What began last Saturday as a technical glitch in San Francisco’s electrical infrastructure became a stark litmus test for the future of autonomous mobility. Waymothe robotaxis company owned by Alphabet, had to temporarily suspend its services after a massive power outage which led to traffic delays and had their autonomous vehicles disableds in different parts of the city.
The incident resulted from a fire at a Pacific Gas and Electric substation that caused “significant and extensive” damage. Around 130,000 customers were affected by the power outageleaving entire neighborhoods like the Richmond District, the Presidio and downtown in the dark. Without functioning traffic lights and disruptions to public transport, the city’s infrastructure collapsedwhich highlights the current limits of autonomous driving technology in the face of unforeseen major events.
Although Waymo’s system is designed to treat turned off traffic lights as four-way stops because the extent of the outage resulted in unexpected behavior. Residents of the city reported seeing several vehicles Waymo stopped in the middle of the street, blocking the flow of traffic on critical arteries like Turk Boulevard, as CNBC reports.
Waymo spokeswoman Suzanne Philion said units remained stationary longer than usual to check the status of intersections, contributing to traffic congestion. Given the deterioration of the situation, the company decided to take a “proactive” approach pause operations from Saturday night to Sunday lunchtime.
As Mayor Daniel Lurie deployed police patrols and emergency response teams to deal with the chaos, the competition responded quickly. Elon Musk stated on the social network X that Tesla services were not affected by the blackout; However, experts point out that Tesla does not operate a driverless robotaxis service in San Francisco Your vehicles require constant human supervision. Unlike Waymo, Tesla does not have permission from California regulators to conduct commercial testing or services without the presence of a safety driver.
This event reignited the debate about preparing cities for full automation. Bryan Reimer, a research scientist at MIT, told CNBC that this incident shows that the technology is not yet the “robust solution” that many believe, emphasizing that power outages are predictable events for which there are human backups. According to Reimer, that is Autonomous vehicle developers should be held responsible for “traffic chaos.” in the same way as a human driver.
The crisis in San Francisco leaves a clear lesson: The path to a driverless future depends not only on advanced algorithms, but also on urban infrastructure that can support them. Even though Waymo has resumed operations, public distrust remains high: surveys show two-thirds of drivers in the US are still afraid of autonomous vehicles.
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