Federal regulators said they are expanding an investigation into Waymo this week, following reports that the company’s self-driving cars navigated around school buses stopped on the road in Austin, Texas.
In a letter to Waymo dated Dec. 3, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it will investigate the performance of the autonomous vehicles and their ability to follow traffic safety laws. Reuters first reported the news.
The Austin Independent School District told CBS News it is now aware of 20 incidents this school year in which a Waymo vehicle illegally passed a school bus. All 50 U.S. states have laws requiring vehicles to halt for a stopped school bus with flashing red lights and a deployed stop-arm signal, according to the NHTSA.
Waymo said it identified the software issue that contributed to the school bus incidents and that it implemented updates by Nov. 17, which it said improved its vehicles’ performance. The company is also planning to issue a voluntary software recall with NHTSA next week, Mauricio Peña, chief safety officer at Waymo, told CBS News late Friday.
“We will continue analyzing our vehicles’ performance and making necessary fixes as part of our commitment to continuous improvement,” said Peña.
Local officials in Austin say they remain concerned about road safety.
“As of Dec. 1, 2025, Waymo received its 20th citation since the beginning of the school year,” JJ Maldonado, a communications specialist for the Austin Independent School District, told CBS News. “This is after the company said it had fixed the issue through software updates that were implemented on Nov. 17.”
In a Nov. 20 letter to Waymo, the school district called on the robotaxi company to cease operations within the school district during the hours when students are loading and unloading from school buses until software updates are completed and Waymo can guarantee its vehicles will comply with the law.
Maldonado said the company “refused to cease operations” during the hours the school district had requested.
In response to a request for comment about the NHTSA probe, Waymo pointed to its overall safety record.
“Safety is our top priority, and the data shows we are improving road safety in the communities in which we operate, achieving a fivefold reduction in injury-related crashes compared to human drivers, and twelve times fewer injury crashes involving pedestrians,” a Waymo spokesperson told CBS News in an email.
Waymo did not comment on its response to the Austin school district’s request to suspend service when students are getting on and off buses.
In October, NHTSA launched a probe into the company after an incident in Atlanta, Georgia, in which a Waymo vehicle drove around a stopped school bus with flashing red lights and its stop arm deployed.
While maneuvering around the bus, NHTSA said the vehicle passed the bus’ stop arm and a safety device that swings out from the bus close to where students were disembarking. At the time of the incident, no safety operator was present in the self-driving vehicle, according to the NHTSA.
Atlanta Public Schools, a school district, told CBS Atlanta they are aware of six cases where Waymo cars illegally passed stopped school buses.
Waymo, owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, first started offering its fully autonomous vehicle service to the public in October 2020 in Phoenix. The company now offers hundreds of thousands of driverless rides each week in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, Phoenix and Atlanta.
Waymo recently announced it was expanding to Philadelphia, just one of two dozen cities where the company plans to expand.
