Zoox Software Update After San Francisco Incident
So, Amazon's self-driving car company, Zoox, just put out another software fix. This is the second one, you know, to help their cars see people walking nearby better and stop them from moving when someone's too close. This all happened after a little bump-up in San Francisco earlier this month.
They said Thursday this fix is for 270 cars that have their self-driving software. Zoox told the folks at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, all about it in a report that day.
What happened on May 8th was someone on an electric scooter was turning slowly at an intersection in San Francisco and bumped into a Zoox robotaxi that didn't have anyone in it. The scooter rider got some small scrapes and fell near the car. Then, the car started to move a tiny bit before stopping, but it didn't hit the rider again. After that, Zoox stopped their cars from driving on the road for a bit to check things out.
Zoox mentioned the new software update will help with something that can happen with people walking and their self-driving cars when they're stopped, moving super slow, or getting ready to go. They said that sometimes, in really specific situations, the Zoox car might start moving again without still noticing the person nearby. Zoox stopped all their driverless cars after that incident. Then they put in the new software, did some fake tests, and real tests. They said they started driving again last week.
All these cars belong to the company, by the way. You can't buy them yet. Zoox has been trying out their self-driving cars on regular roads since 2023 in places like California and Nevada. Last year, they even started testing in Florida and Texas. Now, their test cars are driving around the Bay Area, including San Francisco, plus Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Seattle, Austin, and Miami.
Just earlier this month, Zoox actually called back 270 driverless cars because an empty robotaxi got into a crash with a regular car in Las Vegas back on April 8th. And in April, NHTSA finished looking into 258 Zoox cars about a braking problem after the company did a recall to update their software. It seems like they're really trying to make sure these self-driving cars are safe, even though there have been a few bumps in the road, literally!
