Who is driving Waymo’s self-driving cars? Sometimes even the police.

Last August, a fire consumed 10 acres of grassland on both sides of Interstate 280 near Redwood City, California. Traffic was backed up as firefighters extinguished the fire, and California Highway Patrol (CHP) troopers told drivers to turn around and exit the highway in the opposite direction.

Some of these drivers encountered a new obstacle: Waymo robotaxis.

Video of the incident shows the Waymo AV attempting to pass stopped traffic by driving on the shoulder of the road, then backing away from oncoming traffic before finally coming to a complete stop.

Despite the efforts of the company’s remote support team, the robotaxi did not budge. So Waymo turned to a resource that had become a trusted problem solver and called 911.

“The highway patrol has turned everyone around, but unfortunately our car can’t turn around,” one Waymo remote assistance staff member told an Area 911 dispatcher, according to a recording obtained by TechCrunch through a public records request. Employees wanted police officers on the scene to drive robotaxis and arrange for transportation of passengers inside the vehicles.

About 30 minutes after the Waymo called 911, a CHP officer took the wheel and drove the robotaxi to a park-and-ride parking lot near the highway, according to a CHP incident report obtained by TechCrunch. From there, he was driven away by one of Waymo’s “roadside assistance” employees, the company told TechCrunch.

The Redwood City incident can be seen as an edge case, an inevitable but somewhat embarrassing occurrence in Waymo’s rapidly expanding robotaxi service network.

However, this was not an isolated incident. Despite having its own roadside assistance team, Waymo has relied on taxpayer-funded first responders to navigate when problems occur with its vehicles. In at least six cases identified by TechCrunch, first responders had to take control of Waymo vehicles and move them out of traffic during emergencies, including when police officers were responding to active shooter incidents.

Waymo has recently come under fire from lawmakers for using remote assistance employees, including dozens from the Philippines, to help its robot taxis determine the best routes in complex situations. The company’s roadside assistance team doesn’t get much attention.

Company representatives didn’t mention roadside assistance workers once during a testy March 2 hearing in San Francisco on the operation of Waymo’s robotaxis, which were down during a major power outage in December. At the meeting, city officials expressed concern that stranded self-driving cars are hindering first responders or forcing them away from their jobs.

“What’s starting to happen is public safety personnel and responders are having to physically move themselves.” [Waymos]”In some ways, roadside assistance is becoming the default roadside service for these vehicles, and I don’t think that’s sustainable,” Mary Ellen Carroll, executive director of the San Francisco Office of Emergency Management, said during the hearing.

Waymo told TechCrunch that its roadside assistance staff stranded dozens of robotaxis during the power outage, but several still needed to be moved by first responders.

“Waymo Roadside Assistance is a dedicated team of experts who provide additional on-site support to our fleet,” the company said in an email to TechCrunch. “Waymo’s roadside response and quality of service standards prioritize minimizing potential community impacts.”

The company declined to answer TechCrunch’s questions about how many roadside assistance staff it employs and which third-party companies might hire them. Waymo also declined to say how it plans to expand its team, with the company aiming to launch in about 20 more cities this year and expand beyond its current markets of Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando, Phoenix, San Antonio and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Waymo helper

Waymo’s robotaxis provide more than 400,000 paid rides a week, a testament to the company’s years of developing self-driving technology. However, robotaxis sometimes take help from humans, and they do so in several ways.

Robotaxis sometimes need guidance in complex situations, especially since, as Waymo insists, the company is trying to be as cautious as possible when expanding its service.

Waymo’s robotaxis receive this guidance from “remote assistance” workers. About 70 people monitor Waymo’s roughly 3,000 vehicles at any given time, the company said. Half of these workers are based in the United States and the other half in the Philippines.

These details were shared in a letter to Congress in February, sparking a backlash against Waymo over safety and security concerns. Waymo defended its use of remote assistants, arguing that its employees are fully qualified and that their remote locations will not cause significant delays, whether in Arizona, Michigan, or the Philippines.

“Our vehicle-to-RA connections are also as fast as the blink of an eye. Median one-way delays are approximately 150 milliseconds for U.S.-based operations centers and 250 milliseconds for overseas-based RAs,” the company recently wrote.

Remote assistance workers perform several tasks. When a Waymo vehicle encounters a difficult-to-maneuver real-world situation, it may send a request to these workers to determine the best course of action. Waymo clarifies that these employees are “providing advice and support to our employees.” [robotaxis] However, do not directly control, steer, or drive the vehicle. ” It also responds to low-priority requests from Waymo robotaxis, such as answering questions about whether the vehicle is clean.

