Waymo's Vehicles Did Not Respond Well During a Blackout

Engineering the software that keeps self-driving cars operational involves incorporating a number of factors, from the presence of pedestrians to weather conditions. Traffic signs are also critically important; an autonomous vehicle that ignores stop signs or speed limits is going to do a lot more harm than good. But what happens when a ubiquitous part of urban driving suddenly goes away?

That’s what many of Waymo’s autonomous vehicles experienced over the weekend in San Francisco. As Mission Local’s Joe Rivano Barros reported, Waymo ultimately made the decision to pause its services in the city after a blackout caused traffic lights to go dark — and prompted a number of Waymo vehicles to stop in the middle of the road, leading to traffic jams throughout the city.

As for what was responsible for Waymo’s vehicles stopping in their tracks, The Verge’s Richard Lawler looked into some possibilities, including potential issues connecting with wireless networks. Lawler also noted that Waymo’s vehicles experienced something similar during a blackout in Austin.

It’s possible that we won’t ever know the specific reasons why the blackout affected Waymo’s vehicles so dramatically. Companies are likely to keep the secrets of their propriety self-driving vehicles’ software under wraps, for obvious reasons. There is one interesting wrinkle, however: Elon Musk posted on X that Tesla’s Robotaxis were operating without issues during the blackout.

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By Sunday, Waymo announced that they would resume service. “Yesterday’s power outage was a widespread event that caused gridlock across San Francisco, with non-functioning traffic signals and transit disruptions,” a spokesperson for the company, Suzanne Philion, told Mission Local. “While the failure of the utility infrastructure was significant, we are committed to ensuring our technology adjusts to traffic flow during such events.”

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Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…