Waymo Recalls 3,791 Robotaxis After One Drove Into a Flooded Creek
Waymo filed a voluntary software recall with NHTSA covering 3,791 robotaxis after an empty vehicle drove into floodwater in San Antonio and was swept into Salado Creek. The fix ships over the air.
TL;DR — Waymo is recalling 3,791 robotaxis after an empty vehicle in San Antonio slowed down and drove into a flooded road in late April, getting swept into Salado Creek; the company is pushing an over-the-air software fix and paused service in the city.
The autonomous-vehicle pitch has always rested on a simple claim: machines don't get tired, don't get distracted, and don't make the dumb judgment calls humans make. So it's worth sitting with the fact that in late April 2026, a Waymo robotaxi in San Antonio looked at a flooded road, slowed down — and drove into it anyway.
What actually happened in San Antonio
According to the recall report, an unoccupied Waymo encountered "an untraversable flooded section of a roadway" on April 20. Instead of stopping or routing around it, the vehicle proceeded into the floodwater at reduced speed and was ultimately swept into Salado Creek, as TechCrunch reported. No one was hurt, because no one was inside — which is the only reason this is an embarrassing engineering bug and not a tragedy.
Waymo paused operations in San Antonio and, on May 12, filed a voluntary software recall with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The scope: 3,791 vehicles, two ADS generations
The recall covers 3,791 vehicles running Waymo's fifth- and sixth-generation Automated Driving System, per the NHTSA filing. The core defect, in Waymo's own words:
"We have identified an area of improvement regarding untraversable flooded lanes specific to higher-speed roadways, and have made the decision to file a voluntary software recall with NHTSA related to this scenario."
Translated out of corporate-speak: on faster roads, the system would slow down rather than stop when it hit water it couldn't cross. NHTSA noted Waymo is still "developing the final remedy for this recall."
Why this is (mostly) a software story, not a hardware one
Here's the part that genuinely separates robotaxis from a 2008 Takata airbag recall: nobody has to drive anywhere. The fix is delivered over the air to the entire fleet — no service center, no loaner car, no waiting on parts. An initial update has already placed restrictions "at times and in locations where there is an elevated risk of encountering a flooded, higher-speed roadway."
That's the upside of a software-defined car. The downside is that "recall" now covers everything from a faulty brake line to a logic gap that didn't anticipate standing water, and the word starts to lose its teeth.
| The recall at a glance | |
|---|---|
| Vehicles affected | 3,791 |
| Systems | 5th & 6th-gen ADS |
| Trigger incident | April 20, 2026, San Antonio |
| Filed with NHTSA | May 12, 2026 |
| Remedy | Over-the-air software update |
The bigger picture for autonomous driving
Waymo is the most cautious, most data-rich operator in the robotaxi business, and it still shipped a model that couldn't reliably handle a flooded street. That's not a knock on Waymo so much as a reminder of how long the tail of "edge cases" really is. Floods, construction zones, downed power lines, a mattress in the fast lane — the real world keeps inventing scenarios the training data never saw. Self-driving doesn't fail at the average case anymore. It fails at the weird one, and the weird one is exactly where a human's common sense still wins.
FAQ
How many Waymo robotaxis were recalled and why?
Waymo recalled 3,791 robotaxis running its fifth- and sixth-generation self-driving system. The reason was a software flaw that, on higher-speed roads, would let a vehicle slow down and drive into standing water it couldn't cross, rather than stopping — the same behavior that swept an empty Waymo into Salado Creek in San Antonio.
Do owners need to bring the cars in for the Waymo recall?
No. Waymo owns and operates the fleet, and the fix is delivered over the air. No vehicle needs to visit a service center; an initial update already restricts driving near flooded higher-speed roadways while Waymo finalizes the full remedy.
Was anyone hurt in the San Antonio Waymo flood incident?
No. The vehicle that drove into the flooded road and was swept into Salado Creek on April 20, 2026 was unoccupied, with no passenger inside.
Sources: TechCrunch, Electrek, CNBC.
Image: 9yz, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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