Entire Cruise robotaxi fleet recalled for unexpected braking

• General Motors Co.’s autonomous driving unit Cruise has recalled all its Chevy Bolt ride-hailing vehicles running a version of its Automated Driving System software that was released prior to May 14, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
• Cruise AVs equipped with the older software may unexpectedly brake if a cyclist or vehicle approaches from the rear, increasing the chance of a collision. The recalled software was installed in all of the 1,194 vehicles in Cruise’s U.S. fleet.
• The safety of the Cruise’s autonomous vehicles has been under extra scrutiny since last year after an incident where one of its vehicles struck and seriously injured a pedestrian in San Francisco that resulted in its fleet being grounded by regulators.

Dive Insight:

The NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation opened a preliminary evaluation of the unexpected braking events and immobilizations of Cruise vehicles on Dec. 12, 2022, after it received three reports of rear-end collisions with Cruise vehicles that initiated a hard-braking maneuver. In all three cases, the vehicle was being operated autonomously in “supervised mode” with a safety driver behind the wheel monitoring the vehicle’s behavior.

Cruise completed software updates throughout 2023, as well as during the pause of its operations from Oct. 26, 2023, through May 13, 2024. The updates included improvements to the vehicle’s perception, prediction and path planning capabilities to reduce the risk of unexpected braking, according to the NHTSA.

Cruise met with NHTSA officials on Feb. 29, and again on May 9, to follow up and demonstrate to the agency the effectiveness of its updated software. The NHTSA noted that Cruise complied with all of its information requests and provided various documents and videos for the agency to review.

After the ODI’s analysis, the NHTSA still requested on July 17 that Cruise file a safety recall, which the company did on Aug. 9. Following the recall, the ODI said it was closing its investigation of the sudden braking problem, but reserves the right to take additional action if any other incidents with the Cruise AVs are reported.

For the investigation, the ODI collected information from Cruise, as well as from five peer autonomous vehicle operators, according to the recall report. This included an analysis of data from 7,632 hard-braking events that were commanded by software in the Cruise vehicles.

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