Waymo’s troubles are multiplying: a San Francisco blackout that left its robotaxis stranded now collides with mounting legal scrutiny over unlawful school bus passing, painting a picture of a company under siege from both technical fragility and regulatory pressure.
On a recent evening, a PG&E power outage plunged San Francisco into a darkness that disrupted traffic lights and left thousands without electricity. Amid the chaos, Waymo’s autonomous vehicles froze mid-intersection, blocking roads and confusing drivers who suddenly found themselves navigating around stalled robotaxis. For a city already skeptical of driverless cars, the sight of motionless Waymo vehicles in the middle of busy junctions was more than an inconvenience. It reinforced their fear of how fragile the promise of autonomy can be when infrastructure falters.
The outage exposed a vulnerability: while human drivers can improvise in the face of sudden blackouts, autonomous systems rely on a web of sensors, connectivity, and predictable conditions. When those conditions collapse, so too does the illusion of seamless automation. For Waymo, the incident was another headline in a growing stack of public relations crises.
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The School Bus Problem
Even more damaging than stalled traffic is the legal storm brewing around Waymo’s handling of school buses. In October, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened a probe into 2,000 Waymo vehicles after reports that they failed to stop properly for buses with flashing red lights and deployed stop arms.
Videos from Austin, Texas, show Waymo cars illegally passing stopped school buses at least 19 times in 2025, sometimes accelerating while children were still crossing. Local police cited the company nearly 20 times, accusing it of refusing to halt operations until the issue was resolved.
Regulators don’t see this as a minor glitch. U.S. traffic law treats school bus stops as sacrosanct, with strict penalties for violations. The idea that a driverless car could misinterpret (or worse, ignore) such signals strike at the heart of public trust. Parents, educators, and lawmakers are now demanding answers: how can a technology billed as safer than human drivers fail at one of the most basic, high-stakes rules of the road?
A Pattern of Mounting Headaches
Taken together, the San Francisco outage and the school bus violations illustrate a pattern of compounding challenges for Waymo:
- Technical fragility: Power outages, sensor confusion, and unpredictable urban conditions expose the limits of autonomy.
- Regulatory scrutiny: Federal investigations and local citations signal that patience with “beta testing” on public roads is wearing thin.
- Public trust erosion: Each viral video of a Waymo cruising into a police standoff, a stalled robotaxi, or a bus-passing violation chips away at the narrative of safety and reliability.
Waymo’s competitors, from Cruise to Tesla, face similar hurdles, but Waymo’s visibility makes it a lightning rod. Every misstep becomes a headline, every glitch a case study in why driverless cars may not yet be ready for prime time.
A Company at a Crossroads
Waymo’s vision of a driverless future is colliding with the messy realities of urban infrastructure, legal accountability, and human safety. The judicial challenges around school bus passing could prove especially damaging.
If NHTSA’s probe finds systemic defects, Waymo could face recalls, fines, or restrictions on its fleet. Civil suits from parents or school districts are also possible. That adds financial and reputational risk. More broadly, the cases raise a fundamental legal question: who is responsible when an autonomous vehicle breaks the law? Is it the software engineers, the company executives, or the “driver” who isn’t really driving?
Courts are only beginning to grapple with these questions, but the answers will shape the future of autonomy. For Waymo, the stakes are existential: a ruling that its vehicles are unsafe around children could derail expansion plans and embolden regulators to tighten oversight nationwide.
The San Francisco blackout, as reported by Fox10, showed how quickly robotaxis can become obstacles rather than solutions. The school bus violations revealed how dangerous those obstacles can be when children are involved.