Driverless Cars ABANDON Passengers Mid-Crisis

Waymo’s driverless robotaxis failed spectacularly during San Francisco’s power outage, grinding to a halt in traffic and exposing the dangerous fantasy that unproven autonomous vehicles can replace human judgment in critical situations.

Story Highlights

• Waymo robotaxis stalled in San Francisco streets during power outage, creating traffic chaos
• 130,000 customers lost power after substation fire, revealing autonomous vehicle vulnerabilities
• Tesla’s human-supervised service remained operational while fully driverless Waymo failed
• MIT expert warns cities aren’t ready for mass deployment of autonomous vehicles

Autonomous Vehicle Technology Fails During Crisis

Waymo’s fully autonomous robotaxis demonstrated their fundamental weakness during San Francisco’s massive power outage on December 20, 2025. Multiple vehicles stopped dead in traffic as the city’s electrical infrastructure collapsed, with resident Matt Schoolfield witnessing at least three Waymo cars “just stopping in the middle of the street” between 6 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. The failures occurred despite Waymo’s claims that their vehicles treat non-functional traffic signals as four-way stops, proving the technology cannot handle real-world emergencies.

Bad look for Waymo. Lots of reports out of SF where the power outage caused its robotaxis to stop in traffic, causing jams.

On the other side, the Tesla robotaxi fleet (& personal FSD users) continued the service without hiccups.

Not clear if Waymo vehicles themselves are… pic.twitter.com/DexuAh0Bpt

— Jaan of the EVwire.com ⚡ (@TheEVuniverse) December 21, 2025

California’s Infrastructure Vulnerability Exposed

Pacific Gas and Electric reported the outage began at 1:09 p.m. Saturday, affecting approximately 130,000 customers after a fire caused “significant and extensive” damage to a critical substation. The blackout peaked two hours later, leaving major areas including the Presidio, Richmond District, Golden Gate Park, and downtown San Francisco without power. By Sunday morning, 21,000 customers remained in darkness while PG&E admitted they couldn’t provide a timeline for full restoration, highlighting California’s crumbling energy infrastructure under years of mismanagement.

Tesla Outperforms Competition With Human Oversight

While Waymo’s driverless vehicles created gridlock, Tesla CEO Elon Musk highlighted that “Tesla Robotaxis were unaffected by the SF power outage.” Tesla’s approach maintains human drivers behind the wheel at all times, using their “FSD (Supervised)” system as driver assistance rather than full automation. This human-machine partnership proved superior during the crisis, as Tesla vehicles continued operating normally while Waymo was forced to pause service entirely and retrieve their stranded robotaxis from city streets.

Expert Warns Against Premature Autonomous Vehicle Deployment

MIT researcher Bryan Reimer emphasized that Saturday’s failures expose fundamental flaws in pushing autonomous vehicles into widespread use. “Something in the design and development of this technology was missed that clearly illustrates it was not the robust solution many would like to believe it is,” Reimer stated. He noted power outages are “entirely predictable” events that properly designed systems should handle, advocating for continued human oversight rather than blind faith in unproven technology that could endanger public safety during emergencies.