A cruise vehicle collided with a bus in San Francisco. The robot taxi was to blame for the rear-end collision. Cruise is now recalling 300 vehicles.
The crash happened on March 23 and is due to a software bug. The movement of the articulated bus was mispredicted, as reported by Reuters.
A Cruise autonomous vehicle was involved in an accident with a city bus, resulting in a near-immediate software update and recall by the autonomous vehicle software developer. Although the collision caused no injuries, a Cruise vehicle sustained minor damage in the rare but significant incident for an autonomous vehicle.
Cruise wants to thoroughly analyze the accident and explains that the incident should never have happened. The startup working for GM had put together a team within the company to investigate the incident. The bus involved acted as expected. The problem was how the autonomous vehicle reacted to it.
The cruise mobile braked in response to the exiting bus, but too late. It hit the bus at 10 km/h. The cause of the collision was the interpretation of the movement of the articulated bus. According to Cruise, the incorrect prediction of the bus’s position was due to the front part of the bus being out of sight.
In response, Cruise worked on a software update that helped recognize articulated buses. Within two days of the accident, the update was validated and pushed out to the Cruise fleet. Now, Cruise has submitted its voluntary recall to ensure that the updated software replaces the previous version of its software.
So far, there have only been a few accidents involving autonomous vehicles to blame. In most accidents, humans hit the robotic vehicles. Therefore, this incident is of particular importance and reveals that cruise vehicles are not ready yet. warnings already existed, as well unexpected incidents.