Waymo pauses – Waymo has paused robotaxi service in Atlanta, Georgia and San Antonio, Texas after heavy rain and flooded roads left one vehicle stuck for about an hour. The pause follows a software recall last week tied to Waymo’s inability to fully avoid flooded areas, even
A Waymo robotaxi was seen driving through a flooded street in Atlanta, Georgia on Wednesday before it ultimately got stuck for about an hour. The vehicle was recovered and removed from the scene, and Waymo later told Waymo that it paused service in the city while it works on a solution.
The company is also pausing service in San Antonio, Texas, a move tied to the same problem: struggling to handle heavy rain and roads covered by flooding. Waymo frames the decision as a safety step during intense weather.
“Safety is Waymo’s top priority, both for our riders and everyone we share the road with. During a period of intense rain yesterday in Atlanta, an unoccupied Waymo vehicle encountered a flooded road and stopped,” the company said in a statement.
What prompted the pause isn’t just what happened on the street. It’s what Waymo had already acknowledged about the state of its software. Last week. Waymo issued a software recall after admitting it hadn’t finished developing a “final remedy” for avoiding flooded areas. In the meantime. the company said it shipped an update to its fleet that placed “restrictions at times and in locations where there is an elevated risk of encountering a flooded. higher-speed roadway. ” based on documents released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
But even those precautions apparently failed to prevent the Atlanta robotaxi from entering a flooded intersection. Waymo told TechCrunch on Thursday that the storm produced so much rainfall that flooding was happening before the National Weather Service had issued a flash flood warning. watch. or advisory—conditions the company’s fleet apparently relies on to avoid driving into deep water.
This isn’t the first time Waymo has struggled to stamp out risky or illegal behavior quickly once the public began noticing it. Last year. when people started to observe Waymo robotaxis illegally passing stopped school buses. the company shipped a fix meant to address the issue. The problem, however, continued, with Waymo robotaxis making illegal maneuvers around school buses anyway.
Waymo’s school-bus behavior is now part of one of two sets of active investigations. Both the NHTSA and the National Transportation Safety Board are looking into that problem. and Waymo has already produced a batch of documents to the NHTSA that were redacted from the public. On May 15. the NHTSA sent a second document request to Waymo after the agency said the company’s initial response “necessitates that [NHTSA] receive further data and information.”.
The other investigation involves a January 23 incident in Santa Monica, California, where a Waymo robotaxi crashed into a child. Waymo has said its robotaxi braked to around six miles per hour before striking the child, and that she suffered minor injuries.
In Atlanta. the immediate outcome is clear: service has been paused in the city. and a separate pause is already in place in San Antonio while Waymo “figures out a solution.” The pressure now is whether the restrictions tied to official weather notices can keep up when storms overwhelm timelines—and whether software updates can stop problem behavior before it turns into another incident on the road.
Waymo robotaxi Atlanta floods San Antonio pause NHTSA NTSB software recall autonomous vehicles cybersecurity safety autonomous driving incidents