San Francisco mayor asked Waymo to remove robotaxis during outage

San Francisco leaders says Waymo should 'do better'

San Francisco leaders says Waymo should 'do better'

SAN FRANCISCO - Mayor Daniel Lurie said he contacted Waymo’s chief executive officer and asked the company to remove its cars from city streets during the outage.

"What we need from them is to be in better touch with us and having a direct line of communication with us in events like that," Lurie said on Monday. "Once again, they need to do better. We got a good response from them after we informed them of the problems, but we need them to be more proactive."

Meanwhile, San Francisco Supervisor Bilal Mahmood is calling for hearings after Waymo robotaxis were disrupted during a recent power outage over the weekend, with some self-driving cars seen stalled near intersections where traffic signals were not working.

On Monday, Mahmood said the problems caused what he described as "massive traffic disruptions for residents" and affected the San Francisco Fire Department’s ability to respond to fires as quickly as possible.

Waymo has come under increasing scrutiny after its autonomous vehicles appeared unable to appropriately navigate areas where traffic lights were out, according to city officials.

Video posted to social media showed Waymo robotaxis blocking intersections during the outage on Saturday afternoon. In at least one case, the vehicles were blamed for blocking emergency responders.

Waymo suspended service during the power outage and said it is committed to integrating lessons learned from the disruption.