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Waymo Pauses Atlanta Service As Its Robotaxis Keep Driving Into Floods (techcrunch.com) 123

Waymo has paused service in Atlanta after one of its driverless cars entered a flooded street and got stuck. It follows a similar pause in San Antonio that prompted a recent software recall (PDF) over flood avoidance. TechCrunch reports: Waymo admitted that it hadn't finished developing a "final remedy" for avoiding flooded areas when it issued its software recall last week. Instead, the company said that it shipped an update to its fleet that placed "restrictions at times and in locations where there is an elevated risk of encountering a flooded, higher-speed roadway," according to documents released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

But even those precautions apparently were not enough to stop the Waymo robotaxi from entering the flooded intersection in Atlanta. Waymo told TechCrunch on Thursday that the storm in Atlanta produced so much rainfall that flooding was happening before the National Weather Service had issued a flash flood warning, watch, or advisory. The company said its fleet those alerts are part of a larger set of signals it relies on to prepare the vehicles for poor weather.

Waymo Pauses Atlanta Service As Its Robotaxis Keep Driving Into Floods

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  • by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Thursday May 21, 2026 @01:06PM (#66154298) Homepage

    AI is bad enough, but these robotaxis are a scourge on society. They add to traffic, take away transit ridership, and don't even give humans a job, even a gig job.

    • LIAR!

      They employ people in the Philippines!

      I'm joking, of course. The fact there are even lower wage workers in another country doesn't really help. These companies are so cheap, they won't even employ people in the US to watch over their wayward gadgets. What's hilarious, and terrifying, is that Waymo is better than many at automated driving.
    • These solve a different problem than transit does. And while the loss of gig jobs is unfortunate, that argument has never stopped the march of technology. Personally, I want a self-driving RV. Go to sleep and wake up at the destination.
      • What is the different problem that they solve?

        I can't ever remember taking a taxi and wishing there wasn't a driver. The biggest problems seem to be cleanliness and "robo" isn't going to fix that. Why are tech companies so fixated on this non-problem?
        • by 0123456 ( 636235 )

          They solve the problem of people being able to drive wherever they want.

          The future will be "I'm sorry Dave, I can't drive there."

        • What is the different problem that they solve?

          Here's one: the Waymo will never sexually harass a female passenger. And yes, a lot of women choose Waymo over Uber, Lyft, a taxi, or even public transit for exactly that reason.

          It's amusing to see people assuming the "Get off my lawn!" roles of their elders over AI and autonomous vehicles. Not so long ago I recall similar "shout at the sky" attitudes on Slashdot about Uber and Lyft, which have now become the "good guys" because they employ human drivers (who

          • by dskoll ( 99328 )

            I for one want Uber and Lyft shut down too. And Airbnb and all the other parasitic companies that simultaneously flout regulations and under-pay precarious gig workers. All of those businesses enshittify our cities and our job markets.

            Waymo is not allowed to operate in my country and I will certainly fight hard to keep it and any other similar company from being allowed to get a foothold here.

        • Cost and safety. Robotaxis will be a lot cheaper (in towns/cities) than owning a car. They will also be safer too, they get into far less accidents than human driven cars. https://waymo.com/safety/impac... [waymo.com] That alone should override everything else. Another aspect of safety, many women only want to take robotaxis (seen in SF, AZ, TX etc.) In Atlanta where Waymos have to be ordered via the Uber app many women just keep canceling their ride in the app until it's a Waymo: https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]

          • People will shit on every seat just for fun.
            • ...and your credit card will be charged for the cleanup. You may even face criminal charges over your behavior.

              • And if their credit card is maxed out anyway? The police where I am can't even catch shoplifters that have been caught red handed. The store can't stop them and the police don't have time to chase them. They won't go after automated car vandals. This is another problem that automated car companies will have to fund the solution for on their own instead of relying on government employees.
      • by dskoll ( 99328 )

        They're solving a different problem than the pathetic, execrable transit systems in most US cities do.

        In properly-designed cities with properly-designed transit systems, transit is the most convenient way to get around a city.

        Sure, have your self-driving RV. When everyone has one of those, you won't wake up at the destination. You'll wake up 20km from where you started because of self-driving RV gridlock.

        • Yes. You've mentioned this. Repeatedly. Thing is, we all know we don't have properly designed cities to accommodate upgrades to our public transit. We also don't have the money and we're also insanely corrupt. Just look at California's High speed rail to no where. For the same amount of money, just about any other country in the world would of already have been done building the entire project.

          Waymos are literally routing around our dysfunction regarding public transit.

