{"id":469969,"date":"2025-12-25T03:29:20","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T03:29:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/469969\/"},"modified":"2025-12-25T03:29:20","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T03:29:20","slug":"waymo-explains-why-its-robotaxis-got-stuck-during-the-sf-blackout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/469969\/","title":{"rendered":"Waymo explains why its robotaxis got stuck during the SF blackout"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Waymo is shipping a software update to help its robotaxis navigate disabled traffic lights during power outages \u201cmore decisively,\u201d the company said Tuesday in a <a href=\"https:\/\/waymo.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/autonomously-navigating-the-real-world\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">blog post<\/a> that explains why its self-driving vehicles got stuck at intersections during a blackout in San Francisco this past weekend.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Waymo said the self-driving system in its robotaxis treats dead stop lights as four-way stops, just like humans are supposed to. That should have allowed the robotaxis to operate normally in spite of the massive outage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Instead, many of the vehicles requested a \u201cconfirmation check\u201d from Waymo\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/waymo.com\/blog\/2024\/05\/fleet-response\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">fleet response team<\/a> to make sure what they were doing was correct. All Waymo robotaxis have the ability to make these confirmation checks. With such a widespread outage on Saturday, there was a \u201cconcentrated spike\u201d in these confirmation requests, Waymo said, which helped create all the congestion caught on video.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Waymo said it built this confirmation request system \u201cout of an abundance of caution during our early deployment\u201d but that it is now refining it to \u201cmatch our current scale.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhile this strategy was effective during smaller outages, we are now implementing fleet-wide updates that provide the [self-driving software] with specific power outage context, allowing it to navigate more decisively,\u201d the company wrote.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The software update will add \u201ceven more context about regional outages\u201d to the company\u2019s self-driving software. Waymo also said it will improve its emergency response protocols by \u201cincorporating lessons from this event.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While a lot of focus has been placed on the instances where Waymo\u2019s robotaxis got stuck during the power outage, the company shared that its vehicles \u201csuccessfully traversed more than 7,000 dark signals on Saturday.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Techcrunch event<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cNavigating an event of this magnitude presented a unique challenge for autonomous technology,\u201d the company wrote. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Saturday\u2019s mess is the latest example of how Waymo is still uncovering unforeseen issues with its software and its approach to designing a reliable fleet of self-driving vehicles. The company already had to ship multiple software updates to make its robotaxis wait for stopped school buses, which prompted a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigation and <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/12\/05\/waymo-to-issue-software-recall-over-how-robotaxis-behave-around-school-buses\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">led to a recall<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Waymo is shipping a software update to help its robotaxis navigate disabled traffic lights during power outages \u201cmore&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":269941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[10414,64,21356,67,132,68,17228],"class_list":{"0":"post-469969","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-autonomous-vehicles","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-robotaxis","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us","14":"tag-waymo"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115778090790804830","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}