Zoox Updates Software After Crash: What You Need to Know
So, hey, did you hear about what's going on with Amazon's self-driving car company, Zoox? They just put out another software update for their cars. This is, like, the second one they've done recently.
Apparently, this new update is all about making sure the cars are better at seeing people walking nearby. And it also helps stop the cars from moving if someone is super close. This happened after this little crash in San Francisco a bit ago.
Zoox told the folks at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is, like, the government car safety people, that this recall is for about 270 cars that have their self-driving software on them. So yeah, quite a few cars.
What happened back on May 8th was, someone on an electric scooter was making a turn slowly at an intersection in San Francisco. They bumped into an empty Zoox robotaxi. The person on the scooter got a little bit hurt and fell down right next to the car. Then, the car started to move a tiny bit and stopped, but it didn't touch the person again. Wild, right?
Because of that, Zoox actually stopped driving their cars on the road for a bit to check things out. They said this new software fix is supposed to deal with this specific thing where a self-driving car is stopped, or moving really slow, or about to start moving, and there's a person nearby. They said that in some rare cases, the car might just start moving again and not realize the person is still there. That sounds a bit sketchy, tbh.
Zoox stopped all their cars that didn't have a driver after that incident. Then they put in this new software and did a bunch of testing and simulations. They started driving their cars again last week. Oh, also, all these cars are owned by the company. You can't buy them yet, so don't go looking to get one for yourself anytime soon.
Zoox has been testing these self-driving cars on normal roads since 2023 in California and Nevada. Last year, they even started testing them in Florida and Texas. Right now, their test cars are driving around the Bay Area, including San Francisco, plus Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Seattle, Austin, and Miami. They are kinda everywhere, huh?
You know, just a few weeks ago, Zoox had another software recall for those 270 driverless cars. That was after an empty robotaxi was in a crash with a regular car in Las Vegas back on April 8th. Also, back in April, those same government safety people closed their investigation into 258 Zoox cars about a braking problem after the company did another software update recall. So, they've had a few things going on lately. Idk man, what do you think about all this self-driving car stuff?
