Waymo and Waze are teaming up to spot potholes in real time with cars already on the road, sharing that information with cities and drivers so repairs happen faster and alerts are better, while mixing automated detection with user confirmation to improve accuracy and fairness across neighborhoods.
You know that moment when your car hits a pothole you never saw coming; it’s jarring and sudden and turns a normal drive into a problem pretty fast. Beyond the annoyance, potholes do real damage to tires and suspension and can trigger crashes when drivers swerve to avoid them. Fixing those problems adds up for drivers and for cities that must prioritize scarce maintenance dollars.
Waymo’s robotaxis already log hours of urban driving while scanning surroundings with cameras, radar and other sensors. That sensor suite is now being used to identify road defects as they appear, flagging potholes and rough patches in close to real time. The idea is to turn passive driving data into an active maintenance signal cities can use right away.
When a Waymo vehicle detects a road issue, the information is routed into Waze’s platform for municipalities so transportation departments can access reports at no cost. Alerts can also show up in the navigation app so drivers get a heads up before they reach a trouble spot. That combination of municipal access and consumer alerts aims to shrink the time between detection and repair.
There’s a human layer too: Waze users can confirm or flag reports, which helps filter false positives and keep the data clean. Machine detection picks up lots of events, and people help sort the real problems from sensor quirks or temporary conditions. Over time that feedback loop should sharpen the system and reduce noise.
Most cities still depend on 311 calls, online forms and resident reports, which creates a backlog and uneven coverage across neighborhoods. Reactive systems mean some potholes get fixed quickly while others sit unnoticed until someone reports them. By contrast, continuous feeds from vehicles give transportation teams a more complete, proactive picture of where pavement is failing.
The pilot is active in several metro areas where Waymo operates, including the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin and Atlanta, and it has already found hundreds of problem spots. That early tally shows how much damage can be missed without constant monitoring, especially in busy corridors and weather-affected stretches. Plans call for expanding into regions where freeze-thaw cycles and heavy storms make potholes more frequent.
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Potholes are small but costly: they damage tires and alignment and can force sudden maneuvers that lead to accidents. There’s also a fairness issue, because maintenance that relies on resident reporting often favors areas with higher reporting rates. Automated detection plus community confirmation aims to level that playing field so repairs follow data rather than just reports.
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Beyond immediate fixes, richer data helps cities spot patterns in where and why roads fail, which can improve long-term planning and budgeting for preventive work. Better maintenance planning can reduce wear on vehicles and lower unexpected repair bills for drivers. It also shows how technology originally designed for one purpose can provide unexpected public benefits when shared thoughtfully.
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This partnership is a reminder that private tech plays a growing role in public infrastructure, often behind the scenes. That can speed up service and reduce costs, but it also raises questions about data stewardship, transparency and how public agencies control the inputs that drive repair decisions. Those are conversations cities will need to have as pilots scale into routine practice.
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