Waymo’s robotaxis had a rough Fourth of July. In San Francisco they ran out of charge, snarled traffic for hours, and one drove over a lit firework and caught fire.
Over the holiday weekend, driverless Waymo cars became the story instead of the technology. In San Francisco, dozens stalled in the gridlock after the Golden Gate Bridge fireworks. Several ran out of battery, and crews had to tow them away, NBC Bay Area reports. One resident said he sat in traffic for two hours. People climbed out of their cars to yell at the empty vehicles.
‘Are we on fire, dude?’
It got stranger. At least two Waymos drove over fireworks lit in the road. One caught fire on Connecticut Street, CBS News reports. A passenger, Rose Peterson, filmed her Waymo rolling over a lit firework at a four-way stop. “Are we on fire, dude?” a rider asks on the clip, shared by Mashable. Waymo told the outlet there were no injuries or damage. It has since contacted the rider.
San Francisco fire crews fielded more than 500 calls that night. The trouble reached beyond California, too. In Atlanta, drivers filmed themselves stuck behind three Waymos frozen at an intersection. It was the latest in a run of viral clips from the city.
The company’s explanation
Waymo pointed to the crowds. A spokesperson told Business Insider what went wrong. Severe congestion, a flood of travellers, and unplanned road closures near the fireworks disrupted operations. Some cars drove off once traffic cleared. Others ran flat while idling, and crews towed them. No one got hurt, the company said. The vehicles stayed fully autonomous throughout.
Why it matters
Critics say the pattern is the point. Safety advocates, including attorneys who sue over crashes, put it bluntly. Stalled fleets and cars driving into hazards, they argue, would ground a bus line. They want the NHTSA and city regulators to set hard benchmarks before the fleets grow. Waymo counters that it leads the field on driverless miles. Its supporters add that the firm’s per-mile safety record still beats human drivers.
The timing stings. Waymo is racing to add cities, even as rivals like Zoox gain ground and robotaxis elsewhere drop their human safety monitors. A holiday meltdown like this is not the advert a fast-growing robotaxi business wants. As Peterson put it, the car should be “more sensitive of anything that can come into the path of the road.”
