Waymo recalled close to 4,000 of its autonomous vehicles after the robotaxis were found entering closed freeway construction zones, according to a filing with federal safety regulators. The recall followed more than a dozen incidents across California and Arizona beginning in early April, in which the driverless cars drove into areas that had been closed to traffic.
The company addressed the issue through a software update to its automated driving system rather than a physical repair, a common approach for recalls involving autonomous vehicles. Waymo, owned by Alphabet, operates commercial robotaxi service in several US cities and reports incidents to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as part of federal oversight of automated driving technology.
The construction-zone recall is one of several Waymo has issued over the past year. The company previously recalled vehicles over collisions with stationary roadway barriers such as chains and gates, and separately recalled its US fleet after a software defect allowed a vehicle to drive into a flooded, impassable road. Each recall was resolved through software changes intended to improve how the system recognizes and responds to hazards.
The incidents highlight the regulatory scrutiny facing autonomous vehicle operators as they scale commercial service. Federal investigators have opened evaluations into how driverless systems handle edge cases such as work zones, emergency scenes, and unusual road conditions. For the broader industry, the recalls show how operators are using over-the-air software updates to correct behavior across an entire fleet at once, while regulators weigh how to assess the safety of systems that change through code rather than hardware.
Source: TechCrunch - https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/18/waymo-recalls-nearly-4000-robotaxis-to-stop-them-driving-into-highway-construction-zones/