Waymo is sharing pothole detection data with city transportation departments, launching a pilot program with Google’s Waze that gives officials free access to road condition data collected by its robotaxi fleet.
The initiative uses Waymo’s perception hardware, including cameras, radar, and accelerometers, to log every pothole its vehicles encounter. The sensors detect physical changes in road surfaces, like tilt and vehicle movement when hitting irregularities. That data flows into the Waze for Cities platform, where transit officials can access it alongside real-time, user-generated traffic reports. Waze users can also validate pothole locations, reducing false positives before repair crews get dispatched.
From fleet data to road repairs
Waymo originally built pothole detection to protect its vehicles and passengers, slowing the car before it hits road damage. Sharing that data externally came later, after city officials in multiple markets reached out asking whether the company tracked such information.
“We realized, hey, once we’re at scale, we can actually share this data with cities, which is something that they’ve asked for and something that we collect at scale,” said Arielle Fleisher, Waymo’s policy development and research manager.
The pilot launches in five markets: the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, and Atlanta. In Atlanta, Waymo says the data has already helped identify roughly 500 potholes. Fleisher said the company is open to expanding the program to cover other road conditions based on further feedback from officials.
Most cities currently rely on 311 non-emergency reports and manual inspections to find and prioritize pothole repairs, a system that leaves many hazards undetected until drivers report them. Waymo’s data collection runs continuously across its entire fleet and is fully automated, with quality checks built into the process before data reaches city departments.
A goodwill play in contested markets
The program also serves a political purpose. Waymo has encountered resistance in several cities, particularly Boston, New York, and Washington, DC, where labor unions remain influential. The Teamsters and other groups oppose the expansion of robotaxis on the grounds that autonomous vehicles will displace professional drivers.
Sharing infrastructure data with cities is one way Waymo can demonstrate value beyond replacing human workers. If local transportation departments come to rely on Waymo’s pothole reports, that relationship could carry weight during regulatory discussions.
“We want to be responsive to cities,” Fleisher said. “They are interested in safer streets and potholes are really a tough challenge for cities.”
Waymo’s vehicles are not immune to pothole problems themselves. A San Francisco news broadcast last year caught a Waymo robotaxi driving through a water-filled pothole without slowing down. The company says incidents like that feed back into its autonomous system and improve detection across the full fleet.