Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams

What Happened

• During a major San Francisco power outage, many Waymo robotaxis stopped in place, including in intersections and travel lanes, causing localized gridlock and blocking bus routes in some areas.
• Reports from people on the ground conflicted: some saw many “dead” Waymos every few blocks; others mostly saw cars proceeding very slowly and timidly through dark intersections.

Root Cause Debates

• Two main suspected triggers:
  • Dark traffic signals confusing the autonomy stack.
  • Loss or degradation of connectivity for remote operators.
• Several commenters think it was a multi-system failure (power, cell, backend) rather than a single simple bug, but this is not confirmed in the thread.

Human vs AV Behavior at Dark Intersections

• Legally, dark signals in California are to be treated as all-way stops.
• Experiences diverge:
  • Some describe “absolute chaos” and near misses when lights go out.
  • Others report surprisingly orderly four‑way‑stop behavior, especially after the initial period.
• Commenters from Europe note that dedicated priority signs and fallback rules make outages more manageable there.

Safety, Fail‑Safe Behavior, and Emergencies

• One camp defends Waymo: stopping when uncertain is safer than “winging it,” especially given how badly some humans behaved.
• The opposing camp argues that stopping in the roadway is itself dangerous, especially for emergency vehicles; fail‑safe should mean “pull over safely,” not “freeze in place.”
• Many worry about correlated failures in disasters (earthquake, wildfire) where hundreds of AVs might simultaneously block routes.

Training, Teleoperation, and Edge Cases

• Out‑of‑distribution scenarios (blackouts, parades, weird parking, debris) are repeatedly cited as consistent AV weaknesses.
• People question why there wasn’t a robust “pull over and wait” final fallback for loss of remote assistance or infrastructure.
• Debate over whether citywide or frequent blackouts are “rare” enough not to prioritize, or an obvious scenario that should have been handled from day one.

Regulation, Transparency, and Comparisons

• Calls for:
  • Published disaster response plans for robotaxi fleets.
  • Explicit emergency requirements in operating licenses.
  • Lists of handled edge cases disclosed by regulators.
• Some note Tesla FSD reportedly treating dark lights as four‑way stops; others stress Tesla is still Level 2 and not directly comparable.
• A recurring subthread contrasts robotaxis with trains/buses and questions whether society needs large‑scale AV deployment at all.