San Francisco Power Outage Stopped Waymos Dead In Intersections

Robotaxi maker Waymo has been in hot water recently, thanks to its cars' habit of conveniently not noticing the bright flashing stop signs on school buses. It turns out, though, that Waymo cars have an opposite issue that's just as bad: When faced with an intersection without functional stop lights, it seems Waymos just freeze and put on their hazards. The city of San Francisco discovered this issue over the weekend, when a major power outage in the city left packs of autonomous cars just sitting in intersections, gumming up traffic for the humans. 

San Francisco's power outage, which is still ongoing days after it began, started when a Pacific Gas and Electric Company substation caught fire in the city's Mission district. At one point approximately one third of PG&E's San Francisco customers were out of power, including many grids that operate traffic signals — signals that robotaxis apparently rely on. Humans may not be great at intersections that are suddenly without stop lights, but at least we know to treat the situation as a four-way stop. Waymo, according to Automotive News, apparently didn't teach its cars that same trick. 

Videos out of San Francisco show Waymo's autonomous cars just stopped, with their hazards on, in the middle of lanes and intersections. They don't seem to make any effort to get out of their predicament, or out of the way of drivers who can actually navigate a power outage — they're just sitting there, menacingly. Passengers stuck in those intersections, in those unmoving cars, couldn't even reach Waymo support by phone. Eventually, the AV operator gave up, and just paused service for the entire Bay Area. 

Power outages are a freak occurrence, sure, but roads are full of freak occurrences — anything that wants to operate a car should be equipped to handle unforeseen situations. This San Francisco outage is just a reminder that autonomous cars are still learning, still gathering data, and still not ready for the prime time. They're just getting all their practice on the same public streets that you drive and walk on, so you may be caught behind one as it learns to navigate something new.