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.

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 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..."

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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.

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...

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

Separated bike lanes. It is time.

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).

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.

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?

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

I was visiting a city with Waymos for the fist time recently. Within 30 seconds of observing one I saw it perform a very unsafe maneuver, turning right on red without yielding to oncoming cars turning left with the right of way. It was onto a 3 lane street but still, the oncoming drivers sort of awkwardly slowed down to let the Waymo do its thing.

Was pretty surprising to see given how much I've heard about Waymos being good drivers. And that observation was just from the very first time I pulled up to a light and saw one.

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 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.

>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.

[delayed]