Emails, texts, and NTSB reports show Waymo and an Austin school district struggled for months to train robotaxis to stop for school buses as required by law
The incidents in Austin raise questions about how self-driving cars "learn" and adapt to their surroundings.
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Waymo Robotaxis Kept Blowing Past School Buses in Austin
Internal emails reveal Waymo spent months trying to teach its self-driving cars to actually stop for school buses.
Waymo's robotaxis repeatedly failed to stop for school buses in Austin — a basic legal requirement — and it took months of back-and-forth between the company and a local school district to fix the problem.
Emails, text messages, and NTSB reports obtained by Wired paint a messy picture. The autonomous vehicles apparently struggled to recognize and respond to stopped school buses, raising serious questions about how self-driving systems learn and adapt to real-world road scenarios.
The incidents highlight a fundamental challenge in autonomous driving: edge cases that human drivers handle instinctively can stump even the most advanced AI systems. Stopping for a school bus with flashing red lights isn't optional. It's the law everywhere in the US.
The situation also puts a spotlight on how robotaxi operators handle safety gaps once they're identified — and how long fixes actually take to deploy.