Zoox Updates Software After SF Incident
So, get this, Amazon's self-driving car folks, Zoox, just pushed out another software update. It's to make sure their cars are better at spotting people walking nearby and don't start moving if someone's too close. This happened after a little bump-up in San Francisco a little while ago.
They said in a report with the highway safety people that this update covers 270 of their test cars that have the self-driving software.
What happened? Well, back onMay 8, someone on an electric scooter was turning slowly at a corner in San Francisco and hit an empty Zoox robotaxi. The person on the scooter got some minor boo-boos and fell near the car. Then, the car apparently started to move a tiny bit and then stopped without actually hitting the person who fell. After that, Zoox kinda hit pause on driving on the roads for a bit to check things out.
Zoox mentioned that this new software fix is for a thing where their self-driving cars are stopped, or moving super slow, or are just about to start going again, and there's a person nearby. They said in some rare cases, the car might start moving without still seeing the person close by. Yikes!
After the incident, Zoox stopped all their no-driver car stuff. Then they did the software upgrade and did a bunch of tests and simulations. They said they started driving again last week. All these cars belong to the company, by the way, you can't just go buy one yet.
Zoox has actually been testing their self-driving cars on public roads since 2023 in places like California and Nevada. Last year, they even started testing in Florida and Texas too. Now, their test cars are rolling around the Bay Area, including San Francisco, plus Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Seattle, Austin, and Miami.
You know, earlier this month, Zoox actually did another software recall for 270 of their driverless cars because an empty robotaxi was in a crash with another car in Las Vegas on April 8. And back in April, the highway safety folks closed a look into 258 Zoox cars about a braking thing after Zoox did a recall to update their software then too. Lots of updates happening, huh?
