The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the U.S. auto safety regulator, opened a new review of Waymo's driverless cars on Nov. 6. NHTSA says most of the cases its earlier investigation found of Waymo robotaxis driving past stopped school buses came after a software fix for the problem that Waymo says it finished on Nov. 17, 2025. The review will judge whether that fix was enough and look for what caused the cases that came after it. It covers 2,895 vehicles running the fifth generation of Waymo's self-driving system.
NHTSA first opened an investigation on Oct. 17, 2025, after a news report showed a Waymo car passing a school bus in Atlanta on Sept. 22, 2025. The school district in Austin, Texas, also gave the agency traffic citations it had issued to Waymo cars. Waymo says it updated the software in all affected cars between Nov. 5 and Nov. 17, 2025. On Dec. 10, 2025, it filed a recall, the formal notice a company gives the regulator when it finds a safety defect and how it is fixing it.
Waymo's recall filing explains how a car that had stopped could start moving again. Waymo says its driving system is built to avoid blocking buses and other vehicles that have priority on the road. A software release dated Aug. 20, 2025, which was rolled out widely in mid-September, changed how the system predicts what other road users are about to do. After that, a car waiting for a school bus sometimes decided it was in the way of the bus or another priority vehicle. It then drove on while the bus still had its red lights flashing or its stop arm, the small stop sign that swings out from its side, extended. Waymo said the fix makes its cars put staying stopped for a school bus ahead of getting out of another vehicle's way.
In its Dec. 10, 2025 filing, Waymo said no collisions resulted, and that it knew of 12 citations linked to the problem, all between Sept. 25 and Nov. 14, 2025, before the date it gives for finishing the fix. NHTSA says its first investigation found a large number of cases in which a Waymo car passed a stopped school bus, and that most of them came after Nov. 17, 2025, the date Waymo says the fix was finished. The agency wrote that this calls into question whether the fix worked, so on Nov. 6 it closed the first investigation and opened the new one. The new review's record lists eight citations from the Austin school district, and NHTSA keeps Waymo's own count of cases confidential.
Waymo told reporters it has made significant improvements to how its cars behave around school buses and has received no citations since March 2026. It said it will answer NHTSA's questions once it receives them.
It is not yet known what NHTSA will conclude, whether it will ask Waymo for a new recall, or how many school bus passes Waymo has counted since its fix.