However, this loop is not perfect.

The National Transportation Safety Board recently revealed that in January, Waymo in Austin asked remote assistance workers to check if nearby school buses were picking up and dropping off children. Stop signs and flashing lights were installed, but remote support staff incorrectly told the robotaxi that it was ready to go. The Waymo then passed a school bus carrying children, but the bus’s “stop arm” was still extended, the NTSB said.

Waymo told TechCrunch that it “performs regular audits.”[s] RA response including correctness. Once an incident is caught, it is immediately flagged for next steps, ranging from further instruction to complete decertification. ”

When Waymo crashes or experiences an emergency, the company relies on its “event response team.” Waymo said the team, although still remote, is “based exclusively in the U.S.” and is “certified for more complex tasks, such as coordinating with emergency responders and managing post-crash protocols.”

By that definition, the remote assistance worker who helped CHP move Waymo’s robotaxis from the Redwood City incident was likely part of the incident response team, although Waymo has not confirmed that.

There are growing pains here too. Incident reports and audio recordings of the CHP dispatch obtained by TechCrunch show officers believed for about 10 minutes that Waymo wanted passengers to move the robotaxis away from the fire scene.

CHP found that officers had to remove the remote worker from the scene until the remote worker called 911 a second time. (Waymo declined to answer specific questions about the mishap. The company said it never asks passengers to take control of a vehicle.)

Then there’s the road service team. These workers are responsible for “direct interaction in the field” and are often tasked with moving vehicles. Waymo declined to answer questions about how many robotaxi trips these workers make, how many are waiting at any given time, and how many are in each city.

Some appear to work for Transdev, a third-party contractor Waymo has used in the past, and some were Waymo safety drivers and supervisors, according to their LinkedIn profile information.

The company also told TechCrunch that it “requires it.”[s] Local towing partners maintain rapid response capabilities for emergency towing requests and strategically place support throughout our service area. ”

“If your Waymo vehicle requires assistance, we will dispatch Waymo Roadside Assistance and local tow partners to assist you on the scene,” the company said in a statement. “While we do not naturally expect first responders to move vehicles, we recognize that in an emergency situation, every moment counts. That’s why we designed a simple process that allows first responders to take control of a vehicle within seconds.”

rely on first responders

Waymo says it doesn’t expect first responders to come into contact with its vehicles, but such incidents continue to occur, and it’s unclear whether they will ever be completely avoidable.

In at least six incidents over the past few months, first responders have had to manually maneuver Waymo vehicles, including two crime scenes.

Earlier this month, Austin police officers had to remove a Waymo from an ambulance that was responding to a mass shooting. In February, first responders in Atlanta had to drop off a Waymo after it entered a crime scene before one of the company’s roadside service workers could “recover” it, the company said. And this week, a Nashville police officer had to manually drive a Waymo robot taxi out of the way after it got stuck at an intersection.

At a March 2 public hearing in San Francisco, city officials repeatedly asked Waymo what it would do to reduce its reliance on first responders. Waymo never mentioned during the three-hour meeting that it had employees dedicated to moving vehicles.

District Supervisor Bilal Mahmoud, who oversaw the hearing, told TechCrunch in an interview that he didn’t feel Waymo provided many satisfactory answers.

“What I asked is, how are you going to make first responders more accountable to make sure they don’t do things like that?” he said. “And we didn’t get those answers in the hearings that we were looking for, which is what are they going to do to make sure they have more ownership over the roadside assistance component?”

Sam Cooper, manager of Waymo’s incident response team, said at the hearing that the company has trained “more than 30,000 first responders around the world on how to interact with robotaxis.” He also touted Waymo’s work with first responders to design systems that would allow them to take control.

“We just want to give them the ability, if that happens, to properly remove that vehicle from the scene and make that scene safe so they can do their job,” he said.

Cooper said Waymo has “improved our ability to staff on short notice” to prepare for larger emergencies. However, he did not elaborate on those improvements, and Mahmoud told TechCrunch that his office has not received the promised follow-up.

Cooper also said Waymo will consider leveraging partnerships like the one it has with DoorDash. The partnership involves gig workers closing the door of a robotaxi that is left open and moving the vehicle.

It’s unclear how this will differ from the existing roadside assistance staff that Waymo uses. But city officials reiterated the same message. “Our first responders should not be AAA,” District Supervisor Alan Wong said.

This article was originally published on March 25, 2026 at 9:30am PT.