Waymo vs zombies: how the robotaxis behave in Zombie SF
If you have spent time in San Francisco lately, you have watched driverless cars glide through the Tenderloin. So the streets in Zombie SF have them too, along with a few other things on wheels.
What drives the streets
- Waymo-style robotaxis: white electric SUVs with the roof sensor dome.
- Zoox: the boxy, bidirectional robotaxi with no steering wheel.
- Teslas on "FSD".
- Muni buses, long, slow and very heavy.
- The Powell St cable car on its own track.
Traffic follows the actual street network from OpenStreetMap, including which streets are one-way. That matters in the Tenderloin, where most streets are one-way, so the cars flow the way they do in real life.
The robotaxis can see you, but not the zombies
Every vehicle in the game scans the road ahead. If you step into its path, it slows down and waits for you, just as an autonomous car is designed to stop for a pedestrian. Cars also queue behind each other.
What they do not do is stop for zombies. Their sensors don't classify the undead as pedestrians, so the cars drive straight through them. When that happens the kill feed calls it out: WAYMO ROADKILL, ZOOX ROADKILL, TESLA FSD ROADKILL, MUNI ROADKILL and CABLE CAR ROADKILL, and you get the points.
How to use traffic as a weapon
- Find a street with traffic. In the Tenderloin most streets are one-way, including Eddy, Ellis and O'Farrell, so you always know which direction the cars come from.
- Cross to the far sidewalk with a group of zombies following you.
- Wait at the curb. The zombies step into the lane, and the next car doesn't brake for them.
- Don't stand in the lane yourself. The car stops for you, and so does your free crowd control.
The cable car is the most reliable version of this: it runs on a fixed line up Powell, and you can ride it. See the survival guide for more tactics.
Why build it this way?
Partly because it is funny, and partly because it is a real San Francisco experience in 2026 to share a crosswalk with a car that has no driver. A robotaxi that politely yields to you while mowing down the undead felt like the right amount of satire. The way the cars follow the real street graph is covered in how we built the map.