Mayor Lurie has condemned San Francisco’s transit nightmare over this past 4th of July weekend, promising that October’s Fleet Week won’t suffer the same headaches.
Fourth of July in San Francisco is, ostensibly, a laughable affair. (That … and there’s an incredibly small list of celebratory items to wax patriotic.) Fireworks disappear into dense blankets of fog; cold, windy weather makes outdoor evening festivities less than enjoyable; and the most visible fireworks, barenone, are those set off illegally in neighborhoods until the wee hours of the morning.
A more recent happening — the entire city of San Francisco having access to driverless Waymo rides since June of 2024 — is the presence of bricked self-driving cars causing pandemonium all over SF. The problem, which has been well documented in other service regions, too, remains a constant headache. This Fourth of July was even worse than years prior, thanks to a perfect storm of increased service capacity and the City throwing a massive firework show along the Golden Gate Bridge … attracting massive crowds toward popular green spaces, like Crissy Fields.
Multiple, veritable reports show Waymo cars becoming “confused” while navigating SF’s crowded streets and network of road closures. More than a few of the all-electric vehicles quite literally ran out of juice (read: electrons), stranding passengers. Eyewitnesses near SF’s Presidio recount seeing no less than twenty Waymos causing a long blockage, each vehicle motionless behind the other. (SFGate noted that the road closures apparently “missed” Waymo, despite many of them being announced weeks in advance; Mayor Lurie’s maligned July 4th firework show along the Golden Gate Bridge was revealed June 15th; a network of expected street closures was announced within days of that revelation.)
Anecdotes of riders stuck in traffic for hours flooded social media. Designated drop-off and pick-up locations for rideshares were established along the Presidio, but unmitigated chaos still prevailed. Parking officials organized towing for Waymos that idle for too long.
Unsurprisingly, illegal neighborhood fireworks still proved treacherous for these computers on four wheels.
“An unoccupied Waymo autonomous vehicle caught fire Saturday evening after driving over a small firework in a San Francisco roadway, according to a company spokesperson.
The incident occurred near the 1200 block of Connecticut Street. No one was inside the self-driving car at… pic.twitter.com/8Rw8TU4FYb
— tantic (@wwhq8b8kdr) July 6, 2026
Self-driving cars, like those in Waymo’s San Francisco fleet, use a suite of LiDAR sensors and car-mounted cameras to navigate the world around them. Statistically, they remain far safer than vehicles operated by humans … but that’s not to say they’re without limitation. LiDAR sensors are vulnerable to sudden bursts of light and colored rays — fireworks being the perfect amalgamation of those two. And, more often than not, LiDAR imaging of fireworks coupled will render Waymo vehicles useless … “bricked” in place.
This year was no different than past ones; social media, especially tech-bro-heavy X, were inundated with people showing how their hailed Waymo vehicles kinda-sort-of unalived themselves in the presence of a lit firework. At least one Waymo car literally drove over one … while it was lit. And another, unoccupied Waymo — an iteration of the company’s new generation of hyper-mobile robotaxis — caught fire.
Thankfully, no one was injured as a result of San Francisco’s self-driving meltdown during the 4th of July. Mayor Lurie, whose proposed Citywide budget cuts could hobble some nonprofit services responsible for car-free transportation options in SF, has condemned the “unacceptable” traffic situation and vowed to shore things up before SF’s Fleet Week attracts hundreds of thousands in early October.
Feature Image: Screenshot, courtesy of X
