Why is Waymo having trouble stopping for school buses?

For years, Alphabet-owned Waymo has tried to differentiate itself from other self-driving startups by emphasizing a culture of caution and safety. Now, a little earlier Major launches planned across the countryIt faces repeated failure in one of the most sensitive places imaginable: school districts.

In December, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced I opened an investigation to Waymo after Austin’s largest school district reported at least 19 incidents where the company’s automated robot failed to fully stop school buses during loading and unloading – Violation is illegal in all 50 states. Waymo responded quickly Issuing voluntary software recalls and deploying updates Aim to fix the problem.

But the patch didn’t work. Since the update, the Austin Independent School District (ISD) says at least four additional violations have occurred, Including one that occurred as recently as January 19, When a Waymo car was filmed driving across the opposite lane of traffic while children were waiting to cross the street and get on the bus with the stop arm extended. In total, at least 24 safety violations involving Waymo vehicles and school buses have been reported in Austin Since the beginning of the 2025 academic year.

Waymo has defended itself in part by pointing out that none of the school bus crashes in Austin resulted in a collision or injury. But this is no longer the case nationally. Last week, Waymo Published a blog post It admits one of its vehicles hit a child outside Santa Monica Elementary School on January 23. Although the school district said The Washington Post The child suffered only minor injuries, and the outcome could have been much worse: Waymo says the car slowed from 17 mph to 6 mph in the moment before the collision.

Experts specializing in autonomous vehicle safety and pedestrian interaction said Edge “These incidents were alarming, especially given the company’s stated goal of making its vehicles drive more.”Confidently assertiveAnd in an attempt to get rid of the stereotype Drive like a careful grandfather, The vehicles were Spotted play more flexibly with traffic rules. But making robotaxis look more like humans could also lead to us inadvertently inheriting some of our riskiest driving habits.

“These technologies are still being developed and tested in a real-world environment because there are a lot of things happening in the real world that are difficult for companies and engineers to anticipate,” Cornell Tech professor and expert in human-robot interaction. Wendy you He tells Edge. “Unless you have some understanding of all the things that might happen, it’s hard to know what to design around.”

Waymo did not respond to repeated requests for comment. On Wednesday, Waymo chief safety officer Mauricio Peña said It responded to safety concerns Raised during a Senate hearing. Waymo is evaluating each school bus accident and developing fixes, some of which have already been integrated into its software, he said. Peña also said they are working with Austin ISD “to collect data on different lighting patterns and different conditions.” Waymo has not specifically committed to stopping work around school buses while collecting and testing data.

School bus stops put the “logic” of the self-driving car to the test

Navigating around school buses is one of the most dangerous aspects of driving, for both humans and robots alike. NHTSA 61 deaths were attributed From 2000 to 2023, nearly half of them were pedestrians under the age of 18. This danger has less to do with the bus drivers themselves, who are usually licensed and cautious, than with the chaotic and improvisational nature of the situation. Buses are often overcrowded, and children, being children, may not wait to cross the street when they are supposed to.

“Waymos has a problem because every driver has school bus issues,” Joe said.

As a result, drivers navigating buses need to rely on experience and intuition as well as follow the strict set of rules they learned in driver education. This kind of common sense, which comes naturally to skilled human drivers, presents a particular challenge for self-driving cars, Wu says.

“There are all these moments in time where you have to make a judgment call between different things that you’re supposed to do,” Joe said.

Is Waymo doing “public beta testing” with pedestrians?

On a technical level, there may be more at play. According to Missy Cummings, a George Mason University professor and director of the Mason Center for Autonomy and Robotics, the apparent rise in robot safety issues involving school buses may be related to what she describes as Waymo’s increasing shift away from traditional, Benchmark machine learning Towards more focus on End-to-end learninga technology she calls “fad” and “still emerging.”

Waymo publicly, He says he uses a combination of the twoBut some Speculate that this balance is changing.

Previous autonomous vehicle systems have relied on more conservative, multi-layered architectures, with separate modules responsible for detecting objects, classifying them, and applying explicit safety rules that govern how the vehicle responds. In contrast, end-to-end learning consolidates much of this process into a single model that takes in all the information collected by a car’s sensors at once and produces driving decisions probabilistically, based on patterns learned from large sets of human driving behavior. The result is something that can appear more “natural” and more human-like, though Cummings says it can also introduce additional risks, especially in high-stakes scenarios like school bus stops.

Safety incidents show “all the hallmarks of problems when architecture is changed,” Cummings said. “I think a lot of (robo-taxi companies) do that.”

Schools have asked Waymo to pause

Regardless of the cause of the errors, Austin ISD has made its position clear. Officials Waymo has reportedly asked Waymo to halt robotaxi operations around schools During loading and unloading hours until the problem is resolved. But Waymo refused and continued operating, a decision experts say appears short-sighted and runs counter to the company’s public image of promoting safety and caution.

“I think what’s troubling is that Waymo won’t agree to that,” Cummings said. “You’re only talking about an hour and a half really, 45 minutes in the morning and 45 minutes in the afternoon, so it’s not hard not to do it.”

Philip Koopmana professor at Carnegie Mellon University and an expert in the field of autonomous vehicle safety, He echoed that sentiment In a recent edition of his Substack newsletter Autonomous system safety.

“Waymo is making a clear choice to gamble with children’s lives,” Koopman wrote. “They say they like the odds, but this is not a gamble for them.”

And while the vast majority of school bus-related issues occur in Austin, it’s likely due in part to the city recently Equip both of their arms with cameras. In other words, similar incidents could occur in other places but simply go unnoticed. Austin ISD did not respond to our requests for comment. (Axios I mentioned That problem happens in Atlanta too.)

The school bus incidents, along with the child’s beating, broke out in California Three federal investigations In several months. Although it is unlikely in Loose regulatory environment for autonomous vehicles in TexasSuch incidents could put Waymo at risk of having its operating license revoked. And yet, as investigators He reportedly approached Austin personally To investigate the company, robo-taxis continue to operate in the school zone. At the very least, this cavalier approach could make other municipalities think twice before welcoming company cars onto their streets.

“Waymo brought this on themselves,” Cummings said. “If they did the responsible thing and chose to stay out of the school districts until it was fixed, they wouldn’t have this big (public) investigation because the big investigation became public.”