Cruise gets $1.5 million penalty for keeping pedestrian crash details from safety regulator

General Motors’ self-driving subsidiary Cruise must pay a $1.5 million penalty to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, after its initial reports to the safety regulator about last year’s pedestrian crash omitted that the company’s robotaxi dragged the woman 20 feet.

The penalty is part of a consent order announced by the regulator on Monday. The order, which the company and NHTSA mutually agreed to, will also require Cruise to submit a “corrective action plan” outlining the changes it has made to better comply with the regulator.

“It is vitally important for companies developing automated driving systems to prioritize safety and transparency from the start,” NHTSA’s deputy administrator Sophie Shulman said in a statement. 

Cruise will also have to submit safety reports to the regulator every 90 days for the next two years, along with a report detailing any software updates, and another detailing how its robotaxi fleet is complying with traffic laws. NHTSA has the option to extend the length of the consent order an extra year.

Steve Kenner, Cruise’s chief safety officer, said in a statement that the consent order represents “a step forward in a new chapter” for the company, and that it represents “a firm commitment to greater transparency with our regulators.”

The consent order comes nearly one year after the infamous crash occurred in San Francisco. The pedestrian was first struck by a human-driven vehicle, and ended up in the path of the Cruise robotaxi. While the Cruise AV braked, it still struck the pedestrian, and came to a stop. But then the robotaxi moved to the side of the road and dragged the pedestrian with it.

Cruise and other AV companies are required to submit a series of reports to NHTSA any time one of their vehicles are involved in a crash. The first one Cruise submitted on the day following the crash did not include any information about the woman being dragged, according to NHTSA. The regulator said a second report that was required to be submitted within 10 days of the crash also omitted this information. It wasn’t until the third report, submitted one moth after the crash, that Cruise gave NHTSA the full picture.

By that time, Cruise had been accused by the California Department of Motor Vehicles of not sharing footage of the robotaxi dragging the pedestrian — grounds the DMV had used to suspend Cruise’s permits to operate.

NHTSA said in Monday’s consent order that Cruise “was aware of the Cruise vehicle’s post-crash behavior” at the time those first two reports were filed, but “omitted that material information from the reports.”

Over the last year Cruise has undergone a remaking, and now has new leadership, fewer employees, and is slowly getting its robotaxis back on the road for testing in a number of locations. It paid a fine to California’s Public Utilities Commission in June and, earlier this month, the company announced it is starting to bring a few AVs back to the Bay Area — though operated by humans and only in Mountain View and Sunnyvale.