[AutonomousVehicles] waymo announces software update to deal with power outages

[Cornelius Butler]

Hi Everyone,
Waymo is implementing a software update in response to the power outage
incidents in San Francisco.

The link to the official blog post and text are below.

Blog Post Link:
https://waymo.com/blog/2025/12/autonomously-navigating-the-real-world?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Blog Post Text:
At Waymo, our mission is to be the world’s most trusted driver. We know
trust is built through consistent behavior over time—earned through every
mile we drive and every interaction we have with the community. This past
Saturday, as a widespread PG&E outage cut power to nearly one-third of San
Francisco, our service was put to the test. With power now restored, we
want to share an account of our operations during the outage and how we are
evolving to better serve the city.

The scale of the outage and the sheer number of disabled traffic lights
were the primary contributors to city-wide gridlock. As signals went dark
across major corridors, the resulting congestion required law enforcement
to manually manage intersections. The situation was severe enough that the
San Francisco Department of Emergency Management advised residents to stay
home, underscoring the extraordinary nature of the weekend’s disruptions.

Navigating an event of this magnitude presented a unique challenge for
autonomous technology. While the Waymo Driver is designed to handle dark
traffic signals as four-way stops, it may occasionally request a
confirmation check to ensure it makes the safest choice. While we
successfully traversed more than 7,000 dark signals on Saturday, the outage
created a concentrated spike in these requests. This created a backlog
that, in some cases, led to response delays contributing to congestion on
already-overwhelmed streets.

We established these confirmation protocols out of an abundance of caution
during our early deployment, and we are now refining them to match our
current scale. While this strategy was effective during smaller outages, we
are now implementing fleet-wide updates that provide the Driver with
specific power outage context, allowing it to navigate more decisively.

As the outage persisted and City officials urged residents to stay off the
streets to prioritize first responders, we temporarily paused our service
in the area. We directed our fleet to pull over and park appropriately so
we could return vehicles to our depots in waves. This ensured we did not
further add to the congestion or obstruct emergency vehicles during the
peak of the recovery effort.

The path forward
We’ve always focused on developing the Waymo Driver for the world as it is,
including when infrastructure fails. We are analyzing the event, and are
already integrating the lessons from this weekend’s PG&E outage. Here are
some of the immediate steps we’re taking:

Integrating more information about outages: While our Driver already
handles dark traffic signals as four-way stops, we are now rolling out
fleet-wide updates that give our vehicles even more context about regional
outages, allowing them to navigate these intersections more decisively.

Updating our emergency preparedness and response: We will improve our
emergency response protocols, incorporating lessons from this event. In San
Francisco, we’ll continue to coordinate with Mayor Lurie’s team to identify
areas of greater collaboration in our existing emergency preparedness plans.

Expanding our first responder engagement: To date, we’ve trained more than
25,000 first responders in the U.S. and around the world on how to interact
with Waymo. As we discover learnings from this and other widespread events,
we’ll continue updating our first responder training.

Undaunted in our mission to make our streets safer
We live and work in San Francisco, and we are grateful to the city’s first
responders for their tireless work, and to Mayor Lurie for his leadership.

Backed by 100M+ miles of fully autonomous driving experience and a record
of improving road safety, we are undaunted by the opportunity to challenge
the status quo of our roads, and we’re proud to continue serving San
Franciscan residents and visitors.
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