Residents in Buckhead say Waymo’s driverless cars have turned their neighborhood streets into waiting areas, with neighbors on Battleview Drive reporting that dozens of the vehicles have been rolling through a small cul-de-sac each day. Videos taken by residents showed 13 Waymo cars moving through the street in 10 minutes, and one neighbor said 50 cars passed between 6 and 7 one morning.
The complaints come after neighbors said the pattern worsened over the last two weeks. They said the cars were driving in circles, apparently waiting for someone nearby to request a ride. One Battleview resident said the traffic felt unsafe because families, small children, animals, pets and children heading to the bus stop were all in the area. Another said she had seen two near misses involving a neighborhood cat and a dog on a leash.
Deborah Childers said the cars were also cutting through Glenridge Woods Townhomes, which she described as private property, and that she first noticed the traffic there in the last week. She said the pattern was not just a few stray vehicles. “It’s enough of them that it’s bothersome. It’s not like one. It’s like three or maybe four. They do the same loop,” Childers said. “I’m just hoping that Waymo will only come in our neighborhood when they’re called, like an Uber, you know, not use our neighborhood as a holding area or a training ground.”
Residents on Battleview Drive said they tried putting traffic signs in the road to deter the cars, but that did not stop them. At one point, a neighbor said, eight Waymos were stuck trying to figure out how to turn around. The same behavior was also reported on nearby Fernleaf Circle, adding to frustration in an area where residents said construction is already making streets harder to navigate. “When you combine the Waymo traffic and construction that’s going on, it’s just kind of mass chaos,” one neighbor said.
The local backlash has also exposed how little control neighbors say they have over the routing. One Battleview resident said, “We never got a response. We reached out to local representatives. They kind of passed the buck to the next person.” The resident added: “Then we’ve tried state representatives, haven’t heard back from them. We tried GDOT, haven’t heard back from them. We really just don’t know what to do about it.”
Waymo said Thursday that it had already addressed the routing behavior. “At Waymo, we are committed to being good neighbors. We take community feedback seriously and have already addressed this routing behavior. With over 500,000 weekly trips across the country, our service is proven to significantly reduce traffic injuries and improve road safety. We value our relationship with Atlanta residents and remain focused on providing a seamless, respectful, and safe experience for riders and residents alike,” a company spokesperson said.
The clash comes as the company is facing broader scrutiny over its technology. Waymo is recalling more than 3,700 vehicles over a software issue that could cause them to drive into floods, a separate problem that underscores how quickly trust in autonomous vehicles can be strained when the software misreads real-world conditions. The company has said its service is built to improve road safety, but for Buckhead neighbors, the immediate question is simpler: whether driverless cars will stay on the streets where they are wanted and stop using private neighborhood roads as a place to wait.
