Waymo's troubles with emergency vehicles are getting worse

First responders in San Francisco and Austin say Waymo vehicles continue to struggle to navigate emergency situations — if anything, they're getting worse, writes Andre Nalin in Guessing Headlights.

"Officials say Waymo vehicles sometimes freeze, fail to interpret signals, or simply don’t react the way a human driver would, and in an emergency, that’s a real problem, not just an annoyance." In some cases, responders have lost precious minutes trying to call Waymo's support line to get vehicles out of the way. "One report even mentioned a 53-minute wait time to reach a representative, which is completely unacceptable in a time-critical situation."

In one high-profile case, a power outage in San Francisco caused over 1,000 Waymo vehicles to become stranded at intersections across the city, causing a flood of calls to 911. Around 60 Waymo cars had to be manually removed by emergency vehicles. "When 911 lines are forced to handle autonomous car issues, it diverts resources from real emergencies, and this kind of scenario keeps emergency management officials up at night."

This highlights a major challenge of self-driving cars: "Real-world driving is about understanding context, urgency, and human behavior, not merely following rules. That’s something humans do instinctively, but machines are still learning."