If Waymo thought regulators would get off its back for its robotaxis blowing past stopped school buses, it thought wrong.
On Friday, the National Transportation Safety Board announced it opened an investigation into the self-driving company over the alarming incidents, and specifically the more than 20 instances reported in Austin, Texas.
“Investigators will travel to Austin to gather information on a series of incidents in which the automated vehicles failed to stop for loading or unloading students,” the NTSB said in a statement provided to TechCrunch.
The probe makes the NTSB the second regulator to investigate Waymo over the behavior of its robotaxis around school buses after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched its own probe last October.
So far, most of the reports have come from Austin, but at least six were reported in Atlanta, Georgia, as well. The Waymos ignored the buses’ flashing lights and extended stop arm, an infraction that can bring major penalties for human drivers. No serious collisions or injuries have been reported, but in at least one incident, a Waymo drove right by the students who were disembarking from the bus.
In December, Waymo issued a voluntary software recall for over 3,000 of its 5th-generation vehicles to address the issue, and Waymo claimed that all the affected vehicles had received the patch in November, before the recall officially went out. But an Austin school district claimed that it had reported at least one violation after the patch had been applied, suggesting it didn’t fully address the issue.
Waymo’s own data suggests that its robotaxis are vastly safer drivers than humans. Nonetheless, numerous incidents beyond the school bus violations show that the driverless cabs are still far from perfect. The cars have been spotted driving on the wrong side of the road, getting stuck in roundabouts, blowing through police standoffs, and driving on light rail tracks as if it were actually a railcar. It also stoked intense community backlash when one of its robotaxis ran over and killed a beloved bodega cat.
But the company’s biggest snafu came last month, when seemingly its entire San Francisco fleet suddenly forgot how to drive after the city experienced a power outage, causing the cars to stop in the middle of roads and clog up busy intersections.
Waymo sounds optimistic about the case. Pointing to its safety track record, chief safety officer Mauricio Peña maintains that the company has done its due diligence and emphasized that none of the incidents resulted in collisions.
“We are confident that our safety performance around school buses is superior to human drivers,” Peña said in a statement, via TechCrunch. “We see this as an opportunity to provide the NTSB with transparent insights into our safety-first approach,” he said.
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