GM’s Cruise Recalls 300 AVs After Crash With City Bus

GM’s autonomous vehicle technology division, Cruise, has issued a recall for 300 fully autonomous Cruise AVs after one of the vehicles collided with a city bus in San Francisco.

Per a new safety recall report, the incident occurred on March 23^rd, 2023, and involved an articulated San Francisco Municipal Transit Authority bus. The report states that the Cruise AV incorrectly predicted the movement of the articulated bus as it approached, failing to slow down in time and resulting in a rear end collision.

The safety recall report, issued April 3^rd, 2023, involves 300 individual Cruise AVs, all of which will receive updated automated driving systems software. The report states that while the Cruise AV initially perceived both the front and rear sections of the articulated bus, the bus then maneuvered in such a way that the rear section of the vehicle obstructed the front section, thus causing the Cruise AV to inaccurately gauge the movement of the vehicle, leading to the collision. The report also states that no other collisions have occurred as a result of this issue.

As GM Authority covered late last month, the incident was captured by pedestrians and published to social media. Social media posts show the cruise EV with a damaged front facia, obviously the result of rear ending the articulated bus. Cruise states that there were no passengers in the AV when the collision took place, and that there were no injuries that resulted from the collision.

Cruz recently boasted covering 1,000,000 driverless miles without any major incidents. However, this is not the first time that a Cruise AV has made headlines for a malfunction or collision. There have been multiple reports in the past of Cruise AVs stopping in the middle of the road or an intersection for unknown reasons, resulting in blocked traffic, including blocked emergency vehicles. Then in June of last year, passengers were traveling in a Cruise AV when a Toyota Prius collided with the right rear of the autonomous vehicle in an intersection, resulting in one of the Cruise AV passengers going to the hospital for nine life-threatening injuries.

The NHTSA opened a safety probe into the Cruise AVs late last year, although no major injuries or fatalities ever been reported thus far. Cruz is now seeking to expand its services to other cities in the U.S.

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