Zoox Software Update After San Francisco Crash
Okay, so Amazon's self-driving car company, Zoox, just put out another software update for their vehicles. It's all about making sure the cars are better at seeing people walking around super close and don't move if someone is right there. This happened after a little crash in San Francisco just this month.
They recalled 270 cars that have this self-driving software, according to a report Zoox shared. What happened was, back on May 8th, someone on an electric scooter was turning slowly at a San Francisco intersection and bumped into an empty Zoox robotaxi. The scooter rider got some small injuries and fell down near the car. Then, the car started to move a tiny bit and stopped, but it didn't hit the person again.
Because of that, Zoox actually stopped driving on roads for a bit to really look into things. They said this new software update is supposed to fix a problem with how their self-driving cars handle pedestrians, especially when the cars are stopped or moving super slowly, or just about to start moving again. Apparently, in some kinda rare situations, the car might start moving without still knowing a person is right there. Wild, right?
Zoox stopped all their driverless car stuff after that incident, then they did the software update and did a bunch of testing, like in simulations. They said they started driving again just last week. Oh, and all these cars are owned by the company, you can't buy one yet.
They've been testing these self-driving cars on regular roads since 2023 in places like California and Nevada. Last year, they started testing in Florida and Texas too. Now, their test cars are driving around the Bay Area, including San Francisco, plus Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Seattle, Austin, and Miami. It's a lot of places!
Just earlier this month, Zoox actually did another software recall for those same 270 driverless cars. That was after an empty robotaxi was in a crash with a regular car in Las Vegas back on April 8th. And back in April, the government closed a look into 258 Zoox vehicles about a braking issue because the company recalled them to update their software. Seems like they're keeping busy with these updates!
