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Neither a lack of traffic lights nor cell service should cause the Waymos to stop in the middle of the road, that’s really troubling. I can understand the syste

Neither a lack of traffic lights nor cell service should cause the Waymos to stop in the middle of the road, that’s really troubling. I can understand the system deciding to pull over at the first safe opportunity, but outright stopping is ridiculous.

HarHarVeryFunny 10mo ago
Waymos rely on remote operators to take over when the vehicle doesn't know what to do, and obviously if the remote connection is gone then this is no longer available, and one might speculate that the cars then "fail safe" by not proceeding if they are in a situation where remote help is called for and inaccessible. Perhaps traffic lights being out is what caused the cars to stop operating autonomously and try to phone home for help, or perhaps losing the connection home is itself enough to trigger a fail safe shutdown mode ? It reminds a bit of the recent TeslaBot video, another of their teleoperated stunts, where we see the bot appearing to remove a headset with both hands that it wasn't wearing (but that it's remote operator was), then fall over backwards "dead" as the remote operator evidentially clocked off his shift or went for a bathroom break.
- MBCook 10mo ago
  That’s clearly unacceptable. It needs to gracefully handle not having that fallback. That is an incredibly obvious possible failure. Things go wrong -> get human help Human not available -> just block the road??? How is there not a very basic “pull over and wait” final fallback. I can get staying put if the car thinks it hit someone or ran over something. But in a situation like this where the problem is fully external it should fall back to “park myself” mode.
  - JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
    > How is there not a very basic “pull over and wait” final fallback Barring everything else, the proper failsafe for any vehicle should be to stop moving and tell the humans inside to evacuate. This is true for autonomous vehicles as well as manned ones–if you can't figure out how to pull over during a disaster, ditching is absolutely a valid move.
    - torham 10mo ago
      They now apparently run these things on the interstate, the car needs to do more than just stop.
    - Wowfunhappy 10mo ago
      If the alternative is that the vehicle explodes, sure. And since GP did say "final fallback", I suppose you're right. But if the cars are actually reaching that point, they probably shouldn't be on the road in the first place. The not-quite-final fallback should be to pull over.
      - MBCook 10mo ago
        Yeah. I wasn’t considering people, just getting the car out of the way. I wasn’t considering people taking it as a given that any time the car gives up the doors should be unlocked for passengers to leave if they feel it’s safe. And as a passenger, I’d feel way safer getting out if it pulled over instead of just stopped in the middle of the street and other cars were trying to drive around it. No one should ever be trapped inside by the car.
  - NetMageSCW 10mo ago
    How is it going to pull over at a four way stoplight intersection? Drive on the sidewalk?
- HarHarVeryFunny 10mo ago
  Seems I was pretty much correct. https://waymo.com/blog/2025/12/autonomously-navigating-the-real-world https://waymo.com/blog/2025/12/autonomously-navigating-the-r... "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."
Coneylake 10mo ago
Perhaps this is by design. Cruise had a failsafe system that detected a collision and decided to pull over but by pulling over it dragged a person underneath the car (or something close to this scenario). Maybe this dumb failsafe was designed not to repeat Cruise's mistakes? Certainly a better way to handle this would have been to pull over. I think stopping where ever it happened to be is only acceptable if the majority of sensors fail for some reason
- scoofy 10mo ago
  I was there. I encountered multiple stopped Waymos in the street. It was annoying, but not dangerous. They had their lights on. Any driver following the rules of the road would get around them fine. It was definitely imperfect, but safe. Much safer than the humans blowing through those very same intersections.
- TZubiri 10mo ago
  When I was a young man, I worked at a restaurant, and the lights went off. I being the hero I was, wanted to keep the show running, bought some candles, ovens worked fine, water worked fine (for now). I wanted to charge cash. But eventually big boss came and shut us down since light wasn't coming. And he was right, cooking and working under those conditions is dangerous for the staff, but also for the clients, without light you cannot see the food, cannot inspect its state, whether stale, with visible fungi, etc... Yes, the perfect worker would still operate under those conditions, but we are not perfect, and admitting that we only can provide 2 or 3 nines, and recognizing where we are in that 0.01% moment, is what keeps us from actually failing so catastrophically that we undo all of the progress and benefits that the last bit of availability would have allowed us.
  - Wowfunhappy 10mo ago
    > but also for the clients, without light you cannot see the food, cannot inspect its state, whether stale, with visible fungi, etc... ...I have to say, I'm pretty skeptical of this one. I've eaten in lots of dark restaurants, sometimes lit pretty much just by candles on the table. Seems to work fine.
lokar 10mo ago
What makes you think it was either? AIUI, it was the irregularity of the uncontrolled intersections combining with the “novel” (from the POV of the software) driving style of the humans. In dense areas during outages signaled intersections don’t actually degrade to 4 way stops, drivers act pretty poorly. The normal order and flow of traffic broke down. The software determined it was now outside its safe parameters and halted. Certainly not ideal, and the should be a very strong regulatory response (the gov should have shut them down), and meaningful financial penalties (at least for repeat incidents).
- Wowfunhappy 10mo ago
  > The normal order and flow of traffic broke down. The software determined it was now outside its safe parameters and halted. And my question is why did it halt instead of pull over?
  - lokar 10mo ago
    How much to move once you decide things have gone off the rails is a hard question, but I’d assume they have put some thought into it.
    - Wowfunhappy 10mo ago
      Then they shouldn't be on the road. What happens if there's an earthquake? The Waymos are going to be blocking everyone else.
      - lokar 10mo ago
        I think it’s a big issue. I wish the state would suspend their operations while they come up with a detailed, public plan for this stuff