          I haven't used one yet but it sounds l

      • Personally, I want a self-driving RV. Go to sleep and wake up at the destination.

        Yes, the magic house.

        Twenty years from now the techno-nomadic lifestyle will be commonplace. Why own a home that stays in one spot when you can own a home that lets you wake up in a different destination whenever you want? Think of the modern RV culture, but multiplied 100-fold.

      • by pereric ( 528017 )

        Night trains with sleeper cars does that, if you are in a location (several parts of Europe) where such services are available and serves major travel routes on suitable distances.

    • I don't want to take transit. It stinks, it's unsafe, and takes away too long to get places. Humans don't need jobs, they need things. Robots can provide those things. Oh and if I want a job, if the car is driving itself, I can earn more money and even create new jobs by working from car.

      • by dskoll ( 99328 )

        If your transit sucks, complain to your politicians. Or move somewhere with decent transit. I guarantee that a city with decent transit will have a better quality of life in many other ways too.

        • You couldn't pay me to live in NYC or Chicago. I'll stay in San Diego, thanks. Even SD is getting to busy for my taste. I won't be retiring here, that's for sure.

          • by dskoll ( 99328 )

            San Diego is an example of some of the worst urban design. Huge sprawling suburbs built on top of scrubby hills, with said suburbs burning down every decade or two because of wildfires. But hey, everyone has a great view from the top of the hill!

            • by dskoll ( 99328 )

              Replying to myself... though, I have actually taken transit in San Diego (a bus) and it was fine. It smelled like a normal city bus (ie, diesel) and I felt perfectly safe on it. I think I took it from downtown to get to the Sheraton resort on Harbor Island.

              • Going downtown is about the one exception I will make for public transit though even then, I'll drive 75% of the way downtown and typically just ride transit the last few stops. This does save time and money dealing with downtown for special events.

                Some mention safety and like you say, I've never really felt unsafe. Of course, I'm a 6' tall white man. I rarely need to be afraid of anything and I'm grateful for this. Not so sure women and especially women of color (who suffer more overall abuses and tend to

                • by dskoll ( 99328 )

                  I'm a 5'2" woman. I've ridden transit all over the world, including in a bunch of places in the USA: Chicago, New York, Atlanta, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle. The experiences have varied, but I've never really felt unsafe except very late one night in NYC (but I was with a group of friends, so it ended up OK, and it was really just a feeling and not anything concrete.)

                  The sexual assault issues with Lyft and Uber are another reason I want those companies banned. Regular taxi drivers have to have pol

      • by dskoll ( 99328 )

        Oh also... if you have a job, quit it. And let us know how the "things" you need magically appear at your doorstep in a puff of fairy dust.

        And sure, "working from car" makes so much more sense than working from a room that's not moving. Egads! We should get rid of office buildings entirely and put everyone in cars to work!

      • I don't want to take transit. It stinks, it's unsafe, and takes away too long to get places.

        Yes we know America is utter shit at transit.

        Do you realise that it's clean, safe and quick in other parts of the world?

        • by dskoll ( 99328 )

          There are great videos of a first-person view of a tram route in Amsterdam. What immediately strikes me is how little traffic there is on the road and how the few cars on the road can drive totally unimpeded by traffic.

          This is how a city should work [youtube.com].

          • Amsterdam isn't like that all the time. Sometimes traffic is extremely irritating. The video is early morning.
            • by dskoll ( 99328 )

              Yes, it's true. But on average, the traffic in Amsterdam pales in comparison to that in many similarly-sized US or Canadian cities.

            • by dskoll ( 99328 )

              Also, I think it's in the afternoon based on the shadows. Park Plaza Victoria is south of Amsterdam Centraal and when the tram heads that way, the Sun is to the right, which means West.

            • No, Amsterdam isn't like that *in all places*. Most of the city is actually quite free from traffic due to policies that keep traffic out of the city. That said when you're on major car arterials or highways during peak hour it absolutely sucks, which is incidentally precisely why so many people take public transport.

              Back in the 1970s most of Amsterdam was one giant grid locked parkinglot. The invested in something other than cars.

              It's the polar opposite approach to "Let's just add another lane to the Katy

              • No, Amsterdam isn't like that *in all places*. Most of the city is actually quite free from traffic due to policies that keep traffic out of the city.

                That's most cities I think (I haven't been to most cities, so I'm going off a sampling).

                Cities mostly have a few areas that are crowded with traffic, but the rest is fairly easy to drive around. San Francisco has a reputation for bad driving, but it's only a few areas that are actually bad.

