I was talking about a case where there are cars behind me. And it's "unnecessarily" only legally, but most drivers understand this as a driving etiquette in congested traffic.

Picture two streets joining together, both with long lines of vehicles in them. One of them has right of way, the other one doesn't. When everyone drives "passively aggressively" (like Waymo is being described to), an opening never shows up, and "yielding" cars wait until the rush hour clears up, causing people in that street to go bonkers.

This happens quite frequently in many old European cities I've been to in the rush hour or when anything unusual happens (because there are no alternative routes and streets are tight: like a crash or broken-down car ahead might cause this with lots of traffic). Not sure how much it applies to Waymo and SFO, but I can imagine it certainly happens in some areas.

Ah I see, like merging on to a freeway. In Washington the law is actually to zipper merge (take turns) so I would expect Waymo to do that.

It’s a good question and I’m not sure what Waymo would do there. Based on my limited experience I expect it would navigate that situation correctly. The bias is to go (safely), not wait for perfect conditions.

Thanks for the term as well ("zipper merge") — that's what I was referring to.

Yeah, I really wonder how it'd fare in that case while differentiating between "there are just 3 cars there, no need to yield" and "it's an infinite inflow of traffic, better yield to one car"?

My Waymo ride was in LA. They aren’t operating on freeways there yet. Maybe this is one of the challenges.

Apparently they do operate on freeways in San Francisco so maybe someone who has taken a ride there can share their experience.