Waymo Pauses Robotaxi Service in Multiple Cities Due to Flooding Issues Waymo’s rapid U.S. robotaxi expansion has run headlong into a basic challenge of real-world driving: how to reliably detect and avoid flooded roads.

In early May, Waymo disclosed in a filing that its autonomous vehicles might “slow but not stop” when encountering a potentially untraversable flooded lane on higher-speed roads, triggering a software recall across its fleet. The problem emerged just months after the company launched service in San Antonio, Texas, in February, and prompted a pause in public rider service there while engineers worked on the autonomous driving system.

As the month progressed, the flooding issue spread geographically. The company acknowledged it did not yet have a “final remedy” for avoiding flooded areas when it pushed a software update that instead imposed temporary “restrictions at times and in locations where there is an elevated risk of encountering a flooded, higher-speed roadway.”

Those precautions proved insufficient. In Atlanta, an unoccupied Waymo robotaxi was spotted driving into a flooded street before getting stuck for about an hour; the vehicle was later recovered, and Waymo paused service in the city while it investigated. The company emphasized that “safety is Waymo’s top priority” and said the vehicle “encountered a flooded road and stopped” during a period of intense rain.

By late May, the company had expanded its service interruptions. Waymo halted robotaxi operations in Atlanta and San Antonio, and then in Dallas and Houston, citing both direct flooding incidents and severe weather forecasts. Separately, it temporarily suspended highway rides across all regions to “integrate recent technical learnings” and improve performance in construction zones.

The pullbacks come just after a year of aggressive growth, with Waymo moving into new markets including Miami, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Orlando, and Nashville. Regulators are also watching: the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has said it is monitoring the flooding incidents and will “take appropriate action if necessary.”

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