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The
NHTSA said on Thursday it was closing the evaluation, started in
December 2022, after a review of Cruise's recall and data
analysis, which showed a decrease in hard braking incidents
following software updates.
The robotaxi unit earlier this month filed a recall affecting
all its vehicles equipped with automated driving systems in the
United States.
The NHTSA said the Office of Defects Investigation has
determined that Cruise vehicles were involved in 10 crashes and
four of them resulted in injury of vulnerable road users, after
analyzing hard braking data from 7,632 incidents commanded by
Cruise's automated driving system.
Cruise still faces investigations by the U.S. Justice Department
and the Securities and Exchange Commission following an accident
last October in which one of its robotaxis struck a pedestrian
and dragged her 20 feet (six meters).
The firm along with other self-driving vehicle technology
companies such as Alphabet's Waymo and Amazon's Zoox have come
under heavy regulatory scrutiny due to safety concerns after
multiple crashes involving their vehicles.
Cruise, which resumed U.S. operations in April with a small
fleet of human-driven vehicles in Phoenix, Arizona, said it has
updated the software in all supervised test fleet vehicles.
However, in response to the October accident and subsequent
investigations, Cruise's CEO resigned last year and General
Motors subsequently announced plans to scale back spending on
the self-driving unit.
The California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates
robotaxi operations in the state, has imposed the maximum
penalty of $112,500 on Cruise for its failure to promptly
provide complete information to the commission about the October
crash.
(Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Eileen
Soreng, Anil D'Silva and Shinjini Ganguli)
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