Zoox issued a software recall after one of its robotaxis had trouble navigating a smoke-filled emergency fire scene in June.

The Amazon-owned company said Friday that it shipped a software update that should fix the problem in its fleet of 105 vehicles. No one was aboard the vehicle during the June incident, and Zoox told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that it is not aware of any injuries associated with the problem.

The NHTSA report does not indicate where the June incident took place. Zoox did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Zoox’s recall comes just a week after NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison sent a letter to self-driving car companies warning them to stop interfering with first responders.

“Let me be clear: the inability to detect and respond appropriately to such situations represents functional insufficiency,” he wrote. “Emergency scenes are not rare or extreme ‘edge cases.’ As such, NHTSA today calls for action for AV developers and operators to immediately focus their resources on addressing this issue.”

TechCrunch previously reported on how Waymo has had repeated run-ins with first responders as it expands into new cities. The company had at least six incidents in March of this year in which first responders had to physically move robotaxis from an emergency scene.

NHTSA said in its report describing the recall that on June 20, a Zoox robotaxi “encountered heavy smoke that obscured an active emergency fire scene that was not cordoned off with cones.” Zoox’s vehicle “braked hard as it attempted to drive away before coming to a stop.” A Zoox teleoperator was able to back the vehicle away from the scene, allowing first responders to set up traffic cones.

Zoox told NHTSA it conducted an investigation to determine the root cause and identify similar incidents. The company said that “this is the only event of this type that Zoox has experienced” and that through late June and early July it had multiple conversations with the safety regulator about the “severity, frequency and root causes.” Zoox decided to issue the recall on July 7, a day before Morrison’s letter.

This is not Zoox’s first recall. The company voluntarily removed the software from its vehicles in March 2025 to resolve a harsh braking issue that NHTSA had been investigating since 2024. It issued two more recalls in May 2025 after a collision with a passenger car and an incident in which a Zoox vehicle was struck by an electric scooter driver.

Zoox has been steadily expanding its trials to new cities and is offering free rides in Las Vegas and San Francisco, ahead of a planned commercial launch. That launch depends on NHTSA granting the company an exemption from certain federal motor vehicle safety standards, because Zoox robotaxis don’t have a steering wheel or pedals. NHTSA also recently proposed eliminating the brake pedal requirement for vehicles built to be fully autonomous.