100,000 people came to San Francisco for the 250th anniversary celebrations of both the city and the United States, mainly to see the fireworks fired from the Golden Gate Bridge, only the third time in the bridge’s history. The fireworks were (perhaps predictably) disappointingly swallowed by fog for the majority of the show. But before the show even ended, disastrous gridlock was beginning to take shape across the city as tens of thousands of people tried to get home or to later celebrations. Many waited hours trying to get out of the Presidio and Marina neighborhoods, watching packed buses pass them at stops or waiting for taxis or ride-shares locked in traffic miles away.
Worsening the traffic were Waymo’s “AI powered” autonomous vehicles (AVs). Intersections all over the city were blocked by Waymo face-offs, each unable to yield to the other because of the algorithm’s tendency to stop the car and wait for a Waymo technician to intervene in confusing settings. Several Waymos sat in traffic for so long that their batteries lost charge, blocking the road completely until a tow truck was able to remove the vehicle.
Waymo markets their vehicles as “10 times safer than human drivers” and in many cases that is true: Waymo AVs have faster reaction and input times than human drivers and are far less likely to cause an accident under normal conditions. However, it was well known that this year’s July 4th celebrations would draw huge crowds and lead to increased traffic strain. Dozens of Waymo AVs were nonetheless allowed to drive into the already crowded, narrow streets near the city’s waterfront, predictably leading to hours of gridlock.
SF Supervisors are considering hearings into what went so wrong for Waymo (and MUNI), but no one seems to be asking the question: What happens when a real unexpected disaster hits, like an earthquake? Waymo already performed disastrously in last year’s relatively limited blackout that affected large parts of the city, causing Waymo to suspend service only after causing huge traffic problems when AVs shut down when faced with traffic lights that lost power. Maybe it’s time for our city streets to stop being used as a profit-making experiment before a real disaster hits?
