Waymo — San Francisco, USA
Location
San Francisco, USA — urban network
Multiple locations across San Francisco
Description
Just days after the December 13 blackout mass failure (ROAM-2025-003), Waymo's San Francisco fleet experienced a second shutdown event. Multiple vehicles again stopped operating and blocked traffic. This repeat failure within the same week significantly amplified public and regulatory concern about fleet reliability. The second event suggested that the underlying infrastructure dependency issues identified in the blackout event had not been fully resolved, or that additional failure modes existed in the fleet management system.
Impact
Vehicles
10
Duration
120 min
Injuries
0
Fatalities
0
Traffic disruption: moderate
Emergency Response
Resolution: combination of remote restart and manual vehicle retrieval
Root Cause
fleet management / cloud system failure
Second fleet disruption within days of the blackout event; precise root cause of the repeat failure not fully disclosed. Likely related to residual infrastructure instability or fleet management system issues exposed by the earlier outage
⚠️ Unconfirmed / Under investigation
Systemic Issues
- Repeat failure within same week indicates systemic rather than isolated issue
- Fleet recovery procedures not robust enough to prevent recurrence
- Public confidence severely damaged by back-to-back fleet failures
- Pattern suggests fundamental resilience architecture gaps
Regulatory Action
Contributed to ongoing CPUC and SFMTA reviews initiated after the December 13 blackout. San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin called for stricter fleet resilience requirements.