Waymo is facing a crisis that cuts to the heart of autonomous vehicle safety. After 24 reported incidents of its robotaxis illegally passing stopped school buses in Austin and one collision with a child in California, federal investigators are now heading to Texas to probe whether the Google-owned company's push to make its cars drive more assertively has created dangerous new risks in school zones.
Waymo built its reputation on caution. For years, Alphabet's self-driving unit positioned itself as the responsible alternative in an industry known for moving fast and breaking things. But that carefully cultivated image is crumbling in Austin school zones, where the company's robotaxis have repeatedly blown past stopped buses loaded with children.
In December, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation after Austin Independent School District reported at least 19 incidents where Waymo vehicles failed to fully stop for school buses during loading and unloading, an illegal violation in all 50 states. The company quickly issued a voluntary software recall and rolled out updates intended to fix the problem.
The patch didn't work. Since the update, Austin ISD says at least four additional violations have occurred, according to EdWeek. The most recent came on January 19th, when a Waymo vehicle was filmed breezing through the opposite lane of traffic as children waited to cross the street and board a bus with its stop arm extended. In total, at least 24 safety violations involving Waymo vehicles and school buses have been reported in Austin since the start of the 2025 school year.
Waymo initially defended itself by noting that none of the Austin incidents resulted in collisions or injuries. That's no longer the case. Last week, the company published a blog post acknowledging that one of its vehicles struck a child outside a Santa Monica elementary school on January 23rd. The vehicle slowed from 17 mph to 6 mph in the instant before impact, according to Waymo's own data. The school district told the child sustained only minor injuries, but the outcome could have been catastrophic.