    • If you believed these fools in the early 2000's, by now none of us would have been owning any cars. We would all be summoning robotaxis for our commutes. And here they are driving themselves into floods in spite of remote-control operators in 3rd world countries/

  • Don't they already employ workers [autoblog.com] that are reasonably familiar [unfccc.int] with these situations?
    • You can't request help with a problem before identifying the problem. Given that the cars are driving directly into flood water, they are obviously not identifying the problem.

  • by Anonymous Coward
    Given how many humans drove through flooded streets and highways in Atlanta yesterday, I can't say I am surprised a Waymo did it too. Of course, there is also the question as to why some of these Atlanta streets are flooding like this (this actually seems to be the bigger failure that needs to be addressed).
    • Of course, there is also the question as to why some of these Atlanta streets are flooding like this (this actually seems to be the bigger failure that needs to be addressed).

      The explanation was that the drains were clogged due to items such as leaves and trash blocking the drains (as to why Atlanta did not proactively clean up the debris in advance of the rain would be a different question).

    • I can't believe you're actually getting all this, and stepped back, and said, What's wrong with this picture?

  • where there is an elevated risk of encountering a flooded, higher-speed roadway,

    The road in TFA didn't appear to be a "high speed roadway". It doesn't really matter how slow you try to drive through a puddle like that. Suck some water into the intake manifold and your engine's a goner. Even worse with EVs, I've heard. Pictures somewhere of a parking lot full of water damaged EVs catching fire.

    • That is inconvenient for the passengers. But the bigger concern here might be that people sometimes also die in cars that were driven into a flooded road.

      Washington's State Patrol is fond of pointing out that the majority of flood deaths in our state are people who've driven into a flood - often after intentionally going around a "road closed" sign / barrier.

      • by PPH ( 736903 )

        True. It's damned tough to get out of a car that's being pushed across a farmers field by a flooding creek. And it doesn't take much water velocity to move a vehicle and pin the doors closed.

    • People that think they can brave the tiny 6" of flood water are morons that don't appreciate the danger they are putting themselves in.

  • Posted by BeauHD on 2026.05.21 11:02 from the water-+-EVs-=-bad dept.

    So water minus EVs is negative bad?

    Meanwhile, in Texas:
    https://www.bbc.com/news/artic... [bbc.com]

  • Waymo Pauses Atlanta Service As Its Robotaxis Keep Driving Into Floods

    They just need to switch to Amphicars [wikipedia.org] :-)

  • by timholman ( 71886 ) on Thursday May 21, 2026 @02:58PM (#66154466)

    In Arizona, the police routinely have to rescue people who drive around roadblocks into flooded arroyos and wind up with their vehicles floating down the wash. It got so bad while I lived there that the city had to start charging people a fee for their rescue to curb the stupidity.

    A decade from now, I have no doubt that the authorities will still have to rescue drivers in flooded roadways. I am also certain that Waymo vehicles will have stopped making that mistake years earlier. We can fix autonomous vehicles. We can't fix humans. I'll take the Waymo, thank you.

    • by Pascoea ( 968200 )

      We can fix autonomous vehicles. We can't fix humans. I'll take the Waymo, thank you.

      This, right here. Fun story from last week: I had a guy in front of me heading up an onramp. He literally drove OFF the ramp, three wheels in the grass, before he jerked back onto the ramp. Once he got on the highway, did the same thing twice. 80% into another lane before violently jerking back into the lane he was supposed to be in. He was turned completely around in the driver's seat digging for something in the back. I went around the dickhead, gave him a little "howbout you drive?" honk on the way

    • It's not just Arizona, it's not even just America. In Australia our campaign against stupidity was "If it's flooded, forget it." Of course that campaign didn't work either.

      Of course it would help a lot in America if some tweeting dumb rich fuck stopped telling people his cars can float https://www.theguardian.com/te... [theguardian.com]

      Sidenote: Well fuck me I was looking for a story from last year, I didn't think I'd find one talking about another idiot being an idiot listening to the tweets of idiots from yesterday!

    • "We can fix autonomous vehicles."

      [citation needed]

  • by sjames ( 1099 ) on Thursday May 21, 2026 @03:00PM (#66154472) Homepage Journal

    They're called AI, but in Arizona, there is a law that if you drive into water you will be billed for your rescue. It's known as the "stupid driver law".

    So apparently the Waymo is driven by Artificial Stupidity.

    • And yet, statistically, it's a better drive then your average human driver by far. Go figure.

