Former Meta CTO: "Had a scary Waymo ride just now. Said it had to pull off highway suddenly, then stopped short before a major intersection. Started moving erratically so I jumped out ...still...blocking a lane...84/woodside."
Prob rain at fwy speed failure & busy telops. Telcom outage v unlikely.
"A KSAT viewer sent us this video of a Waymo blocking an intersection in San Antonio...as roads began to flood"
OP: tiktok.zariaoates
Poplar St at Colorado, San Antonio, TX
Prob, the robot stopped bc robot water incompetence, called telops, and telops said ok/go.
Jaguar I-Pace wading depth ~= 20"
"Waymo are you scarred of the water?"
OP: tiktok.mandiesrv
Waymo shutdown in San Antonio bc flooding and after an empty robot "entered a roadway that was flooded and was pulled into an active waterway. Waymo says they are...working to recover the car"
Waymo's shutdown after failing to handle flooding/rain in SF, LA, AZ, & TX.
www.kens5.com/article/news...
Some times & places they are ~100%
Some places they are often >50%.
bsky.app/profile/anic...
Empty robots are ~1% of VMT in San Francisco.
"There was a whole minute plus of him using his marshalling stick pretty clearly before I recorded this."
OP: reddit.Ikontwait4u2leave
American Airlines Center, 2500 Victory Ave, Dallas, TX
Prob required telops pushing while police pulled.
Easily spooked, not easily unspooked.
Yes, fortunately she's quite capable and knew enough to call police instead of waiting/hoping Waymo would send someone, which they will but it can take anywhere from ~10 minutes to hours.
Waymo has done much worse, eg this one drove past a "DO NOT ENTER WHEN FLOODED" sign:
bsky.app/profile/anic...
Waymo had provided 13.8 million paid trips in California through the end of 2025.
None were wheelchair accessible, per Waymo's publicly available reports to their regulator, CPUC.
Several things he says in that opinion piece are demonstrably untrue.
His Waymo trips may have been fine, most are, but Waymo robots fail at staggering rates (~~100x human driver), often dangerously stranding passengers without assistance, eg:
bsky.app/profile/anic...
Not so good at AI (prompting) either.
Waymo robots dropping off passengers in the middle of busy roads who leave the rear door open thereby immobilizing the robot in traffic until someone closes it is a very real and recurring scenario/problem.
Waymo passengers have powerful tho limited robot motion controls.
bsky.app/profile/anic...
It is possible the Waymo robot dropped off passenger(s) in the middle lane who in their haste/alarm didn't close the rear door and someone else did just before the video began, maybe from inside like in the infamous LA Waymo robot that showed up w a stranger in the trunk.
bsky.app/profile/anic...
Not sure what happened with/to this Waymo robot, except that it shouldn't have happened this way in this place:
Cesar Chavez St at Red River St, Austin, TX
Maybe a pickup in the middle lane. Note the door handles are out and can't see if anyone is inside.
OP: x.JacksonGarnett
Waymo told WKRN they'd trained >30k first responders to rescue their failed robots in this way. Waymo has >3k robots, ie
Waymo has had to train ~10 first responders per robot "driver" to handle their failures.
Zoox solves this problem by making their robots impossible to drive manually. Tow only.
Nashville police bodycam of a Waymo takeover, which he says happens every weekend. Note Waymo telops tells him they'll disengage the robotics.
The "waymos are safe around pedestrians" narrative meets the "waymos are incompetent around pedestrians" reality, again and again.
youtu.be/wSZsEnu3NTE?...
My PhD is on galloping robots.
This is impressive from a locomotion perspective. The gait is nothing new… the difference between what was possible 20 years ago and now is mostly due to battery and motor improvements for much less money.
Same stuff that makes flying drones in Ukraine so practical.
It happens repeatedly everywhere Waymo operates without a safety driver.
bsky.app/profile/did:...
Another Waymo robot w passenger(s) drove through a police/crash scene and for no good/apparent reason stopped/MRC, reportedly for ~30 minutes by time of video:
100 block of W 5th St, Tempe, AZ
"Someone come get their Waymo it’s just sitting in the middle of the road"
OP: tiktok.srianabrinz
Reminder from Waymo's massive 12/20/2025 traffic light failure in San Francisco that wasn't over until the next day when the last of >60 Waymo robots was finally retrieved/towed back to their depot.
bsky.app/profile/anic...
One after another, Waymo robots failed to handle a red flashing traffic light until they'd blocking all lanes:
Northside Dr at Hemphill Ave, Atlanta
Waymo's done this in SF, LA, AZ, TX, GA, and FL bc they haven't fixed their:
- traffic light bug (root cause)
- telops to prevent failure cascades
They work as well as sunglasses sprayed by a skunk.
Google Maps accepted my place edit asking a funny question.
Waymo's newest SF lot usually has the greatest concentration of robots in a US downtown core, since it opened in 2026. I often see more Waymo robots in it than Waymo has in Georgia or Tennessee.
Next door is SF's largest homeless shelter.
Tesla announced their "robotaxi" service is "rolling out" in Dallas and Houston, apparently uncrewed.
AFAIK, Tesla has only had a very small fleet of cars doing this in part of Austin, despite launching there ~10 months ago.
IMO, uncrewed FSD is very unsafe & TxDOT should never have allowed it.
This is one of the more concerning of these videos bc it shows the robots creating a roboblot out of ~nothing, ie there was abundant room to pass.
Waymo may have set a much too large safety margin distance around their robots to reduce crashes while creating roboclots.
bsky.app/profile/anic...
This is one of the most recent and most similar to the new one.
bsky.app/profile/anic...
This is one of the earliest of these videos and gives a good view of how Waymo robots struggle with these situations.
bsky.app/profile/anic...
Sometimes they crash into each other. This was during testing on a block on Telegraph Hill that's been within Waymo's ODD since 2021, yet remains outside of where Waymo is willing to risk letting their robots drive passengers, ie Waymo's passengers have to hike this slope.
bsky.app/profile/anic...
This was ~2 weeks ago in San Francisco.
bsky.app/profile/anic...
Another Waymo v Waymo on a ~narrow road roboclot, prob LA area. Note unused space avail to pull over to let the other robot pass.
2:40 passenger bailed out of the near robot
4:00 OP gave up & turned around, revealing many cars queued behind inc another Waymo robot
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPED...
