NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation has opened a recall query into Waymo after finding that a majority of reported incidents in which the company's robotaxis illegally passed stopped school buses occurred after Waymo deployed a software update intended to fix the problem2.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) disclosed the action in a November 6 filing, stating it would assess the adequacy of Waymo's remedy. Reuters was the first to report the filing.
The original defect and fix
NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) opened its initial investigation into Waymo in October 2025 after footage showed one of its autonomous vehicles maneuvering around a stopped school bus in Atlanta. In that incident, the school bus had its stop sign extended and lights flashing while unloading children; the Waymo robotaxi crossed perpendicularly in front of the bus from its right side, then turned left around the front of the bus before traveling down the street.
Waymo updated its self-driving software and issued a recall, stating last year that the software update was completed for all affected vehicles on November 17, 2025. Despite that fix, numerous other incidents were documented in the weeks and months since in Austin, where Waymo also operates a robotaxi service. Austin Independent School District officials reported at least five such incidents in a letter filed with NHTSA1.
Regulatory and competitive backdrop
The recall query arrives as Waymo navigates a shifting competitive and partnership landscape. Waymo recently confirmed it will end its exclusivity arrangement with Uber in Austin and Atlanta from January 2028[3], and Lyft disclosed a deepening operational role with Waymo in Nashville, collecting per-vehicle fees tied to uptime[2]. Separately, Tesla launched its Robotaxi Service in San Antonio on November 9, covering approximately 275 square miles in its largest debut geofence[1].
ANALYSIS The persistence of school-bus violations after a completed recall fix raises a distinct regulatory question for autonomous-vehicle operators: whether over-the-air software updates, the standard remediation mechanism for self-driving fleets, can satisfy NHTSA's recall-adequacy requirements when the underlying behavior recurs. ODI's decision to open a formal recall query rather than close the matter after the initial fix sets a concrete precedent for how the agency evaluates AV software remedies.