SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — San Francisco leaders pressed Waymo officials on Monday about the company’s response to a major power outage in December that left driverless cars stalled in intersections and, in some cases, blocking emergency crews and public transit.
The outage, sparked by a fire at a PG&E substation, knocked out power to about a third of the city on Dec. 20 and triggered widespread traffic disruption as traffic signals went dark and robotaxis stopped in the roadway.
“We can even see fire trucks, and Muni buses stuck behind helpless Waymos,” observed Supervisor Bilal Mahmood, who co-led the hearing, as video was shown.
City officials cited Waymo data showing nearly 1,600 vehicle stoppages lasting at least two minutes during the outage. Officials said more than 60 Waymo vehicles had to be manually moved.
WATCH: Videos show Waymo cars stuck at San Francisco intersections during massive power outage
Waymo, the operator of driverless ride-hailing vehicles, was also impacted by the massive power outage in San Francisco.
Mahmood compared the technology to “Cinderella’s magical carriages,” but warned that “just like in the fairytale, we can now see that those carriages can turn into pumpkins at the drop of a hat.”
The Land Use and Transportation Committee hearing drew a packed City Hall chamber and an overflow room.
Outside, union workers and rideshare drivers rallied against Waymo, raising concerns about job losses and public safety.
“I’m not against technology,” said rideshare driver Joseph Augusto. “But we think we ought to have a say in how they’re implemented. There’s a very serious question whether they’re being implemented in a way that’s safe. I personally don’t think they’re safe.”
Inside the hearing, city emergency leaders described the impact on first responders during the outage.
VIDEO: 3 Waymo self-driving cars in ‘standoff’ cause traffic jam in San Francisco
The video shows three self-driving Waymo cars blocking a residential street after two of them appeared to have hit each other. The third seemed to have stopped when it sensed the others.
“Our personnel were already on scene,” said San Francisco Fire Department Deputy Chief of Operations Pat Rabbitt. “Waymo was within the avoid the area, encroaching on our scene and for safety reason, a firefighter from our department went to address the Waymo personally.”
During the hearing, Waymo officials took accountability.
“Waymo takes full responsibility for the communication gaps that occurred that evening,” said Sam Cooper, a program manager of incident response for Waymo.
The company also outlined changes it says are designed to prevent a repeat, including updates to fleet operations aimed at handling regionwide outages and surges in internal alerts. Chinmay Jain, Waymo’s director of product management, said the company can now send instructions directly to vehicles in a broad outage so they can respond more decisively at dark intersections.
“If there is a regionwide outage, we want to, we can now communicate to the fleet,” Jain said. “So in cases where they encounter these dark traffic lights they don’t even need to reach out to remote assistance.”
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