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Waymo resumed San Francisco robotaxi service on December 21, 2025, after a widespread PG&E outage caused dark traffic signals, disrupted transit, and a surge in remote-assistance requests. Some vehicles stalled while waiting for confirmation, prompting Waymo to suspend rides and move its fleet to depots. The incident exposed a fleet-scale operational bottleneck and emergency-response risk, not a universal inability to navigate intersections without working signals.
Waymo resumed robotaxi service in San Francisco on December 21, 2025, after temporarily suspending rides during a widespread PG&E power outage that disabled traffic signals and disrupted public transit. The company’s vehicles were not universally unable to handle dark signals: Waymo said they crossed more than 7,000 disabled intersections. But a surge in requests for remote assistance created a fleet-scale bottleneck, leaving some vehicles stationary while waiting for confirmation.
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The incident became significant because it involved more than passenger delays. San Francisco officials and firefighters said stalled vehicles could obstruct intersections and emergency response. A California Public Utilities Commission filing recorded 1,593 qualifying stoppage events during the outage’s peak period, although the filing cautioned that not every stoppage was necessarily caused by a dark traffic signal.
What happened during the San Francisco blackout?
On December 20, 2025, a widespread PG&E outage affected nearly one-third of San Francisco. Many traffic signals went dark, public transit was disrupted, and city emergency officials advised residents to stay home.
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From approximately noon until 11 p.m., 829 Waymo vehicles operated for at least some period inside the affected area. Around 5 p.m., Waymo’s system began receiving substantially more requests for confirmation from remote-assistance staff than normal. As response times increased, some vehicles remained stopped at intersections while waiting for help.
At approximately 5:55 p.m., Waymo suspended ride-hailing service and began directing vehicles to pull over, park appropriately, or return to depots. The company said the decision was intended to prioritize rider safety, reduce congestion, and keep routes clear for emergency vehicles.
Waymo returned vehicles to depots in waves while the disruption continued. Service resumed on December 21, except in limited locations where the PG&E outage was still active. That was a staged resumption based on local conditions, not an immediate all-clear throughout San Francisco.
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Why did some Waymo vehicles stop?
The documented failure mode was more complicated than “the robotaxis could not see traffic lights.” Waymo said its autonomous driving system was designed to treat a nonfunctioning signal as a four-way stop. In many cases, the Waymo Driver could therefore proceed through an intersection using its normal decision-making and right-of-way rules.
The difficult cases were situations in which the vehicle requested an additional confirmation check from remote assistance. That workflow is intended to give the vehicle contextual help in unusual or ambiguous situations while the autonomous system remains responsible for driving. During the outage, many vehicles encountered related uncertainty at roughly the same time. The resulting queue increased response times, and vehicles waiting for an answer sometimes remained stationary.
This distinction matters. A remote-assistance process can be adequate for isolated edge cases but become a bottleneck when hundreds of vehicles experience the same infrastructure problem simultaneously. The blackout therefore exposed a fleet-operations and capacity problem as much as a perception problem.
What the 1,593 stoppage events mean
The CPUC filing recorded 1,593 stoppage events during the peak outage period. Under the commission’s definition, a stoppage was a stop lasting at least 120 seconds in which the autonomous vehicle could not proceed without outside assistance.
More than 96% of those recorded events were resolved when the vehicles eventually continued autonomously. The remainder required manual retrieval, including vehicles that had already been parked out of traffic. Waymo separately told San Francisco supervisors that it was aware of 62 manual retrievals during the blackout.
The number should not be read as 1,593 identical failures or as proof that every stopped vehicle blocked a road. The CPUC filing said the events could have had several contributors, including:
- disabled traffic signals;
- erratic behavior by human drivers;
- general congestion; and
- other reasons a Waymo vehicle might stop.
Nor does the fact that more than 96% of events were resolved autonomously make the operational impact insignificant. A small subset of failures can still create serious consequences when vehicles are concentrated at busy intersections during an emergency. San Francisco officials were particularly concerned about vehicles obstructing fire engines, ambulances, or other emergency traffic.
How many traffic signals did Waymo navigate?
