There have been numerous instances of road robot algorithms being written so poorly that they end up blocking everyone else (causing denial of service). In the earliest case, nearly a decade ago, Google engineers never bothered to input basic Mountain View traffic laws and their robots were pulled over for nuisance driving (too slow).

In the latest case, Waymo stopped perpendicular to San Francisco traffic, on Nob Hill just outside the Fairmont, dangerously blocking a Vice Presidential motorcade.

California has thus finally passed a new emergency requirement (don’t call it a backdoor), that a traffic authority can issue a direct command to an entire robot fleet to vacate a space.

The bill would, commencing July 1, 2026, authorize an emergency response official to issue an emergency geofencing message, as defined, to a manufacturer and would require a manufacturer to direct its fleet to leave or avoid the area identified within 2 minutes of receiving an emergency geofencing message, as specified.

Now the obvious question arises how strong the integrity checks are on that message bus (no pun intended), because I know a lot of people who thought dropping orange cones to “geofence” robots already was a great idea.