Waymo Execs Face Grilling at City Hall

The December 20th power outage, caused by a fire at a PG&E substation, knocked out power to about a third of San Francisco and led to nearly 1,600 "stoppage events" for Waymo's driverless vehicles. The company's Public Policy Manager, Michael Magee, and Director of Product Management, Chinmay Jain, were among the executives who apologized to the Board of Supervisors' Land Use and Transportation Committee. The core of the problem was a feature designed for caution: Waymo vehicles encountering a dark traffic signal are programmed to request a "confirmation check" from a remote human operator before proceeding. While the cars successfully navigated over 7,000 such intersections that day, the sheer volume of simultaneous requests created a massive backlog. Waymo has approximately 70 remote operators on duty at any given time to manage its global fleet, with some of those operators based in the Philippines. This team was simply inundated by the spike in confirmation requests from the San Francisco fleet, leaving vehicles frozen in intersections and exacerbating city-wide gridlock. The incident drew sharp criticism from city officials, including Supervisor Bilal Mahmood, who called the hearing and likened the autonomous cars to "Cinderella's magical carriages" that can "turn into pumpkins at the drop of a hat." Emergency officials reported difficulty reaching Waymo during the crisis, with contact only being made after Mayor London Breed's office personally called the company. Outside City Hall, the hearing was met with protests from labor unions, including the Teamsters, SEIU 1021, and the International Association of Firefighters Local 798. They voiced long-standing concerns about the safety of autonomous vehicles, their potential to disrupt emergency response, and the threat they pose to the jobs of professional drivers. This event has intensified the debate over the regulation of autonomous vehicles, a power largely held by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and the DMV, not city officials. Previously, an administrative law judge had scolded Waymo for initially refusing to disclose the number of stalled vehicles, claiming the figure was a trade secret. In response to the December failure, Waymo has pledged to update its software to give vehicles more context during large-scale outages, allowing them to navigate more decisively without relying on remote operators. However, supervisors and critics remain concerned about how the fleet might perform in other emergencies, such as a major earthquake.