Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams • Hacker News Board

Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams

#151

Post by MBCook » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 7:40 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #138

MBCook wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it matter? Once you’re on public roads, you need to ALWAYS fail-safe. And that means not blocking the road/intersections when something unexpected happens. If you can physically get out of the way, you need to. Period.

> Does it matter Yes. OP is inferring Waymo's internal processes from this meltdown. ("Makes me think there are likely other obvious use cases they haven’t thought about proactively either.") If Waymo literally didn't foresee a blackout, that's a systemic problem. If, on the other hand, there was some weird power and cellular meltdown that coïncided with something else, that's a fixable edge case.

>If Waymo literally didn't foresee a blackout, that's a systemic problem.

I agree with this bit

> If, on the other hand, there was some weird power and cellular meltdown that coïncided with something else, that's a fixable edge case.

This is what I have a problem with. That’s not an edge case. There will always be a weird thing no one programmed for.

Remember a few years ago when a semi truck overturned somewhere and poured slimy eels all over the highway? No one‘s ever gonna program for that.

It doesn’t matter. There has to be an absolute minimum fail safe that can always work if the car is capable of moving safely. The fact that a human driver couldn’t be reached to press a button to say to execute that is not acceptable. Not having the human available is a totally foreseeable problem. It’s Google. They know networks fail.

Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams

#152

Post by justin66 » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 7:45 PM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #112

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Come the next Big One earthquake, all of San Francisco’s emergency services will be blocked by Waymos Were any emergency vehicles actually blocked? We have an actual failure here–step one is identifying actual failures so we can distinguish what really happened from what hypothetically could.

A fire truck can simply push the waymo out of the way.

It can’t push a block of gridlocked traffic that cannot move because of the dead waymos present out of the way.

Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams

#153

Post by Wowfunhappy » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 7:45 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #140

MBCook wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s clearly unacceptable. It needs to gracefully handle not having that fallback. That is an incredibly obvious possible failure. Things go wrong -> get human help Human not available -> just block the road??? How is there not a very basic “pull over and wait” final fallback. I can get staying put if the car thinks it hit someone or ran over something. But in a situation like this where the problem is fully extern…

> How is there not a very basic “pull over and wait” final fallback Barring everything else, the proper failsafe for any vehicle should be to stop moving and tell the humans inside to evacuate. This is true for autonomous vehicles as well as manned ones–if you can't figure out how to pull over during a disaster, ditching is absolutely a valid move.

If the alternative is that the vehicle explodes, sure. And since GP did say "final fallback", I suppose you're right. But if the cars are actually reaching that point, they probably shouldn't be on the road in the first place.

The not-quite-final fallback should be to pull over.

Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams

#154

Post by Polizeiposaune » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 8:52 PM UTC

duhast2020 wrote: post #120

BlackjackCF wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I was shocked by this. Blackouts in California aren’t some sort of rare event. I’m primed to expect rolling brownouts/blackouts yearly in the summer.

There haven't been rolling blackouts since 2001.

There were significant power shutdowns in California in 2019 (affecting millions of customers in aggregate); the reason for the shutdowns was different from 2001 (preemptive shutdowns when the risk of downed power lines starting wildfires was thought to be high) but the impact on customers is the same: no power for an extended period.

Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams

#155

Post by elzbardico » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 8:53 PM UTC

As a society, as a whole society, opposed to our narrow interests and point of views as typical affluent HN dwellers, do we really NEED this kind of shit?

Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams

#156

Post by w-ll » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 8:56 PM UTC

malfist wrote: post #146

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would just push them all out of the way with my fire truck, I mean one fire truck could probably clear 6-8 Waymos at a time, right?

Fire trucks are very expensive to be playing bumper cars with

True, but in a 'Big One' event i dont think we would care.

Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams

#157

Post by andsoitis » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 8:56 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #138

MBCook wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it matter? Once you’re on public roads, you need to ALWAYS fail-safe. And that means not blocking the road/intersections when something unexpected happens. If you can physically get out of the way, you need to. Period.

> Does it matter Yes. OP is inferring Waymo's internal processes from this meltdown. ("Makes me think there are likely other obvious use cases they haven’t thought about proactively either.") If Waymo literally didn't foresee a blackout, that's a systemic problem. If, on the other hand, there was some weird power and cellular meltdown that coïncided with something else, that's a fixable edge case.

> > Does it matter

> Yes. OP is inferring Waymo's internal processes from this meltdown. ("Makes me think there are likely other obvious use cases they haven’t thought about proactively either.")

No, I'm not inferring internal processes.

I'm guessing level of critical thinking.

When you are creating autonomous vehicles, one of the things that you want to risk assess and have mitigation for is what you want the vehicles to do in case the systems they depend on fail (e.g. electricity, comms).

Now, it could be that the team has anticipated those things but some other failure in their systems have caused vehicles to stop in the middle of intersections, blocking traffic (as per article).

I'm super curious to learn more about what Waymo encountered and how they plan to up their game.

Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams

#158

Post by reorder9695 » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 8:57 PM UTC

hodgesrm wrote: post #77

terribleperson wrote: post #19

In my experience, humans respond incredibly poorly to traffic lights being out. There's no sense or reason, just people deciding to drive across the intersection when they feel like it's okay. Presumably Waymo will make sure they can handle this situation in the future, but I'm not sure there's a really satisfactory solution. The way you're supposed to handle an intersection with no lights (treat it as a stop sign in…

> In my experience, humans respond incredibly poorly to traffic lights being out. My purely anectodotal experience is that the response is variable and culturally dependent. Americans tend to treat any intersections with a downed stoplight as a multi-way stop. It's slow but people get through. I've experienced other countries where drivers just proceed into the intersection and honk at each other. (Names withheld to…

Where I'm from (a relatively rural country) they just get treated like give way signs you'd have on a country road, the larger road generlly has priority but as it's not clear they'd be more cautious too.

Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams

#159

Post by quesera » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 9:03 PM UTC

malfist wrote: post #146

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would just push them all out of the way with my fire truck, I mean one fire truck could probably clear 6-8 Waymos at a time, right?

Fire trucks are very expensive to be playing bumper cars with

Modern fire trucks, and police cars usually, are built to be able to push vehicles out of the way. It's a very common need.

(Not an argument against Waymo doing better in this situation though!)

Re: Waymo halts service during S.F. blackout after causing traffic jams

#160

Post by sefrost » Sun, Dec 21, 2025, 9:03 PM UTC

MBCook wrote: post #93

From John Ripley on Mastodon: “Thought of the day, and I wish there were a way to get this to legislators: Come the next Big One earthquake, all of San Francisco’s emergency services will be blocked by Waymos.” I’m AMAZED they’re not designed to handle this better. This does indeed seem like a massive problem. “Oops we give up” right when things get the worst? How is this OK? I’ve been very impressed by Waymo’s more…

Surely if the Big One hits then all of the metropolitan areas on the West Coast would be gridlocked in scenes reminiscent of zombie apocalypse movies anyway? I guess we won't know until it happens for sure, but I can't imagine it would be easy for emergency services to get around with or without Waymo.