Waymo has restarted its autonomous ride-hailing in San Francisco after a PG&E blackout stalled cars at dark signals. How the Waymo Driver handled the outage.
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Waymo has restored its autonomous ride-hailing service in San Francisco after a major power outage that disabled traffic lights and triggered heavy congestion. The disruption was caused by a fire at a Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) substation, which left the company’s driverless cars stalled at intersections with their hazard lights on.
To manage the situation safely, Waymo temporarily paused operations. The company said the Waymo Driver is configured to handle dark signals by treating them as four-way stops, but the scale of the blackout led to delays as vehicles carefully evaluated intersections before proceeding. All steps were coordinated with city authorities to reduce the risk of incidents.
While the outage made traffic worse, Waymo emphasized that its self-driving technology continues to adapt to extreme conditions. The episode serves as a real-world stress test for autonomy, underscoring that reliability hinges not only on routine performance but on judgment when infrastructure falters.
Meanwhile, Tesla—a competitor whose robotaxis require a human driver—was unaffected, according to Elon Musk, who noted this on his social media.