Waymo pauses – Waymo has paused robotaxi service in four cities—Atlanta, San Antonio, Dallas, and Houston—after vehicles encountered flooded roads during intense rain and severe weather. The company says it had already issued a software update and placed restrictions to redu
For a little over an hour. one Waymo robotaxi sat on a flooded street in Atlanta. Georgia—unable to move while heavy rain swallowed the road around it. The vehicle was eventually recovered and removed from the scene. Waymo said. as the company moved from one-off disruptions to service pauses across multiple cities.
Waymo has now paused service in four cities because its robotaxis are struggling to deal with heavy rain and flooded roads. The company previously paused service in San Antonio, Texas. Now it has expanded the pause to Atlanta. and it has also halted service in Dallas and Houston as severe weather hit Texas this week.
In a statement, Waymo framed the incident as a safety decision made 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.
Waymo told TechCrunch that the Atlanta robotaxi was spotted driving through a flooded street on Wednesday before it got stuck. The company said it paused service in the city “while it figures out a solution.”
The flood problem is tied to a separate move Waymo made last week: a software recall. The company acknowledged that it hadn’t finished developing a “final remedy” for avoiding flooded areas when it issued the recall. Instead. it shipped an update to its fleet that. according to documents released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). placed “restrictions at times and in locations where there is an elevated risk of encountering a flooded. higher-speed roadway.”.
Those restrictions, Waymo said, still couldn’t fully prevent the Atlanta incident. It told TechCrunch on Thursday that the storm in Atlanta produced so much rainfall that flooding was happening before the National Weather Service had issued a flash flood warning. watch. or advisory. Waymo said those alerts are part of a larger set of signals it relies on to prepare the vehicles for poor weather.
The regulator is tracking what happened. “NHTSA is aware of this incident, is in communication with Waymo, and will take appropriate action if necessary,” an NHTSA spokesperson told TechCrunch.
The flood disruption lands in a broader storm of scrutiny over how Waymo’s robotaxis behave in real-world driving situations. Last year, people noticed Waymo robotaxis illegally passing stopped school buses. Waymo shipped a fix intended to address the issue, but the fleet continued making illegal maneuvers around school buses.
That school-bus behavior sits at the center of one of two sets of active investigations into the company. Both the NHTSA and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are looking into it. Waymo has already produced a batch of documents for the NHTSA, all of which were redacted to the public. Then. on May 15. the NHTSA sent a second document request to Waymo because the company’s initial response “necessitates that [NHTSA] receive further data and information.”.
The other set of investigations involves a January 23 incident in Santa Monica, California, where a Waymo robotaxi crashed into a child. Waymo said its robotaxi braked to around six miles per hour before it struck that child, and that she suffered minor injuries.
For now, the company’s latest move is blunt: pause service in cities where its vehicles have been shown to struggle when weather turns roads into hazards faster than preconditions can catch up. The question is whether the next software step will be quicker than the next storm.
Waymo robotaxi service pause flood risk Atlanta San Antonio Dallas Houston NHTSA National Transportation Safety Board recall software update National Weather Service alerts
So it’s a robotaxi that can’t drive in rain… cool.
I saw something about this and it honestly sounds like they didn’t plan for real weather. Flooded roads in Georgia and they just paused for “an hour”?? That seems like a lot of time to figure it out.
Not to be dramatic but if it got stuck on a flooded street, how are they “working on a solution” and still driving around anywhere? Also they mentioned a software recall, which like… means this is already a known problem, right?
Waymo pauses in Atlanta, San Antonio, Dallas, Houston… so basically Texas and parts of the south are a no-go. But the article says it was unoccupied, so why does it matter that the car stopped? I don’t trust any of these updates after they “issued a recall” last week, like they’re still guessing. Also that “final remedy” thing sounds like it’s gonna take forever.