Waymo faces investigation by National Transportation Safety Board over illegal activities on school buses

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has launched an investigation into Waymo after its robot taxis were repeatedly spotted illegally passing stopped school buses in at least two states.

The NTSB said in a post to X on Friday that it was specifically focused on more than 20 incidents in Austin, Texas.

“Investigators will travel to Austin to gather information regarding a series of incidents in which self-driving vehicles failed to stop to pick up or drop off students,” the NTSB said in a statement to TechCrunch. A preliminary report is expected to be submitted within 30 days, and the safety commission is expected to release a more detailed final report within 12 to 24 months.

This is the first time Waymo has been investigated by the NTSB, but it is the second time an investigation has been launched against Waymo over the school bus scandal. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Office of Deficiency Investigations launched a similar investigation in October.

Waymo also issued a software recall last year to address the issue. But previous software updates weren’t enough to eradicate the problem, and in Austin, Texas, where most of the incidents were caught on camera, school districts asked the company to cease operations during pick-up and drop-off hours.

The new research comes as Waymo is rapidly expanding across the United States. Just this week, the company began offering 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 each week across the United States, and Waymo drivers are continually improving. There were no crashes in the events in question, and we are confident that our safety performance around school buses is superior to that of human drivers,” Mauricio Peña, Waymo’s chief safety officer, said in a statement to TechCrunch. “We see this as an opportunity to provide the NTSB with transparent insight into our safety-first approach.”

The NTSB differs from the NHTSA in that it is not a federal regulatory agency. Fines and fines cannot be imposed. Rather, safety boards typically conduct detailed investigations to determine the root cause of problems in the transportation industry. Once the investigation is complete, the board will often hold a public hearing and issue a non-binding recommendation.

The first high-profile incident of a Waymo vehicle passing a parked school bus occurred in Atlanta last September. Waymo pulled out of the driveway and crossed in front of the school bus at right angles to the right side of the bus. The robotaxi then turned left and continued down the street as the children got off the bus.

Waymo said at the time that its vehicles were unable to recognize stop signs or flashing lights, and said it had since addressed this particular scenario with a software update.

But when Waymo patched a specific scenario it encountered in Atlanta, some of its vehicles were caught passing a stopped school bus in Austin, Texas. Local news outlet KXAN published a video taken from a camera on a school bus that shows Waymo vehicles engaging in multiple illegal acts.

“We continue our productive engagement with the Austin Independent School District and commend their reported success in reducing human violations around school buses from more than 10,000 per year,” Peña said.