Waymo robotaxis require emergency services for rescues

The expansion of autonomous vehicle services is encountering a significant operational hurdle: the repeated need for police and firefighters to physically intervene when robotaxis become immobilized. A pattern has emerged where public safety personnel are increasingly required to act as a default roadside assistance team for stalled Waymo vehicles, raising questions about the scalability and community impact of this rapidly growing technology.

One illustrative event occurred last August near Redwood City, California. After a grass fire closed lanes on Interstate 280, California Highway Patrol officers directed traffic, including instructing drivers to turn around. A Waymo robotaxi, attempting to navigate the closure, ended up stopped and unable to proceed. Despite efforts from the company’s remote assistance team, the vehicle would not move. Waymo ultimately called 911, requesting that an officer drive the car to safety. According to a CHP report, an officer did exactly that roughly thirty minutes later, moving the vehicle to a nearby lot.

This incident, while perhaps an edge case, is not unique. An investigation has identified at least six similar situations in recent months where first responders had to manually take control of Waymo vehicles to clear them from traffic during emergencies. In one case, an Austin police officer moved a robotaxi to clear a path for an ambulance responding to a mass shooting. In another, a vehicle in Atlanta drove into an active crime scene before a responder could disengage it.

The reliance on emergency services has become a point of serious contention with local officials. At a recent San Francisco hearing concerning robotaxis that stalled during a major December power outage, city leaders expressed deep frustration. “What has started to happen is that our public safety officers and responders are having to be the ones to physically move them,” said Mary Ellen Carroll, executive director of the city’s Department of Emergency Management. “In a sense, they’re becoming a default roadside assistance for these vehicles, which we do not think is tenable.”

Waymo states it operates a dedicated roadside assistance team to handle such situations, asserting that this team cleared dozens of vehicles during the blackout. The company says its standards “prioritize minimizing potential community impacts.” However, it declined to answer questions about the size of this team, its staffing levels in various cities, or how it plans to scale operations as it aims to launch in approximately 20 new urban markets this year.

The company’s human support structure involves several layers. Remote assistance workers, about half based in the Philippines, provide advisory guidance to vehicles in complex situations but do not drive them. A separate Event Response Team, based in the U. S., manages post-collision protocols and coordinates with first responders. Finally, the roadside assistance team and local tow partners are intended for on-scene, direct interaction, including moving vehicles.

This system has shown imperfections. In January, a remote assistant incorrectly advised a Waymo in Austin that it could proceed past a school bus with its stop arm extended, an error the company says it audits for and addresses. Communications can also falter; during the Redwood City fire, CHP officers were initially under the impression for ten minutes that the passenger might be asked to drive the car away, a request Waymo says it never makes.

At the San Francisco hearing, officials pressed Waymo on its plans to reduce dependence on first responders. A company manager, Sam Cooper, highlighted that Waymo has trained over 30,000 first responders globally on how to interact with its vehicles and has designed systems for them to take control quickly. He mentioned improvements to “surge-staffing capabilities” and floated the idea of leveraging partnerships, similar to one with DoorDash, for moving vehicles. He emphasized the goal is to give responders the capability to clear a scene swiftly so they can focus on their primary duties.

These assurances did not fully satisfy the supervisors overseeing the meeting. District Supervisor Bilal Mahmood noted that Waymo never detailed its existing roadside assistance resources during the three-hour hearing and failed to provide a clear plan for assuming greater accountability. “We did not get that answer in the hearing that we were looking for,” Mahmood stated, summarizing the core question: what concrete steps will the company take to ensure public safety officers are not functioning as its ad-hoc support crew? As another supervisor, Alan Wong, succinctly put it, “Our first responders should not be AAA.”