NHTSA opens recall query RQ26-006 into Waymo's school bus software fix
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened Recall Query RQ26-006 on Nov. 6 to test whether Waymo's December 2025 school bus recall actually fixed the problem. NHTSA said its earlier probe, PE25-013, found a large number of reported incidents of Waymo robotaxis passing stopped school buses with red lights flashing or stop arms out, and that a majority happened after Nov. 17, 2025, the date Waymo told regulators the software remedy was on every affected vehicle.
Source: NHTSA: Recall Query RQ26-006 record
Reuters and the financial wire Jin10 reported Monday that the query covers 2,895 Waymo vehicles; that count isn't in NHTSA's public summary. The original recall, 25E-084, covered 3,067 vehicles running Waymo's fifth-generation driving system. A recall query is not a defect finding. NHTSA says it will judge whether the remedy was adequate and find the causes of the post-fix reports.
Why the recall query matters
NHTSA is now questioning whether Waymo's fix worked, not just whether a defect exists. Waymo's own recall report said it knew of 12 related citations, all between Sept. 25 and Nov. 14, 2025, and no collisions. NHTSA now says most reported incidents came after the fix. An unresolved school bus problem keeps pressure on Waymo's operations around schools; the Austin school district asked it last year to pause service near schools at pick-up and drop-off times, Reuters reported.
More on Waymo, Alphabet and robotaxis and self-driving vehicles.
Sources
- NHTSA: Recall Query RQ26-006 record
- try.vin: RQ26-006 and PE25-013 summaries from NHTSA's investigations file
- NHTSA: Waymo recall report 25E-084 (Dec. 10, 2025)
- Jin10: NHTSA recall query covers 2,895 Waymo vehicles (Nov. 9)
- Reuters: Waymo recalls, updates software for over 3,000 vehicles (Dec. 2025)
- Reuters: NTSB opens probe into Waymo robotaxis passing school buses (Jan. 2026)
New to robots? Read our guide: How robotaxis work: Tesla vs Waymo, explained.
Summarized by Servospace from the sources above, drafted with AI help and checked against those sources before publishing. Claims are the companies' or outlets' unless we say otherwise. How we work.