San Francisco rider says Waymo drove into Highway 101 construction zone

A routine Waymo trip on Highway 101 turned frightening for San Francisco resident Elliot Slade when the robotaxi entered a construction zone, appeared to lose its bearings, and kept going despite lane shifts, cones and signs. Slade said the car first tried to merge into other lanes, then drove into the work area itself, sped up, and eventually left the zone and exited into a residential neighborhood.

Slade’s account matters in San Francisco County because it turned a single freeway ride into a public-safety question on a corridor that mixes fast traffic, active roadwork and close CHP oversight. He said a California Highway Patrol officer chased after the vehicle and shouted for Waymo to stop, a scene that underscored how quickly an autonomous-driving error can move from an isolated passenger complaint to an incident involving law enforcement and other drivers on the road.

The episode landed as Waymo was already under pressure over how its robotaxis handle construction. The company paused freeway rides in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Miami on May 22 while it worked to improve how the vehicles respond in work zones. Then, on June 18, Waymo issued a voluntary recall of more than 3,800 robotaxis, which it described as nearly its entire U.S. fleet, after federal filings said at least 13 vehicles had driven into highway construction zones.

That recall followed earlier federal scrutiny. In 2024, U.S. federal regulators reviewed 22 reports of Waymo vehicles crashing or behaving in ways that may have violated traffic laws, including incidents tied to signs and cones. For San Francisco riders, that history sharpens the concern that freeway travel is not just another service expansion but an unresolved safety test, especially where detours and lane changes happen fast.

Waymo has said it is voluntarily sharing safety data and has framed freeway service as part of a broader push across the Bay Area, Phoenix and Los Angeles. In San Francisco, where construction is constant and freeway interfaces are already crowded, the company’s next steps will be judged less by how quickly it expands than by whether passengers can trust the cars to recognize a work zone before a routine ride turns into a roadside emergency.