Zoox, an Amazon-owned self-driving vehicle company, issued its second voluntary software recall in a month following the collision between one of the Robotaxis and the E-Scooter Rider in San Francisco on May 8th.
The latest incident included an empty Zoox vehicle that operated at slow speeds. The company says he was hit by an e-scooter after applying the brakes to surrender at the intersection.
Just a few weeks ago, the company recalled about 270 vehicles after Las Vegas crashed between passenger cars that raised concerns about the ability of self-driving software to predict movements of Zoox Robotaxi and other road users.
That issue still appears to be a concern.
“The Zoox vehicle was stopped at the time of contact,” read the company’s statement regarding the May 8 crash. “The e-scooter player fell to the ground just next to the vehicle. After completing the turn, the Robotaxi began to move and stop, but did not make any further contact with the E-Scooterist.”
According to Zoox, e-Scooterist has declined to offer medical treatment for minor injuries.
Zoox has already issued software updates to share relevant information and videos with regulators and “prevent vehicle movement further if vulnerable road users are likely to be near the vehicle.”
Robotakshi that continue to move after a collision can risk injuring other road users involved in the collision. See what happened to Cruise, Zoox’s former competitor. The GM backed company dragged the pedestrian 20 feet while attempting to pull over the pullover after one of the Robotaxis hit a pedestrian that was thrown into the road by a human-driven vehicle.
TechCrunch reached out to find out if this was Zoox’s top concern when it issued a software recall, or if there were other factors like unexpected hard brakes.
In March, Zoox recalled 258 vehicles due to issues with autonomous driving systems that could cause unexpected hard braking, following two reports of incidents in which a motorcyclist collided with the back of a Zoox test vehicle.
Zoox didn’t make it to TechCrunch so we checked out the latest software recall details. This includes the number of vehicles affected and how this update differs from an update issued a few weeks ago.
TechCrunch has contacted the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for further details about the recall.
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