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Cruise has agreed to pay a $500,000 settlement for providing a false record of a crash involving a pedestrian, with “the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation.”
In October 2023, a human-driven car struck a San Francisco pedestrian and sent her body into the path of a Cruise autonomous vehicle. The robotaxi firm reported the incident to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). However, the court found Cruise failed to report that its vehicle did not detect that the victim was underneath it and attempted to pull over to the side of the road, dragging the victim over 20 feet.
Though Cruise did eventually submit video evidence of the crash, which showed the woman being dragged, it did not update the accident report or the disclosure in a report that was submitted 10 days after the crash.
Cruise will now need to cooperate with government investigations, implement a Safety Compliance Program, and provide annual reports to the US Attorney’s Office.
“Companies with self-driving cars that seek to share our roads and crosswalks must be fully truthful in their reports to their regulators,” says Martha Boersch, who leads the criminal division for the US Attorney’s Office in San Francisco.
California’s DMV suspended Cruise’s permit to test self-driving cars following the incident, after which Cruise temporarily halted its robotaxi operations. Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt stepped down and Cruise's parent firm General Motors cut the company’s workforce by 24%.
Several months later, Cruise self-driving cars returned to the streets, but only in Phoenix with a safety driver behind the wheel.
The company reported $3.48 billion in operating losses last year.