Waymo 在本周旧金山发生大规模停电、其无人驾驶出租车暂停运行后，刚刚发布了一份官方声明。 “我们希望向大家说明停电期间我们的运营情况，以及我们将如何持续演进，以更好地服务这座城市。 应对如此规模的事件，对自动驾驶技术来说是一次独特的挑战。虽然 Waymo Driver 的设计可以在交通信号灯熄灭时，将路口视为四向停靠（four-way stop），但在某些情况下，它会请求人工确认，以确保做出最安全的决策。周六当天，我们成功通过了 7,000 多个无信号灯路口，但此次停电导致这类确认请求在短时间内集中激增。这形成了请求积压，在部分情况下造成响应延迟，进而加剧了本就不堪重负的道路拥堵。 在早期部署阶段，我们本着高度谨慎的原则建立了这些确认机制；而现在，我们正在对其进行优化，以匹配当前的运营规模。虽然这种策略在较小规模的停电事件中行之有效，但我们目前正在部署全车队更新，为 Driver 提供明确的停电场景上下文，使其能够更果断地进行决策和通行。 随着停电持续，且市政府官员呼吁居民尽量减少外出、优先保障应急人员通行，我们在相关区域临时暂停了服务。我们指示车队就地靠边、规范停车，并分批将车辆送回车库。这确保我们不会在恢复高峰期进一步加剧交通拥堵，也不会阻碍应急车辆通行。” 前进方向 “我们正在对本次事件进行分析，并已开始整合从此次 PG&E 停电中获得的经验教训。以下是我们正在采取的一些即时措施： 整合更多停电信息： 虽然 Driver 已能将熄灭的交通信号灯视为四向停靠，但我们正在推出全车队更新，为车辆提供更丰富的区域停电信息，使其在这些路口做出更果断的判断。 更新应急准备与响应机制： 我们将改进应急响应流程，把此次事件的经验纳入其中。在旧金山，我们将继续与市长 Lurie 团队合作，寻找在现有应急预案中深化协作的空间。 扩大与应急人员的合作： 目前，我们已在美国及全球范围内培训了 25,000 多名应急人员，指导他们如何与 Waymo 车辆互动。随着我们从此次及其他大规模事件中获得新的经验，我们将持续更新对应的应急人员培训内容。” Waymo has just released an official statement following the massive power outage in San Francisco this week and their robotaxis shutting down. “We want to share an account of our operations during the outage and how we are evolving to better serve the city. Navigating an event of this magnitude presented a unique challenge for autonomous technology. While the Waymo Driver is designed to handle dark traffic signals as four-way stops, it may occasionally request a confirmation check to ensure it makes the safest choice. While we successfully traversed more than 7,000 dark signals on Saturday, the outage created a concentrated spike in these requests. This created a backlog that, in some cases, led to response delays contributing to congestion on already-overwhelmed streets. We established these confirmation protocols out of an abundance of caution during our early deployment, and we are now refining them to match our current scale. While this strategy was effective during smaller outages, we are now implementing fleet-wide updates that provide the Driver with specific power outage context, allowing it to navigate more decisively. As the outage persisted and City officials urged residents to stay off the streets to prioritize first responders, we temporarily paused our service in the area. We directed our fleet to pull over and park appropriately so we could return vehicles to our depots in waves. This ensured we did not further add to the congestion or obstruct emergency vehicles during the peak of the recovery effort. The path forward We are analyzing the event, and are already integrating the lessons from this weekend’s PG&E outage. Here are some of the immediate steps we’re taking: • Integrating more information about outages: While our Driver already handles dark traffic signals as four-way stops, we are now rolling out fleet-wide updates that give our vehicles even more context about regional outages, allowing them to navigate these intersections more decisively. • Updating our emergency preparedness and response: We will improve our emergency response protocols, incorporating lessons from this event. In San Francisco, we’ll continue to coordinate with Mayor Lurie’s team to identify areas of greater collaboration in our existing emergency preparedness plans. • Expanding our first responder engagement: To date, we’ve trained more than 25,000 first responders in the U.S. and around the world on how to interact with Waymo. As we discover learnings from this and other widespread events, we’ll continue updating our first responder training.”