SAN FRANCISCO — Waymo suspended freeway service in the San Francisco Bay Area and three other locations. This action followed an incident in San Francisco where a vehicle entered an active freeway work zone, which prompted a police response.
The suspension was enacted to allow the company to reassess its vehicle navigation systems within construction zones. Public records and city complaints document instances of its vehicles failing to yield to pedestrians and navigating into flooded streets. San Francisco residents have documented close proximity incidents involving the vehicles and pedestrians, cyclists, schoolchildren, crossing guards, and wheelchair users. A cyclist filed a lawsuit alleging brain and spinal injuries after colliding with the vehicles that were blocking a designated bike lane.
San Francisco police officers are frequently dispatched to assist stalled vehicles. Company operators have also requested police welfare checks for passengers who do not exit the vehicles. In a separate incident, a passenger exited through a vehicle window after one drove into floodwaters. Following multiple flood-related incidents, the company recalled nearly 4,000 vehicles and restricted operations during severe weather.
The company reported that incident records represent a small percentage of its total completed trips. It also stated it reduced its operator-initiated emergency passenger calls by more than 50 percent. "The shift to robotaxis is not eliminating transportation problems so much as replacing one set of problems with another." Bryant Walker Smith, an autonomous vehicle researcher, said.
The company completed 13.8 million trips for 19.3 million passengers, covering a distance of 86.3 million miles during the study period. At the start of the analysis, 36 percent of its vehicle miles were driven with a passenger onboard. By the end of the study period, this proportion increased to approximately 56 percent. An independent analysis by UC Berkeley policy researcher Matthew Raifman, covering January 2024 through September 2025, confirmed that approximately 44 percent of its miles were driven empty. Two-thirds of these empty vehicle miles involved vehicles waiting for customer ride assignments.