Waymo Pulls Robotaxis off Freeways for Now after Safety Snags

Reuters, Bloomberg, FOX Business contributed to this report.

Waymo is putting the brakes on freeway robotaxi rides in several US markets while it works through software and safety issues.

The Alphabet-owned company said Thursday that freeway service is being paused temporarily as it updates its software, especially around construction zones and flooded roads. Surface-street rides are still running, so passengers can keep using Waymo in cities, just not on the highway for the moment.

A Waymo spokesperson said safety comes first and that the company expects freeway routes to come back soon. The company said its vehicles deal with construction zones more than 10,000 times a day, which gives a sense of how often these edge cases show up.

The timing is awkward. Waymo recently paused service in Atlanta after floodwater caused trouble for an unoccupied vehicle, and earlier this month it recalled nearly 3,800 robotaxis over a flooding-related software issue that regulators said could lead to a loss of control.

That recall covered vehicles using Waymo’s fifth- and sixth-generation automated driving systems. NHTSA said the software could slow down near standing water on higher-speed roads but not always stop fully, which is not exactly what you want from a driverless car.

Waymo has been expanding steadily, with robotaxi service in places like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Austin. But the company is clearly in a fine-tuning phase right now, and this pause shows how much work still goes into making autonomous cars handle the messy real world.