NHTSA demands robotaxis better follow first-responder instructions
Waymo robotaxis in Austin have accumulated $9,325 in parking fines since the company began operating in the city in 2024, according to records obtained by The Wall Street Journal through an open-records request. The company has paid $7,433 across 83 citations, while $1,892 remained unpaid as of July 15, a Journal analysis found.
Austin is one of the largest emerging markets for robotaxis in the U.S., and Waymo operates more than 300 driverless vehicles there — nearly half its Texas fleet. The fines represent a small fraction of the $6.3 million Austin collected in parking fines in fiscal year 2025, but parking mishaps have become a visible friction point as Waymo and other robotaxi companies scale services across the country.
Waymo’s parking fines range from $20 to $519. The company’s largest single fine came from a Sept. 11, 2024, citation for parking in a spot reserved for disabled drivers. The company has also been cited 64 times for parking in a tow-away zone, 13 times for not paying a metered spot, and nine times for double parking.
“We do not expect different treatment [in regard] to ticketing,” a Waymo spokesman said.
Parking enforcement officers in Austin issue civil citations against a specific vehicle, not the driver. The city uses a public database to track complaints, often from citizens, about robotaxi parking violations. Between trips, some Waymo vehicles use publicly available parking spaces to avoid creating unnecessary traffic while staying near potential passengers. The company also uses an Uber operations depot in Austin to park, charge, and clean its vehicles; Waymo declined to comment on how many vehicles can park there at a time.
Some incidents have required police intervention. On Jan. 11, 2025, a Waymo vehicle stopped on the side of a busy road in northern Austin and partially blocked an active railroad track, leaving the police department with no choice but to have the vehicle towed, an officer reported. In another instance, a Waymo stopped in a marked disabled parking spot while waiting to pick up a passenger outside an elementary school.
A resident reported that in April, a Waymo idled for more than five minutes in front of the entrance to a church parking garage during a Sunday service, preventing parishioners from entering and exiting. “There needs to be some way to get them to move,” the resident wrote.
In two cases, in 2024 and 2025, citations for impeding traffic were dismissed through plea bargain. “Waymo reviews all received citations and may engage with the court to address and resolve them, including contesting cases on their merit if we believe they were issued erroneously,” a company spokesman said.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration sent a letter on July 8 demanding that autonomous-vehicle developers enable robotaxis to better follow instructions from first responders. The letter said robotaxis often fail to recognize where they can stop without getting in the way. The NHTSA letter applies to all autonomous vehicle developers operating in the U.S.
Despite the parking violations, robotaxi companies including Waymo and Tesla say their vehicles are statistically safer than human drivers. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, in an independent analysis of Waymo’s driverless operations over 50 million miles in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin, found that Waymo’s crash involvement rate was 68% lower than that of human drivers.