"The Alphabet-owned self-driving car company said in a statement on Tuesday that its autonomous vehicles behaved as designed when intersections went dark, treating them as four-way stops. The problem was scale. The Waymo "may occasionally request a confirmation check" when it encounters dark traffic signals to "ensure it makes the safest choice," the statement said. "While we successfully traversed more than 7,000 dark signals on Saturday, the outage created a concentrated spike in these requests.""
""This created a backlog that, in some cases, led to response delays contributing to congestion on already-overwhelmed streets," the company added. On Saturday, some Waymo robotaxis stalled in intersections and along busy streets in San Francisco during a power outage, according to footage shared on social media. One clip on X showed at least five driverless vehicles bunched together at a junction, causing traffic congestion. The power outage, which affected about 130,000 Pacific Gas & Electric customers, prompted Waymo to halt its ride-hailing services."
Autonomous vehicles treated dark intersections as four-way stops and occasionally requested confirmation checks when encountering dark traffic signals to ensure the safest choice. More than 7,000 dark signals were traversed on Saturday, but the outage created a concentrated spike in confirmation requests. The spike produced a backlog that in some cases led to response delays and contributed to congestion on already-overwhelmed streets. Some robotaxis stalled at intersections and along busy streets, with footage showing multiple driverless vehicles bunched at a junction. The outage affected about 130,000 Pacific Gas & Electric customers and prompted a temporary halt of ride-hailing services while the system was refined and restarted.
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