50 People Coordinated a Waymo Traffic Jam at a Dead-End Street. Here's What Happened.

San Francisco has become the capital of autonomous vehicles, with Waymo's white Jaguars completing over 250,000 paid rides weekly across the city. The robotaxis are everywhere—so much so that they've woven themselves into the fabric of daily life. But back in July, engineer Riley Walz decided to find out what would happen when you push that ubiquity to its absolute limit.

The premise was simple: coordinate 50 people to simultaneously order Waymo rides from San Francisco's longest dead-end street, near Coit Tower. The result? What Walz dubbed "the world's first Waymo DDOS."

According to Walz's follow-up posts, the participants didn't actually get in the cars. They simply waited as autonomous vehicles began arriving at the dead-end street, one after another, queuing up with nowhere to turn around. After about 10 minutes, the robotaxis departed, charging each would-be passenger a $5 no-show fee.

The atmosphere, Walz reported, felt like middle school—everyone was giddy, and when another car showed up, there were cheers. A few regular drivers passing by just laughed and drove around the robotic traffic jam.

So how did Waymo respond?

Apparently quite well. Walz noted that Waymo "handled this well" and that the situation wasn't much different from what happens when a big concert ends. The company's solution was straightforward: they disabled all rides within a two-block vicinity until the next morning.

The incident highlights an interesting dynamic in San Francisco's relationship with autonomous vehicles. Just two years ago, more than half of city residents opposed driverless cars. Now, according to recent polling, two-thirds support them. The city has, as one local publication put it, become "Waymo-pilled."

Waymo currently operates in five cities—Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, and Atlanta—completing over 250,000 paid rides per week. The company has published peer-reviewed research showing its vehicles experience 82% fewer crashes with bikers and motorcyclists and 92% fewer crashes with pedestrians compared to human drivers.

But the dead-end street problem isn't entirely new for Waymo. Back in 2021, residents on 15th Avenue in San Francisco's Richmond District complained that Waymo cars were repeatedly turning around on their dead-end street—sometimes up to 50 times per day. The issue then was a routing quirk related to the city's Slow Streets program, which limited through traffic on certain residential roads.

Which raises the practical question: how did 50 robotaxis eventually extract themselves from a dead-end street?

Walz didn't provide those logistical details, but given that the cars left after 10 minutes, they likely performed the same multi-point turns that have become routine on San Francisco's many dead-end streets. After all, these are vehicles designed to navigate one of America's most complex urban environments—tight hills, unclear intersections, and yes, dead ends.

The experiment reveals something deeper about where autonomous vehicles sit in 2025. They're no longer exotic prototypes—they're infrastructure you can stress-test with a group text. Waymo's fleet has driven over 56 million miles and provides transportation that many San Franciscans now consider more dependable than Uber or Lyft.

As TechCrunch reported, Waymo plans to expand to ten new testing cities in 2025, from Las Vegas to San Diego, gathering experience in different traffic patterns and weather conditions. The company has said it's looking for places that will "challenge our system and look very, very different."

Apparently, 50 people with smartphones at a dead-end street counts as a challenge. And judging by Waymo's measured response—temporary geofencing instead of system failure—it's a challenge the technology handled just fine.