By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Amazon.com’s self-driving unit Zoox issued a second software update to improve how its vehicles track nearby pedestrians and prevent movement when someone is close, following a crash in San Francisco earlier this month, the company said Thursday.
The recall covers 270 vehicles equipped with its self-driving software, Zoox said in a report with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Thursday.
On May 8, a person on an electric scooter was turning at low speed at a San Francisco intersection and struck an unoccupied Zoox robotaxi, the company said.
The rider sustained minor injuries and fell next to the vehicle, which then began to move and then stopped without making further contact, the company said. The incident prompted Zoox to temporarily suspend on-road operations to conduct a review.
Zoox said the software update will address an issue involving pedestrians and its self-driving vehicles that are stopped or moving very slowly or about to resume travel. Under certain rare scenarios, the Zoox vehicle may resume travel without continuing to detect the presence of the nearby person, the company said.
Zoox paused all driverless vehicle operations after the incident and then implemented a software update and conducted simulation and testing, it said, adding it resumed operations last week.
All of the vehicles are owned by the company and are not yet available for sale to the general public.
Zoox has been testing self-driving vehicles on public roads since 2023 in California and Nevada and last year expanded testing to Florida and Texas. The test fleet now operates in the Bay Area, including San Francisco, as well as Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Seattle, Austin, and Miami.
Earlier this month, Zoox issued a software recall for 270 driverless vehicles after an unoccupied robotaxi was involved in an April 8 crash with a passenger car in Las Vegas.
In April, NHTSA closed a probe into 258 Zoox vehicles over a braking issue after the company issued a recall to update its software.
(Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington and Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar and Aurora Ellis)
