Residents of northwest Atlanta's Buckhead neighborhood say that empty Waymo driverless taxis have been circling in droves in recent weeks, creating traffic and alarming bystanders.
"I think yesterday morning, we had 50 cars that came through between 6 and 7," a resident told Channel 2 Action News. "It's almost every little cul-de-sac in our area, so I think it's a problem," another resident told the station.
One resident placed a children at play sign in the road, allegedly causing about eight Waymos to become stuck on the residential street as they tried to turn around. The Independent has contacted the Alphabet-owned Waymo for comment.
The company has said it has addressed the routing behavior in response to community feedback. Waymo service arrived in Atlanta last June, one of 11 U.S. regions where the driverless ride-hailing cars operate. The service, which uses autonomous Jaguars outfitted with high-tech sensors, has exploded in popularity in recent years, but its rollout across the country has been marked with occasional glitches and issues.
This month, the company began a voluntary recall of about 3,800 robotaxis to fix software issues that risked the vehicles driving onto flooded roadways. In March, alarming video showed an empty Waymo in Austin stopped on the wrong side of a railway barrier as a train passed by. That same month, a Waymo in the city temporarily blocked an ambulance trying to get to the scene of a mass shooting. In January, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it opened a preliminary investigation after a Waymo struck a child, who was uninjured, near an elementary school in Los Angeles. In December, Waymo briefly suspended service in San Francisco during a power outage, as some of its cars appeared disoriented and caused traffic problems.
In October, a Waymo killed a beloved bodega cat in the city, outraging local residents. Waymo rival GM cut funding to its autonomous Cruise project in 2024, after the company's license to operate the robotaxis in California was suspended when a Cruise vehicle dragged a pedestrian along the road who had just been hit by a separate, human-driven vehicle. Elon Musk's Tesla has also joined the robotaxi race, debuting its service in June in Austin.
