U.S. safety regulators have opened an investigation into about 2,000 of Waymo’s self-driving vehicles after reports that one of its robotaxis failed to stop for a school bus with its red lights flashing.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it launched the probe after seeing a media report about an incident where a Waymo vehicle didn’t stay put as students were getting off a school bus. The report said the driverless car initially stopped but then drove around the front of the bus, passing its extended stop arm while children were disembarking.
A spokesperson for Waymo, which is owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, said the company has “already developed and implemented improvements related to stopping for school buses” and that more software updates are on the way. The company also said that in this specific incident, the car approached the bus from an angle where the flashing lights were not visible.
This is the latest in a series of federal reviews of self-driving car technology as regulators take a closer look at how these new systems interact with the real world, especially around pedestrians and other vulnerable road users.
Waymo has a fleet of over 1,500 robotaxis operating in cities like Phoenix, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, and it has plans to expand internationally. The incident and the new investigation are a reminder of the complex challenges that still need to be solved before self-driving cars can become a widespread reality.
