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

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

#161

Post by Coneylake »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #109

Neither a lack of traffic lights nor cell service should cause the Waymos to stop in the middle of the road, that’s really troubling. I can understand the system deciding to pull over at the first safe opportunity, but outright stopping is ridiculous.

Perhaps this is by design. Cruise had a failsafe system that detected a collision and decided to pull over but by pulling over it dragged a person underneath the car (or something close to this scenario). Maybe this dumb failsafe was designed not to repeat Cruise's mistakes?

Certainly a better way to handle this would have been to pull over. I think stopping where ever it happened to be is only acceptable if the majority of sensors fail for some reason

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

#162

Post by cgriswald »

MBCook wrote: post #151
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This isn't to disagree with your overall point about proper emergency mitigation and having humans available.

> 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.

While the cause is unusual, this is really just three things that everyone absolutely should be programming into their autonomous vehicles: accidents, road debris, and slick conditions.

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

#163

Post by alistairSH »

bigyabai wrote: post #124
pjc50 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also means that their claims of "autonomy" are fraudulent, like most "self driving" cars. A car which depends on powered infrastructure outside the car to drive is not autonomous.

Nearly all humans depend on powered infrastructure outside their car to drive it. You're describing a shortcoming of all 21st century navigation.

Horse manure. If the power goes out, I can still drive. Including navigating intersections. Same for my cell phone.

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

#164

Post by will4274 »

Zambyte wrote: post #11

We should put self driving cars on tracks so they are always out of the way and have easily predictable behavior. Maybe we can even link the cars together for efficiency or something like that.

It's tedious to see these same sarcastic comments on every self driving car story. Yes. Buses and trains exist.

When you link the cars together, they usually switch to a hub that's a 10-15 minute walk from your destination instead of your destination and the compartments are occasionally shared with unstable and violent people, which while possibly "efficient" in some metrics, are downsides that many people would rather avoid. Personal compartments are a real differentiating advantage.

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

#165

Post by scoofy »

I live in SF in an area that was affected by the blackout. I saw four different Waymos stopped. Three were in the middle of the street. One was along the curb.

My personal opinion. With number of cars I saw flying through blacked out intersection -- major intersections -- I'm very happy that Waymo had a fail safe protocol for such a "white swan"-style event (that is extremely rare, but known-to-happen event).

I saw a damn Muni bus blow through an minor intersection, and was just shaking my head. So many dumbasses behind the wheel, it's miracle no one was killed, and everyone seems to be concerned with "the flow of traffic."

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

#166

Post by scoofy »

MBCook wrote: post #132
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seems like a power outage is a an obvious use case Waymo should have foreseen We have zero evidence a power outage wasn't foreseen. This looks like a more complex multi-system failure.

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.

A fail-safe is EXACTLY blocking roads at intersections without power, not proceeding through intersections without power. It's much safer to be stopped than to keep going. I honestly wish the humans driving through blacked out intersections without slowing down in my neighborhood last night actually understood this.

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

#167

Post by will4274 »

cmurf wrote: post #85
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen how human drivers deal with traffic lights and emergency vehicles at the same time? Waymo made the right call to suspend service, they will probably update their playbook to suspend service during power outages in the future.

Humans certainly are imperfect and make mistakes, but will iterate with the understanding that doing nothing at all and blocking emergency vehicles is untenable. At the least we will fall back to incentive/disincentive social behavior. People will supply ample friendly and unfriendly advice to try to unwind the knot. Waymo should lose their operating license based on this experience. It's self-evidently dangerous to…

Developing new technologies has risks. In the absence of anything really bad actually happening, I think we can solve the problem by adding new requirements to Waymo's operating license (and all self driving cars) rather than kneecapping the technology.

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

#168

Post by alistairSH »

SoftTalker wrote: post #114

"San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie warned residents to stay off the roads unless they needed to travel." Sure, I go out and drive around on the roads for no reason all the time. I'll avoid doing that during the crisis.

I used to go out in the snow on purpose (DC metro). Mostly have them to myself, it was always fun.

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

#169

Post by andsoitis »

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 haven't been rolling blackouts since 2001.

Waymo operates in more places than the Bay Area. Phoenix, AZ, for example, had widespread power outages in Aug 2025 due to Haboob and Monsoon.

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

#170

Post by rcxdude »

Zambyte wrote: post #141
rcxdude wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're happy to put those tracks on every road, sure. I wonder why no-one's bothered with that before.

Sorry if you're playing in to the joke, I can't tell. Streetcars / trams were widely deployed before they were ripped out for the car, driven by lobbyists interested in selling cars. Wondering why no one has bothered with that is starting from a false premise, because people have bothered with that.

I'm well aware that there are multiple options for public transport, but none of them are actually as flexible or as far reaching as cars/taxis. To me this 'but why not trains' on every article about self-driving cars is a tired meme that fails to address that these are not equivalent options. I might as well say "Well, why don't we get rid of these expensive rails and fixed timetables and just lay down some cheap concrete and let people navigate how they want" in just as condescending a tone and be equally as unconvincing.
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