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Last weekend, Waymo came under fire after several of its vehicles were affected by a citywide power outage in San Francisco that left many of its vehicles stalled at intersections.
Waymo has since announced it will update software across its robotaxi fleet to better respond to outages, while also expanding its first responder engagement and emergency response protocols.
Saturday’s outage, which cut power to almost a third of the city, was caused by a fire at a substation. The incident resulted in “significant and extensive” damage, according to a report by utility provider PG&E.
As a result of the outage, many traffic signals ceased functioning, and several commuter train lines and stations were also affected.
Videos were posted on social media of Waymo vehicles stopped at busy intersections or stationary in lanes of heavy traffic.
Waymo responded to the incident, saying:
“The scale of the outage and the sheer number of disabled traffic lights were the primary contributors to citywide gridlock.”
As it currently stands, Waymo’s driver system, though largely fully autonomous, sometimes requests a “safest choice” confirmation to handle complicated four-way stops. Waymo said the outage created a “concentrated spike” in these requests, leading to a backlog and long response delays.
Waymo continued:
“We established these confirmation protocols out of an abundance of caution during our early deployment. While this strategy was effective during smaller outages, we are now implementing fleetwide updates that provide the Driver with specific power outage context, allowing it to navigate more decisively.”
It remains to be seen how Waymo’s updated software will respond to similar incidents at this scale.
While Saturday’s outage caused major disruption, there were no associated casualties, and Waymo has since resumed its robotaxi service in the Bay Area.
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