Self-driving car company Waymo is now under federal investigation following reports that one of its vehicles failed to stop for a school bus as students were disembarking.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched the investigation following the incident on September 22 in Atlanta, Georgia, which is being carried out by its Office of Defects Investigation.
Despite the school bus being stationary, with its red lights flashing and stop arm deployed, the Waymo failed to stop, the ODI report stated.
The self-driving vehicle reportedly approached the bus from a perpendicular side street and halted briefly, but then turned right and passed in front of the vehicle and down its entire left side, the report states.
“During this maneuver, the Waymo AV passed the bus’s extended crossing control arm near disembarking students (on the bus’s right side) and passed the extended stop arm on the bus’s left side,” the ODI said.
At the time of the incident the Waymo was being operated by the company’s 5th Generation Automated Driving System (ADS) and no safety operator was in the vehicle.
Waymo’s ADS surpassed 100 million miles of driving in July of 2025.
Operations involving Waymo’s ADS currently accumulate approximately two million miles per week, according to the ODI.
The department added that, based on the incident and the accumulation of operational miles, the likelihood of other prior similar incidents is high.
“ODI has opened a Preliminary Evaluation to investigate the performance of the Waymo ADS around stopped school buses, how the system is designed to comply with school bus traffic safety laws, and the system’s ability to follow those traffic safety laws,” ODI’s report stated.
“During this investigation, NHTSA will seek to identify the scope of the issue presented by this incident and identify any other similar incidents.”
In a statement shared with The Independent, a Waymo spokesperson said: “Safety is our top priority, as we provide hundreds of thousands of fully autonomous paid trips every week in some of the most challenging driving environments in the U.S.
“The data shows we are improving road safety in the communities in which we operate, achieving a fivefold reduction in injury-related crashes compared to human drivers, and twelve times fewer injury crashes involving pedestrians.
“NHTSA plays a vital role in road safety, and we will continue to work collaboratively with the agency as part of our mission to be the world’s most trusted driver.”
It comes shortly after a separate incident in San Bruno, California, in which traffic cops accidentally stopped a driverless Waymo for a suspected DUI, after it performed an illegal U-turn.
“Since there was no human driver, a ticket couldn’t be issued (our citation books don’t have a box for “robot”),” the department wrote in an online post.
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