The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has opened an investigation into Waymo after its robotaxi was spotted illegally passing stopped school buses multiple times in at least two states.
The NTSB is specifically focusing on the more than 20 incidents that have occurred in Austin, Texas, it said in a post to X on Friday.
“Investigators will travel to Austin to gather information about a series of incidents in which automated vehicles failed to stop to load or unload students,” the NTSB said in a statement to TechCrunch. A preliminary report is expected within 30 days, and the security council will publish a more detailed final report in 12 to 24 months.
This is the first time Waymo has been investigated by the NTSB, but it is the second investigation launched into Waymo into the school bus problem. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Office of Failure Investigation opened a similar investigation in October.
Waymo also issued a software recall last year to address the problem. But previous software updates weren’t enough to eliminate it, and in Austin, Texas — where most of the incidents were caught on camera — the school district asked the company to suspend operations during pick-up and drop-off.
The new research comes as Waymo is in the midst of a rapid expansion in the United States. Just this week, the company began offering a robotaxi service in Miami, adding to its operations in Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix and the San Francisco Bay Area.
“We safely navigate thousands of school bus encounters weekly across the United States, and Waymo Driver is constantly improving. There were no crashes at these events, and we’re confident that our safety performance around school buses is superior to human drivers,” said Mauricio Peña, Waymo’s Chief Security Officer at TechCC. “We see this as an opportunity to provide the NTSB with transparent information about our safety-first approach.”
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The NTSB is different from the NHTSA in that it is not a federal regulatory agency. It cannot impose fines or penalties. Instead, the safety committee usually performs deep investigations to identify the root causes of problems in the transportation world. When an investigation is complete, the board often holds hearings and issues non-binding recommendations.
The first notable incident where a Waymo vehicle ran over a stopped school bus happened last September in Atlanta. The Waymo exited a roadway and crossed perpendicularly in front of the school bus on the right side of the bus. The robotaxi then turned left and proceeded down the street while the children got off the bus.
Waymo said at the time that the vehicle couldn’t see the stop sign or flashing lights, and has since said it addressed that particular scenario with a software update.
But as Waymo fixed the particular scenario it encountered in Atlanta, some of the company’s vehicles were caught passing stopped school buses in Austin, Texas. Local news outlet KXAN published video obtained from cameras mounted on school buses that showed Waymo vehicles making illegal maneuvers in multiple cases.
“We continue to work productively with the Austin Independent School District and applaud their reported success in reducing human-centered school bus violations from 10,000+ per year,” Peña said.
