SerpApi.Org
A self-driving car has exactly one move when trouble shows up: follow the program. It can brake, reroute, or call for help, but it cannot get creative, and it definitely cannot floor it and get out of the way. That single limitation is turning into Waymo's biggest problem in San Francisco, where two very different incidents this year have exposed the same underlying flaw. When a robotaxi gets stuck, whether by dead batteries or a hostile crowd, everyone inside is stuck with it.
Two Incidents, One Design Flaw
In May, a Waymo passenger riding through the Marina District around 3:30 a.m. found himself trapped inside a stopped vehicle while two men attacked it with a blunt object, cracking the windshield while the car sat motionless at an intersection. Then, over the Fourth of July weekend, a very different failure produced a nearly identical result. Multiple Waymos scattered across the city lost power at roughly the same time during the fireworks crowds, freezing in travel lanes and forcing the company to tow them out one by one while pedestrians squeezed past the blinking hazards. Different triggers, same outcome: a two-ton EV that will not move, and a human inside who has no say in the matter.
What "Remote Assistance" Actually Means
Waymo's fleet, built largely on modified Jaguar I-PACE electric SUVs bristling with lidar, radar, and cameras, does not hand control to a human dispatcher the moment something goes wrong. The rider support line that passengers reach through the in-car intercom connects to a remote operator who can see the vehicle's sensor feed and nudge its self-driving software, approving a lane change, adjusting a pickup point, or ending a trip early. Nobody on that call is grabbing a steering wheel, because there isn't one to grab. That distinction matters enormously in a crisis. A human rideshare driver surrounded by an angry crowd can simply drive away. A Waymo can only ask its own software for permission, and if the system decides the road ahead is blocked, it stays put no matter what is happening to the glass.
A Legal Gray Area Nobody Planned For
That immobility creates a genuinely strange legal wrinkle. When vandals damage a parked or stopped vehicle, the car itself is typically the victim of record in a malicious-mischief case, not the person inside it. That classification is unremarkable for an empty vehicle sitting in a driveway, but it gets a lot more uncomfortable when there is a frightened passenger locked inside watching the windshield crack. It also complicates evidence-gathering after the fact. Interior and exterior footage from a robotaxi is not something a passenger can simply request, since Waymo has said it needs law enforcement to obtain a search warrant before releasing footage, even to the person who was sitting inside the car when it was recorded. For a company that markets its cameras as a rider safety feature, that is a hard gap to explain away.
San Francisco's Mayor Wants Proof, Not a Highlight Reel
The battery failures over the holiday weekend pushed City Hall past the point of polite partnership. Mayor Daniel Lurie sent a letter to California Secretary of Transportation Toks Omishakin asking the state to raise the bar for every autonomous vehicle operator working in the city, not just Waymo. Lurie wants companies to demonstrate four specific abilities before they are allowed anywhere near a major event again: clearing disabled vehicles out of travel lanes immediately, adjusting routes and pickup zones in real time once trouble starts, keeping city agencies informed about outages and stranded vehicles as they happen, and running real stress tests that prove a fleet can handle a dense, unpredictable crowd instead of just assuming it can. Waymo's public response leaned on its résumé, pointing to smooth runs during World Cup matches, the Super Bowl, Fan Fest, and NBA All-Star Weekend, and noting it has logged millions of rides in the city. A strong track record does not explain why roughly twenty cars died at once on one of the busiest nights of the year, and the mayor's letter reads like it came from someone who has already heard the highlight reel.
NHTSA Isn't Just Watching Anymore
Days after Lurie's letter went out, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued its own warning, aimed at every autonomous vehicle developer, not just Waymo. NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison issued a formal call to action after documenting a pattern of AVs driving into active emergency scenes, blocking ambulances and fire crews, and failing to react to flashing lights, flares, smoke, or traffic cones. Morrison called the failure a "functional insufficiency" and stated flatly that emergency scenes are not rare edge cases. The agency has scheduled meetings with driverless system developers before the end of the month to hear how they plan to fix it, and it is keeping its enforcement authority in reserve if the answers are not good enough. A call to action is not a recall or a rule, and it carries no immediate penalty, but it is a public signal that the agency is done treating these incidents as isolated software hiccups. That same regulator has been busy elsewhere this year, including a separate investigation opened after a Tesla plowed into a Texas home and killed a woman, and an earlier standoff over a potential Autopilot recall covering more than three million vehicles.
This Isn't Waymo's First San Francisco Headache
None of this is happening in a vacuum. Waymo has spent much of 2026 managing headlines it did not want, including a recall covering nearly 3,800 robotaxis after regulators found a software flaw that could let the vehicles keep driving into flooded roads instead of stopping. A confrontation in SoMa back in 2024, where two men blocked a stopped Waymo and gestured at the passenger inside before wandering off, was an early example of what happens when a car cannot simply leave a bad situation. Add it up, and the pattern is not about one bad sensor or one unlucky weekend. It is a fleet that drives beautifully until the moment it needs to improvise, and improvising is the one thing this technology still cannot do.
What Riders Should Actually Do
None of this means robotaxis are more dangerous than human-driven cabs on balance, and Waymo's own crash-rate data still looks favorable next to human drivers. But riders should treat the intercom button as a backup, not a lifeline. Dialing 911 directly gets a dispatcher who can send officers without waiting on a remote operator to relay the request, and it starts a police response clock that does not depend on a tech company's internal escalation process. Every passenger vehicle sold in the United States, autonomous or not, is required to keep a manual interior door release so occupants can always let themselves out, so getting out of a stopped Waymo has never been the real issue. Getting the car itself out of a bad spot is. Until Waymo, or the regulators now leaning on it, solve that problem, the safest assumption for anyone hailing a robotaxi late at night is that if things go wrong, the car is not going to save you. You will need a plan of your own.
