Police can apparently now hop into stalled, confused Waymo robotaxis and drive them away manually, and this reportedly happened twice Wednesday night at Mayor Daniel Lurie’s inauguration party.
As new San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie celebrated his inauguration in Chinatown Wednesday night, a very not-new San Francisco thing happened. Mission Local reports that stalled Waymos held up traffic on at least two separate occasions (and we’ve found a third unverified account of this), in what was obviously a very motorcaded-up and chaotic street party.
But what’s unique here is that police were able to quickly unlock and jump into the Waymos, and drive them manually out of their confused jams. This capability has apparently existed for a couple of years, though maybe first responders are just becoming more aware of it, or maybe it’s just getting more efficient.
police dealing with waymo.
empty car blocking a bus load of passengers#SanFrancisco #muni #transit #transportation #chinatown pic.twitter.com/15K2bcVI8F
— dy/dt (@dt8k) January 9, 2025
We don’t know if the above video is one of the same incidents that Mission Local describes, but the timing and the circumstances do match up. In one of these incidents at about 6:40 pm, Mission Local says that “the first Waymo got stuck at Sacramento Street and Grant Avenue, facing west. The cause was two black limousines double-parked on Sacramento Street.” Those limos had exempt plates, so were likely part of Lurie’s motorcade.
That Waymo blocked a 1-California Muni bus, which dropped people off at a random spot just so riders could exit. But Mission Local adds that “The Waymo was eventually driven away by someone who appeared to be a police officer.”
In the second incident some 20 minutes later, a Waymo got waylaid and stopped in its tracks amidst the chaos at Grant Avenue and Washington Street.
“One officer gained entry to the vehicle and sat in the Waymo’s driver’s seat,” Mission Local says. “He inspected the dashboard for a moment, and nodded in response to questions from colleagues, including, ‘Are you able to drive?’ and ‘Are you sure?’ The officer then drove the vehicle away.”
Just took 2 Waymo rides tonight. FSD is so far ahead of the game. On the second ride we made a right onto a busy SF Chinatown one way street and the cars wouldn't let the Waymo through. At one point we were directly perpendicular to the traffic and had to call support to remote…
— Dhruvin (@ratherspicycrab) January 9, 2025
Above we have a separate (and unverified) third incident from an apparent Tesla fan, who reports that he and his family had to rope in Waymo technical support after being stalled in that same Lurie inauguration traffic jam. Now of course Tesla fans are going to say those cars are better than anything on the road, but these technical specs described sound credible.
That rider says they got stuck on a one-way street, and “had to call support to remote in and get us out of there.” He notes that his family is “so used to us driving around on [full self-driving mode] in the model S, 3 and the Cybertruck that they were like what the actual fuck is this unreliable Waymo software. Never again 😂”
But our takeaway here is… can police finally just jump into a Waymo and drive the thing manually when the vehicle is stuck in unusual traffic circumstances? We asked SFPD, and they told us to “Please reach out to Waymo.” So we reached out to Waymo, and they directed us to their Waymo Emergency Response Guide and Law Enforcement Interaction Protocol.
The above Youtube video is part of that protocol, and the video is at least two years old. So the protocols we’re describing below have been around for at least two years.
At the 3:50 mark, the video details a Waymo first responder hotline for those who encounter trouble involving a Waymo vehicle. There is also apparently also a “DISP” (dispatcher) button on the dashboard console in the Waymo. And yes, if and when a first responder can get inside the vehicle, the video says, “To put the car in manual mode, you will have to contact Waymo rider support, so they can authorize you to drive the vehicle.”
Then at the 5:10 mark, the video details how a first responder can put a Waymo in manual mode, and the video has actual SF firefighters doing this, albeit in painfully scripted and fake fashion.
We must be honest, SFist had not previously heard of a Waymo being accessed and driven by first responders in troublesome self-driving car stalling situations. But it has clearly happened at least once prior to Wednesday night.
We found one reported incident from Mission Local, where on June 7, 2023, a stalled Waymo was blocking a fire engine in North Beach. “Connected with Waymo employee remotely,” the official SFFD report said. “Took over 8 minutes to have car put in manual mode to move.”
OK that does not sound very efficient, and eight minutes can mean life or death (or many deaths) to SF firefighters. But that incident was 18 months ago. Wednesday night’s incidents sound like they were resolved more quickly.
Yes, for police to have to come and handle these disruptive Waymo hiccups is a lot like what former SF Fire Chief Jeanine Nicholson was talking about when she said, “it is not our job to babysit their vehicles.” And as supposedly “smarter and safer” as these self-driving cars are compared to humans, they got confused by a motorcade in ways that a human driver could generally figure out in seconds.
But if human first responders can intervene in a jam and clear out a stalled Waymo, that should absolutely be happening. Maybe first responders had not been made aware they could do this, maybe the technology has gotten more efficient and robust since that “eight minutes” that it took to get a Waymo into manual mode in June 2023. And the need to contact rider support first seems wholly unnecessary if lives are in the line.
But for the cops to have gotten into a Waymo and gotten the damned thing out of peoples’ way twice Wednesday night, well, that’s an improvement over the old status quo where angry first responders could only look on helplessly at driverless car screw-ups as amused bystanders declare, “Ain’t nobody in it!”
Related: Of Course a Waymo Got In the Way of Kamala Harris’s Motorcade on Nob Hill Friday Night [SFist]
Image: @dt8k via Twitter