The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has started investigating Amazon’s self-driving Zoox vehicles after the news of unexpected braking incidents came to light, causing two rear-end collisions that injured motorcyclists. The NHTSA has started an investigation of 500 Zoox cars with automated driving systems.
A representative for Zoox said that the company is at present examining the NHTSA’s request for information but did not give more details on the incidents, Reuters reported. The spokesperson has highlighted the importance of being transparent and working with the regulators, thus Zoox will stick to the cooperation with the NHTSA throughout the whole investigation process.
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In March, Zoox disclosed its enlargement of the vehicle testing in California and Nevada, which includes a wider area, higher speeds, and night driving, as a strategy to compete with Waymo robotaxis of Alphabet. Amazon bought Zoox in 2020 for USD 1.3 billion. The NHTSA reports that both collisions happened under daylight conditions and within the operational design limits of the Zoox system, and the preliminary findings show that the Zoox vehicles were using the ADS when each collision happened.
The inquiry will concentrate on the evaluation of the Zoox Automated Driving System performance, mainly the reported collisions, and the behavior concerning the vulnerable road users in crosswalks and similar rear-end collision scenarios.
NHTSA in March 2023 opened a probe into the self-certification by Zoox in 2022 of a robotaxi without traditional driving controls. The examination that is being conducted is trying to see if Zoox’s certification procedure used the internally developed tests or if it left out some standards because of the special design of the vehicle.