Video Shows Waymo Driving Wrong Way on Houston Street

A Waymo driverless SUV turned into oncoming rush-hour traffic on St. Joseph Parkway near downtown Houston, attempted to enter an eastbound reversible HOV lane from the wrong direction, and blocked three lanes of traffic before the company's remote-assistance team took control and backed the vehicle out of the intersection.

Craig Funni was behind the wheel of his own car, trying to enter the HOV lane Tuesday afternoon, when the Waymo vehicle cut across traffic in front of him. "It was kind of scary, just concerning, because what is this car doing?" Funni said. "It was sitting there blocking two lanes of traffic, now it's blocking three lanes." The encounter was captured on video and circulated online before KHOU aired the footage in its Texas News Now segment on March 24.

Waymo confirmed what the video showed and issued a formal statement: "One of our vehicles attempted to turn west onto the reversible HOV lane of St. Joseph Parkway while the reversible lane was running eastbound. After the vehicle came to a stop, our Remote Assistance team helped the vehicle to back up and clear the intersection. We are looking into this event further, and will make operational changes to help prevent this moving forward."

The remote-assistance system is one of Waymo's core failsafes: off-site human operators can monitor vehicles in real time and take over navigation when the onboard software cannot resolve a situation. The system functioned as designed in this case, stopping the vehicle rather than allowing it to continue against traffic. But the incident also exposed a gap between Waymo's claimed safety record, the company states its vehicles are 84 percent safer than human drivers, and what Houston commuters are now witnessing firsthand on familiar downtown corridors.

The St. Joseph Parkway encounter was not isolated. Funni told KHOU that his daughter came across a second Waymo vehicle stalled in the same corridor just three days later, on Friday morning, "sitting in a lane of traffic next to orange barrels, with its flashers on, not moving."

Waymo opened public rides in Houston on February 24, 2026, less than four weeks before the St. Joseph Parkway incident. The rollout here was part of a simultaneous expansion into Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio, adding to the company's existing Austin operations, where the National Transportation Safety Board has already opened an investigation after Waymo vehicles were recorded passing school buses with extended stop arms.

The regulatory framework governing where and how Waymo can operate in Harris County sits almost entirely outside city and county hands. Under Texas state law, municipalities cannot regulate autonomous vehicles; permitting authority and incident oversight belong to the state. That structure means Houston and Harris County have limited formal leverage to impose immediate operational restrictions, even as incidents accumulate on downtown streets. State agencies reviewing such events can request vehicle telemetry, demand incident logs, and in more serious cases impose temporary suspensions or new geofencing requirements on testing zones.

Drivers who encounter a Waymo vehicle blocking traffic or behaving erratically should call 911; Houston Police Department responds to traffic hazards regardless of whether a vehicle is human-operated. Concerns about specific Waymo incidents can also be reported directly through the company's app. The Texas Department of Transportation holds primary authority over autonomous vehicle permits statewide and is the appropriate contact for residents seeking to formally flag a pattern of incidents.

With two documented disruptions on the same downtown corridor within days of each other, the focus now shifts to what Waymo's promised "operational changes" mean in practice and how quickly state regulators will demand evidence that those changes have taken effect.