On May 21, Waymo announced it was suspending operations in Atlanta following an incident on May 20, when heavy rains caused one of its self-driving vehicles to become stuck in floodwater in downtown Atlanta for roughly an hour before being towed away by manual intervention. Rachael Knudsen, a reporter from The Atlanta Constitution, happened to be riding in that vehicle and witnessed firsthand how it repeatedly got trapped in flooded areas. According to Waymo, the rainfall that day was exceptionally intense; since no flood warnings had been issued by the U.S. National Weather Service at the time, the company’s extreme weather protocols failed to activate preemptively. Besides Atlanta, Waymo also temporarily halted services in Dallas and Houston on the same day as a precautionary measure against inclement weather. Austin saw similar service interruptions, while San Antonio had already suspended operations since late April after another self-driving car drove into a flooded lane and was swept into a ditch by rushing water. Collectively, these five cities account for all of Waymo’s operational zones in Texas and Georgia.
This Atlanta incident occurred just ten days after Waymo filed a software recall with the NHTSA last week—a recall affecting 3,791 vehicles worldwide, prompted specifically by the San Antonio flooding episode. In its filing, Waymo openly admitted it hadn’t yet developed a ‘permanent solution,’ opting instead to roll out temporary restrictions on high-risk flooded roads. However, the Atlanta mishap underscores that even this interim patch proved inadequate. This marks Waymo’s third recall since February 2024; the NHTSA has acknowledged awareness of the latest incident. Meanwhile, both the NHTSA and NTSB are still investigating multiple instances where Waymo’s autonomous cars illegally overtook stopped school buses, while the NHTSA separately probes a January collision involving a child in Santa Monica, California. Despite these setbacks, Waymo insists it remains committed to global expansion, aiming to achieve over one million paid rides weekly by end-2026. Its sixth-generation Ojai model is currently undergoing safety driver tests in London.