Poor software? Waymo faces another recall
The U.S. Transportation Safety Administration NHTSA has launched a new investigation against Alphabet’s Waymo company because its driverless taxis repeatedly drove past stopped school buses in violation of regulations. The focus of the investigation now is determining why a software update released as early as the end of 2025 failed to prevent these dangerous violations.
Image: Waymo
The U.S. transportation safety agency NHTSA is investigating nearly 3,000 robot taxis operated by Alphabet’s subsidiary Waymo. The investigation was triggered by repeated violations committed by these driverless robo-taxis, which passed by stopped school buses in violation of traffic rules, even though the buses were signaling to stop with flashing red lights.
The agency is treating this case as a so-called recall review to determine why a software update deployed by Waymo at the end of 2025 failed to correct this faulty behavior. Although the company reported in November 2025 that the necessary fix had been installed on all affected vehicles, the majority of the recorded violations occurred after this action was taken.
Nineteen incidents were documented alone in Austin, Texas. Waymo was fined $300 for each of these incidents. At least six additional violations were reported in Atlanta. Against this backdrop, the NHTSA has completed a preliminary investigation launched in October 2025 and seamlessly transitioned into a new investigation.
Waymo stated in a statement that the behavior of its vehicles around school buses has improved since March, with no further tickets issued.
However, Waymo is under significant pressure from regulators and the public, as the NHTSA and the National Transportation Safety Board have launched separate investigations into a specific accident on January 23, 2026, near an elementary school in Santa Monica, California. There, a robot taxi collided with a child.
The incidents intensified the debate over the actual safety of autonomous vehicles. Critics and experts point out that the positive safety statistics emphasized by Waymo are mainly due to the fact that these vehicles have so far operated primarily in highly controlled, precisely mapped areas at low speeds, and that absolute safety does not exist even in autonomous road traffic.