      • by sjames ( 1099 )

        Except they keep blowing past school busses with the stop sign out and arranging caravans in residential neighborhoods.

  • Obviously that is a major failure: they are setting up geo-blocking to avoid areas where there may be flooding instead of having the AI avoid driving into a flood.

    Aside from this not working because they can't geo-block areas quickly & accurately enough to avoid rapidly changing flood conditions... this shows that either their hardware is not capable of detecting flood waters on the street, or the AI can't be set to avoid it. I am betting this is a hardware issue -as in the hardware does not register t

    • by Pascoea ( 968200 )
      My assumption is that the geo-fencing is a short-term "implement it immediately" kind of thing, while a "teach the Borg to not drive into the water" is a much longer lead time. If the sensor suite is capable of detecting water (which I have no idea what sensors they even have on them, nor their capabilities) I assume it's a relatively easy fix. Just like every other "don't do X" fix that's been implemented after something bad happens. If the sensors can't see water, that's a way different problem.
      • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        If the sensor suite is capable of detecting water (which I have no idea what sensors they even have on them, nor their capabilities) I assume it's a relatively easy fix.

        Cameras and LIDAR. I am not a self-driving car engineer, but from what I understand, it seems likely that it is possible to detect water with even just cameras, at least under the right circumstances, and with cameras plus LIDAR under a lot more circumstances. But doing so would require proper training data; it's not like there's a "Ooh, that's water" recognizer built into the hardware or whatever.

        More to the point, they would have to train it how to recognize that some particular sensor return pattern

        • by Pascoea ( 968200 )

          they would have to train it how to recognize that some particular sensor return pattern

          Spot on. I share the same assumptions as you, that it's not that hard for someone who does such things for a living to figure out how to get the model to recognize "hey, there's water there" and "hey, there's a shitload of water there, probably shouldn't barrel through it".

          I wonder if it somehow saw the hand gestures, or if it just didn't see the flashing red light at all.

          My guess? I doubt it saw or recognized the intent of the hand gesture, but it almost certainly recognized the flashing red. I assume the "thought" process was "well, nobody else is going. We all stopped at roughly the same time. Yeehaw.

          • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

            My guess? I doubt it saw or recognized the intent of the hand gesture, but it almost certainly recognized the flashing red. I assume the "thought" process was "well, nobody else is going. We all stopped at roughly the same time. Yeehaw." but who knows. Doesn't Tesla have some sort of "playback" feature where it can show you what it saw? Or is that only a real-time view?

            As far as I know, it is just real-time. And it didn't even slow down at the flashing red light. So either it recognized that someone was waving it on or it didn't see the flashing light at all.

    • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      Obviously that is a major failure: they are setting up geo-blocking to avoid areas where there may be flooding instead of having the AI avoid driving into a flood.

      Aside from this not working because they can't geo-block areas quickly & accurately enough to avoid rapidly changing flood conditions... this shows that either their hardware is not capable of detecting flood waters on the street, or the AI can't be set to avoid it. I am betting this is a hardware issue -as in the hardware does not register the flood waters on the street. If it were a software issue, it would be a relatively easy to correct.

      Any hardware or device driver engineer will tell you that every hardware problem, once shipped, is a software problem. :-) (Translation: Hardware bugs, once the hardware is in the wild, have to be fixed with a software workaround.)

      Nothing in self-driving cars is a quick fix other than geo-blocking something. You have to train a visual or LIDAR recognition model to recognize the problem situation and then train the path finding model to flag it as a bad path. How hard that is for this particular case, I h

  • Wait, isn't everyone poking fun a Tesla for not using LIDAR? You mean LIDAR doesn't solve every vehicle navigation problem?

    • Yeah I think I heard something about that 8 or 10 years ago. About Tesla not using it. Not about LIDAR solving every vehicle problem, or world hunger; that I don't remember.

    • Or Cybertrucks dying after driving through a tiny puddle.
    • Wait, isn't everyone poking fun a Tesla for not using LIDAR? You mean LIDAR doesn't solve every vehicle navigation problem?

      Waymos have 39 full colour cameras on board. No one was poking fun for Tesla using cameras instead of LIDAR, they were poking fun for not using LIDAR with cameras. Waymo can literally do more as it can see more and collect more data.

      You equating the software not being trained to react to data with some ignorant comment about hardware choices made by a competition whose vehicles have a 1000x times worse safety record, is very much the opposite of clever.

      Please take your tongue out of Musk's ass, you don't kn

  • And decided to end it all by driving into water rather than listen to PHBs for another second drone on about mission statements or efficiency.

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