Autonomous driving companies like Waymo, Zoox and Tesla promise a future where self-driving vehicles are the norm and traffic accidents and fatalities fall significantly because of it.
But while the data on whether autonomous driving is truly safer than human driving is still inconclusive, some cities have fully embraced the vehicles, even though there are clearly kinks that still need to be worked out.
Last December, autonomous ride-hailing company Waymo was forced to temporarily suspend service in San Francisco for one day after a city-wide blackout left the robotic vehicles dead in the water and unable to navigate.
At the time, Waymo told TheStreet that the vehicles can navigate intersections where the traffic signal is inoperable, despite numerous videos showing the opposite.
More than six months later, Waymo ran into a similar issue over the July 4, holiday weekend, once again bringing parts of the city’s traffic to a standstill after dozens of vehicles all just stopped working at the same time.
Waymo autonomous vehicles die in the middle of traffic in San Francisco
Several Waymo vehicles had to be towed in San Francisco over the weekend after their batteries died at the same time during Fourth of July holiday celebrations in the city.
Video on social media showed about 20 Waymos lined up in a row, all with blinking lights and seemingly nowhere to go while pedestrians walked past the intersection they were blocking.
Another video from San Francisco taken by a passenger showed a Waymo vehicle driving into a fireworks display that had been set up in the middle of another intersection.
One social media user claimed that people who went out to enjoy the city’s official fireworks presentation were “trapped in gridlock for hours after unresponsive Waymos clogged the streets.” The user, who is a Tesla booster, shared video of citizens physically pushing the vehicles out of the way in order to clear the roads.
Waymo blamed heavy traffic for the incident. “Major traffic disruptions, a high volume of travelers, and unplanned road closures contributed to unexpected congestion,” Waymo said in a statement to NBC News. The statement also said that the company is “evaluating ways to strengthen Waymo’s resilience in major traffic disruptions.”
However, from the videos and reports online, it looks like Waymo was the one causing the major traffic disruptions.
@Waymo we’ve been trapped by your cars for 4 hours behind the Palace of Fine arts in San Francisco. Fix your shit now! pic.twitter.com/t3wSEG3PrT
— Damián Hernández (@TheDamianHdez) July 5, 2026
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie’s office also seemed to give the company a pass while promising that the outages wouldn’t happen again.
“With more than 100,000 people in the area, some people experienced delays getting home,” a spokesperson for the mayor’s office told the San Francisco Standard. They said that the city “will have conversations with our public and private partners to ensure the experience is smoother next time.”
But this is the next time, and Waymo still seemingly hasn’t fixed the issue that causes its vehicles to turn into two-and-a-half-ton bricks during these types of incidents.
If Waymo is having trouble with simple gridlock during a high-volume event, one has to wonder what happens if there is a true emergency and people need to evacuate en masse. Inoperable Waymos blocking traffic is a hazard most cities cannot afford to withstand.
Inoperable Waymos cause a scene, traffic jam in Atlanta
In April, another video from Atlanta went viral, showing a group of three Waymos completely blocking traffic in one direction of a street, each stopped at the white line with a broken traffic light flashing red.
The video shows drivers stuck behind cars as people exit their vehicles and walk around the intersection, filming the chaos.
But that incident pales in comparison to the 50 unmanned vehicles that invaded one upscale Atlanta neighborhood earlier this year.
Residents of Atlanta’s exclusive Buckhead neighborhood have filmed dozens of empty Waymo driverless taxis circling their neighborhood in recent weeks. The video shows the vehicles blocking traffic as they struggle to navigate the narrow residential streets.
“We’re families. We have small animals and pets, got kids getting on the bus in the morning, and it just doesn’t feel safe to have that traffic,” a resident told the local news, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Residents said that they reached out to Waymo and did not receive a response, so they contacted their City Council member and representatives from the Georgia Department of Transportation.
One resident claimed they had seen 50 cars in the neighborhood one morning.
Related: Waymo responds to viral video showing weird vehicle behavior