Robotaxi is in constant trouble. First, the "carrot" Waymo on the other side of the ocean learned to run red lights, run over cats and dogs, and even brought passengers into the C position of the scene of a police and criminal confrontation... Back in China, a Hello unmanned Robtaxi directly hit two pedestrians at a zebra crossing, and one of them was rolled under the car. Fortunately, the two were only injured.

Not long ago, Waymo, which had been in a stalemate with the U.S. NHTSA for nearly two months, finally admitted that its algorithm needs improvement and "proactively" submitted a software recall application to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The official document is expected to be submitted to NHTSA early next week.

The straw that broke the camel's back was the frequent overtaking of school buses that were loading and unloading students, at least 19 times since this school year, which caused a great safety risk.

In fact, last month, NHTSA warned them and asked them to make rectifications quickly. Waymo also said it would make rectifications at the time. However, after the rectifications were completed, the problem of overtaking school buses still occurred frequently, so NHTSA issued an ultimatum to Waymo.

However, Waymo Chief Safety Officer Mauricio Pena was still "hard-talking" even when the recall was announced: the performance in this critical scenario was "better than that of human drivers."

01 Waymo who refuses to change despite repeated admonitions

The reason why it was recalled has to start with a video in October this year.

At that time, a Waymo self-driving car whizzed past a school bus with its red warning lights on and its parking arm extended, while students were getting off the bus.

In the video, although the vehicle stopped at first, it then took a series of detours, first turning right briefly to avoid the right front end of the school bus, then turning left to pass in front of the school bus, and then continuing to turn left and driving along the lane, passing the entire left side of the school bus.

In the process, the vehicle not only passed by the crossing control arm extended on the right side of the school bus near the students getting off the bus, but also passed through the parking arm extended on the left side of the school bus, completely violating the traffic prohibition when the school bus is stopped.

U.S. traffic regulations clearly stipulate that when a school bus lights up its red warning light and extends its parking arm, all vehicles must stop immediately and wait. This is one of the most stringent and heaviest traffic regulations in the country. If a human driver overtakes a school bus, he or she will face a fine of US$1,000 (approximately 7,000 yuan).

Therefore, the US NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) launched a preliminary investigation into Waymo in October this year.

According to a document released by ODI, the investigation will focus on evaluating the response performance of Waymo's autonomous driving system when the school bus is completely stopped, examining whether its software design complies with traffic regulations related to school buses, and further analyzing the system's decision-making logic.

Moreover, the Austin Independent School District (AISD), as the school's administrator, asked Waymo to temporarily suspend operations during critical school bus pick-up and drop-off times. However, Waymo's attitude at the time was quite tough and directly rejected the request to suspend operations, saying that it did not agree with the school district's risk assessment. Instead, Waymo has also used its safety record to defend its ongoing operations.

Waymo also explained this, saying that the school bus partially blocked the lane, preventing the Robotaxi from seeing flashing lights or stop signs. Later, Waymo said it had pushed a software update to the fleet to improve performance in such situations.

However, the incident did not end there.

Just two weeks after Waymo claimed on Nov. 17 that it had made a software update to fix the vulnerability, the Austin School District discovered five more violations. Violations captured by the district's AlertBus AI-powered parking arm cameras showed that Waymo would often slow down when passing stationary school buses, sometimes stopping briefly before speeding past.

The Austin School District couldn't sit still and wrote another letter to NHTSA, pointing out that since the beginning of the 2025-26 school year, 19 incidents of Waymo vehicles illegally passing school buses have been recorded.

"Waymo's software update is clearly not working as expected... We cannot allow Waymo to continue to endanger our students while it attempts a fix."

Even Travis Pickford, the assistant chief of the AISD Police Department where the incident occurred, bluntly stated that "it has not been repaired."

After receiving the school district’s report, NHTSA also wrote to Waymo again, questioning whether it had stopped operations in accordance with the school district’s requirements and whether its software repairs had truly alleviated concerns. It even asked whether it planned to launch a recall. It required that it must answer questions related to the accident before January 20, 2026.

Waymo had no choice but to announce a software recall. Waymo Chief Safety Officer Mauricio Peña emphasized in a written statement: The company's internal statistics show that the incidence rate of pedestrian injury accidents in its vehicles is about one-twelfth that of human driving. However, if it wants to maintain the "highest safety standards," it must proactively improve when deficiencies are discovered.

