Imagine you’re running behind on an otherwise typical morning. The alarm didn’t go off, you hit snooze one too many times, or the kids just wouldn’t get moving.
Just in time, you rush out the door and jump in the car. You breathe a sigh of relief as you put your car in gear.
Then a self-driving vehicle parks right in front of your driveway, blocking you in.
That’s what one woman says keeps happening in her neighborhood. And she’s over it.
Earlier this week, Shelbae (@notshelbae) posted a TikTok about the self-driving Waymo vehicles that she says “terrorize” her neighborhood.
In the TikTok, Shelbae captures a Waymo driving down a residential street. The vehicle pulls up parallel to a driveway, making it impossible for another car to enter or exit.
She says this happens multiple times every day.
Shelbae also says that she’s written to the company on three separate occasions to no avail. So she took to TikTok to call it out.
“So let’s try tagging them,” she says.
Shelbae didn’t immediately respond to an email from the Mary Sue sent Thursday morning.
What is Waymo?
Waymo, formerly known as the Google Self-Driving Car Project, offers driverless taxis. It’s basically an Uber or Lyft without the potentially problematic driver.
After several years of development, Google put its first vehicles on American roads in 2015. It spun the company out to create Waymo the following year. Both operate under the umbrella of parent corporation Alphabet.
Today, it operates in several major cities in the United States and is undergoing testing in other locations.
While the technology is an exciting development, Waymo has not been without problems. There have been crashes, recalls, and protests.
Some places require a human driver to be in the vehicle as a backup in case of malfunction or conditions in which the current technology isn’t up to the task of handling. Others, like Los Angeles, California, where Shelbae purportedly lives, allow Waymo to operate completely autonomously.
Therein lies the problem, she says.
“It’s not like you can say, ‘Hey, you need to move,’ because there’s not a human driver,” she says in the TikTok. “And you either get trapped in your driveway or you can’t get in your driveway.”
An autonomous neighborhood menace
Shelbae says she knows why the Waymos keep coming around. The vehicles are dropping off and picking up patrons of a nearby mall.
She claims that Waymo hasn’t worked out a drop-off and pickup place at the mall, so the company uses her neighborhood instead.
According to her post, they’re technically supposed to move when another vehicle approaches, and sometimes they do. Other times, she says, they don’t.
She’s hoping that the power of social media will spur the company to rectify the situation.
Judging by the response, there’s a chance that Waymo will take note. Her TikTok has been viewed 1.7 million times and generated 3,700 comments.
People offered Shelbae many suggestions for dealing with the autonomous vehicles.
“Do the tires go flat like an ordinary car,” one wrote facetiously.
Others suggested more legal options. “Call the cops on them for illegally parking,” one offered. “The company will get ticketed and have to pay for the tow truck. I’m sure enough of those will make them change the program.”
Shelbae says the Waymos don’t block driveways for long, maybe three minutes. But, as multiple commenters pointed out, that three minutes could be the difference between life and death. Or simply whether you have time to stop for a latte.
@notshelbae @Waymo ♬ original sound – NOTSHELBAE
Waymo did not respond to an emailed inquiry sent to Google’s press office.
Update May 29: A spokesperson for Waymo shared how the vehicle in the clip was waiting for passenger pickup, “which is limited to a couple of minutes. If the vehicle detects that it’s blocking someone, it will move.”
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