Waymo is recalling thousands of its self-driving cars in the US over a software issue that could allow vehicles to drive into flooded roads. The voluntary recall affects nearly 3,800 robotaxis using the company's fifth and sixth-generation automated driving systems.

The incident, which occurred on 20 April in San Antonio, Texas, saw an empty Waymo vehicle enter a flooded road and be swept into a creek. In response, the company said safety was its 'primary priority' and that it was working on additional software safeguards. Mitigations had already been put in place, such as limiting access to areas where flash flooding might occur.

Waymo's San Antonio service remains temporarily suspended following the incident but will resume public rides after a necessary software fix has been rolled out. The company provides more than 500,000 trips per week across multiple US cities including San Francisco, Austin and Miami.

A spokesperson from Waymo, which is owned by Google's parent company Alphabet, told the BBC that all self-driving car systems had limits on when and where they could operate safely. 'We often see these limits only when something goes wrong,' said Professor Jack Stilgoe at University College London. As more autonomous vehicles are deployed, Prof Stilgoe said, more such problems are likely to emerge.

Over the past year several incidents with different driverless car firms have raised concerns over robotaxi safety. In December 2025, a large power outage in San Francisco led Waymo taxis to stop working around the city, causing significant disruption. And in April, a mass Apollo Go robotaxi outage in the Chinese city of Wuhan caused at least a hundred self-driving cars to stop mid-traffic.