Waymo has issued a voluntary recall affecting nearly 4,000 robotaxis after its vehicles repeatedly entered highway construction zones, raising fresh questions about how autonomous cars handle complex roadway conditions.
The Alphabet-owned company said it identified at least 13 incidents in which robotaxis drove into sections of highway that were closed for construction. Six of those cases occurred in Phoenix in April, while seven took place in San Francisco in May. Waymo has already stopped its vehicles from operating on highways while it works on a software update.
According to filings with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the company pulled freeway driving from its service on May 19. Waymo said the fix is still being developed. The company stressed that the recall does not require it to remove vehicles from the road entirely. Its robotaxis continue to operate on surface streets, although the service has sometimes been paused during severe weather events that could create flood risks.
In a statement to TechCrunch, Waymo said it had found an area for improvement in how its cars perform near freeway construction zones. The company said it voluntarily restricted freeway operations last month, alerted state and federal regulators, and chose to file a software recall with NHTSA.
Waymo’s filings provide a split picture of the failures. In Phoenix, the company said its robotaxis did not properly recognize ramp closure signs and moved into pre-planned freeway construction areas in mid-April. After reviewing those incidents, Waymo’s Field Safety Committee restricted freeway operations in the city while engineers worked on a remedy.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, the company said seven robotaxis entered lanes that were under active construction on May 18. Waymo told regulators that its software was prioritizing other freeway hazards, or failing to identify the construction zone altogether. The following day, the company suspended freeway driving across its service area. Waymo’s safety board decided to move ahead with the recall on June 8.
This is the sixth recall Waymo has announced for its robotaxis. Previous recalls addressed a range of operational problems, including behavior around flooded roads, school buses, low-speed collisions with chains and gates, and incidents involving telephone poles and towed trucks. The company’s software is also under scrutiny from NHTSA and the National Transportation Safety Board over its conduct around school buses after one of its robotaxis struck a child near a school in January.
Waymo says its vehicles have driven more than 170 million miles autonomously and that they have shown a 13-fold reduction in serious-injury-or-worse crashes compared with human drivers. Even so, the latest recall shows how expansion can expose autonomous systems to new edge cases. The company began offering highway rides in November 2025 and is now planning launches in more than 20 cities this year, including London and Tokyo.
The recent construction-zone incidents also spilled into public view. Some were captured on social media, including video posted by an X user who said a Waymo vehicle moved through cones and was followed by police. The rider later described the moment as frightening in an interview with CBS News.
For Waymo, the recall marks another reminder that highway driving presents a different set of challenges than urban routes, especially when road layouts are changing. The company says it is now working to make its vehicles better at identifying and responding to construction zones before restoring freeway service.