Waymo stuck behind parked church cars

Waymo’s robo-taxis are a very common sight in San Francisco these days, and I’ve gotten pretty used to riding them. In general they’re really good drivers, but sometimes it still gets into a situation that would never happen to a human.

In San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood the left lane on some multi-lane streets is used on Sunday morning as parking space for church goers (1). Somehow our Waymo yesterday wasn’t aware of this convention and decided to stop behind the last car in the left lane as if it was waiting for a traffic light or something like that - not realizing the car was parked. It happened twice on one ride. The first time it figured it out on its own pretty quickly, but the second time it just stood behind the parked car waiting - I guess for that car to start moving.

I called Waymo support from the in-vehicle console, explained what was up, and they quickly unblocked us. Overall it probably was at most a 5 minute delay, but it made it obvious that you still need a human to figure out certain traffic situations.