Amazon's Zoox Fixes Self-Driving Car Software After California Crash
So, you know how Amazon has this self-driving car thing called Zoox? Well, they just put out another software fix for their cars. This is to help them do a better job at seeing people walking nearby and to make sure the car doesn't move if someone is too close.
This happened after a little oopsie in San Francisco earlier this month. Zoox said Thursday that this fix goes out to 270 of their cars that have the self-driving software.
They told the folks at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is a government thing, all about it. Apparently, on May 8th, someone on an electric scooter was turning slowly at an intersection in San Francisco and bumped into one of Zoox's robotaxis that didn't have anyone in it. The scooter person got some minor bumps and fell next to the car. Then, the car started to move but stopped before it touched them again.
Because of this, Zoox actually stopped driving their cars on the road for a bit to figure things out. They said this new software stuff will fix a problem where sometimes the car might start moving again without realizing a person is still right there, especially if the car was stopped or going really slow.
They stopped all their driverless cars after the incident, then they did the software update and tested it out a bunch. They said they started driving their cars again last week. Just so you know, these cars are all owned by the company right now and you can't buy one yet.
Zoox has been testing these self-driving cars on public roads since 2023 in places like California and Nevada. Last year, they even started testing in Florida and Texas. Now, you can see their test cars in the Bay Area, including San Francisco, plus Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Seattle, Austin, and Miami.
Oh, and just earlier this month, Zoox had another software fix for those same 270 cars because an empty robotaxi got into a crash with another car in Las Vegas back on April 8th. And get this, back in April, the NHTSA closed up their investigation into 258 Zoox cars about a braking issue after Zoox did another software update to fix it.
