Waymo Robotaxis Ignore Software Update, Continue Passing Stopped School Buses
What happens when you break traffic laws? Well, if you get caught, you get a ticket and hopefully learn your lesson. Maybe you go to traffic court. But what happens if the driver is detached, emotionless, and (apparently) unrepentant? What happens if AI breaks the law and can’t be “dissuaded” from doing otherwise?
Waymo is dealing with that exact issue right now – about a year ago, the company issued a recall amidst reports that its robotaxis were passing stopped school buses.
But even after Waymo’s software update, the transgressions have continued, with a majority of the incidents actually occurring after the recall, and now the NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) is pursuing a “recall query” to “assess the adequacy of the remedy.”
“The recall report indicated that the remedy for this defect, a software update, was completed for all affected vehicles on November 17, 2025. Of the total reported incidents identified during PE25013, a majority of the incidents occurred after the November 17, 2025 remedy date,” noted the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
While the incidents had occurred in Atlanta, Georgia and Austin, Texas, the recall and software update was fleet-wide.
Oh, and Waymo is also dealing with the fallout from an incident in January where one of its robotaxis hit a child in Santa Monica, California.
For their part, Waymo seems fully cooperative with the NHTSA’s probe, noting that “We have made significant improvements to vehicle behavior around school buses and have received no citations since March 2026… we’ll work to respond to NHTSA’s query and look forward to continuing our engagement on recall processes for AV software that continues to learn and improve.”
That said, it’s more than a little frightening that autonomous vehicles are behaving this obstinate, and it could foretell disaster once entire cities are littered with these AI motorists.
