Waymo has been investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board for illegal school bus conduct

The National Transportation Safety Board has opened an investigation into Waymo after its robotaxi was spotted illegally driving through parked school buses multiple times in at least two states.

The NTSB is particularly focused on more than 20 incidents that occurred in Austin, Texas, it said in a post on Friday.

“Investigators will travel to Austin to gather information about a series of incidents in which motor vehicles failed to stop to load or unload students,” the NTSB said in a statement to TechCrunch. A preliminary report is expected within 30 days, and the safety board will publish a more detailed final report in 12 to 24 months.

This is the first time Waymo has been investigated by the NTSB, but the second investigation launched into Waymo over the school bus issue. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Office of Defect Investigation opened a similar investigation in October.

أصدرت Waymo أيضًا استدعاءًا للبرامج في ديسمبر لمعالجة المشكلة. But previous software updates weren’t enough to eliminate it, and in Austin, Texas — where the bulk of the incidents were caught on camera — the school district asked the company to suspend operations during pickup and drop-off times.

The new investigation comes as Waymo experiences rapid expansion across the United States. Just this week, the company began offering robo-taxi service in Miami, in addition to its operations in Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

“We safely navigate thousands of school bus encounters weekly across the U.S., and the Waymo Driver Program is constantly improving. There were no collisions in the events in question, and we are confident that our safety performance around school buses outperforms that of human drivers,” Mauricio Peña, Waymo’s chief safety officer, said in a statement to TechCrunch. “We see this as an opportunity to provide the NTSB with transparent insights into our safety-first approach.”

The NTSB differs from the NHTSA in that it is not a federal regulatory agency. It may not issue fines or penalties. Instead, the safety board typically conducts in-depth investigations to determine the root causes of problems in the world of transportation. When an investigation is complete, the board often holds hearings and issues nonbinding recommendations.

The first notable accident where a Waymo car ran over a parked school bus occurred last September in Atlanta, Georgia. The Waymo vehicle pulled out of the lane and crossed perpendicularly in front of the school bus from the right side of the bus. The robo-taxi then turned left and continued down the street as the children got off the bus.

Waymo said at the time that the vehicle was unable to see the stop sign or flashing lights, and has since said it has addressed this specific scenario with a software update.

But while Waymo corrected the specific scenario it encountered in Atlanta, some of the company’s vehicles were caught driving through parked school buses in Austin, Texas. Local news agency KXAN published videos it received from cameras installed on school buses that showed Waymo vehicles performing illegal maneuvers on multiple occasions.

“We continue to work productively with the Austin Independent School District and applaud their reported success in reducing man-made violations around school buses by more than 10,000 annually,” Peña said.