Waymo's autonomous cars are already rolling through Atlanta, and it turns out they are doing more than driving. 11Alive reports that Atlanta is one of five cities where Waymo vehicles scan the roads and report potholes they detect along the way. That is a genuinely useful byproduct of having sensor-covered cars circling the city all day.
The catch, per 11Alive, is that Atlanta is not actually using that pothole data. The cars see the craters, log them, and the city's repair operations are not plugged into the feed. Anyone who has rattled a rim on a stretch of Atlanta asphalt after a wet winter understands why this stings a little.
None of this is hard to fix in principle. The data is being collected whether the city taps it or not, so the gap is about coordination, not technology. For now it is a reminder that knowing where the potholes are and getting them filled are two very different municipal problems.
