Waymo has now suspended service in four cities because its robotaxis are struggling to cope with heavy rain and flooded roads, a problem that already prompted the company to issue a recall last week.
One of Waymo’s robotaxis was spotted driving down a flooded road in Atlanta, Georgia, on Wednesday before eventually getting stuck for about an hour, according to in local newscasts. The vehicle was towed and removed from the scene, Waymo told TechCrunch. Waymo says it has suspended service in the city, just as it did in San Antonio, Texas, while it finds a solution.
“Safety is Waymo’s top priority, both for our riders and everyone we share the road with. During a period of heavy rain yesterday in Atlanta, an unoccupied Waymo vehicle encountered a flooded road and came to a stop,” the company said in a statement.
Waymo also suspended service in Dallas and Houston due to severe weather across Texas this week, the company confirmed to TechCrunch late Thursday. Expansion was first was mentioned from Bloomberg News.
A Waymo spokesman said the company also suspended service in Dallas and Houston out of an abundance of caution for predicted severe weather.
Waymo admitted it had not finished developing a “definitive remedy” to avoid flooded areas when it issued the software recall last week. Instead, the company said it sent an update to its fleet that placed “restrictions on times and locations where there is an increased risk of encountering a flooded road at higher speeds,” according to documents released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
But even those precautions apparently weren’t enough to stop the Waymo robotaxi from entering a flooded intersection in Atlanta. Waymo told TechCrunch on Thursday that the storm in Atlanta produced so much rain that flooding was happening before the National Weather Service issued a flood watch, watch or warning. The company said these alerts are part of a larger set of signals it relies on to prepare vehicles for bad weather.
“NHTSA is aware of this incident, is in communication with Waymo, and will take appropriate action if necessary,” a spokesperson for the safety regulator told TechCrunch about the robotaxi that got stuck in Atlanta.
This isn’t the first time Waymo has struggled to quickly eliminate problematic behavior with its robotaxis. When people started noticing Waymo robotaxis illegally passing stopped school buses last year, the company sent out a patch that supposedly fixed the problem — only to have its fleet continue to illegally maneuver around school buses.
Waymo’s conduct around school buses is the focus of one of two active investigations into the company.
Both NHTSA and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are looking into this problem. Waymo has already produced a batch of documents for NHTSA, which have been updated to the public. On May 15, NHTSA sent a second document request to Waymo because the company’s initial response “requires [NHTSA] get further data and information.”
The other set of investigations by the NHTSA and NTSB involves a Jan. 23 incident where a Waymo robotaxi crashed into a child in Santa Monica, California. Waymo said its robotaxi braked at about six miles per hour before hitting the child and that he suffered minor injuries.
This story has been updated with more information about how Waymo uses National Weather Service alerts, and include new service outages in Houston and Dallas.
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