Waymo Recalls Nearly 4,000 Robotaxis Over Freeway Construction Zone Failures

The recall, filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, bars the fleet from highway driving while Waymo works on a fix that the filings describe as "currently under development." Six of the 13 incidents happened in Phoenix, Arizona, in April. The other seven occurred in San Francisco, California, in May. Waymo pulled its robotaxis off every highway on May 19, the filings say, and its safety board decided to issue the recall on June 8.

Waymo is not taking vehicles off the road. The company still runs them on surface streets, though it has paused service from time to time during severe weather that could cause flooding.

In the Phoenix cases, Waymo told NHTSA that its robotaxis "did not recognize and drove past ramp closure signs into pre-planned freeway construction zones" in mid-April. The documents show that after a review, the company's Field Safety Committee restricted freeway operations in the city while Waymo worked on a fix. On May 18, seven Waymo robotaxis drove into highway lanes under active construction in the San Francisco Bay Area. The company's software was "prioritizing the avoidance of other freeway hazards and/or failing to recognize the construction zone." Freeway driving was suspended the next day.

"We identified an area of improvement regarding performance around freeway construction zones," Waymo said in a statement to TechCrunch. "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."

This is the sixth recall Waymo has issued for its robotaxis. In May, the company recalled them after they drove into flooded roads. In December, it issued one to address illegal behavior around school buses. Waymo has also recalled its vehicles to fix low-speed collisions with chains, gates and telephone poles, and to solve a problem with towed trucks.

NHTSA and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the company's driving software over its behavior around school buses, after one of its robotaxis struck a child near a school in January.

Footage of some of the construction zone incidents circulated on social media. On May 19, X user @Elliot_slade posted a video in which they claimed a Waymo "blasted through cones" and said police "chased" it. "There were construction signs," Slade told CBS News last month. "There were lights going on. Police in the distance and it sped up. That's when I looked at my fiancée, we're done. This is it. We're dead. We're going to die right here in the Waymo." According to CBS, Waymo offered Slade three free rides worth up to $40 each.

Alphabet-owned Waymo says its vehicles have driven more than 170 million miles autonomously and claims they have shown a 13x reduction in serious-injury-or-worse crashes compared with human drivers. The robotaxi company is in the middle of a huge expansion, with plans to launch in more than 20 cities this year alone, London and Tokyo among them. That expansion has thrown up a number of edge cases Waymo's robotaxi software has struggled with, and highway construction zones are now one of them.

Waymo, which started offering highway rides in November 2025, has not said when freeway operations will resume.