Introduction: On Wednesday, the NHTSA wrote to Waymo stating that it had requested a response on a series of issues by January 20, 2026.

(Text / Observer Network, Zhou Shengming; Editor / Gao Xin)

According to Reuters on December 5, due to the issue of illegally overtaking school buses, U.S. regulators are intensifying their scrutiny of Robotaxi company Waymo.

Previously, officials in Texas reported that since the start of the new school year, Waymo's autonomous vehicles had illegally overtaken school buses 19 times.

According to U.S. traffic regulations, all vehicles must stop immediately and prohibit overtaking when a school bus has its red warning lights on and the stop arm extended. This is one of the strictest and most severely penalized traffic laws nationwide, aimed at ensuring the absolute safety of children when they get on or off the school bus.

Therefore, when Waymo's driverless cars repeatedly violated the rules by overtaking school buses in Texas, it attracted the strong attention and investigation of regulators and school districts.

It is known that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) had already launched an investigation into Waymo this October, with the cause being a Waymo vehicle failing to stop as required when encountering a school bus with flashing red lights and an extended stop arm in Georgia.

So far, Waymo has not resolved this issue well after the investigation.

According to a letter published by the NHTSA on November 20, the Austin Independent School District stated that although Waymo claimed to have performed software updates to address such issues, there were still five similar violations in November. The district therefore requested that Waymo suspend operations in areas around schools during school hours until the company can ensure no further violations occur.

The district's lawyer stated in the letter: "We cannot allow Waymo's vehicles to continue posing risks to students before the issue is fully resolved." He gave an example where a Waymo Robotaxi drove past a stopped school bus. Just before that, a student had just gotten off the school bus and had not yet completely left the road.

This letter prompted the NHTSA to further ask Waymo on November 24 whether it would comply with the suspension requirements and asked: "Has the relevant software fix been implemented? Will Waymo submit a recall application for the fix?"

The Austin school district told Reuters on Thursday local time that Waymo refused to suspend autonomous operations near school areas. It is reported that on December 1 in Austin, another incident occurred where a Waymo Robotaxi overtook a school bus. "This indicates that these software updates have not solved the problem or eliminated our concerns," the district said.

Waymo did not explain why it refused to suspend operations or respond to whether it would issue a recall in its statement. The company said: "We take the safe interaction with school buses very seriously. We have quickly rolled out the relevant software updates and will continue to improve."

The NHTSA stated in a letter to Waymo on Wednesday that it had requested responses on a series of issues by January 20, 2026, which involved multiple incidents of illegal overtaking of school buses and details about the software updates the company had made to address the related problems.

At the same time that U.S. regulators were investigating Waymo over the school bus scenario, the company was actually accelerating its commercialization efforts.

According to a previous report by Reuters, Waymo has been operating fully driverless Robotaxi in Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin, and has announced the expansion of its services to highways and airports.

In addition, the company plans to launch paid Robotaxi services in Las Vegas, San Diego, and Detroit in 2026, which is also its largest operational expansion so far.

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Original: toutiao.com/article/7580313517786415668/

Statement: This article represents the personal views of the author.