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There was an electricity outage in San Francisco in December 2025 that caused chaos among all Waymo’s robotaxis in the city. Even though one robotaxi could handle, for example, a signalized intersection where the lights are not functioning, when everything turns black and all the robotaxis call home to ask for assistance, then the ecosystem around autonomous vehicles ends up in turmoil. All the operators of autonomous vehicles worldwide learned from this event, but there will be more of these events that I would say belong to the rare events in long-tail probability. How can such events be predicted?
What is said to be the world’s first distributed denial-of-service attack on Waymo’s robotaxis service took place in the same city in October 2025, orchestrated by the 23-year-old tech prankster Walz. Fifty robotaxis were ordered to one of San Francisco’s longest alleys, causing an unparalleled traffic jam. No one entered the robotaxis and a no-show fee of US$5 was issued. Even though this was a prank, it demonstrates that technology can have major weaknesses even though it is well-intentioned.
Full Article: IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine, Volume 21, Number 1, April 2026
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