Cruise Control: GM Recalls 950 Autonomous Vehicles After Pedestrian Accident

General Motors’ self-driving unit, Cruise, has announced the recall of 950 autonomous vehicles in the United States after one of its robotaxis was involved in a crash. It is expected that additional recalls will be issued in the future.

The cars are being recalled because the collision detection subsystem of the Cruise Automated Driving Systems (ADS) software may react incorrectly after a crash, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said Wednesday.

Last month, a pedestrian in San Francisco was hit and run into an adjacent lane and hit a second time by a Cruise robot taxi that failed to stop in time and then pulled the pedestrian over.

The recall is for conditions where the collision detection subsystem can cause the Cruise AV to try to veer away from traffic instead of staying put “when the sweater is not the desired post-collision response,” Cruise said.

Cruise said last month it would stop operating nationwide after California regulators suspended the robot taxi driver’s license, saying the self-driving vehicles were a danger to the public. The company announced on Monday that it plans to temporarily suspend production of the fully autonomous Cruise Origin.

Cruise said it noted that “a similar crash with a risk of serious injury could have happened every 10 to 100 million driving miles on average before the software update,” but said it is constantly working to improve.

“As our software improves, it is likely that we will issue more recalls to inform both NHTSA and the public of updates to improve the safety of our fleet,” Cruise said.

Cruise is facing two federal investigations into the safety of its cars, including two incidents in which the robot cars did not appear to yield to pedestrians in a crosswalk.

Cruise – which has operations in Phoenix, Arizona; Houston, Austin and Dallas in Texas; and Miami, Florida — are competing with Alphabet’s Waymo unit and others to bring robot cars to market.

Cruise is looking for a chief security officer and has hired law firm Quinn Emanuel to conduct an outside evaluation.

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