The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a recall query into Waymo on 6 November, according to the agency’s investigations data file. Recall query RQ26006 will “assess the adequacy of the remedy for Recall 25E084”, the December 2025 software recall for Waymo vehicles passing stopped school buses. A post on X by Wall St Engine on 9 November put the query at 2,895 Waymo vehicles.
A recall query is a review of whether an existing fix worked, not a finding of fault. NHTSA opened it 354 days after the 17 November 2025 date by which, per the recall report, the software remedy was complete, by our arithmetic.
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A short Business Engineer explainer on earned autonomy. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss Waymo, NHTSA or this recall query.
The key insight: NHTSA opened recall query RQ26006 on 6 November to assess whether Waymo’s December 2025 school-bus software recall worked, after its earlier investigation found that a majority of reported incidents came after the 17 November 2025 remedy date.
In the record, the agency’s Office of Defects Investigation says it “has identified a large number of reported incidents of Waymo AVs passing stopped schools buses with the school bus’s red lights flashing and/or the stop arm extended”. It adds: “Of the total reported incidents identified during PE25013, a majority of the incidents occurred after the November 17, 2025 remedy date.”
The query’s stated aim is “to assess the adequacy of the remedy for Recall 25E084 and to identify the cause(s) of the conditions leading to the post-remedy reports”. The record names the system as Waymo’s 5th generation automated driving system and the component as its self-driving software.
Vehicle counts are the totals potentially involved in Waymo’s recall reports 25E084 and 26E026; the 2,895 for recall query RQ26006 is as reported by Wall St Engine, since the NHTSA record gives no count. The filings cover different software and dates.
What Was Posted on X
NHTSA has opened a recall query covering 2,895 Waymo vehicles over continued reports of robotaxis failing to stop for school buses.
Waymo recalled over 3,000 vehicles for the same issue in December 2025.
Regulators are now reviewing whether the earlier software fix was effective.
Wall St Engine’s post at 11:00 UTC on 9 November says NHTSA has opened a recall query covering 2,895 Waymo vehicles over continued reports of robotaxis failing to stop for school buses, and that regulators are reviewing whether the earlier software fix was effective. The 2,895 figure in this piece comes from this post; the NHTSA record we read gives no vehicle count.
How the Case Got Here
NHTSA opened the underlying investigation, Preliminary Evaluation PE25013, on 17 October 2025, and closed it on 6 November 2026, the day the recall query opened: 385 days, by our arithmetic. The closing summary says the evaluation “identified a large number of incidents where the Waymo AV passed a school bus with its red lights flashing and/or the stop arm extended” and that this “calls into question the effectiveness of the recall remedy”.
Waymo’s recall report 25E084 gave 3,067 as the total number potentially involved, covering 5th generation software from the 20 August 2025 driverless release up to the 5 November 2025 release. The 2,895 in the Wall St Engine post is 94.4% of that figure, by our arithmetic; we did not find 2,895 in the NHTSA data we read.
Against a Later Waymo Recall
A later Waymo recall report, 26E026, submitted on 6 May 2026 over vehicles that may slow but not stop for a potentially untraversable flooded lane, gave 3,791 as the number potentially involved, across 5th and 6th generation systems. On that base, 2,895 would be 76.4% of the vehicles covered by that filing, by our arithmetic. The filings cover different software and dates, so the comparison is a rough scale only.
As we read the record, the regulator’s question has moved from whether Waymo’s software passed stopped school buses to whether the recall meant to fix it did its job.
As we read it, the time elapsed matters: 354 days separate the remedy date and the query, by our arithmetic. Separately, NHTSA closed its earlier investigation and opened the query on the same day, 6 November.
NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation, PE25013 closing summary
“This calls into question the effectiveness of the recall remedy.”
Three Implications
FOR WAYMO NHTSA says the query will assess the adequacy of the remedy for recall 25E084 and identify the causes of the post-remedy reports.
FOR THE ROBOTAXI MARKETTesla opened its fifth Texas robotaxi city on 9 November, three days after the query opened, as covered in our San Antonio piece.
FOR THE 2,895 FIGURE The NHTSA record we read gives no vehicle count; the 2,895 is from a post on X by Wall St Engine.
What Is Not Established
The NHTSA record does not give a vehicle count; the 2,895 comes from the Wall St Engine post. The record does not say how many incidents occurred, where, or whether anyone was hurt. A recall query can end with no further action or with a new recall; NHTSA has not said which. Waymo’s response is not part of the NHTSA record.
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NHTSA opened recall query RQ26006 on 6 November to test whether Waymo’s December 2025 school-bus software recall worked, after its earlier investigation found most reported incidents came after the fix. The query was reported at 2,895 vehicles, 94.4% of the 3,067 covered by the original school-bus recall, by our arithmetic.
A note on sourcing. The recall query and the earlier investigation are from NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation data file; vehicle totals for recalls 25E084 and 26E026 are from Waymo’s recall reports filed with NHTSA. The 2,895 figure is from a post on X by Wall St Engine. Day counts and percentages are our arithmetic.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
