Waymos blocked roads and caused chaos during San Francisco power outage

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Many of Waymo's self-driving cars blocked streets of San Francisco during a mass power outage Saturday and forced the company to temporarily suspend service, raising questions about the cars' ability to to adapt to real-world driving conditions.

Social media users posted videos of Waymos as they encountered traffic lights that were off. Some cars’ hazard lights blinked and they abruptly stopped in place, failing to cross the intersection. Others stopped in the middle of the intersection, forcing other cars to swerve around them.

The power outage affected 130,000 homes and businesses in San Francisco, nearly one-third of the customers served by Pacific Gas and Electric Co. It was caused by a fire at a power substation, officials said. On Monday, the utility company was still working to restore power to thousands of customers.

Waymo operates hundreds of robotaxis in San Francisco, but it wasn't clear how many cars were on the road at the time of the outage. The company paused service Saturday evening and resumed it Sunday afternoon.

The road-blocking problems that prompted Waymo to suspend its service during the weekend power outages revived concerns that city officials raised about the robotaxis periodically coming to abrupt and inexplicable stops before California regulators approved them as a commercial service in August 2023.

Tyler Cervini, who lives in the Mission District, said he was calling an Uber to bring him to the airport since his train station was not operating due to the outage. At the traffic light outside his apartment, there were five Waymos crowding the intersection, he said.

He got into his Uber right outside where all the Waymos were, but his driver "had to swerve through them to pick me up," Cervini said. “He seemed extremely frustrated by what was going on.”

Waymo said that its vehicles are designed to treat nonfunctioning traffic signals as four-way stops, but the scale of the outage created unusual conditions.

“While the failure of the utility infrastructure was significant, we are committed to ensuring our technology adjusts to traffic flow during such events,” a Waymo spokesperson said. “Throughout the outage, we closely coordinated with San Francisco city officials.”

The company said most active trips were completed before vehicles were safely returned to depots or pulled over.

Philip Koopman, professor emeritus at Carnegie Mellon University and expert on self-driving vehicle safety, said the scale of the traffic disruption was concerning. Autonomous vehicles are generally programmed to come to a stop if they are unsure or confused on what to do and ask for remote assistance, he said.

Koopman said it did not appear to be a software failure in the cars themselves, but an “operational management failure” where the company did not have the capability to deal with so many robotaxis needing assistance at once.

Waymo should have suspended service earlier — as soon as their vehicles started having issues, he said.

“If you have thousands of robotaxis that stop, you have a problem,” he said. “What if this had been an earthquake? You would have thousands of robotaxis blocking the road.”

Waymo, which started as a secret project within Google in 2009, has steadily expanded its operations in San Francisco while also introducing its robotaxis into other California cities such as Los Angeles and San Jose, in addition to other U.S. markets in Texas, Arizona, Florida and Georgia.

In the months leading up to the approval from the state’s Public Utilities Commission, San Francisco's transportation and fire department leaders flagged dozens of reports about robotaxis coming to standstills, blocking traffic.

Besides inconveniencing other drivers trying to get to their destinations, the road-blocking robotaxis were viewed as a possible impediment in life-threatening emergencies when firefighters and police officers were responding to calls for help.

Waymo’s fleet of robotaxis is on pace to complete more than 14 million rides this year, more than tripling from last year, according to the company.

California is considering expanding approval for heavy-duty autonomous trucks and vehicles carrying up to 15 passengers to operate, a move opposed by unions representing truck drivers.

Shane Gusman, director of Teamsters California, called the Waymo disruption “a clear warning that turning our roads and lives over to autonomous vehicles is premature and dangerous.”

“We live in a state where blackouts, wildfires, floods and earthquakes affecting power and roadways are all too common," Gusman said in a statement. “AVs stalled in streets and intersections threaten the safety of AV passengers, and others on the road, and inhibit emergency response when we need it most.”

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Ding reported from Los Angeles.

