Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

When a driver receives a parking ticket or moving violation, they’re personally responsible for resolving it and any liability that comes with it. Their license may be docked points or even suspended. But when a driverless vehicle receives a traffic ticket, who’s responsible?

This question is becoming more pressing as driverless taxis expand to new cities. In early September, the first wave of driverless taxis from Wayve took to the streets of London, where they’re currently being put through their paces.

Wayve is now operating 15 driverless taxis in London as part of Uber’s rideshare fleet. Ride-hailers can opt in for a chance at a Wayve driverless vehicle, though the odds are low.

London is a notoriously complex city to drive in, and autonomous vehicles (AVs) haven’t yet been approved for use on public roads without a trained and licensed safety driver. The driver is liable if something goes wrong, since they’re responsible for taking over if the software makes a mistake. However, as the technology advances, the UK government will likely allow AVs to operate without a safety driver. Several U.S. states are already allowing this.

The U.S. has little legislation governing AVs or their operating systems, since the technology was developed and sold before laws and regulations could catch up. In states like Texas, Waymo and other companies have already deployed thousands of driverless cars onto public streets alongside human drivers.

The safety driver in Wayve's London cars exists largely to assume liability for the vehicle. Waymo cars have no one behind the wheel to take on that responsibility. Instead of a human, a single software system dictates what every car does.

Over the past 2 years, Waymo’s driverless cars have racked up $9,325 in parking tickets around Austin, Texas. In San Francisco, they earned over 600 tickets in 2024 alone, worth more than $65,000.

A single human driver would have lost their license long before accruing that many tickets. But software doesn’t hold a driver’s license, so it can’t have one suspended. It never had to pass a driving test or earn a license to operate a vehicle on public roads, yet thousands of these vehicles descend on a single city at peak rideshare times.

If a company had a driver in their fleet who racked up thousands of dollars in tickets, that driver would be let go. Yet despite costing the company thousands of dollars in parking tickets annually and making frequent mistakes, the software continues to be allowed on the road.

Liability and responsibility have always been a point of contention in AI spaces. As far back as 1979, IBM’s training manual stated that a “computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision.” Yet software is trusted to manage thousands of vehicles without being held accountable for its mistakes. There is no governing body testing its driving ability or requiring software engineers to fix the errors it makes.

The companies managing AVs have been allowed to self-govern. They’ve only announced recalls after major or frequent collisions, not for illegal parking or other errors. But they’re liable for the actions their software directs their cars to make, and if that software is making mistakes, they must be held responsible for improving it so it doesn’t repeat the same mistakes.

Unlike Waymo, Wayve’s self-driving technology relies on an AI learning model rather than mapping, though it’s unclear whether this makes it any better at parking. Wayve co-founder and chief executive Alex Kendall says the company has “done a lot [of] work to make sure the car can park in appropriate spots that are socially acceptable,” hopefully helping them to avoid parking-related issues such as tickets. The UK government continues to restrict AVs on London roads until a fuller evaluation can be completed. If Wayve’s vehicles have as much trouble parking as Waymo’s in the U.S., the government will hopefully step in to hold the company liable.

Driverless vehicles may be part of our future, but the danger they currently pose cannot be allowed to continue without swift recourse.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waymo

https://insideevs.com/news/802842/waymo-robotaxi-austin-parking-tickets/

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/sep/03/london-first-self-driving-taxis-for-hire-wayve-uber?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1

https://news.sky.com/video/driverless-taxis-are-now-available-in-london-but-are-they-safe-13580653

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2026/02/17/waymo-overseas-human-assist-wasnt-secret-but-is-it-secure/