Waymo’s Fourth Safety Recall: Navigating Challenges in Autonomous Vehicle Technology
Waymo filed This is its fourth safety recall since February 2024, after its driverless cars were caught entering closed highway construction zones.
The recall, filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) on June 17, appears to affect Waymo’s entire U.S. fleet, covering 3,871 vehicles equipped with Waymo’s 5th generation Automated Driving System (ADS).
Understanding the Recall and Its Implications
NHTSA estimates that 100 percent of affected units have the defect, which is described in the filed safety recall report as follows: “Under certain circumstances, the AV may enter and drive at high speeds in highway construction zones due to improper priority to avoid other highway hazards and/or failure to recognize the construction zone.”
Waymo started offering freeway rides in late 2025, and the underlying problem appears to be a failure of priority logic. According to the NHTSA filing, ADS sometimes failed to recognize construction zones and, in other cases, actively chose to drive through them because it was busy avoiding other hazards on the highway. Both conditions can produce the same result: a driverless car driving at highway speeds in a closed construction zone.
The Trigger Events and Waymo’s Response
The events that triggered the recall apparently began earlier this year. On April 11 and 19, Waymo vehicles in Phoenix drove past ramp closure signs in pre-planned construction zones. Waymo’s Field Safety Committee responded by restricting highway operations.
Then, on May 18, seven Waymo vehicles in the San Francisco Bay Area drove between construction cones and into active lane closures. Although no collisions or injuries were reported during these events, it was this second group that prompted the company to ban the highway more broadly. Waymo’s safety committee reviewed the issue on June 1 and decided on June 8 to issue a formal recall.
Waymo’s Commitment to Safety and Future Developments
“Waymo’s mission is to be the world’s most trusted driver, and the data shows we’re making the roads safer in the communities we operate in,” said a Waymo statement emailed to WIRED. “We have identified an area of improvement regarding performance around highway construction zones. We voluntarily restricted highway operations last month while making improvements, proactively notified state and federal regulators, and decided to file a voluntary software recall with NHTSA.”
Current Limitations and Operational Adjustments
Importantly, there is no software fix for this potentially dangerous error yet. Indeed, the NHTSA filing indicates that a permanent remedy is “currently under development.”
Waymo’s interim response is to ban all of its vehicles from highways entirely, a significant operational restriction for a company that previously offered highway rides in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Miami.
However, because Waymo owns every vehicle in its fleet, there are no owners to notify. The patch, once scheduled, will be released as an over-the-air ADS software update.
A Look at Waymo’s Recall History
This is the fourth time in about 28 months that Waymo has had to issue a safety recall. In May 2025, Waymo recalled 1,212 robo-taxi following collisions with fixed road barriers following a preliminary NHTSA assessment citing at least seven incidents between December 2022 and April 2024. In May of this year, Waymo recalled 3,791 vehicles after a robo-taxi drove into a flooded, impassable road in San Antonio and was swept into a creek.
This latest recall apparently does not affect Waymo’s newer 6th generation vehicles, and the company’s cars will continue to operate on surface streets in the United States.
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