Seven Waymo robotaxis blocked traffic moving along 101 Potrero Avenue in San Francisco on Tuesday at 9:30 p.m. video of the incident was posted on Reddit and confirmation from Waymo.
While returning to Waymo’s city depot that evening, the first robotaxi of the series encountered a road closure with traffic cones. The only other route available to the vehicles was to take the freeway, according to a Waymo spokesperson. California regulators recently approved Waymo to operate its autonomous robotaxi service on San Francisco freeways without a human driver, but the company is still testing only on freeways with a human driver in the front seat. Waymo told TechCrunch that it is first prioritizing a safe and gradual scale of rider-only highway operations in Arizona before moving on to California.
After the road was closed, the first Waymo vehicle in the series exited the cone-blocked lane, followed by six more Waymo robotaxis. Then the human powered cars got stuck behind some of the robotic machines. shows a video posted online tired drivers getting out of their cars to physically move the cones out of the way so they can get past both the road closure and the Waymos gridlock.
Waymo told TechCrunch that it immediately dispatched its Roadside Assistance team to manually retrieve the vehicles, and that the entire event took no more than 30 minutes.
This isn’t the first time Waymo’s vehicles have caused road blockages, but this is the first documented incident involving a highway. Cruise, GM’s autonomous vehicle subsidiary, has come under scrutiny for multiple instances of its vehicles malfunctioning and impeding traffic, first aid and public transit. Of course, human drivers block traffic all the time, but city officials and first responders in San Francisco have expressed frustration both at not being able to access and move robo-taxis when they’re on the road, and the inability to issue traffic citations to vehicles. In San Francisco, there must be a driver in the car for a citation to be issued.
