It rains. The cars don’t always get it.
Waymo expanded its pause today. Service is halted in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. The robotaxis are drowning. Not metaphorically. They drive into water. Then they get stuck.
“Safety is Waymo’s top priority”
The PR statement lands flat against the footage. In Atlanta on Wednesday, an empty Waymo cruised through a flooded street. It drove until it couldn’t. Sat there for an hour. Local news captured it. TechCrunch confirmed the recovery. The car was towed away. The city got dark again.
Just like in San Antonio last week.
Dallas and Houston joined the freeze late Thursday. Severe weather is rolling through Texas. Bloomberg flagged it first. Waymo called it caution. An abundance of it, supposedly. But the pattern is clear. The code isn’t ready.
The software recall last week? It was a placeholder. Waymo admitted there is no final fix for flooded zones. Instead. they shipped a restriction update. It tells the cars to stay away from high-risk roads at specific times. Sounds safe. Right?
Wrong.
The Atlanta storm hit hard. Too hard. Flooding started before the National Weather Service issued a warning. The cars rely on those alerts. If the alert hasn’t dropped, the car keeps rolling. Logic. Until you realize the road is underwater.
The NHTSA knows. They are watching. Communication lines are open. Action will be taken if necessary.
This feels familiar.
Last year the cars ignored stopped school buses. Waymo patched the software. The cars kept passing. Illegally. Again and again. The behavior didn’t change. It just waited.
Now we have two active investigations. One is the bus issue. The NTSB and NHTSA are digging. Waymo turned over redacted docs in May. The agency wasn’t happy. They sent another request for more data. “Necessitates,” they said. Bureaucratic for we don’t trust you.
The second investigation looks worse. January 23. Santa Monica. A robotaxi hit a child. Waymo says the car slowed to six mph before impact. The injuries were minor. But the optics aren’t.
A machine driving. A child in the path. Braking too late.
We update the story with new details. The weather service delays are part of the puzzle now. The service pauses cover four cities.
The roads are wet. The servers are silent.
What happens when the next storm doesn’t warn us first?
