What happened

The recall was triggered by an internal investigation that began on August 26, 2025, when a Zoox robotaxi made an excessively wide right turn, partially entered an opposing lane, and came to a temporary halt in front of oncoming vehicles. While no collisions or injuries occurred, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reported that the behaviour significantly increased the risk of a crash.

Between August and December 2025, Zoox identified 63 separate instances where its vehicles unnecessarily crossed lane boundaries in San Francisco and Las Vegas. In several cases, the vehicles didn't just drift; they stopped entirely in the path of opposing traffic, creating a hazardous obstruction for human drivers and disrupting traffic.

Why it happened

Zoox attributed the dangerous manoeuvers to a combination of software logic bugs and perception errors in its Automated Driving System, including mislabeling stationary, double-parked vehicles as "lane boundaries," causing the robotaxi to path-find into the opposing lane to "avoid" them.

In addition, last-second routing changes near complex intersections caused the system to execute poorly planned turns.

Ironically, the vehicles had been programmed with an "abundance of caution" to avoid blocking cross-traffic; however, these manoeuvers were executed so poorly that they nudged the cars over the yellow center lines.

The incident highlights accountability limitations in the AV industry. While Zoox was proactive in its reporting, the fault lived within proprietary black-box algorithms that had been certified for public road use only months earlier. 

The reliance on Over-the-Air (OTA) updates allows companies to keep vehicles on the road while "fixing" safety-critical defects, potentially exposing the public to experimental code during the validation period.