People living in Buckhead, up in northwest Atlanta, Georgia, have had an odd couple of weeks. Nearly every morning, they wake up to a parade of empty Waymo robotaxis aimlessly circling their cul-de-sac with no passengers, no pick-ups, nothing but an endless loop of silent electric cars with nowhere to be.
“I think yesterday morning we had 50 cars that came through between 6 and 7,” one neighbor on Battleview Drive told WSB-TV.
Neighbors reportedly caught 13 Waymo cars passing through in the span of ten minutes. The cars crept down the quiet street, looped the dead end, and rolled right back out, only for a fresh batch to show up a minute later. This went on for hours.
One neighbor had had enough and stuck a Step2Kid safety sign in the street, thinking it might scare off the cars. It worked, but not in the way they hoped. The Waymos stayed out, but now nobody could actually drive through.
Waymo told Fox News Digital that its cars cluster in spots where people tend to request rides, but they are not supposed to be a nuisance. These cars operate via Uber and are fully driverless.
Frustrated, neighbors reached out to Waymo, city leaders, their local reps, and even the Georgia DOT. Waymo came back with a statement to Fox News Digital: “At Waymo, we are committed to being good neighbors. We take community feedback seriously and have already worked with our fleet partner to address this routing behavior.”
They did not explain why the cars suddenly picked a quiet cul-de-sac as their hangout in the first place.
Internet Reacts to Georgia’s Atlanta Waymo Invasion of Buckhead Cul-De-Sacs
The puns arrived first, and they arrived quickly. “They’re getting Way Mo traffic than usual?” one person wrote. Another landed the sharpest summary of the moment: “We were promised flying cars. Instead, we got giant Roombas roaming the suburbs.”
The tactical advice came in hot, too. “Place a traffic cone on the hood and they won’t move. This will force someone from Waymo to come out to rescue the car. Do it enough times and they will stop it,” one commenter suggested. Someone else explained what they believe is actually happening: “They’re using side roads as staging areas while waiting for calls. It saves them money from paying to park somewhere. Welcome to driverless dystopia.”
The safety questions landed hardest. “Look at how fast they are going down residential streets. Ridiculous,” one person wrote. Another connected the sign incident directly to the bigger picture: “Can’t handle a neon sign but sure, let’s trust them near school buses.”
So far, all Waymo will say is that the issue is “already addressed.” But for the Georgia residents staring down a new line of robots every morning on Battleview Drive, answers are still in short supply. It’s a street where kids gather for the bus and where nobody ordered a late-night robotaxi invasion.
