By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Amazon.com’s self-driving unit Zoox agreed to recall 258 vehicles due to issues with its automated driving system that could cause unexpected hard braking, after a U.S. investigation, according to a company filing Wednesday.
The recall affects vehicles equipped with self-driving software versions released before November 5. The California-based company said it has addressed the issue by updating the software on the company-owned vehicles.
In May, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a probe into self-driving Zoox vehicles due to unexpected braking leading to two rear-end collisions that injured motorcyclists.
Zoox said in its filing with NHTSA Wednesday that there were two issues addressed by the software updates: One if a bicyclist is in or near an adjacent crosswalk and the Zoox vehicle had a newly green traffic signal, the software may have reacted overcautiously and braked unnecessarily hard.
The other is if a motorcyclist or bicyclist is rapidly approaching the rear of the vehicle, the software may have incorrectly anticipated a collision and braked unnecessarily hard.
Zoox said there have been no additional occurrences and said it was agreeing to the recall “in light of NHTSA’s position and in the interest of promoting transparency.”
Zoox has ramped up testing over the past year.
Last June, the company announced plans to begin testing its autonomous vehicles in two new cities.
Self-driving vehicle companies, including General Motors’ Cruise and Google-owned Waymo, are under heightened scrutiny following a 2023 incident where a pedestrian was seriously injured by a Cruise vehicle.
Last year, Waymo recalled more than 670 self-driving vehicles after one of its driverless vehicles struck a wooden utility pole in Phoenix, Arizona.
NHTSA in March 2023 opened a probe into the self-certification by Zoox in 2022 of a robotaxi without traditional driving controls that remans open.
(Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington and Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Tasim Zahid and Elaine Hardcastle)
