Autonomous Vehicles and Safety Regulation

The National Transportation Safety Board has opened a formal investigation into Waymo’s autonomous robotaxis after a series of incidents in Austin, Texas, where the vehicles allegedly failed to stop for Austin Independent School District buses that were loading or unloading children with flashing lights and stop arms deployed. Investigators will travel to Austin to examine at least two dozen documented violations, including at least four that occurred after Waymo pushed a November software update it said would fix the problem. Waymo’s chief safety officer Mauricio Peña told CBS the company safely navigates "thousands of school bus encounters" weekly, says there have been no collisions in these incidents, and claims its performance around school buses is "superior to human drivers," even as the district previously asked the company to halt operations during school hours and says Waymo refused. The NTSB expects to release a preliminary report within 30 days, with a full probe likely taking 12 to 14 months, and the case comes on top of a separate NHTSA defect investigation into Waymo that was expanded last month in response to the same Austin bus encounters. The outcome could influence how federal regulators treat autonomous-vehicle deployments around vulnerable road users, particularly schoolchildren, as AV firms push to expand operations in U.S. cities.