Videos show Waymo self-driving cars blocking roads during San Francisco blackout

Waymo is resuming its driverless taxi service after a large blackout across San Francisco stranded its cars in the streets Saturday night.

Waymo is resuming its driverless taxi service after a large blackout across San Francisco stranded its cars in the streets Saturday night.

Videos shared on social media showed the self-driving cars blocking roads and intersections as a widespread power outage left a large part of the city in the dark. In a video on X, one of the Waymo vehicles appeared stuck at an intersection, with four other Waymo cars and flashing hazard lights blocking the road behind it.

Cars with human drivers were forced to navigate between vehicles in a narrow section of the street.

The issue spurred a suspension of Waymo's service Saturday, but the company returned to offering rides once power was up the next day, CNBC reported.

"While the Waymo Driver is designed to treat non-functional signals as four-way stops, the sheer scale of the outage led to instances where vehicles remained stationary longer than usual to confirm the state of the affected intersections,” a spokesperson told CNBC. “This contributed to traffic friction during the height of the congestion.”