HarHarVeryFunny 10mo ago

Waymos rely on remote operators to take over when the vehicle doesn't know what to do, and obviously if the remote connection is gone then this is no longer available, and one might speculate that the cars then "fail safe" by not proceeding if they are in a situation where remote help is called for and inaccessible. Perhaps traffic lights being out is what caused the cars to stop operating autonomously and try to phone home for help, or perhaps losing the connection home is itself enough to trigger a fail safe shutdown mode ? It reminds a bit of the recent TeslaBot video, another of their teleoperated stunts, where we see the bot appearing to remove a headset with both hands that it wasn't wearing (but that it's remote operator was), then fall over backwards "dead" as the remote operator evidentially clocked off his shift or went for a bathroom break.

MBCook 10mo ago
That’s clearly unacceptable. It needs to gracefully handle not having that fallback. That is an incredibly obvious possible failure. Things go wrong -> get human help Human not available -> just block the road??? How is there not a very basic “pull over and wait” final fallback. I can get staying put if the car thinks it hit someone or ran over something. But in a situation like this where the problem is fully external it should fall back to “park myself” mode.
- JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
  > How is there not a very basic “pull over and wait” final fallback Barring everything else, the proper failsafe for any vehicle should be to stop moving and tell the humans inside to evacuate. This is true for autonomous vehicles as well as manned ones–if you can't figure out how to pull over during a disaster, ditching is absolutely a valid move.
  - torham 10mo ago
    They now apparently run these things on the interstate, the car needs to do more than just stop.
  - Wowfunhappy 10mo ago
    If the alternative is that the vehicle explodes, sure. And since GP did say "final fallback", I suppose you're right. But if the cars are actually reaching that point, they probably shouldn't be on the road in the first place. The not-quite-final fallback should be to pull over.
    - MBCook 10mo ago
      Yeah. I wasn’t considering people, just getting the car out of the way. I wasn’t considering people taking it as a given that any time the car gives up the doors should be unlocked for passengers to leave if they feel it’s safe. And as a passenger, I’d feel way safer getting out if it pulled over instead of just stopped in the middle of the street and other cars were trying to drive around it. No one should ever be trapped inside by the car.
- NetMageSCW 10mo ago
  How is it going to pull over at a four way stoplight intersection? Drive on the sidewalk?
HarHarVeryFunny 10mo ago
Seems I was pretty much correct. https://waymo.com/blog/2025/12/autonomously-navigating-the-real-world https://waymo.com/blog/2025/12/autonomously-navigating-the-r... "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."

Coneylake 10mo ago

Perhaps this is by design. Cruise had a failsafe system that detected a collision and decided to pull over but by pulling over it dragged a person underneath the car (or something close to this scenario). Maybe this dumb failsafe was designed not to repeat Cruise's mistakes? Certainly a better way to handle this would have been to pull over. I think stopping where ever it happened to be is only acceptable if the majority of sensors fail for some reason

scoofy 10mo ago
I was there. I encountered multiple stopped Waymos in the street. It was annoying, but not dangerous. They had their lights on. Any driver following the rules of the road would get around them fine. It was definitely imperfect, but safe. Much safer than the humans blowing through those very same intersections.
TZubiri 10mo ago
When I was a young man, I worked at a restaurant, and the lights went off. I being the hero I was, wanted to keep the show running, bought some candles, ovens worked fine, water worked fine (for now). I wanted to charge cash. But eventually big boss came and shut us down since light wasn't coming. And he was right, cooking and working under those conditions is dangerous for the staff, but also for the clients, without light you cannot see the food, cannot inspect its state, whether stale, with visible fungi, etc... Yes, the perfect worker would still operate under those conditions, but we are not perfect, and admitting that we only can provide 2 or 3 nines, and recognizing where we are in that 0.01% moment, is what keeps us from actually failing so catastrophically that we undo all of the progress and benefits that the last bit of availability would have allowed us.
- Wowfunhappy 10mo ago
  > but also for the clients, without light you cannot see the food, cannot inspect its state, whether stale, with visible fungi, etc... ...I have to say, I'm pretty skeptical of this one. I've eaten in lots of dark restaurants, sometimes lit pretty much just by candles on the table. Seems to work fine.

lokar 10mo ago

What makes you think it was either? AIUI, it was the irregularity of the uncontrolled intersections combining with the “novel” (from the POV of the software) driving style of the humans. In dense areas during outages signaled intersections don’t actually degrade to 4 way stops, drivers act pretty poorly. The normal order and flow of traffic broke down. The software determined it was now outside its safe parameters and halted. Certainly not ideal, and the should be a very strong regulatory response (the gov should have shut them down), and meaningful financial penalties (at least for repeat incidents).

Wowfunhappy 10mo ago
> The normal order and flow of traffic broke down. The software determined it was now outside its safe parameters and halted. And my question is why did it halt instead of pull over?
- lokar 10mo ago
  How much to move once you decide things have gone off the rails is a hard question, but I’d assume they have put some thought into it.
  - Wowfunhappy 10mo ago
    Then they shouldn't be on the road. What happens if there's an earthquake? The Waymos are going to be blocking everyone else.
    - lokar 10mo ago
      I think it’s a big issue. I wish the state would suspend their operations while they come up with a detailed, public plan for this stuff