GM Authority reported in December 2022 that the NHTSA had launched a probe into General Motors’ autonomous driving subsidiary Cruise due to reports of inappropriately hard braking and immobilizations of its Cruise AV units. It now appears that the administration has closed its investigation.
Per the NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation (ODI), inappropriately hard braking and vehicle immobilizations can increase the risk of a crash. As such, the ODI collected a wealth of information from Cruise, along with five peer ADS-equipped vehicle operators. It was found that potential safety risk is heavily dependent on the context of the immobilized vehicle’s location and the detectability of said vehicle due to hazard lights automatically engaging.
Notably, none of the reported immobilization incidents reviewed resulted in a crash or injuries. However, the investigation determined that hard-braking events contributed to at least 10 crashes.
Later on, Cruise released a safety recall on August 9th, 2024 for “unexpected braking maneuvers [that] could occur if the ADS inaccurately predicts the immediate future path of the close-following actors, experiences diminished sensor precision from the close proximity of the close-following actors, or erroneously responds to a perceived risk ahead of the AV unrelated to the rear actor.” Cruise implemented a software update across all AV units to correct this error.
With all of that in mind, the NHTSA and the ODI elected to close the investigation due to Cruise’s recall action to address the risk. Interestingly, the administration noted a reduced occurrence of hard braking incidents after the software updates.
“We are committed to building trust and increasing transparency with respect to autonomous vehicle technology, and look forward to our continued work with NHTSA toward that end,” a Cruise spokesperson remarked in a prepared statement.
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