NHTSA checks whether Waymo's recall stopped its robotaxis passing school buses

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a recall query on Friday, 6 November, into whether Waymo's 2025 software recall stopped its robotaxis from driving past stopped school buses. According to NHTSA, most incidents happened after the date of the fix.

Waymo issued the voluntary recall after an earlier NHTSA investigation found its robotaxis passing school buses that had stopped with red lights flashing and stop arms out, in Atlanta, Georgia, and Austin, Texas. The update reached the whole fleet in November 2025. The new query by NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation will check whether it worked and look for the causes of the later reports.

NHTSA is also investigating a January incident in which a Waymo robotaxi hit a child in Santa Monica, California, and the National Transportation Safety Board opened its own investigation into the robotaxis' behaviour around school buses earlier this year.