Zoox Updates Self-Driving Software After San Francisco Crash
So, get this... Amazon's self-driving car folks, Zoox, just put out another update for their software. This is the second one, btw. It's all about making sure the cars are better at spotting people walking nearby. Like, so they don't move if someone is too close.
This whole thing happened after a little fender bender in San Francisco a bit ago. They said the recall covers about 270 cars that have their special self-driving software. It's in a report they sent to the government safety people.
Okay, so on May 8th, someone on an electric scooter was turning slowly at an intersection in San Francisco and bonked into one of those empty Zoox robotaxis. The scooter guy got a few bumps and fell next to the car. Then, the car, like, started to move a tiny bit before it stopped. It didn't hit him again though, thankfully.
After that, Zoox actually hit pause on driving their cars on the road for a bit to figure things out. They said this new software update is supposed to fix the issue with people walking near the cars, especially when the car is stopped, moving super slow, or just starting to go again. They mentioned that in some rare cases, the car might start moving without noticing someone is still really close by. Yikes, right?
Zoox stopped all their driverless car stuff after that May incident, put the new software in, and did a bunch of testing and simulations. They said they started driving again last week. And get this, all these cars are owned by the company; you can't actually buy one yet.
Zoox has been testing their robot cars on public roads since 2023 in California and Nevada. Last year, they even started testing in Florida and Texas. Right now, you can see their test cars cruising around the Bay Area, including San Francisco, plus Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Seattle, Austin, and Miami. Busy bees, huh?
Oh, and earlier this month, Zoox actually did another software recall for the same 270 cars. That was after an empty robotaxi got into a crash with another car in Las Vegas back in April. And before that, in April, the government safety people closed their investigation into 258 Zoox cars about a braking issue. That also got fixed with a software update.
