Way More Goofs for Waymo: Power Failure? Humans at Fault!
December 23, 2025
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I found the stories about Google smart Waymo self driving vehicles in the recent San Francisco power failure amusing. Dangerous, yes. A hoot? Absolutely. Google, as its smart software wizards remind us on a PR cadence to make Colgate toothpaste envious, Google is the big dog of smart software. ChatGPT, a loser. Grok, a crazy loser. Chinese open source LLMs. Losers all.
State of the art artificial intelligence makes San Francisco residents celebrate true exceptionalism. Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough.
I read “Waymo Robotaxis Stop in the Streets during San Francisco Power Outage.” Okay. Google’s Waymo can’t go. Are they electric vehicles suddenly deprived of power? Nope. The smart software did not operate in a way that thrilled riders and motorists when most of San Francisco lost power. The BBC says a very Googley expert said:
"While the Waymo Driver is designed to treat non-functional signals as four-way stops, the sheer scale of the outage led to instances where vehicles remained stationary longer than usual to confirm the state of the affected intersections," a Waymo spokesperson said in a statement provided to the BBC. That "contributed to traffic friction during the height of the congestion," they added.
What other minor issues do the Googley Waymos offer? I noticed the omission of the phrase “out of an abundance of caution.” It is probably out there in some Google quote.
Several observations:
- Google’s wizards will talk about this unlikely event and figure out how to have its cars respond when traffic lights go on the fritz. Will Google be able to fix the problem? Sure. Soon.
- What caused the problem? From Google’s point of view, it was the person responsible for the power failure. Google had nothing to do with that because Google’s Gemini was not autonomously operating the San Francisco power generation system. Someone get on that, please.
- After how many years of testing and how many safe miles (except of course for the bodega cat) will have to pass before Google Waymo does what normal humans would do. Pull over. Or head to a cul de sac in Cow Hollow.
Net net: Google and its estimable wizards can overlook some details. Leadership will take action.
As Elon Musk allegedly said:
"Tesla Robotaxis were unaffected by the SF power outage," Musk posted on X, along with a repost of video showing Waymo vehicles stopped at an intersection with down traffic lights as a line of cars honk and attempt to go around them. Musk also reposted a video purportedly showing a Tesla self-driving car navigating an intersection with non-functioning traffic lights.
Does this mean that Grok is better than Gemini?
Stephen E Arnold, December 23, 2025
Comments
Got something to say?
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
