Waymo has suspended service in four cities because its robotaxis are struggling to cope with heavy rain and flooded roads, a problem that is already encouraged the company to issue a withdrawal last week.
One of Waymo’s robotaxis was seen driving through a flooded street in Atlanta, Georgia, on Wednesday before getting stuck for about an hour, according to to local news reports. The vehicle was recovered and removed from the scene, Waymo told TechCrunch. Waymo says it has suspended service in the city, as it did in San Antonio, Texas, while it finds a solution.
“Safety is Waymo’s top priority, both for our passengers and everyone we share the road with. During a period of heavy rain yesterday in Atlanta, an unoccupied Waymo vehicle encountered a flooded roadway and stopped,” the company said in a statement.
Waymo also stopped service in Dallas and Houston due to severe weather in Texas this week, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Thursday evening. Expansion came first reported by Bloomberg News.
A Waymo spokesperson said the company also suspended service in Dallas and Houston out of an abundance of caution over forecasted severe weather.
Waymo admitted it had not finished developing a “final remedy” to prevent flooded areas when it issued its software recall last week. Instead, the company said it sent an update to its fleet that imposed “restrictions at times and places where there is an elevated risk of encountering a flooded and higher-speed road,” according to documents released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
But even those precautions apparently weren’t enough to prevent 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 occurred before the National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning, watch or advisory. The company said those alerts are part of a broader 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 eradicate problematic behavior with its robotaxis. When people started noticing Waymo’s robotaxis illegally passing stopped school buses last year, the company shipped a fix that was supposed to fix the problem, only to have its fleet They continue to carry out illegal maneuvers around school buses.
Waymo’s behavior around school buses is at the center of one of two sets of active investigations into the company.
Both NHTSA and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are investigating this issue. Waymo has already produced a batch of documents for NHTSA, all of which were redacted for the public. On May 15, NHTSA sent a second document request to Waymo because the company’s initial response “requires (NHTSA) to receive more data and information.”
The other set of NHTSA and NTSB investigations involve a Jan. 23 incident in which a Waymo robotaxi crashed into a child in Santa Monica, California. Waymo has said its robotaxi braked at about six miles per hour before hitting the girl and that she suffered minor injuries.
This story has been updated with more information about how Waymo uses alerts from the National Weather Service., and include new breaks in service in Houston and Dallas.
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