|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
A California Highway Patrol Officer needed to take over for “the world’s most experienced driver” off Interstate 280 in Woodside after a grass fire shut down the highway for hours.
The vegetation fire broke out just before 5 p.m. on Aug. 30 on the northbound side of I-280, north of Farm Hill Road, after a car caught fire, according to the CHP. Flames spread up the hillside to Cañada College and jumped across the highway, forcing a full closure in both directions.
CHP officers directed traffic off at Edgewood Road and Woodside Road, even escorting stranded southbound drivers the wrong way back on the highway to the exit. Among them was a Waymo robotaxi carrying a single passenger in the back seat. The autonomous car initially tried to keep driving southbound.
Isaiah Narciso, a driver who was also stuck in traffic, said the Waymo pulled out of traffic to drive onto the shoulder, apparently attempting to avoid the traffic, before needing to drive in reverse on the road since CHP instructed cars in front of it to turn around and drive back in the breakdown lane to the nearest exit. Narciso videoed the incident as well.
“If I were a passenger in that car in the scenario I captured on video (and there was no way I could independently take control of the wheel myself to get out of it), it would certainly be a traumatic experience,” Narciso said. “Perhaps it’s just me, but at this point, I won’t be ditching my car and jumping into a self-driving one anytime soon.”
At some point following the video, a CHP officer called Waymo’s dispatch, which authorized him to take the wheel. He climbed into the driver’s seat and personally steered the car the wrong way off the freeway before parking it at the Edgewood Road park-and-ride lot, according to CHP. “The Waymo was never in autonomous mode while driving wrong way on I-280,” CHP spokesperson Jovita Ojeda said. Waymo later arranged for a private tow to collect the vehicle.
It was an uncommon human assist for the nation’s only fully-autonomous ridehailing service. Waymo, a subsidiary of Mountain View-based Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, has been steadily expanding its self-driving taxi service across the Bay Area, including into Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Los Altos Hills earlier this summer for select users only. The company says its California service now covers more than 80 square miles of the Peninsula as part of its third expansion in less than a year.
Waymo also operates in Los Angeles, Phoenix and Austin, and claims it is providing more than a quarter of a million paid trips per week nationwide. Company officials point to their safety record with fewer and less significant collisions than human drivers, and say the service particularly benefits seniors, people with disabilities and others facing mobility challenges.
But its Peninsula rollout has not been without bumps in the road. Local officials expressed concern when Waymo cars first appeared in Daly City, Colma and Broadmoor last year without advance notice. More recently, Peninsula drivers have shared sightings of Waymos all over the area.
In late August, Waymo said it was starting its next chapter and accelerating its expansion. It says when residents see more Waymos on the road, it means the company is working hard to expand in those areas. Before Waymo allows autonomous driving in an area, it says it maps roads and its surroundings.
“I think that self-driving vehicles in general have a long way to go before the wider public accepts them as an alternative form of transportation. Perhaps Waymo will form new test cases from this incident and will hopefully account for the unpredictability of both human behavior and the environment,” Narciso said.
Waymo says it does not currently operate a ridehailing service in Woodside, Portola Valley or the area where the Waymo car was on 280. The company did not say whether the passenger was a Waymo employee.
Local emergency responders have conducted some training with Waymo. Woodside Fire Protection District Fire Chief Tom Cuschieri said the district, which led the firefighting efforts on Aug. 30, and local agencies have attended a training jointly with other fire departments.
Woodside man and dog injured in hit-and-run on dangerous stretch of Woodside RoadMarch 19, 2026 10:39 am
