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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

#461

Post by JohnTHaller »

rangestransform wrote: post #428
JohnTHaller wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw this recently when the lights were out at an intersection in Manhattan. People kept on driving and almost hitting pedestrians and cars. I called 911 and then directed traffic for 15 minutes until DoT came out and put up a temporary stop sign.

Odd that it was necessary, my mental model of manhattan is that it would become so slow and chaotic that it would be free reign for pedestrians to walk wherever

Driving up 6th Ave all the lights change in sync one after another, so that street kept moving. Unfortunately, cars kept moving even when the light would have been red and nearly hitting pedestrians and cross traffic.

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

#462

Post by bsder »

freejazz wrote: post #405
bsder wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem seems to be that the Waymo cars did exactly as you requested and treated the intersections like 4 way stops but kept getting displaced by more aggressive drivers who simply slowed and rolled. How many non-Waymo accidents happened at intersections during this time? I suspect more than zero given my experiences with other drivers when traffic lights go off. Apparently, Waymo's numbers are zero so humans are…

>The problem seems to be that the Waymo cars did exactly as you requested and treated the intersections like 4 way stops but kept getting displaced by more aggressive drivers who simply slowed and rolled. So, you're saying Waymo can't handle a regular 4 way stop sign given how everyone else on the road drives? That's not a problem?

Waymo cars handle 4 way stops just fine.

When traffic lights go out, that is supposed to be a 4 way stop with appropriate yielding of right-of-way. The problem is that most human drivers can't deal with even a simple, low-traffic stop sign 4-way-stop reliably, and these are complex 4-way-stops with lots of right-of-way changes when power is off.

For example, navigating intersections in San Diego during the blackout was a disaster with lots of accidents and that long predated Waymo.

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

#463

Post by raspasov »

rwoll wrote: post #3

Prior to reading the article, I assumed Waymos were stuck due to an Internet connectivity issue. However, while the root cause is not explicitly stated, it sounds like the Waymos are “confused” by traffic lights being out.

I live in SF, and drive alongside Waymos every day. Also, they park in my buildings garage, where they frequently cause major delays and blockages inside the garage.

I am pretty sure Waymo does not disclose how many human interventions they get. It would destroy their magic aura. A fancy RC car with self-driving experimental features is not very futuristic after all. By all the evidence, that’s what we observed when the internet went out. I don’t buy the 4-way stop explanation. Waymos handle 4-way stops just fine on an average day. I drive alongside them daily.

I’ve long suspected that they get many human interventions on the road, frequent enough that when the internet connectivity slowed down to a crawl across the city, Waymos could not get themselves unstuck from a variety of situations and simply just blocked the roads. That’s not a paragon of safety, nor is it “self-driving”. Self-driving cars were 10 years away in 2015, and in 2025, they are still 10 years away.

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

#464

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #130
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.

Waymos rely on remote operators to take over when the vehicle doesn't know what to do, and obviously if the remote connection is gone then this is no longer available, and one might speculate that the cars then "fail safe" by not proceeding if they are in a situation where remote help is called for and inaccessible. Perhaps traffic lights being out is what caused the cars to stop operating autonomously and try to pho…

Seems I was pretty much correct.

https://waymo.com/blog/2025/12/autonomously-navigating-the-r...

"Navigating an event of this magnitude presented a unique challenge for autonomous technology. While the Waymo Driver is designed to handle dark traffic signals as four-way stops, it may occasionally request a confirmation check to ensure it makes the safest choice. While we successfully traversed more than 7,000 dark signals on Saturday, the outage created a concentrated spike in these requests. This created a backlog that, in some cases, led to response delays contributing to congestion on already-overwhelmed streets."

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

#465

Post by freejazz »

bsder wrote: post #462
freejazz wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The problem seems to be that the Waymo cars did exactly as you requested and treated the intersections like 4 way stops but kept getting displaced by more aggressive drivers who simply slowed and rolled. So, you're saying Waymo can't handle a regular 4 way stop sign given how everyone else on the road drives? That's not a problem?

Waymo cars handle 4 way stops just fine. When traffic lights go out, that is supposed to be a 4 way stop with appropriate yielding of right-of-way. The problem is that most human drivers can't deal with even a simple, low-traffic stop sign 4-way-stop reliably, and these are complex 4-way-stops with lots of right-of-way changes when power is off. For example, navigating intersections in San Diego during the blackout w…

People roll through 4 way stop signs all the time

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

#466

Post by The_President »

Current driving model realism could be greatly improved with a few real world training styles to consider in order to offset the Austin Left Lane Hippie driver model:

- New Orleans taxi cab driver

- Houston gang banger

- Los Angeles traffic weaver

and most importantly,

- Saudi Arabia Toyota Camry driver and 360 drift hobbiest (with bonus 2 wheel tire change)

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

#467

Post by cindyllm »

The_President wrote: post #466

Current driving model realism could be greatly improved with a few real world training styles to consider in order to offset the Austin Left Lane Hippie driver model: - New Orleans taxi cab driver - Houston gang banger - Los Angeles traffic weaver and most importantly, - Saudi Arabia Toyota Camry driver and 360 drift hobbiest (with bonus 2 wheel tire change)

[dead]

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

#468

Post by The_President »

victorbojica wrote: post #21
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> miss the time when "confused" for a computer program was meant in a humorous way Not sure what about this isn’t funny. Nobody died. And the notion that traffic lights going down would not have otherwise caused congestion seems silly.

Not directly. But what about the emergency services not being able to reach their destinations? It stops being funny really fast

American cops, fire, and EMS will go upstream on a one way road, or use the sidewalk or the grass if they have to. The Blues Brothers film may even be the material used to train some of the more ambitious departments.
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