This just keeps happening.

Robotaxis have been causing traffic jams and snarls for some time in San Francisco, but now the problem is spreading to other cities as services like Cruise expand. While we covered the situation in Austin, Texas where about 20 of the self-driving taxis just stopped, bringing traffic to a halt, something similar happened on September 25 in Houston.

Find out why people in San Francisco are attacking robotaxis here.

Plenty of residents who were in the Montrose neighborhood documented with photos and videos three Cruise robotaxis stopped at an intersection, refusing to move. A thunderstorm knocked out the traffic lights in the area so they only showed red. Rather than treating the intersection as a four-way stop, as human drivers did, the autonomous cars just stopped moving, apparently waiting for the knocked-out lights to turn green.

Thankfully, it only took 15 minutes to clear up the traffic jam, reports Fox 26. But it delayed drivers, including causing some city buses to run late on their schedules.

While not as large and vexing a problem, the Houston situation is still concerning. After all, there’s talk of expanding these autonomous vehicle services to even more cities. But the technology seems pretty rough at times.

If an autonomous robotaxi can’t figure out how to navigate a situation like this, are they really a safe thing to have on city streets? That’s what many in Houston are now wondering, similar to what’s been going on in San Francisco.

In San Francisco, robotaxis have run over and killed a dog, driven into an active firefighter scene and refused to move, stopped randomly and blocked traffic, one even drove into wet cement in a blocked-off construction zone. Instead of just ignoring these problems, perhaps they need to be fully addressed before subjecting even more cities to the insanity and inconvenience of a technology we’re constantly told will replace human drivers in a few short years.

Image via X

JUST IN: New pictures of self-driving cars blocking a Houston intersection Monday. A viewer says 3 of the 4 directions of travel were blocked. This happened after a thunderstorm knocked out power… all the traffic lights were stuck on red. #SelfDriving #texas pic.twitter.com/AlbEV19XYW

— Matthew Seedorff (@MattSeedorff) September 26, 2023