Amazon's autonomous vehicle startup Zoox is pulling 270 self-driving cars off the streets after a mishap in Las Vegas. According to Zoox’s report, the proactive recall follows an incident on April 8 where an unoccupied robotaxi collided with a passenger car. Zoox insists that safety is their ethos, not just a priority, hence the voluntary recall and related transparency about the event and the steps taken afterward.
In the incident involving no injuries, the autonomous vehicle made an "inaccurate prediction" when a passenger car approached it perpendicularly and stopped suddenly, per Reuters. The robotaxi, anticipating the other vehicle would keep moving, slowed and veered right; however, despite hard braking, a collision occurred. Zoox's remote operations team informed the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department immediately after the incident. It commenced an internal safety review, pausing all driverless vehicle operations.
This recall isn't the first rodeo for Zoox with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The government agency just finished investigating 258 of Zoox's vehicles over a separate braking problem that led to the rear-end collisions of motorcyclists, according to Reuters. The company had resolved this by issuing another software recall.
Moreover, NHTSA is watching Zoox for a robotaxi prototype that it self-certified back in 2022, which lacked traditional driving controls, a probe that remains open as of March 2023. The present recall addressed an issue that comes into play when Zoox vehicles, operating over 40 miles per hour, face vehicles encroaching incrementally from a perpendicular driveway. After a swift response that included a safety review and updates to software, Zoox has rolled out patches to all its vehicles to prevent future prediction errors, as stated in Zoox’s report.
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