Waymo reported that its vehicles successfully traversed more than 7,000 dark traffic signals during the outage. That figure is important context because it shows that the fleet was not uniformly incapable of navigating intersections without power.
It must be considered alongside the stoppage data rather than used to cancel it out. The fleet handled most dark-signal encounters, while a concentrated subset of situations generated enough confirmation requests to overwhelm the response workflow. In other words, both statements can be true:
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- Waymo vehicles successfully navigated thousands of disabled signals.
- A significant number of vehicles still experienced prolonged stoppages and some required retrieval.
Why the incident raised emergency-response concerns
The central public-safety issue was not simply that some passengers had to wait or that service was unavailable. A stalled robotaxi can become an obstruction at exactly the time streets are needed for emergency movement.
At a March 2026 San Francisco supervisors’ hearing on emergency operations, Waymo said two of the 62 manual-retrieval cases involved first responders manually moving a vehicle. KQED reported that fire officials said remote operators were not always reachable or able to move a stalled vehicle, leaving first responders to intervene.
The episode also highlighted a coordination gap. Emergency officials may tell the public and transportation providers to avoid an area, but that information is most useful when it reaches the operating software and fleet-control teams quickly enough to change vehicle behavior. At the hearing, city officials continued to seek stronger integration between emergency “avoid the area” notifications and Waymo’s operating systems.
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Repair common Windows errors and clear accumulated junk for a smoother, more stable PC - no reinstall needed.Free scan · no reinstallWaymo representatives acknowledged communication gaps and described changes to vehicle behavior, emergency-response procedures, and staffing capabilities. However, company representatives did not provide supervisors with specific staffing numbers at the hearing, leaving questions about how much remote-assistance capacity would be available during another large-scale event.
What changes did Waymo announce?
On December 23–24, Waymo published an explanation of the outage and announced fleet-wide software updates. The company identified several response areas.
More regional outage information
Waymo said updates would provide the Waymo Driver with additional regional power-outage context. The goal was to help the system recognize the broader infrastructure condition and navigate intersections with disabled signals more decisively, rather than treating each unusual intersection as an isolated ambiguity.
Revised emergency procedures
The company said it would revise emergency-response protocols and coordinate further with San Francisco officials. That work addresses the operational question of what a fleet should do when infrastructure is failing across a large area: continue selectively, avoid affected zones, pull over, or return vehicles to depots.
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At the March hearing, Waymo described improved operations-team procedures and staffing capabilities for significant incidents. The underlying lesson is that software changes alone cannot eliminate every fleet-scale failure. If a vehicle still requests assistance, the company needs enough trained personnel and clear escalation procedures to handle a sudden surge.
First-responder training
Waymo said it had trained more than 25,000 first responders globally and would continue updating that training based on lessons from widespread incidents. Training can help firefighters and other emergency personnel understand how to identify, approach, and move an autonomous vehicle safely, but it does not replace timely remote coordination or a plan that keeps vehicles out of emergency lanes in the first place.
What happened during the later July 2026 outage?
A separate PG&E outage on July 18, 2026, affected approximately 9,400 customers and disabled traffic signals in parts of San Francisco, including the Richmond District and Presidio. Waymo temporarily paused or adjusted service for about an hour while it assessed conditions and coordinated with local officials. It continued serving much of the rest of its Bay Area territory before resuming service.
The July event provides useful follow-up context, but it does not prove that every problem from December was eliminated. Reporting describes a short precautionary adjustment rather than a citywide suspension accompanied by the December incident’s documented stoppage volume. The events also differed in outage scale, geography, duration, traffic conditions, and other operational factors. Those differences make it impossible to attribute the improved outcome solely to Waymo’s software or staffing changes.
What the blackout says about robotaxi reliability
The December outage is best understood as a test of the complete robotaxi operating system, not just the vehicle’s ability to identify a road or signal. A commercial autonomous fleet depends on several layers working together:
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- Onboard driving software: the vehicle must interpret the road and make a safe decision.
- Fallback behavior: it needs a conservative but usable response when signals, communications, or other infrastructure fail.
- Remote assistance: human operators must be able to provide context when the vehicle encounters an unusual situation.
