Waymo Said It Fixed Its School Bus Problem. The US Government Says It Didn’t Work

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened a formal investigation into whether Waymo’s software update stopped its robotaxis from illegally passing school buses loading or unloading children. The inquiry matters because the company announced a fix and later issued a voluntary recall, yet the agency says most reported incidents happened afterwards.

Waymo issued the fix in mid-November and the recall in mid-December, according to a filing; the National Transportation Safety Board also reported an incident in mid-January and is investigating. Waymo says it has significantly improved vehicle behaviour and has not been cited for passing a school bus since last March. Austin’s school district helped organise a data collection session after the recall, but incidents still continued; similar government inquiries have sometimes led to civil penalties worth tens of millions of dollars.