GM’s autonomous driving unit Cruise has filed a voluntary recall with federal regulators to update software in 300 robotic taxis after one struck the back of a city bus in San Francisco.
Cruise said in a report with the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration which initiated the recall because in rare circumstances the software could incorrectly predict the movement of “articulated” vehicles.
No injuries were reported in the low-speed crash on March 23, in which a Cruise robotaxi rear-ended a San Francisco Municipal Transit Authority articulated bus. Cruise’s self-driving software was unable to accurately predict the bus’s movement and it rear-ended after braking too late. Cruise said the incident caused minor damage to the AV’s front fender and caused no injuries.
“Fender dings like this rarely happen to our autonomous vehicles, but this incident was unique,” Cruise co-founder and CEO Kyle Vogt wrote in a statement. blog posted on friday. “We do not expect our vehicles to rear-end a city bus under any circumstances, so even a single incident like this was worthy of immediate and careful study.”
Vogt went on to explain how Cruise engineers responded to the accident and provided some details about their investigation. The company updated the software on March 25 and has said that the issue has been fixed.
Last September, Cruise reported a recall and software update on 80 of its robotaxis following an accident in June. The accident, which resulted in minor injuries to two passengers, received national attention because it occurred a day after Cruise received final permission from California regulators to market its driverless robotaxi service.
Cruise said in the regulatory filing that the software recall was issued due to a “rare circumstance” in which the automated driving system caused the driverless robotaxi, which did not have a human safety driver behind the wheel, to brake hard while turning left without protection.
Cruise said in an emailed statement last September that he submitted the voluntary submission in the interest of transparency for the public, adding that it pertains to an older version of the software and does not affect or change its current on-road operations.
