tech
December 26, 2025
Waymo explains Saturday’s self-driving shutdown in San Francisco.
When a substation fire cut off electricity across the city, Waymo SUVs stuck at malfunctioning stoplights quickly became another headache, and now the company is explaining it as an issue of too many remote operator assistance requests:
TL;DR
- A city-wide power outage caused by a substation fire led to Waymo SUVs getting stuck at dark stoplights.
- Waymo vehicles are designed to treat dark signals as four-way stops.
- The outage caused a significant increase in remote operator assistance requests for confirmation checks.
- This led to a backlog and response delays, contributing to traffic congestion.
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