There’s a modern twist on the ol’-fashioned Western movie trope debuting in San Francisco — and, quite literally, no one’s behind the wheel of it.
With General Motors-owned Cruise shuttered, Google’s Waymo is vying for supremacy over SF’s robotaxi space. (Amazon’s Zoox is a contender, no doubt, but it’s years behind in offering public readership; when those toasters inevitably find themselves on our roads, best believe we’ll have a heyday.)
It’s only natural that as that dominance grows, new words and phrases around the company’s feel of robotaxis will evolve in tandem. Case and point: A “Waymo standoff” is now a thing.
In an Instagram reel uploaded by UNILAID, by way of [at]viralhog (ew, what a name), a flock of Waymo robotaxis was found seemingly incapacitated by a parked Amazon delivery truck doing its rounds. The truck, which was parked with its blinkers on in the middle of the San Francisco road, caused a Waymo traveling behind it to stop. That Waymo caused another one to stop behind it; another Waymo robotaxi traveling up the street on the opposite side found itself suffering the same, stationary fate … which caused a Waymo driving up behind it to also stop.
Within a matter of minutes, four Waymo robotaxis were at a standstill because of the Amazon delivery truck. As a woman filming the video put it: “It’s a Waymo standoff.”
“What’s happening, folks?” the woman filming questions. “Who’s gonna win?”
By this time in the short video, a small group of passersby gathered to see what the commotion was about. Traffic from human-driving vehicles was also building up. And the “Waymo standoff” phrase was quickly volleyed between those present.
(Newfound colloquialism aside, the Instagram reel perfectly encapsulates the irony of how mundane randomness can effectively render one of humankind’s most advanced technological achievements utterly useless.)
Before the video ended, no winner was declared. But if we’d wager here, I think the real winner here is a new vernacular entering into the cultural zeitgeist.
