Austin police and firefighters recorded 99 emergency calls for passengers who fell asleep in Waymo robotaxis during the company's first nine months of service in the Texas capital, a problem dispatchers have labeled "sleepers"1,2.
The pattern is one facet of a broader operational challenge confronting autonomous vehicle operators as they scale driverless taxi services across U.S. cities. Passengers are falling asleep, vomiting, spilling food and drinks, experiencing medical emergencies, and — in at least two instances — giving birth in the vehicles. When riders stumble out and leave doors open, operators pay nearby gig workers to close them.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has separately documented dozens of incidents in which autonomous vehicles interfered with law enforcement or other first responders, calling it a "recent, disturbing trend" and a "clear pattern"4. NHTSA sent a letter to Waymo, Tesla, Zoox, and other autonomous vehicle makers demanding they explain how they will prevent vehicles from driving into active emergency scenes, blocking ambulances and firefighters, or failing to respond to flashing lights, flares, smoke, fire, and traffic cones. The agency required the companies to meet with regulators by the end of the month.
In March, several Waymo robotaxis blocked emergency medical services responding to a mass shooting in Austin. Also in March, a human driving a Waymo car was cited for crossing barriers at an active house fire in San Antonio.
The sleeping-passenger problem illustrates a distinct challenge: when a remote Waymo assistant cannot rouse a rider through the car's speakers, the protocol escalates to a 911 call. In one case, Los Angeles interior designer Ditto Kasendar, 30, fell asleep during a six-minute ride home from a friend's birthday party in 2025. His trip had ended nearly an hour before firefighters opened the door. "I was like, 'Oh my god, what happened?'" Kasendar said. Austin dispatchers treat a robotaxi sleeper incident as a potential heart attack if the remote assistant cannot determine whether the passenger is breathing. Only about 3% of such Austin calls require transporting the passenger to a hospital.
Kasendar said the incident did not cost him more than the original $8 fare and that it made him more likely to use Waymo, which he rides about four or five times a week.
Waymo now operates about 250 vehicles in a 140-square-mile service area in Austin, where it began service in March 2025. The company also operates in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, Nashville, Phoenix, the San Francisco Bay Area, and San Antonio, where it began limited service in February. Waymo's San Antonio service remains offline, and the company has not indicated when it expects to resume. In San Francisco, more than 60 Waymos had to be moved after a widespread blackout in December 2025 left them blocking city streets.
Waymo told Senator Ed Markey in written testimony in February that it has a team of specialized, U.S.-based agents dedicated to coordinating with first responders during incidents. The company's remote support staff can access interior camera footage to conduct cleanliness checks or investigate unusual activity. Waymo charges a $50 cleaning fee for spills, rising to $100 if the next passenger discovers the mess first, and charges repeat offenders more for trash and smoking violations.
Tesla's Robotaxi-branded Model Ys are operating in Austin, Dallas, and Houston, though most still have human safety monitors onboard. Tesla charges $50 for moderate messes such as food spills and $150 for smoking or leaving biowaste behind. Waymo's fleet partner in Miami, Moove, posted a job listing for an autonomous vehicle cleaner that included responding to biohazard incidents per OSHA bloodborne pathogen protocol.
ANALYSIS The convergence of NHTSA's enforcement letter and the mounting "sleeper" call data in Austin highlights a gap between the technical maturity of autonomous driving systems and the operational infrastructure required to manage the unpredictable behavior of human passengers — a challenge that scales with every new city deployment. Tesla's continued reliance on human safety monitors in most of its robotaxi fleet underscores that the transition to fully driverless commercial service remains incomplete even for the largest players.