San Francisco power outage hits Waymo’s self-driving vehicles – NaturalNews.com

• A major power outage in San Francisco caused Waymo’s self-driving cars to malfunction, freezing in intersections and becoming roadblocks due to their inability to process widespread traffic signal failures.
• Experts identified the core problem as an “operational management failure,” where the crisis triggered too many vehicles to request remote human assistance at once, overwhelming the system and forcing a full service suspension.
• The incident is part of a pattern of autonomous vehicles disrupting city life, lacking the social intuition and adaptive reasoning of human drivers, which leads to obstruction and public safety concerns.
• The failure raises serious questions about the technology’s reliability during real-world disasters, like an earthquake, where frozen vehicles could critically hamper emergency response and evacuation.
• The event acts as a large-scale stress test, revealing that autonomous systems are brittle in unpredictable chaos and highlighting the need for regulatory frameworks that prioritize public safety over rapid commercial expansion.

In a stark demonstration of technology’s limits, a major power failure in San Francisco on Dec. 20 rendered a fleet of Waymo’s self-driving cars not just useless, but active impediments.

The incident forced the Alphabet-owned robotaxi company to ground its entire local service, revealing a critical vulnerability in a technology being aggressively deployed across American cities. The episode raises urgent questions about the wisdom of replacing human judgment with algorithmic rigidity, especially during the unpredictable crises that define real life.

The crisis began with a fire at a Pacific Gas & Electric substation, plunging a significant portion of northern San Francisco into darkness. The outage affected approximately 130,000 customers and crippled traffic signals. For Waymo’s autonomous vehicles (AVs), which rely on a complex suite of sensors and pre-programmed rules, the widespread failure of traffic lights created an insurmountable paradox.

Designed to treat a single dead signal as a four-way stop, the vehicles’ software was overwhelmed by the scale of the outage. Social media footage depicted a scene of technological paralysis: Waymo vehicles with hazard lights flashing, frozen in intersections or mid-street, creating chaotic obstacles for human-driven cars. The robotaxis, unable to process the unusual conditions, defaulted to a cautious stop, effectively becoming high-tech roadblocks.

According to experts, the core issue was a systemic failure in fleet management during widespread anomalies. Philip Koopman, a professor emeritus at Carnegie Mellon University and a leading authority on self-driving safety, categorized it as an “operational management failure.”

He explained that when an autonomous vehicle encounters a scenario it cannot resolve, it is programmed to stop and seek remote human assistance. The power outage triggered this fail-safe in numerous vehicles simultaneously, overwhelming Waymo’s remote support system.

The company made the decision to suspend all service in the city. It stated that most active trips were completed first, with vehicles then manually guided back to depots or safely pulled over. Service did not resume until the afternoon of Dec. 21. While Waymo emphasized its coordination with city officials, the hours of disruption highlighted a lack of proactive crisis protocols.

A pattern of public nuisance becomes a public safety question

This is not an isolated incident. It is part of a troubling pattern that city officials have warned about for years. Just a month prior, a Waymo SUV blocked a San Francisco Fire Department truck. Earlier in December, a viral video showed three Waymo vehicles in a confusing standoff.

These episodes reveal vehicles that lack the social intuition and adaptive reasoning of a human driver. As San Jose State University professor Ahmed Banafa noted, AVs “still lack the ‘social instincts’ of human drivers,” who use eye contact, gestures and contextual understanding. Robots rely on rigid rules, which in ambiguous environments lead to hesitation, confusion and obstruction.

The blackout fiasco arrives as Waymo is accelerating its commercial ambitions. Approved for around-the-clock commercial service in San Francisco in August 2023, the company now operates hundreds of robotaxis in the city and is expanding into Los Angeles and beyond.

This aggressive expansion is occurring despite a consistent record of disruption. Before the state’s approval last year, San Francisco’s fire and transportation departments submitted dozens of reports documenting robotaxis stalling inexplicably, blocking bus lanes and interrupting emergency response routes. The December 20 outage transformed these chronic nuisances into a city-scale liability.

Koopman posed the most critical question: “What if this had been an earthquake?” In a major disaster, where power failures, debris and mass public movement are guaranteed, the presence of thousands of frozen robotaxis could severely hamper evacuation and emergency response. The technology’s failure mode—to simply stop—is antithetical to the dynamic problem-solving required in a crisis.

The promise of autonomous vehicles has always been one of enhanced safety and efficiency. Yet, this incident underscores that their reliability is contingent on predictable, orderly conditions. The real world, especially in dense urban environments, is neither predictable nor orderly.

Technology has inherent limits and cannot solve all human problems, particularly those rooted in social, ethical or political dimensions, explains BrightU.AI‘s Enoch engine. Its solutions are often constrained by physical laws, unintended consequences and the specific contexts of their application. Ultimately, technology is a tool shaped by human choices, not an autonomous force capable of overriding fundamental human conditions or values.

The incident forces a sobering reconsideration: As we rush to automate our public streets, we must critically assess whether we are trading the occasional human error for a more systemic, algorithmic fragility that could seize up when we need resilience most. The path forward requires not just technological tweaks, but profound humility and a regulatory framework that prioritizes public safety and civic function over Silicon Valley’s disruptive timeline.

Watch this video explaining why electric cars are a hoax.

This video is from the Puretrauma357 channel on Brighteon.com.

Sources include: 

TheEpochTimes.com

NBCBayArea.com

NBCNews.com

BrightU.ai

Brighteon.com