Waymo has recalled its fleet of nearly 4,000 robotaxis and pulled them from all highway operations after identifying at least 13 instances in which the vehicles drove into highway sections closed for construction.
Six of the incidents occurred in Phoenix, Arizona in April 2026, and seven happened in the San Francisco Bay Area in May 2026. Waymo suspended all freeway driving on May 19 and filed a voluntary software recall with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) on June 8. A fix is described as “currently under development” in NHTSA filings. Vehicles remain in service on surface streets.
In Phoenix, Waymo’s robotaxis “did not recognize and drove past ramp closure signs into pre-planned freeway construction zones,” according to NHTSA documents. In the San Francisco incidents, the company’s software was “prioritizing the avoidance of other freeway hazards and/or failing to recognize the construction zone.”
Footage of at least one incident circulated on social media. Passenger Elliot Slade posted a video on May 19 claiming a Waymo “blasted through cones” and was chased by police. “There were construction signs. There were lights going on. Police in the distance and it sped up,” Slade told CBS News. “We’re going to die right here in the Waymo.” Waymo offered Slade three free rides valued at up to $40 each.
“We voluntarily restricted freeway operations last month while making improvements, proactively notified state and federal regulators, and decided to file a voluntary software recall with NHTSA,” the company said in a statement.
This is Waymo’s sixth recall. Previous recalls addressed vehicles driving into flooded roads, illegal behavior around school buses, low-speed collisions with chains, gates, and telephone poles, and an issue involving towed trucks. The company’s driving software is also currently under investigation by the NHTSA and National Transportation Safety Board following an incident in January in which a robotaxi struck a child near a school.
Alphabet-owned Waymo says its vehicles have driven more than 170 million miles autonomously and claims a 13-times reduction in serious-injury-or-worse crashes compared to human drivers. The company, which began offering highway rides in November 2025, is in the middle of a planned expansion to more than 20 cities in 2026, including London and Tokyo. The construction zone failures suggest the expansion may be surfacing software edge cases the system has not yet encountered at scale.
Source: TechCrunch