But, in this case, it's not a term of art, it's a specific legal definition. It's a "recall" because Waymo filed a recall notice with the NHTSA.

I think that's the problem. "Recall" to most people means "I need to take my car to the dealership, and they will fix something dangerous with the car and give it back to me".

Whereas, may recalls these days are just "Your car performed an over the air update while you were sleeping".

Maybe we need the concept of "physical recall" and "software recall".

Recall is unfortunately interpreted as the fix, “physically send back to factory”, where as it is actually a term of art meaning a public notice of a safety-endangering problem that the manufacturer is responsible for fixing, replacing, or refunding for free.

While I have previously agreed that it should not be necessary to change the term, it is unfortunately confusing to laypeople and intentionally misconstrued by bad actors to downplay safety faults. I propose it should be replaced with: “Safety Defect Notice” which is a fairly precise description of the underlying concept and can not be misconstrued to be about the “fix”.