike lanes co-located with on street parking is dangerous. We (well Americans) also don’t believe in creating pick up and drop off spots on our roads.

As a bicyclist I kinda agree with Waymo. Unless there is a strong separation (physical barrier) between the car lane and the bike lane, the rules of the road is that one always overtakes on the left; this implies that if a car is stopped, one has to overtake on the left. If the car is stopped within the bike lane, I can bike into the car lane and overtake. If the car is stopped in the car lane, well then I have to merge across two car lanes in order to overtake. I don’t stay in the bike lane because I could be doored, and my expectation is that the car could decide to drive into the bike lane to make room for overtaking traffic.

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.

As a pedestrian, I fear cyclists the most. Please do block the bike lane while I am getting in and out so cyclists won't hit me. I have been almost killed by cyclists many more times than cars. My office building hires someone with a sign to stand in the crosswalk in front of the building where cyclists almost never respect the crosswalk.

Cyclists here regularly ignore red lights and also go the wrong way on streets and even in bike lanes.

CAN you always avoid a bike lane? I don't think so. There's lots of shared bike lanes/right turn lanes, bike lanes that terminate unexpectedly, etc.

This article is about London, but it's a problem in SF too. The problem is that cities aren't made for ride sharing, robo or otherwise. If the cities actually wanted to make ride sharing less annoying they'd have designated drop off zones on streets and make an effort to build truly separate bike lanes. That requires actual work though, so very cities will proactively do this.

Isn't it illegal?

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.

Looks like busy times ahead for Cycling Mikey [0]!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CyclingMikey

I wonder if cities would want to create even more short term pick up and drop off points on the road for USPS, UPS, FedEx, DoorDash, Uber, Lyft, Waymo and other similar short term parking needs, this would mean removing some long term street parking options and potentially conflict with some bike lanes in some areas.

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?

Why is it when they can't make software solve a problem, they then basically blame the problem.

How do other countries solve this?

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.

This is the same Waymo that outright refuses to honor No Thru Traffic and No U-Turns signs in favor of “I was ticketed at coordinates xyz” reports. I assume eventually one’s going to get crushed by an oncoming train after willfully ignoring a No Turn On Red sign. Not only are they saying that unenforced laws are void, they’re also having people do ticketable things in order to collect enforcement data for others.

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.

This is ridiculous - passengers want to be dropped off in the zig zag lines either side of pedestrian crossing too, but that's illegal. Just because sneaky minicab drivers do it should not be justification for self driving cars - they need to be designed to obey the laws of the road.

I want Waymo to succeed but you don't do that by bending over to the passengers' whim!

To what extent is the data of these driverless vehicle companies available to external researchers?

Bicycles and automobiles should not share the same roads at all.

People need to understand that this is a corporate-friendly variation of, “there are no incentives for us to stop that outweigh the profits we make from the harm caused, and so we won’t.” A “fuck you and fuck off”, in other words.

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.

Completely fair, since city buses and nearly every other vehicle does the same.

The YouTube Channel "Not Just Bikes" calls these abominations 'Painted Bicycle Gutters'. They should be completely abolished in favor of multiuse pathways.

What the actual fuck? Customers' expectations shouldn't matter at all if the things they expect is illegal.

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...

Separated bike lanes. It is time.

This really makes me angry and more sympathetic towards the tyre extinguishers

Yeah screw them. Respect the rules of the road or GTFO.

And the AI peddlers are amazed why people seem to hate them. That right here is the answer.

bit of an absolutist argument in california. can't speak to the UK.

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.

Most of driving is being predictable to other drivers and pedestrians and cyclists. Waymos do that very well in their respective cities, and by programmed they mean the training set of drivers in that city

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

Eh. Just start removing bike lanes. They're destroying businesses and making life worse for everyone.

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?

So the real statement is "Following the law is unrealistic".

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.

Expecting bike riders to follow traffic laws is also unrealistic. This is why they often have a massively higher rate of fatalities, including in localities with good bike infrastructure.

Periodic reminder to the Americans..

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.

I live in the U.S.

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..."