Amazon's Zoox Updates Software After San Francisco Scooter Crash
So hey, you know how Amazon has that self-driving car thingy called Zoox? Well, get this. They just put out another software update because there was a little oopsie in San Francisco recently. Like, their car bumped into a person on an electric scooter.
They told the government peeps, like the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, that this update is for 270 of their cars that have this self-driving software. Apparently, what happened on May 8th was a person on a scooter was turning slowly and hit one of these empty Zoox robotaxis. The person got a little hurt and fell near the car, and then the car kinda moved and stopped without hitting 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 fix is to help the cars be better at knowing when people are super close, especially when the car is stopped or moving really slow. They mentioned that sometimes, in some weird situations, the car might start moving even if there's still a person right there. Idk, sounds a bit scary, tbh.
After that incident, Zoox paused everything, put in the software update, and did a bunch of testing to make sure it works. They said they started driving on the roads again last week. Oh, and these cars aren't something you can just buy yet. Zoox owns all of them.
They've been testing these self-driving rides on public roads since 2023. First in California and Nevada, and then they added Florida and Texas last year. Now, you can see them driving around in places like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Seattle, Austin, and Miami.
Remember that other time earlier this month? Zoox had to do another software fix for those 270 cars because of a crash in Las Vegas back in April. That time, an empty robotaxi hit a regular car. And get this, back in April, the government already closed a look into 258 of their cars because of a braking issue. Zoox fixed that with a software update too. Seems like they're working through some kinks, right?
