Waymo’s autonomous vehicles have become a familiar sight in cities like San Francisco and Phoenix, where passengers can hail one without a human driver behind the wheel. Some people are intrigued, others are not so sure they want to trust the technology, but something we know for sure: when they get stuck, clearing them can be surprisingly difficult… as we’ve seen in recent weeks and months.
When the cars malfunction, hesitate, or stop unexpectedly, cities are discovering that dealing with a driverless vehicle can be slower – and sometimes far more complicated – than dealing with a human driver. In San Francisco, clearing a stalled robotaxi can take up to an hour, according to data reviewed by Fast Company. The process often requires transit dispatchers to contact Waymo’s call center or wait for remote operators to intervene. In some cases, police officers or Waymo staff must physically move the vehicle.
The delays have created a new category of traffic problem: the driverless obstruction. Reports from San Francisco’s Transit Management Center show that stalled Waymo vehicles have periodically blocked bus lanes, intersections, and public streets. In one complaint logged by a transit operator, a robotaxi blocked traffic in both directions. The operator wrote that “Waymo contacted and was ZERO help.” Another report described dispatchers trying to reach the company but repeatedly getting routed through a call center that could not resolve the problem.
Sometimes the issue escalates to police involvement. “This is not something police should be involved in,” a San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency official told Fast Company. “But sometimes the situation requires it.”
In 2024, San Francisco created a dedicated dispatch category called “Driverless Car Incident.” The change came shortly after Waymo removed precautionary safety drivers from its vehicles and launched fully driverless service. The city’s Transit Management Center now receives regular calls about stalled robotaxis. On average, resolving those incidents takes about 20 minutes, according to an analysis by Mary Cummings, an autonomous-vehicle researcher and engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
In busy areas, even short delays can disrupt buses, trains, and dozens of commuters. Those burdens become far more serious during emergencies. In December, a partial blackout in San Francisco knocked out traffic lights across parts of the city. Without functioning signals – and with communications networks strained – many Waymo vehicles were left stalled and confused in intersections. According to city filings, emergency services made more than 31 calls to Waymo’s first-responder hotline, spending a combined two hours and 36 minutes trying to reach the company. One staff member remained on hold for 53 minutes, most of that time waiting for assistance. During the outage, the company later said there were more than 1,500 stoppage events involving its vehicles.
The incident exposed a key vulnerability in the system. When Waymo vehicles encounter complicated situations, they often require assistance from a remote team of human operators to guide their software. If communication systems fail – or call centers are overwhelmed – Waymos struggle to reconnect with those remote teams. The company says it is working to address those challenges, and that it has made changes to ensure first responders and transit officials receive priority assitance.
Source: Inc.
