For a technology that’s supposed to remove friction and revolutionize urban transportation, Waymo’s robotaxis are creating a different kind of problem.
In a closed-door meeting with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) last month, first responders from San Francisco and Austin had nothing nice to say about the robotaxi service. According to an audio recording of the session obtained by WIRED, police, firefighters, and emergency officials say autonomous vehicles-particularly Waymo’s-are increasingly getting in the way when seconds matter.
“I believe the technology was deployed too quickly in too vast amounts, with hundreds of vehicles, when it wasn’t really ready,” said Austin Police Lieutenant William White, who heads the department’s Highway Enforcement Command.
Waymo currently operates driverless ride-hailing services in parts of 10 U.S. cities and is planning to expand into 10 more, including international markets like London. The company says it’s now delivering roughly 500,000 paid rides per week-a number that has grown 10x in the past year, although it’s just a fraction of what human-driven services like Uber handle.
According to emergency responders, one of the biggest problems is what they describe as “freezing”-situations where the vehicle simply stops and stays put when confronted with something it doesn’t fully understand. That might be an officer directing traffic, an emergency scene, or even a blocked roadway. Regardless, the immobile robotaxi is now an obstacle in the way.
Chief Patrick Rabbitt of the San Francisco Fire Department said those moments are no longer rare. “Waymo is frequently now blocking our fire stations from access,” he told regulators. “Their default is to freeze.” When that happens in front of a firehouse or along an emergency route, the frozen Waymos are actively delaying emergency responders.
San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management has also seen what it describes as regression. Executive Director Mary Ellen Carroll told regulators the vehicles are “committing more traffic violations” and, in some cases, behaving worse than they had in earlier deployments. Austin officials report similar patterns.
Then there’s the so-called “human element” behind autonomous driving-the remote support teams-that has become a bottleneck of its own. In one case cited by San Francisco emergency officials, a 911 operator reportedly waited 53 minutes on hold trying to reach Waymo support during an incident.
Even in less extreme scenarios, connection times of up to three minutes have been reported. In an emergency, when life and death hang in the balance, that’s a long time to be waiting on hold. In Austin, a Waymo vehicle blocked an ambulance for approximately two minutes while it was responding to a downtown shooting that left three people dead and at least 14 injured.
California’s Department of Motor Vehicles has introduced new rules, set to take effect in July, that require autonomous vehicle companies to respond to first-responder requests within 30 seconds. The rules also allow emergency officials to designate temporary “no-go” zones, requiring autonomous vehicles to clear the area within two minutes.
It’s a start, but it also points to a technology that still struggles when it has to interact with humans in unpredictable situations. “The moment you introduce the human element, the vehicles lack that social awareness of what to do, and they freeze,” White said.
To be clear, first responders aren’t calling for autonomous vehicles to be removed from their cities, but they are asking for something fairly basic: predictability and responsiveness.
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