Recent autonomous vehicle snafus in San Francisco include five Waymo cars jamming an intersection and Cruise recalling software last week after an AV hit a bus
Rachel Swan / San Francisco Chronicle :
Context & Ripple Effects
This story lands mid-fight over who controls San Francisco's streets. In January, after repeated stopped-and-idle robotaxi episodes, city officials asked California regulators to halt or scale back Cruise and Waymo's expansion; by early July, regulators were set to decide on July 13 whether to allow 24/7 driverless cabs, while city leaders fumed over having no say.
The Chronicle's report adds fresh ammunition from both operators in one week — five Waymo vehicles deadlocked at an intersection, and a Cruise software recall after an AV struck a bus — weeks before that regulatory verdict.
First-order effects
- San Francisco officials pressing regulators get two new incident exhibits in seven days, strengthening the case in their halt-or-scale-back demand against both companies.
- Cruise now carries a formal software recall tied to a bus collision, a compliance and credibility hit distinct from Waymo's traffic-jam embarrassment.
Second-order effects
- If regulators approve 24/7 service anyway despite the incident record, the resulting rollout immediately strains public trust, as blocked intersections and obstructed emergency vehicles become daily friction for residents rather than isolated news items.
- Every jam or stall converts directly into paid human labor — Waymo already pays workers via the Honk app roughly $20–$24 per door close and $60–$80 per tow, so recurring snafus raise the operating cost of 'driverless' service with each added vehicle.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward autonomy economics where hidden human support scales with the fleet — Waymo has trained roughly 25,000 people to assist its cars — making intervention staffing, not just driving software, a core competitive variable.
- Recurring street-level failures also push cities to seek formal authority over AV deployment, challenging California's state-led permitting model and setting up a longer fight over local versus state control.
The trend: Robotaxi commercialization is outpacing both municipal authority and the industry's ability to hide the human scaffolding behind 'driverless', with every edge-case failure feeding the regulatory and reputational bill.