NHTSA opened a safety investigation into nearly 600 Cruise autonomous vehicles after reports of risky behavior around pedestrians, including an incident where a driverless Cruise car came to a stop on top of a severely injured woman who had been struck by another vehicle.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a safety-defect probe into nearly 600 driverless cars operated by Cruise, GM's autonomous vehicle unit, after reports that the vehicles might not be exercising appropriate caution around pedestrians in crosswalks and roadways. NHTSA is investigating four incidents, including two that resulted in injuries. The most serious incident occurred in San Francisco where a woman was struck by a hit-and-run driver and then launched into the path of a driverless Cruise vehicle operating in autonomous mode with no passengers. The Cruise car came to a stop on top of the pedestrian, requiring rescue crews to lift the vehicle off the woman before she could be transported to the hospital with severe injuries. NHTSA is also investigating other reports of Cruise vehicles encroaching on pedestrians in crosswalks and roadways, which could increase collision risk. This represents the second NHTSA defects investigation of Cruise vehicles in less than a year, following a December 2022 probe into about 240 Cruise vehicles for hard braking and stalling issues that involved three crashes and two injuries. Cruise operates in San Francisco, Phoenix, and Austin, providing about 10,000 trips per week as of July, using GM Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicles equipped with autonomous technology.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
AI systems that fail to perform reliably or effectively under varying conditions, exposing them to errors and failures that can have significant consequences, especially in critical applications or areas that require moral reasoning.
AI system
Due to a decision or action made by an AI system
Unintentional
Due to an unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed