Amazon-owned autonomous vehicle company Zoox has like, totally issued its second voluntary software recall in a month, following a gnarly collision between one of its robotaxis and an e-scooter rider in San Francisco on May 8. The latest incident involved an unoccupied Zoox vehicle cruising at low speed, which the company says was totally struck by the e-scooter after braking to yield at an intersection.
Just a few weeks earlier, the company recalled about 270 vehicles after a wild Las Vegas crash between a Zoox robotaxi and a passenger car that totally raised some concerns over the self-driving software’s ability to predict the movement of other road users.
“The Zoox vehicle was stopped at the time of contact,” the company’s statement on the May 8 crash reads. “The e-scooterist fell to the ground directly next to the vehicle. The robotaxi then began to move and stopped after completing the turn, but did not make further contact with the e-scooterist.”
The e-scooterist declined an offer of medical attention for minor injuries, according to Zoox.
Zoox was like, “We shared all the relevant deets and video with regulators, and we’ve already issued a software update to improve perception tracking and further prevent vehicle movement when a vulnerable road user may be very near the vehicle.”
A robotaxi that continues to move after a collision could totally risk harming other road users that were involved in the crash. Just look at what happened to Cruise, Zoox’s old competitor. The GM-backed company saw its biz crumble after one of its robotaxis struck a pedestrian that was flung into its path by a human-driven vehicle, and then dragged that pedestrian some 20 feet while trying to make a pullover maneuver.
TechCrunch has reached out to learn if this was a top-of-mind concern for Zoox when it issued its software recall, or whether there were other factors at play, like unexpected hard braking.
In March, Zoox recalled 258 vehicles due to issues with its autonomous driving system that could cause unexpected hard braking, following two reports of incidents in which motorcyclists collided into the back of Zoox test vehicles.
Zoox didn’t respond in time to TechCrunch to confirm more deets about its latest software recall, including how many vehicles were affected, and how this update is different from the update issued several weeks ago.
TechCrunch has reached out to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for more info on the recall.
Rebecca Bellan, who’s a senior reporter at TechCrunch and covers Tesla and Elon Musk’s broader empire, autonomy, AI, electrification, gig work platforms, Big Tech regulatory scrutiny, and more, invested in Ethereum. She’s one of the co-hosts of the Equity podcast and writes the TechCrunch Daily morning newsletter.
Before that, she covered social media for Forbes.com, and her work has appeared in Bloomberg CityLab, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, Mother Jones, i-D (Vice) and more.
Rebecca is like, a total rockstar in the tech journalism world, so she’s probably got some rad insights into this whole Zoox situation.