- Fleet capacity: the assistance operation must absorb correlated events rather than only isolated requests.
- Emergency coordination: the company and city must share information quickly and keep vehicles from obstructing critical routes.
- Recovery operations: vehicles that cannot continue must be parked, retrieved, or moved without creating a larger hazard.
Waymo’s vehicles performed successfully in many dark-signal encounters, but the outage revealed that correlated uncertainty can stress the human-support and recovery layers. That is a different conclusion from saying that autonomous driving failed everywhere, yet it is also more consequential than treating the event as an ordinary service interruption.
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For riders, a future widespread outage may produce a pause, reduced coverage, or geographic restrictions rather than a normal service map. The December resumption shows why “service restored” can be conditional: some areas may remain unavailable while traffic signals or power are still out.
For cities, the key questions are operational:
- How quickly does the fleet receive official outage and emergency-avoidance information?
- What is the maximum remote-assistance load during a citywide infrastructure failure?
- How are vehicles prevented from stopping in intersections or blocking emergency routes?
- Who can authorize a service suspension, and how quickly can the fleet be moved to safe locations?
- Can first responders reach a responsible operations team without relying on ad hoc intervention?
- What incident data will the operator share so regulators can distinguish ordinary stops from assistance-dependent stoppages?
Those questions apply beyond Waymo. Any autonomous mobility service operating at scale must demonstrate not only routine driving performance but also graceful degradation during power failures, signal outages, communications problems, severe congestion, and emergency operations.
The bottom line
Waymo resumed San Francisco service one day after suspending it during the December 20, 2025 PG&E blackout, with limited exceptions where the outage continued. The robotaxis did not all fail to recognize dark traffic signals; Waymo said they crossed more than 7,000 of them. The more precise problem was that a large, correlated wave of confirmation requests overwhelmed remote assistance, contributing to prolonged stoppages and some manual retrievals.
Waymo responded with software intended to provide better outage context, revised emergency procedures, increased incident staffing capabilities, and additional first-responder engagement. The later July 2026 service adjustment was shorter and more localized, but the available evidence does not establish that the December failure modes were permanently solved. The lasting significance of the blackout is its demonstration that robotaxi safety depends on fleet-scale operations and emergency coordination as much as on the vehicle’s moment-to-moment driving decisions.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did Waymo’s robotaxis fail because they could not recognize dark traffic signals?
No. Waymo said its vehicles were designed to treat nonfunctioning traffic signals as four-way stops, and the fleet successfully crossed more than 7,000 dark signals during the outage. The problem was concentrated in unusual or ambiguous situations that triggered a surge of remote-assistance confirmation requests.
When did Waymo suspend and resume service in San Francisco?
Waymo suspended ride-hailing service at approximately 5:55 p.m. on December 20, 2025. Vehicles were directed to pull over, park appropriately, or return to depots. Service resumed on December 21, except in limited areas where the PG&E outage was still active.
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The CPUC recorded 1,593 stoppage events during the peak outage period. Its definition required a stop of at least 120 seconds during which the autonomous vehicle could not proceed without outside assistance. More than 96% were resolved when vehicles continued autonomously; the remaining cases involved manual retrieval.
Did first responders have to move Waymo vehicles?
Yes. Waymo told San Francisco supervisors that it knew of 62 manual retrievals, including two cases in which first responders manually moved a vehicle. Officials were concerned that stalled vehicles could obstruct intersections or emergency routes.
What did Waymo change after the San Francisco blackout?
Waymo announced fleet-wide software updates with more regional power-outage context, revised emergency-response procedures, improved incident staffing capabilities, and continued first-responder training. The company said it had trained more than 25,000 first responders globally. The evidence from the later July 2026 outage suggests a shorter service adjustment, but it does not by itself prove that all December problems were solved.
The Bottom Line
Bottom line: Waymo’s San Francisco service resumed on December 21, 2025, but the blackout exposed a fleet-scale remote-assistance bottleneck—not a universal inability to recognize dark traffic signals. The company updated its software and emergency operations, while later outage coverage suggests improvement without conclusively proving that every December failure mode has been eliminated.
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