At the beginning of October, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched a probe into Waymo driverless taxis, alleging that they committed safety violations by failing to stop when a school bus ahead of them had. According to the initial report with the Office of Defects Investigation, the robotaxis would do this “particularly when the bus is boarding or offboarding students.” Although students get on and off school buses on the sidewalk, opposite to the side of the bus that the robotaxi would pass on, this presents an obvious safety risk, or else it wouldn’t be illegal to pass stopped school buses in the first place.
At the time, a Waymo spokesperson defended the September 22 incident that led to the investigation by telling Car and Driver that the bus was partially blocking a driveway that the robotaxi was exiting and that the lights and stop sign were not visible from the sensors’ point of view. But now, the investigation has finally turned into a full recall.
Over 3,000 Vehicles Recalled
The NHTSA recall says that all affected vehicles were repaired with an autonomous driving system software update by November 17, spanning some 3,067 units with production dates from 20 August to 5 November 2025. For the record, the initial investigation had covered approximately 2,000 Waymo driverless taxis. This recall fix comes as Waymo targets 1 million robotaxi rides per week, according to Forbes, having recently surpassed 450,000 rides per week. Thus far, Waymo robotaxis have done some 14 million trips in 2025 alone, and these trips provide the company with more and more data to further improve its systems. But no matter what Waymo has achieved, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has written off the company’s progress by posting on his social media site X (formerly Twitter) yesterday that the company “never really had a chance” against Tesla, despite Tesla itself lagging in the robotaxi race.
Waymo never really had a chance against Tesla. This will be obvious in hindsight.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 10, 2025
Waymo’s Publicity is Good and Bad
With such a tricky technology, Waymo faces both good and bad publicity, with recent reports including multiple crashes in San Francisco just days after a woman gave birth in a driverless taxi. Elsewhere, Waymo driverless cars can now drive themselves on highways, but they’ve also proven susceptible to hacking, with one individual playing a prank that saw 50 robotaxis trapped in San Francisco’s longest dead-end street. Clearly, there’s still a long way to go before autonomous cars from any company can be truly trustworthy, but recalls like this one help achieve that goal, bit by bit.
Related: Rimac One-Ups Musk By Revealing a Fleet of Robotaxis Before Tesla Does
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