US Regulator Probes Whether Waymo's Software Recall Solved School Bus Problem
The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened a formal investigation into whether Waymo's software recall stopped its robotaxis from illegally passing stopped school buses. The agency says most incidents occurred after the fix.
The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened a formal investigation into whether last fall's software recall by autonomous vehicle company Waymo actually resolved a safety problem. The issue involves robotaxis that repeatedly drove past stopped school buses. The probe will determine whether the company's fix worked.
Investigators will assess whether Waymo's self-driving cars still improperly pass school buses that have red lights flashing and stop arms extended. Those signals indicate that students are getting on or off the bus. Passing such buses is illegal in all 50 US states.
Fix and recall
According to a filing, Waymo put a software fix in place in mid-November and followed with an official voluntary recall a month later. The government says, however, that most of the school bus incidents happened after that date.
A report published this year by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the independent US safety agency, found another incident in mid-January, several weeks after the supposed fix. The NTSB is also investigating the problem.
Waymo's response
In a written statement, Waymo spokesperson Dana Gallagher said the company has made significant improvements to vehicle behavior around school buses. She said Waymo has not been cited for passing school buses since last March, months after the mid-December recall. The company looks forward to continuing its engagement on recall processes for autonomous vehicle software that keeps learning and improving, she added.
WIRED previously reported that late last year the Austin school district helped organize a half-day data collection event for Waymo. School buses and stop-arm signals were brought to an empty parking lot so the company could gather data to train its vehicles. The event took place after the fix and recall, yet the incidents continued.
In past years, similar recall inquiries in the US have led to civil penalties, in some cases costing automakers and software developers tens of millions of dollars.
