Cruise Recalls its Fleet of Self-Driving Cars

­Self-driving cars have dealt with some growing pains…to say the least. And the challenges (and bad PR) will continue after Cruise recalled its fleet of 1,194 self-driving cars to resolve a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration probe into improper braking.

Back in 2022, the NHTSA opened an investigation into incidents in which Automated Driving System (ADS) equipped vehicles operated by Cruise LLC (General Motors’ AV company) “may engage in inappropriately hard braking or become immobilized while operating in the specified Operational Design Domain.”

In three cases identified by the NHTSA, the Cruise vehicle sensed a car approaching from behind and subsequently slammed on the brakes, causing the other vehicle to strike the Cruise one.

And those incidents are a small fraction of the 7,632 hard-braking events investigated by the NHTSA, though from 2022-2024, only about 10 were the fault of Cruise.

Of course, the fact – and as Cruise told the NHTSA – that these hard-braking events were “much lower than a human driver” is almost besides the point – anything involving robots, and especially fully autonomous systems, always have and always will be held to much higher standards.

So when automakers told regulators back in 2022 of 400 crashes involving partially automated driver-assist systems, that’s frightening – even if crashes involving conventional autos in the same period totaled in the millions (with more than 42,000 deaths).   

We always have and always will expect perfection from automated systems.

Either way, Cruise’s actions have apparently sated the NHTSA, at least for now.

"In view of the recall action taken by Cruise and ODI’s analysis of the available data, including data presented by Cruise demonstrating a reduced occurrence of hard braking incidents after the software updates, ODI is closing this Preliminary Evaluation," the NHTSA wrote.