The company has suspended operations in a second city.
Autonomous cars are getting more capable all the time, but they remain a bit too willing to fight mother nature and lose. Case in point: Waymo has halted its robotaxi service in a second US city in the past fortnight due to issues with heavy rain and flooding.
First reported by TechCrunch, the company has paused its operations in Atlanta after one of its self-driving vehicles was seen driving through a heavily flooded street, where it eventually got stuck for around an hour. This comes after Waymo also temporarily suspended its San Antonio service last week and issued a voluntary recall for nearly 4,000 robotaxis. At the time, the company said it was preparing an OTA software patch that would fix an apparent inability to determine when an area is too flooded to drive through safely. This was in response to one of its unoccupied vehicles driving into and subsequently being swept away by a flood in the Texas city.
Another recent software patch was supposed to have placed restrictions on Waymo’s in-service autonomous vehicles approaching roads at high risk of flooding at a certain time, but this update clearly wasn’t effective enough to prevent the latest incident in Atlanta. Waymo told Engadget that a local storm had been so intense that flooding had occurred before the National Weather Service could issue a warning or alert, and that it was continuing to develop its software to improve performance in challenging conditions.
“Safety is Waymo’s top priority, both for our riders and everyone we share the road with,” a Waymo spokesperson told Engadget. “During a period of intense rain yesterday in Atlanta, an unoccupied Waymo vehicle encountered a flooded road and stopped. The vehicle has been recovered and removed from the scene.”
Nobody has been reported injured as a result of the recent spate of flooding incidents, but while Waymo would no doubt insist that its vehicles are broadly much safer than the human-driven equivalent, this isn’t the first time their sometimes erratic behavior has raised concerns. Back in January, the National Transportation Safety Board said it was investigating reports of the company’s robotaxi illegally passing unloading school buses in Austin.
On the same day that particular investigation was opened, a Waymo vehicle hit a child, who sustained minor injuries. Waymo said its vehicle detected the pedestrian immediately, and that the robotaxi braked hard to lower its speed from around 17 mph to under 6 mph at the time of impact. An investigation into that incident by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is ongoing.
