A new viral Facebook Reel has sparked debate after showing a Waymo autonomous vehicle involved in a “dooring” incident on a busy San Francisco street. The clip, shared on Facebook, shows the Waymo stopped in the middle lane with one of its doors open, while the right-hand lane is clearly marked as taxi-only.
According to what can be seen in the video, a Waymo passenger appears to open the door to exit the vehicle while traffic is still flowing. At the same moment, a vehicle travelling along the taxi-only lane strikes the open door, causing visible damage. The incident has quickly drawn attention online, with many commenters blaming human driving standards rather than the autonomous vehicle itself.
The original Reel description claims that “when you get doored, it’s always the other car’s fault” and uses the incident to highlight perceived issues with human drivers compared to autonomous systems. However, the footage itself raises more complex questions about passenger behaviour, stopping positions, and lane discipline, particularly where restricted lanes such as taxi-only corridors are involved.
The video was shared on Facebook and has since circulated widely across social media platforms, reigniting ongoing discussions around robotaxis, road responsibility, and urban traffic design in San Francisco.
DM News Commentary
This clip is a good example of why “dooring” incidents are rarely as black-and-white as social media captions make them out to be.
From a professional driving perspective, responsibility doesn’t automatically sit with the moving vehicle just because it made contact. Opening a door into live traffic — especially next to an active lane — is a classic cause of dooring collisions, and in many jurisdictions, the person opening the door (or the vehicle operator allowing it) can be found at fault.
There’s also the taxi-only lane to consider. If that lane was legitimately in use by an authorised vehicle, then the focus shifts even more towards where the Waymo stopped and why a passenger was allowed to exit into flowing traffic. This isn’t really a “human drivers can’t drive” moment — it’s more a reminder that autonomous vehicles still rely on human passengers making safe decisions.
For taxi and private hire drivers, especially those working busy city centres, this incident underlines a familiar reality: unexpected door openings are one of the most dangerous and costly hazards on the road, whether the vehicle is human-driven or autonomous.
Autonomy might reduce some risks, but it doesn’t eliminate poor judgement at the kerbside.
If this were a conventional taxi driven by an experienced driver, he would have warned the passenger not to open the door until it was clear.
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