Two autonomous vehicle companies, including one based in Austin, are making waves amid a federal investigation into one driverless service and a voluntary recall impacting the other’s fleet of self-driving vehicles. Here’s what we know about those incidents and whether they will impact driverless operations in Texas.
Waymo issued a voluntary software recall in late April following late April storms that saw a Waymo vehicle attempting to enter a flooded lane in San Antonio before stalling. Software remedies are underway, and the voluntary recall applies to Waymo’s entire fleet, which includes almost 300 driverless vehicles in Austin as well as dozens more in Dallas, Houston and San Antonio.
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) addressed a letter to Waymo leadership on Monday, May 11, that acknowledged the voluntary recall, with NHTSA describing the issue as the current software “may allow the vehicle to slow and then drive into standing water on higher speed roadways.”
NHTSA noted Waymo’s improvements are currently underway, with the company modifying its vehicle operations scope to “increase weather-related constraints and [update] the vehicle maps.”
In a statement to MySA, a Waymo spokesperson said the software recall is designed to maintain safety as the company’s top priority:
“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,” the statement read. “We are working to implement additional software safeguards and have put mitigations in place, including refining our extreme weather operations during periods of intense rain, limiting access to areas where flash flooding might occur.”
The NHTSA issued a May 6 letter stating that it was investigating Austin-based autonomous vehicle company Avride related to more than a dozen crashes involving its vehicles. NHTSA’s failure report summary outlined 16 specific crashes resulting in one minor injury due to Avrides allegedly “executing lane changes into other vehicles and failing to avoid vehicles or objects in the roadway, resulting in crashes.”
The 16 crashes happened in Dallas and Austin and involved the “competence” of Avride’s automated driving system. Each of the reported incidents involved the automated driving system operating with an in-vehicle operator sitting in the driver’s seat, with many of the crashes happening in Dallas.
The investigation is designed to evaluate the automated driving system to “determine the scope, nature and severity of the potential problems and to assess the potential safety risks to passengers and other road users.”
In a statement to MySA, an Avride spokesperson confirmed the company was aware NHTSA had opened the preliminary evaluation, adding Avride reports any incidents involving company vehicles to NHTSA “regardless of fault or severity.”
Avride’s statement said the majority of incidents involved vehicles traveling at lower speeds and pointed to “actions of other road users” as precipitators of the crashes being investigated. Avride’s spokesperson also added that the company has not been able to confirm on its end the minor injury mentioned in NHTSA’s preliminary report.
“As part of our standard safety protocol, every incident undergoes a structured review that includes identifying and evaluating root causes,” Avride’s statement read in part. “We have implemented targeted technical and operational mitigations to address our findings from each reported incident between December 2025 and March 2026, and have further enhanced overall system capabilities.”