Because of this, Waymo decided to submit this voluntary software recall to NHTSA regarding "appropriate deceleration and parking in relevant scenarios" and promised to continue to analyze fleet performance and launch more fixes as needed to achieve "continuous improvement."

However, Waymo still clearly rejected the school's request to "prohibit the operation of its self-driving vehicles during morning and evening peak hours until it can ensure that the vehicles fully comply with the law."

02 Robotaxi becomes increasingly bold

2025 can be said to be a year of rapid expansion for Waymo.

It has successively covered many major cities in the United States, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, and Atlanta, and next year it will also include three major cities, Las Vegas, San Diego, and Detroit.

However, Waymo’s rapid expansion has been accompanied by frequent “risk” incidents.

Earlier, American netizens broke the news on social media that a Waymo self-driving car ran over an untethered dog in San Francisco. A few weeks ago, another Waymo self-driving car hit and killed a neighbor's beloved cat.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Waymo's autonomous vehicles have been involved in at least 14 animal collisions so far.

Not to mention disturbing the public by running red lights, cutting traffic jams, and charging people together in the middle of the night, Waymo even led its passengers into the scene of a confrontation between police and robbers while facing a row of police lights. What is even more speechless is that when a passenger in a Waymo self-driving car passed by the suspect's vehicle, it also chose to slow down, exposing the passengers to the guns of the gangsters...

After this video was released, some netizens joked that "Waymo will always take you to your destination, whether you live or die." Netizens also posted other cases of Waymo's "rollover", such as crazy walking in the "Z" shape in a tunnel.

However, don’t just look at foreign fun, domestic Robotaxi accidents also need to be examined. Not long ago, many media reported that a Robotaxi vehicle hit a person on the streets of Zhuzhou, Hunan, and one person was involved in the car.

According to witnesses at the scene, when the accident occurred, two pedestrians were crossing the road normally at the zebra crossing. The Robotaxi involved did not take avoidance measures and directly knocked down the pedestrians, and one of them was trapped under the car.

As can be seen from the video that was circulated, the company involved was Hello Robotaxi, which entered the industry just this year. There was also the word "3009" posted on the window of the car. Officials from Hello also stated that operations at the site of the incident have been suspended. This incident is also one of the few Robotaxi collisions in China that has been publicly confirmed to have injured people.

This has undoubtedly poured cold water on Hello and even the entire Robotaxi industry, although in the past few years, Robotaxi players have produced tens of millions of kilometers of road tests, thousands of days of operation records and extremely low accident rates.

But with the rapid expansion of Robotaxi, can technical capabilities, data accumulation, and system verification be able to support such a fast pace? Many people even think that Robotaxi seems to have become more and more "bold" from the "cautious" before.

According to the New York Post, many local residents have begun to complain that Waymo's self-driving taxis have suddenly changed from being "overly polite" in the past to becoming like "aggressive New York taxi drivers", snaking through tunnels, failing to stop completely at stop signs, squeezing past other vehicles, and even making illegal U-turns.

As for why Robotaxi is becoming more and more aggressive, Chris Ludwick, Waymo’s senior director of product management, answered: “It is forced to be more decisive, otherwise it will affect traffic.”

In order to avoid congestion caused by being too cautious, Waymo redesigned the vehicle system to make its driving more "assertive." "In a busy city like San Francisco, it's almost necessary to scale."

Officials also emphasized that even so, Robotaxi is still designed in accordance with road rules and is safer than human-driven cars. Accidents causing serious casualties have been reduced by 91%, and accidents causing injuries to pedestrians have been reduced by 92%.

But safety is no small matter, and the commercialization of driverless technology must not be at the expense of safety. Just like the 20 violations caused by Waymo, although the total number only accounts for a very small part of the approximately 7,000 school bus violation tickets issued by the AISD Police Department to all vehicles this school year.

However, due to the systemic failure nature of autonomous driving technology, it will be considered a serious and systemic risk, which will be infinitely amplified and even cause the public to question the "maturity of autonomous driving technology."

So, are Robotaxi, which have grown wildly since this year, really ready to walk with "passers-by"?