Waymo Updates Vehicles to Better Handle Power Outages - But Still Faces Criticism (cnbc.com)
- Reference: 0180463111
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/12/27/0645206/waymo-updates-vehicles-to-better-handle-power-outages---but-still-faces-criticism
- Source link: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/25/waymo-pauses-robotaxis-in-sf-again-due-to-flash-flood-warnings-on-christmas-day.html
Ironically, two days later Waymo paused their service again in San Francisco. But this time it was due to a warning from the National Weather Service about a powerful storm bringing the possibility of flash flooding and power outages, [2]reports CNBC . They add that Waymo "didn't immediately respond to a request for comment, or say whether regulators required its service pause on Thursday given the flash flood warnings." And they also note Waymo still faces criticism over last Saturday's incident:
> The former CEO of San Francisco's Municipal Transit Authority, Jeffrey Tumlin, told CNBC that regulators and robotaxi companies can take valuable lessons away from the chaos that arose with Waymo vehicles during the PG&E power outages last week. "I think we need to be asking 'what is a reasonable number of [autonomous vehicles] to have on city streets, by time of day, by geography and weather?'" Tumlin said. He also suggested regulators may want to set up a staged system that will allow autonomous vehicle companies to rapidly scale their operations, provided they meet specific tests. One of those tests, he said, would be how quickly a company can get their autonomous vehicles safely out of the way of traffic if they encounter something that is confusing like a four-way intersection with no functioning traffic lights.
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> Cities and regulators should also seek more data from robotaxi companies about the planned or actual performance of their vehicles during expected emergencies such as blackouts, floods or earthquakes, Tumlin said.
[1] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/12/21/2048257/confused-waymos-stopped-in-intersections-during-san-francisco-power-outage
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/25/waymo-pauses-robotaxis-in-sf-again-due-to-flash-flood-warnings-on-christmas-day.html
The problem with AI is... (Score:2)
It only handles the situations it's modeled for. Anything new fucks it over. By its very nature, it cannot handle anything new.
Re: (Score:2)
That is also its strength. Applies to any form of automation: Once it is configured for something, it will handle a specific situation forever. Humans get tired, bored, arrogant, reckless, drunk, etc., automation does not.
The tech in Waymo and other has a long way behind it. When I studied CS 35 years ago, I talked to somebody doing her Master's thesis on "2 lane left turn on an intersection with traffic lights" for self-driving cars. The tech was pretty impressive back then, but had obviously not much chan
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FSD is fundamentally different from other kinds of automation.
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It has some reasoning capability that's why it's called AI and not just programming of rules. The thing is Waymo uses very little AI compared to Tesla.
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No, it's called AI as a marketing term.
Serious problem (Score:4, Insightful)
I live in SF. The power outage was probably a blessing in disguise, causing this highly visible failure when it was "just" a power outage.
Waymo [1]failed spectacularly [fox9.com] at handling this.
Real emergencies not uncommonly also cause power failures. So at the exact the time you really need, say, firetrucks to get around or get people out of somewhere, all these fucking robots become bollards.
They really need a true fail-safe mode tested to actually work for these things, pay to have the human capacity on the backend to handle emergency conditions, or be limited in numbers such that they can't shut down a city. Maybe this needs federal oversight, there are some obvious national security implications to a private facility that can remotely shut down mobility in major metros.
And it can always get [2]worse [wikipedia.org], if you've read that novel...
[1] https://www.fox9.com/news/san-francisco-power-outage-waymo-vehicles-block-intersection
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(novel)
Re: (Score:2)
So what? This tech is in its last optimization phase. In a few years it will be able to handle expected but rare situations as well and be generally better than an average human driver.
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Spectacularly?
> Footage posted by TikTok user @brahmsstan and obtained by Storyful shows several Waymo vehicles stalled at an intersection in the Mission District neighborhood.
> While the Waymo Driver is designed to treat non-functional signals as four-way stops, the sheer scale of the outage led to instances where vehicles remained stationary longer than usual to confirm the state of the affected intersections. This contributed to traffic friction during the height of the congestion.
I dunno man. Even a s
Re: (Score:2)
100% agree. People have been fucking that situation up for ages.
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There was a lot of chaos, and it took Waymo six hours to clear it all.
I personally saw it at 5th and Market - 3 Waymos were blocking all three northbound lanes. Human drivers can let a firetruck through until the road is hopeless. The robots just block them.
Maybe mandatory human overrides on these things. If the theft risk it too great, well, maybe they aren't ready for prime time.
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Eh. Waymo will be fixed and it will be programmed to "safe" itself in case a widespread event occurs. Probably by driving until it finds a place to pull over and wait for the event to resolve.
If you look at development of ANY new large-scale technology (trains, cars, planes), it's always the same. You'll have hilarious early failures, catastrophes, unforeseen confluences of events leading to disasters, etc. But eventually all the glaring bugs get fixed.
Re: Serious problem (Score:2)
Yes, this outage sure was a blessing as it showed another situation which wasn't properly handled, but that's the beauty of robocars, you just fix it with one update over the complete fleet of cars and use the incident as another startingpoint to think of other situations you might have not thought about and fix those before they happen and create cars that are much safer as human drivers (in general). Yes, there will then still be situations which robocars won't handle properly, but those can be fixed one
Re: (Score:2)
> Real emergencies not uncommonly also cause power failures.
Real emergencies also cause complete breakdown of any taxi service, Waymo or otherwise, as well as most private transport too. Nothing learned about this will apply to "real emergencies". You're not going to be calling your Waymo during the apocalypse.
Wrong kind of regulations (Score:1)
There are 3 basic kinds of regulations:
Safety, Ethical, and Busybody.
Number of customers is NOT something that the government should be deciding. The reasonable number of autonomous vehicles on the city streets is exactly something that the market should decide, not government.
Should it ramp up from a low number to something higher? Yes. But ramping up the number is something government does POORLY. Government works slowly because it is supposed to deal with the dangers and unethical issues, not busines
Re: (Score:3)
It does have a legitimate purpose. For one thing the driver is 50% or more of the cost of any taxi ride. Thus with some competition (Tesla Robotaxi is coming soon, wherein any Tesla own can pimp out their own car) the price to consumer will reduce. Second, most women I know in San Francisco prefer a Waymo over an Uber or Lyft. That's not anecdotal evidence:
[1]https://www.fox10phoenix.com/n... [fox10phoenix.com]
[2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Third, and most importantly, autonomous vehicles are safer than human frivers, who caus
[1] https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/safety-fears-drive-women-prefer-driverless-rideshare
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE3fD_3cGOQ
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> Tesla Robotaxi is coming soon
You can't possibly still believe that nonsense. [1]Here's clue for you. [wikipedia.org]
> Second, most women I know in San Francisco prefer a Waymo over an Uber or Lyft. That's not anecdotal evidence
...
Do I really need to explain that one?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autonomous_Tesla_vehicles_by_Elon_Musk
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Pretty sure most of the women you know take the bus.
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It absolutely 1000% is when you have something like autonomous vehicles which is something without precedent since we've had roads and motor vehicles. We all accept the government decides so much already of what happens on the roads via law, police, maintenance, design, why is this one thing off limits now?
Government works as fast as it wants to operate or is allowed to operate. I think California has been rather quickly reactive to how they've handled self driving cars and part of why we can even have th