Cruise Admits to Falsifying Report Over 2023 Crash
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Troubled autonomous vehicle maker Cruise has admitted to a federal charge and agreed to pay a $500,000 fine in connection with a crash last year involving one of its vehicles that left a person badly injured.
The company will admit to filing a false report with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration with the intent to impede the investigation into the incident.
“Companies with self-driving cars that seek to share our roads and crosswalks must be fully truthful in their reports to their regulators,” said Martha Boersch, chief of the U.S. Attorney’s Office San Francisco criminal division.
“Cruise will comply with the requirements set forth in the agreement, as we continue to move forward under new leadership and with a firm commitment to transparency with our regulators,” said Craig Glidden, Cruise’s president and chief administrative officer, in a statement.
Cruise co-founder and CEO Kyle Vogt resigned after the crash and the company’s subsequent suspension of the company’s operations in San Francisco.
In September, NHTSA fined the company $1.5 million for not fully reporting the incident.
The California Public Utilities Commission had recently given the company permission to operate its autonomous cars with paid riders last year when one of its vehicles dragged a woman 20 feet after striking her and pinning her underneath the car.
The car failed to detect the person underneath it and pulled to the side of the road with her still trapped.
The company had its permit revoked by the state and temporarily ceased all operations after the incident.
Cruise filed a report with NHTSA describing the accident but failed to reference the secondary movement and dragging, prosecutors said in a statement.
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“The criminal investigation and prosecution against Cruise is being resolved with a deferred prosecution agreement in which Cruise admits and accepts responsibility for the charge” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
The CPUC later reached a settlement with the company over allegations it covered up the incident, fining Cruise $112,500.
The company commissioned an outside review of the incident and says it has implemented those recommendations.
Cruise resumed vehicle testing in Arizona earlier this year with safety drivers at the wheel and announced it will begin testing its cars in Mountain View and Sunnyvale with manual drivers.