Cars wait at an intersection with no working traffic lights from power outages, in San Francisco, Saturday, Dec. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Pacific Gas & Electric crews walk around the substation building at 8th and Mission streets, in San Francisco, Monday, Dec. 22, 2025, as they work to repair infrastructure that failed and caused massive power outages across the city. (Jessica Christian/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)

A Waymo vehicle sits idling at an intersection with no operating traffic lights due to power outages, in San Francisco, Saturday, Dec. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

CAIRO (AP) — Iranians began to regain internet access on Wednesday after authorities ended a monthslong shutdown. But users said service was slow and spotty in some areas, with apps like YouTube and Instagram heavily restricted, as they were before the cutoff began during nationwide protests in January.

Authorities justified the outage as a military imperative after the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28. Their decision to lift some restrictions this week came as negotiators appeared to be closing in on a more permanent truce. But many Iranians feared access could be cut off again at a moment's notice.

Internet tracking company Netblocks said Iran’s connectivity, which measures the ability of devices to connect to the internet, is at around 86% of capacity from before the cutoff. Internet analysis firm Kentik said internet traffic, which measures the amount of data transferred and is a good illustration of usage, was at around 40%.

Amir Rashidi, an Iranian cybersecurity analyst, said there were still widespread disruptions. “It's too early to say the shutdown is over,” he wrote on X.

Iran’s roughly 90 million people have been cut off from the internet for most of 2026, one of the world’s longest and strictest national shutdowns. Young people with online careers saw their incomes evaporate. Job losses and the closure of online businesses added to the war's steep economic costs.

The cutoff made it difficult for Iranian families to communicate through months of unrest and war. At some points, phone lines were also cut off, though they were later restored.

A woman living in Tehran said that for months she was barely able to speak to her sons living abroad. She couldn't believe authorities had restored access, saying she had assumed they would find some justification to prolong the outage.

A taxi driver said service was restored but weak. He expressed hope it would improve so he could use messaging apps with family and friends. Both spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

Prices spiked during the shutdown, with residents in Tehran at times paying around $7.50 per gigabyte. Prices are back down to around $2.25 for 30 gigabytes, roughly where they were before the protests.

Even then, Iran tightly controlled access to popular social media sites, leading many to rely on virtual private networks, or VPNs. The cost of those workarounds soared during the shutdown, making them unaffordable for many as the economy was battered.

Businesses have started reappearing online, announcing their return with posts on sites like Instagram and Telegram.

A gamer and tech influencer in the central city of Isfahan said the shutdown had caused him to lose a lot of his audience on YouTube and Instagram, where he had spent years building up a large following.

“All my views and interactions are way down. I’ve been erased from the algorithm,” he said in a voice note sent by WhatsApp, adding that his internet connection was still slower than before the shutdown.

“The situation is such that many content producers have had their income reduced to zero, have moved on to other jobs, or have been forced to sell their equipment to survive,” he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Iranian authorities first shut down the internet in January during mass anti-government protests that were eventually stamped out in a violent crackdown. Thousands of people were killed and tens of thousands detained.

That cutoff was just starting to ease when the government imposed a complete internet blackout after the start of the war, when U.S. and Israeli strikes killed Iran's supreme leader and other top officials.

The government faced criticism for the prolonged shutdown, which caused even more harm to an economy devastated by inflation, strikes on key industries and a U.S. blockade on Iranian ports.

The internet cutoff cost an estimated $30-40 million daily, with indirect losses likely twice that much, a member of Iran’s Chamber of Commerce, Afshin Kolahi, told a local newspaper last month. About 10 million people have jobs that depend on internet connectivity, according to Communications Minister Sattar Hashemi.

Iranians still had access to a national net, but that has a far narrower reach, and users complained of poor service and heavy censorship. Senior government officials are given SIM cards granting them access to the global internet. Under pressure, the government expanded access to the SIM cards to some professions during the shutdown.

A woman checks her smartphone while sitting on a bench along a sidewalk in northern Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, May 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)