- Waymo has suspended robotaxi service across five major US cities this week.
- The pause follows a recent recall covering nearly 3,800 autonomous vehicles.
- One Waymo sat stranded in Atlanta floodwaters until a human stepped in.
For a company built on the premise that machines see the road better than humans do, getting repeatedly outsmarted by puddles is not a great look. The Alphabet-owned firm has suspended operations in five U.S. cities while it works out why its robotaxis keep mistaking flooded streets for drivable ones.
Read: Waymo Recalls Thousands Of Robotaxis After One Got Washed Away In A Flood
The flooded-road problem first surfaced earlier this month, when a Waymo robotaxi drove onto a submerged road in San Antonio, Texas, on April 20 and was swept into a creek. No one was on board, which is the only saving grace. The incident pushed Waymo to recall close to 3,800 robotaxis to fix how they handle these conditions.
The Atlanta Incident
While the company continues working on a fix, another one of its vehicles got stranded in floodwaters after heavy rain in Atlanta, Georgia, earlier this week. 10News reports the EV was stuck for roughly an hour before the floodwaters receded, at which point a human driver was able to jump behind the wheel.
Following the Texas incident, Waymo paused service in San Antonio, and the suspension now extends to Austin, Atlanta, Dallas, and Houston, partly in response to the severe weather sweeping across Texas this week.
Speaking with TechCrunch, Waymo says it uses National Weather Service alerts to prepare its vehicles for difficult weather conditions. However, in the case of the flash flood in Atlanta, it says a storm produced so much rainfall in such a short period that the robotaxi got stuck before any alert was issued.
As part of the recall issued last week, Waymo said it was rolling out operational restrictions in areas with an elevated risk of flooded, higher-speed roads, and added that work on a “final remedy” is still underway.
