Waymo pauses – Waymo has slowed its public operations after a month of weather-related and construction-related disruptions, including a NHTSA-filed software recall tied to a flooded roadway incident in San Antonio and temporary rider-service pauses in six cities.
For more than a month, Waymo’s robotaxis have been running into a familiar enemy: water, fast—and sometimes on lanes they were built to treat as passable.
The result has been a tightening of operations. The company temporarily suspended rider service in six cities and paused highway rides across all regions where they’re offered, after a sequence of setbacks tied to flooded roadways and construction zones.
The trouble began in early May, when Waymo issued a software recall for its fleet after a robotaxi drove through a flooded roadway in San Antonio. The incident was detailed in a report filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
On higher speed roadways, the NHTSA report said, the Waymo automated vehicle “may slow but not stop in response to detecting a potentially untraversable flooded lane.”
That language was published just months after Waymo started rider service in San Antonio in February. The recall prompted Waymo to pause public rider service in the city while it improved its autonomous driving system. according to a spokesperson. Waymo said at the time of the NHTSA report filing on May 11 that a “remedy” was under development.
But the flooding problems didn’t stay contained to San Antonio.
On Thursday, Waymo suspended rider service in Atlanta after heavy rain and flash floods. A Waymo spokesperson said an unoccupied Waymo vehicle drove into a flooded road and stopped. The spokesperson added: “The vehicle has been recovered and removed from the scene.” Waymo did not explain what technical issues its robotaxi faces on flooded roads.
By Friday, rider service was paused across six cities: Atlanta, Nashville, Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. The spokesperson confirmed the pauses were due to heavy rain in the regions.
The company also hit the brakes on a different front: freeway travel. Waymo temporarily suspended rides on highways in order to improve performance around construction zones. “We have temporarily paused freeway operations. as we work to integrate recent technical learnings into our software and expect to resume these routes soon. ” Waymo said on Thursday.
These constraints come as Waymo pushes into more markets. The company’s latest service pauses follow its expansion to six new cities this year—Miami. Dallas. Houston. San Antonio. Orlando. and Nashville. That pace represents a step-up from recent years: in 2024. Waymo added Los Angeles while deepening its footprint in the San Francisco Bay Area. and in the next year it added Austin and Atlanta.
At the same time, growth in California—Waymo’s largest market to date—has slowed as the company deploys resources into other regions with additional expansion plans in the pipeline for 2026.
A Driverless Digest analysis showed how the monthly pace of rides was already softening before the latest weather disruptions. It found that monthly gains declined from +14,800 rides a week in January to +2,700 rides a week in March.
Harry Campbell. founder of The Driverless Digest. said he was surprised by the number of flooding and construction-zone issues at this stage. given how aggressively the company had expanded over the past year. He also said pausing service is probably the right move if performance isn’t where Waymo wants it.
Looking beyond the pauses, Waymo said it expects to start commercial rides in Las Vegas, San Diego, and London later this year. The company also plans to roll out two new vehicle platforms—the Ojai and the Hyundai Ioniq 5. Both cars will have a reduced sensor suite.
Waymo’s operational slowdown is now measured not just in software revisions and fleet behavior, but in the cities where riders were briefly left waiting after rain, flash floods, and construction altered the roads it needs to navigate with confidence.
Waymo rider service pause flooded roads NHTSA recall San Antonio Atlanta freeway operations construction zones autonomous driving Ojai platform Hyundai Ioniq 5 Alphabet