Empty miles

Deadheading is the industry word for driving with nobody in the car: heading to the next rider, or waiting by moving.

A 2026 write-up of a large California sample of Waymo miles found that only about half the miles had a passenger. The rest were empty. That is not a rounding error. It is a second car’s worth of traffic for every car that is carrying someone.

San Francisco wrote thousands of parking tickets to those cars in 2025 and 2026, for bus stands, bike lanes, and no-parking curbs, on the order of a million dollars in fines. The curb is fighting back.

If waiting legally is hard, the car circles. Circling is traffic. Nia’s van still cannot stop, and now the lane is full too.

The tempting mistake is to think an empty car is free because nobody is paying a driver. Empty miles are paid for by everyone on the street.

That is what lets you ask what happens to the land the cars no longer need.