Waymo Suspends Service in Atlanta as Robotaxis Stumped by Floods

Waymo has temporarily halted service in Atlanta over concerns that its robotaxis may attempt to drive on flooded roads, the latest setback over an issue that recently led the company to recall thousands of vehicles.

It’s the second city where the autonomous vehicle unit of Alphabet Inc. has suspended service following severe weather. Storms swept through Atlanta on Wednesday, during which an unoccupied Waymo vehicle drove and got stuck in a flooded road. The car has since been recovered and removed from the scene, a Waymo spokesperson said.

The company’s San Antonio service has similarly been on pause since late April, after one of its unoccupied vehicles entered a flooded lane and was swept into a creek. Last week, the company recalled 3,791 vehicles to fix an issue with its software that could cause robotaxis to continue driving and not stop even upon detecting a potentially untraversable flooded lane.

Waymo said it has refined its extreme weather operations after the San Antonio episode. The vehicle in Atlanta encountered the flooded roadway before any National Weather Service alerts about potential flash flooding, which the company monitors to guide its plans when floods occur.

The weather agency expects scattered thunderstorms through Saturday in the Atlanta area, including the risk of heavy rainfall.

Waymo said it is still working on additional software updates to improve its performance around flooded roadways. It will monitor weather and road conditions to determine whether its safe to resume its robotaxi service in Atlanta, which is offered via the Uber app through a partnership with the ridehailing company.

The incidents highlight the challenges for driverless vehicles to adapt to unpredictable weather and other unexpected roadway conditions without a human driver’s judgment. Waymo has been rolling out its robotaxi service in cities across the U.S. in a growing competition with the likes of Tesla Inc.

Waymo is under two separate investigations by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. One is probing an incident in which a robotaxi struck a child near a school in Santa Monica, California, in January, while the other was opened after the company’s cars repeatedly failed to fully slow or stop for school buses last year.

Top photo: A logo on the back of a Waymo Robotaxi during a preview event in London, on Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026. The Alphabet Inc. unit will begin testing a small fleet of its vehicles with safety drivers across a 100-square-mile area of London in the coming months, a spokesperson said. Bloomberg.