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Intersection of Autonomous Vehicles and School Buses
It’s alarming: A staggering 8,000 drivers illegally passed a stopped school bus, with the stop arm deployed and red lights flashing between mid-August and Feb. 10 in Austin, Texas alone.
The Austin Independent School District (AISD) partners with BusPatrol to install cameras on every bus in the district. When a car illegally passes a stopped school bus with the red flashing lights and stop arm deployed, police issue a $300 citation after confirming a violation on video provided by BusPatrol. Every school district should be capturing the license plate of offenders. BusPatrol system has no up-front cost for a school district because they fund the program out of the revenue from fines.
The City of Austin passed an ordinance in 2015 allowing the school district to implement the program. The fine is an effective deterrent because only 1 percent of drivers who are issued a ticket re-offend. Since mid-August, 25 Waymo driverless taxis have blown by stopped school buses illegally.
Three Ways to Look at These Statistics
1. Waymo’s 25 violation are small in comparison.
2. There are 2.1 million vehicles in the greater Austin area and just over 100 Waymo autonomous vehicles. One out of every 263 normal vehicles illegally drove by a stopped school bus but one in four Waymo vehicles did. On a per vehicle basis, Waymo has 65 times more illegal drive-bys than average motorists.
3. Human drivers have a 1 percent repeat rate. Waymo AVs repeated the mistake 24 times in the last seven months.
School buses are designed to have the highest visibility possible. They’re painted bright yellow. They have flashing red lights when stopped and an arm that comes out into traffic.
Alarmed about these incidents, Kris Hafezizadeh, Austin ISD’s director of transportation, got in touch with Waymo and offered to run tests in a safe parking lot in early December so that Waymo engineers could solve this problem. Waymo updated its software a couple of weeks later as a result, but violations still have occurred since the updates.
Hafezizadeh and Austin police suggested to Waymo representatives, that until the problem is resolved, Waymo not drive during the hours that school buses are picking up and dropping off students. Waymo representatives refused and said that the cars will keep driving.
The video documentation of these violations is an important part of this story because without this evidence, Austin ISD would not know the extent of the threat that children face and the National Transportation Safety Board and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would not have had the data that prompted their investigations.
A Waymo spokesperson is quoted by Reuters as saying, “Our safety performance around school buses is superior to human drivers” But it depends on how you look at the numbers.
In an interview with Bloomberg on Feb. 11, Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana would not unequivocally confirm the problem has been solved.
Frightening Figure: National Epidemic
Every year, the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services (NASDPTS) conducts a voluntary, one-day study to document how many cars illegally pass stopped school buses. Last year, bus drivers in 36 states and D.C. participated. The data was annualized and extrapolated to cover all U.S. jurisdictions. The figure is frightening: 43.5 million illegal passes a year. A NTHSA study as to why this is happening is equally disturbing: Over 30 percent didn’t care, 25 percent were in a hurry, 24 percent said they didn’t know the law, and 12 percent were distracted.
A staggering 94 percent of car crashes are due to driver error. As a result, 44,000 people are killed every year in car accidents in the U.S. and another 2.6 million end up in the hospital. So, the long-term promise of driverless vehicles is great. No more drunk driving, no more distracted driving accidents. However, currently there is a big, yawing gap between the promise and the practice.
Why Is This Important Now?
This is important right now because there is a rapid expansion of driverless cars in certain jurisdictions. In July, Waymo reported that it had completed 100 million fully autonomous rides and 250,000 paid rides per week. We are in an era of rapid expansion of driverless vehicles. This makes it critical to fix this problem as soon as possible.
Waymo operates in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, Atlanta and Miami and plans to expand into Washington, Detroit, Las Vegas, San Diego, Denver and nine other U.S. and international cities this year. The service will hit more than 1 million paid robotaxi rides a week in the U.S. by the end of 2026, up from the current 400,000 paid rides a week, according to Mawakana.
It’s not just Waymo that’s rapidly expanding, all car manufacturers are deploying autonomous features. China is the most advanced market globally with 3,500 robotaxis deployed, but Goldman Sachs predicts that there will be 500,000 robotaxis across 10 Chinese cities by 2030, and UBS predicts there will be four million in China by the late 2030s. China shows us a vision of our own future. So, this problem is going to intensify.
The Way Forward
Waze and Google Maps are both owned by Waymo’s parent company Alphabet. Why not require Waze and Google Maps to publish all the school district locations on their maps and verbally warn human drivers to slow down in school zones and pay attention to stopped bus flashing lights and force Waymo vehicles to do the same?
Today, driverless vehicles only react to what they can “see” with Lidar and cameras. Future V2X technology will enable communication between autonomous systems. So, school buses will broadcast signals that Waymo and other driverless vehicles will detect and, as a result, be triggered to slow down and stop.
Predicting Illegal Passing
Safe Fleet has an AI-based Predictive Stop Arm. It looks at the speed of a vehicle and predicts whether it will illegally drive by the bus. This allows the bus driver to prevent students from getting off the bus. The system also comes with loudspeakers on the under side of the bus that warn children of a car that is not going to stop and to not cross the road.
Many school districts face serious budget cuts and constraints. The violator-funded model is not only a good deterrent but also makes the program financially possible. Districts might consider launching a public education campaign on media and social media similar to the highly effective ones launched by Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
Editor’s Note: As reprinted from the March 2026 issue of School Transportation News.
Jim Harris is a one of North America’s foremost thinkers, authors and on-air analysts on AI, disruption and innovation. He keynotes internationally at more than 50 in-person and virtual conferences and events a year. Association magazine ranked him as one of North America’s top ten speakers. Jim has published five books. Blindsided! was released in 80 countries and is a No. 1 International bestseller.
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