Amazon’s Zoox Robotaxis Recalled For Crossing Into Oncoming Traffic

Here’s a fun way to ruin your confidence in the future: earlier this year, AAA found that only 13% of people trust self-driving cars. That’s not “low,” that’s “basically nobody.” If you were part of the other 87%, congrats - you’re about to feel extremely validated.

Amazon-owned Zoox has just recalled 332 of its robotaxis after discovering that they sometimes cross the yellow center line and roll straight into oncoming traffic. Just… sometimes. And occasionally they’ll even stop there, as if blocking traffic head-on is a totally reasonable decision.

To be clear, no actual crashes have occurred. Thanks God. The regulators, however, were not completely unimpressed. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says that in these incidents, the cars drifted across lane lines near intersections with no apparent justification. In a few cases, they stopped right in front of approaching traffic, which is the kind of thing that makes humans yell stuff you can’t print.

Zoox first noticed something was off back on August 26. One of their robotaxis made a wide right turn, crossed into the oncoming lane, and then paused there like it needed a timeout. That one awkward moment kicked off a bigger investigation, and yeah - it wasn’t a one-time thing.

Once they started digging, Zoox found 62 incidents between late August and early December where their vehicles crossed lane markings for no good reason. Engineers were already working on it and pushed out a software update in early November that helped with some situations. But clearly, the cars still had a few bad instincts baked in.

They returned, tweaked it more, and issued another release earlier this month. Zoox has not shared many of the technical aspects, but they have confirmed that the vehicles were confused by things like double-parked cars, unpredictable detours, and clumsy maneuvers to not block intersections. In short, the robot was being smart, and traffic immediately smacked it down.

As of December 19, every Zoox vehicle running on public roads has the new software. The company says that they should take care of it, but they’re also keeping a close eye on how things behave in the real world. 

And look, we get it. Autonomous driving is hard. Traffic is messy, people are unpredictable, and real streets don’t behave like clean test simulations. Still, when a robot car starts drifting into oncoming traffic, it’s easy to see why people don’t trust it.

Maybe self-driving cars really are the future. Maybe they’ll eventually be safer than humans. But right now? We’re okay holding onto the steering wheel a little longer. At least when we mess up, we don’t blame a software update.