Waymo hits the brakes on freeways and pauses two cities

If you woke up on Thursday and booked a Waymo expecting a quick highway zip to the airport, you were out of luck. Trip times suddenly jumped as cars routed strictly through stop-and-go surface streets.

Waymo quietly shut off freeway driving across every single US market.

Alphabet’s autonomous driving unit confirmed it paused all freeway operations nationwide due to safety concerns around highway construction zones. Freeway trips had previously been accessible only in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Miami.

At the same time, the company is dealing with a severe weather mess on the ground. Waymo halted robotaxi operations in Atlanta and San Antonio over road flooding issues, with TechCrunch reporting the flood pauses also expanded to Dallas and Houston.

Construction cones and flash floods

Waymo spokesperson Chris Pappas confirmed the freeway shutdown was tied to construction zone concerns, though he declined to specify what exactly the vehicles struggled with. Surface street driving outside flood-affected regions remains live.

Water, however, has proven to be an even bigger headache. After several Texas robotaxis were caught barreling through deep puddles at elevated speeds, Waymo issued a fleet-wide software recall. But the issues kept happening.

In San Antonio, an empty Waymo drove straight into deep water and got swept into a creek, sitting there for four days before recovery. In Atlanta, another unmanned vehicle plunged into a flooded street and sat stuck for an hour, prompting Waymo to pause local service. Waymo admitted it had not rolled out a final software fix, relying instead on regional geo-fencing, and claimed the Atlanta storm flooded streets faster than National Weather Service alerts could broadcast.

Add in an incident where empty Waymos jammed an Atlanta cul-de-sac and a red-light run at a busy Dallas intersection, and federal safety regulators at NHTSA are now keeping close watch.

Why it matters

For riders, losing highway access kills one of Waymo’s best selling points. Airport runs and long cross-town trips are the most lucrative routes in rideshare, and doubling travel times by sticking to local avenues makes Uber and Lyft the obvious choice for anyone on a schedule.

For the autonomous vehicle industry, these setbacks highlight just how stubborn edge cases remain. Construction zones feature human flaggers, erratic lane shifts, and confusing cones; floodwaters blind ground sensors and erase road geometry. Scaling up does not automatically solve edge-case perception.

We think hitting the brakes on highway driving across all markets was a calculated, necessary retreat. Waymo handles around 500,000 paid rides weekly and is racing toward 1 million, with its next-generation Zeekr Ojai electric minivans preparing to roll out. A catastrophic high-speed crash in a work zone right now could trigger severe regulatory restrictions and derail the entire rollout.

Still, blaming delayed weather alerts for cars driving into water is a weak defense. True Level 4 autonomy cannot rely on external storm advisories to know when a puddle is too deep. Until Waymo proves its vehicles can detect standing water and chaotic construction independently, its rapid expansion timeline faces real friction.