Waymo — San Francisco, USA
Location
San Francisco, USA — urban network
Multiple locations across San Francisco during PG&E power outage
Description
A widespread PG&E power outage in San Francisco caused mass paralysis of the Waymo robotaxi fleet. Over 20 vehicles became immobilized across the city, blocking traffic lanes and intersections. The outage disabled traffic signals and connectivity infrastructure that the vehicles depended on. Emergency services were severely impacted — first responders called Waymo's support hotline 31 times, spending a cumulative 2 hours and 36 minutes on hold waiting for assistance. The incident exposed critical dependencies on external infrastructure and revealed that Waymo's emergency response systems were wholly inadequate for a multi-vehicle simultaneous failure scenario. This was the first documented mass fleet failure event for a commercial robotaxi service.
Impact
Vehicles
20
Duration
180 min
Injuries
0
Fatalities
0
Traffic disruption: severe
Emergency Response
Resolution: manual vehicle retrieval one by one after power restoration
Root Cause
external infrastructure dependency
PG&E power outage disabled traffic signals and cellular/network infrastructure; vehicles entered safe stop mode but blocked traffic; fleet management system could not coordinate mass recovery; emergency response channels overwhelmed
✅ Confirmed
Systemic Issues
- Fleet has critical single-point dependency on external power and connectivity infrastructure
- No graceful degradation strategy for mass infrastructure failure
- Emergency response hotline completely inadequate for multi-vehicle events
- 31 calls from first responders with 2h36m total wait time is unacceptable
- Safe stop behavior (stop in lane) creates secondary hazards at scale
- No pre-coordinated protocol with city emergency services
Regulatory Action
SFMTA and CPUC launched reviews of robotaxi resilience requirements. San Francisco officials publicly criticized Waymo's emergency response capacity. Renewed calls for mandatory fleet resilience standards.