Amazon's self-driving robotaxi unit Zoox is being investigated by the U.S. government's highway safety agency after two of its vehicles braked suddenly and were rear-ended by motorcyclists.

Amazon’s self-driving robotaxi unit is being investigated by the U.S. government’s highway safety agency after two of its vehicles braked suddenly and were rear-ended by motorcyclists.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in documents posted on its website Monday it will evaluate the automated driving system developed by Zoox.

Both crashes happened during daytime hours, and the motorcyclists suffered minor injuries. In both cases, the agency confirmed that the Amazon vehicles were operating in autonomous mode leading up to the crashes.

  • Veraxus@lemmy.world
    13·
    6 months ago

    Braking suddenly like every other car on the road when something unexpected happens ahead… or did they do it while changing lanes or something?

    I generally want to empathize with motorcyclists, but if all it did was stop…

    • Hawke@lemmy.world
      12·
      6 months ago

      I think the distinction is what a human sees as “something unexpected happened” vs something that the bot sees… is the bot seeing something that isn’t there, or is the human missing something that the bot noticed?

      Or did they both notice something and the bot handled it in an unexpected way?

      Number one rule of safe driving is to be predictable…

      • Veraxus@lemmy.world
        6·
        6 months ago

        I agree. There’s not a lot of information in that article… but as a motorcyclist myself, you don’t trust anyone on the road. In fact, it’s safer to assume that every car wants to kill you. And these robots-taxi things apparently only go 35mph to boot.

      • jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de
        71·
        6 months ago

        Rule number 2 of safe driving is assuming the driver in front of you might have to break without warning.

    • SomeoneSomewhere@lemmy.nz
      4·
      6 months ago

      While braking suddenly is something that can happen on the roads, it’s still a potentially dangerous maneuver. It’s often better than the alternative (crashing into something/someone), but there’s still risk involved.

      If these vehicles are doing panic stops frequently and unnecessarily, that’s a major problem. It’s a common type of insurance fraud, for starters.

      I wouldn’t be surprised to find that the computer has a faster initial braking response whereas it takes time for peoples’ feet to fully depress the brake pedal. A shorter time from the brake lights coming on to the brakes being at full service pressure.