Autonomous Vehicles

Waymo recalls robotaxi software amid school‑bus incidents

Software defect caused 19 documented illegal passes of stopped school buses across Texas and Arizona.
Issue affects the 5th‑generation Automated Driving System (ADS) installed in roughly 2,000 robots.
Vehicles were averaging 2 million miles per week since July 2024, with total mileage exceeding 100 million miles.
Waymo’s internal safety metrics still show a 91 % reduction in serious‑injury crashes and a 92 % reduction in pedestrian‑injury crashes compared with human drivers.

NHTSA opened a preliminary evaluation in October 2025 following media coverage of the incidents.
Waymo filed a voluntary recall with NHTSA in early December 2025, triggering a formal response deadline of 20 January 2026.
Regulators require full disclosure of the defect, a detailed remediation plan, and post‑patch verification that the ADS complies with school‑bus stop‑arm laws.

Waymo One services in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and the San Francisco Bay Area will face temporary reductions while the OTA patch is deployed.
Projected short‑term engineering and downtime costs range from $5 million to $7 million, versus an estimated $20 million annual savings from uninterrupted operation.
The incidents introduce a measurable risk‑profile deviation that could influence municipal contract negotiations and public perception.

Edge‑case detection of school‑bus stop signals remains a systematic weakness in perception algorithms.
NHTSA’s escalation from a preliminary review to a formal deadline signals tighter oversight for high‑density autonomous fleets.
Isolated compliance failures now carry disproportionate regulatory weight, accelerating recall cycles despite overall safety superiority.

Waymo plans to release an OTA software update within 30 days of the recall filing, followed by fleet‑wide verification.
State‑level mandates will likely require explicit validation of school‑bus stop compliance before autonomous operation in school zones within the next 6–12 months.
Industry adoption of enhanced sensor fusion—combining LiDAR with high‑resolution cameras for stop‑arm detection—is expected within two years, driven by forthcoming NHTSA guidance and municipal contract clauses.