Have they lost their Way-mo?
Alphabet’s glitch-plagued robo-cab subsidiary has yet another speed bump. Waymo has recalled 3,800 autonomous taxis after identifying a bug that allowed the vehicles to drive into standing water, per a letter on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) website.
According to the NHTSA, which is probing the mishap, the software recall applies to Waymo vehicles that use the company’s fifth and sixth generation automated driving systems (or ADS).
The recall was prompted by an incident that occurred on April 20, when a self-driving car drove into a flooded creek in San Antonio amid inclement weather and was swept away, CNBC reported. Thankfully, there were no passengers aboard at the time.
Meanwhile, in Austin, Texas, cameras had reportedly caught the wonky autonomous passenger transports puttering right onto a flooded street and coming to a halt, forcing other motorists to drive around them,
While no injuries were reported, these malfunctions did raise concerns over the cars’ ability to navigate deluges and other natural disasters.
Reps for Waymo, which prides itself on reducing traffic accidents, said they’d “identified an area of improvement regarding untraversable flooded lanes specific to higher-speed roadways.”
“We are working to implement additional software safeguards and have put mitigations in place, including refining our extreme weather operations during periods of intense rain, limiting access to areas where flash flooding might occur,” the spokesperson added.
In the interim, Waymo narrowed its operating scope to bolster weather-related safeguards and updated maps as it works toward a more permanent solution.
These changes were instituted on April 20.
They’ve also temporarily suspended their robo-taxi operations in San Antonio.
This is far from the first incident to plague the automated cab company, which has wheels on the ground in 11 U.S. markets and is ubiquitous in cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin and Miami.
In February, onlookers filmed the moment that Waymo cars got trapped in flood waters in Los Angeles as heavy rains pummeled the city.
In 2025, meanwhile, Alphabet’s Waymo recalled more than 1,200 units in its fleet over a software bug that had the potential to make the robotic vehicles more likely to crash into gates and other obstacles.
Perhaps the strangest glitch occurred earlier this Spring at San Jose Mineta International Airport, when a rogue robotaxi sped off with a Bay Area passenger’s luggage in its trunk — leaving him stranded without clothes, work materials before a flight to San Diego.
“So I have no luggage, no clothes to change, and all my work notes are in my luggage,” lamented the flyer, named Di Jin.
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