News you might be able to use.
Waymo has suspended service in Houston and other Texas cities since heavy rain is expected to hit the region over Memorial Day weekend and the company’s self-driving vehicles have struggled to navigate flooded roadways, a spokesperson confirmed to the Houston Chronicle on Friday.
The company is working on a solution to the issue, but for now the robotaxis have been disabled in Houston, Austin, Dallas and San Antonio as severe weather hit Texas this week, the company confirmed.
The company spokesperson said the suspension was prompted for safety reasons and that services are expected to resume once the issue is resolved, and updates will be provided on the Waymo app.
The suspension follows a recent recall of nearly 4,000 vehicles due to their problem navigating flooded streets. The service suspension was first confirmed by Bloomberg.
[…]
“Safety is Waymo’s top priority, both for our riders and everyone we share the road with. During a period of intense rain yesterday in Atlanta, an unoccupied Waymo vehicle encountered a flooded road and stopped,” the company said in a statement to tech media outlet TechCrunch on Thursday about the expanded pause.
Earlier this month, Waymo announced it was expanding services in Houston before the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which is expected to draw over 500,000 visitors.
See here and here for the background. That TechCrunch story notes that Waymo had a similar problem in Atlanta and has suspended service there as well pending a fix. Which I’m sure they’re highly motivated to achieve, what with the imminent arrival of the FIFA World Cup. So whatever you may think about the future of driverless cars and robotaxi services, remember that we’re still on version 1.0 of all this, and you know what that means. I say let other people do the beta testing and work out the bugs first, then maybe think about it later.