The National Transportation Safety Board announced on January 23 that it has opened an investigation into Waymo’s autonomous vehicles after reports of them illegally passing stopped school buses in Austin, Texas, on multiple occasions since the school year began.
The probe focuses on incidents where the robotaxis failed to yield to Austin Independent School District buses that were loading or unloading students with flashing lights and extended stop signs activated. Waymo vehicles have been cited for at least two dozen such violations in the city.
Waymo, a unit of Alphabet Inc., issued a software update in November aimed at fixing the problem, but at least four violations have occurred since then. The company recalled more than 3,000 vehicles in December to address the issue, which raised crash risks. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began its own inquiry in October and expanded it last month in response to the Austin events.
In a November 20 letter to NHTSA, the school district reported five post-update incidents that month and urged Waymo to suspend operations near schools during student pick-up and drop-off periods until compliance could be assured. The district later informed media outlets that Waymo had declined the request, USA Today reported.
“We cannot allow Waymo to continue endangering our students while it attempts to implement a fix,” a lawyer for the school district wrote, noting one case where a Waymo vehicle “was recorded driving past a stopped school bus only moments after a student crossed in front of the vehicle, and while the student was still in the road.”
Waymo stated there were no collisions in any of the incidents and that it met with the district last month to discuss the matter.
“We safely navigate thousands of school bus encounters weekly across the United States, and the Waymo Driver is continuously improving,” said Mauricio Peña, Waymo’s chief safety officer, per CBS News. “There have been no collisions in the events in question, and we are confident that our safety performance around school buses is superior to human drivers. We continue to engage productively with the Austin Independent School District and applaud their reported success in reducing human-driven violations around school buses from 10,000+ a year.”
A Waymo spokesperson added earlier this month that the company has “seen material improvement in our performance since our software update,” CBS News reported.
The NTSB said investigators will head to Austin to collect data, with the full inquiry potentially lasting 12 to 14 months, though a preliminary report is expected within 30 days.
“School bus safety and the safe operation of automated vehicles have been a focus of previous NTSB investigations,” the agency said in its announcement, per CBS.
