WASHINGTON — Normal Motors’ self-driving unit Cruise LLC recalled 300 robotaxis and up to date their software program after a March 23 crash with a San Francisco bus.
In a doc submitted Monday to NHTSA, Cruise mentioned the collision was attributable to “a problem associated to prediction of the distinctive actions of articulated autos,” akin to buses and tractor trailers.
Within the San Francisco incident, Cruise mentioned its robotaxi initially perceived each sections of the bus because it was pulling out of a bus cease. Because the bus proceeded ahead into the Cruise robotaxi’s lane, the rear part of the bus blocked the entrance part, and the bus started decelerating.
Cruise informed federal regulators that its car “inaccurately decided that the bus was persevering with to maneuver ahead in site visitors primarily based on the anticipated conduct of the entrance part of the bus, which was by then obstructed, and the [automated driving system] commanded the [autonomous vehicle] to start decelerating too late to keep away from a rear-end collision with the bus.”
Cruise mentioned it notified NHTSA the next day in accordance with the company’s crash-report mandate and applied the software program replace March 25.
No different collisions have occurred on account of the software program situation, in keeping with the report.
In a weblog submit Thursday, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt detailed the bus collision, stating that “it resulted in minor harm to the entrance fender of the AV and brought on no accidents.”
“Fender benders like this not often occur to our AVs, however this incident was distinctive,” he wrote. “We don’t count on our autos to run into the again of a metropolis bus beneath any circumstances, so even a single incident like this was worthy of speedy and cautious research.”