Cruise LLC, a self-driving car subsidiary of General Motors Co., today announced it’s recalling 950 of its driverless vehicles more than a month after one of its robotaxis ran over a pedestrian.

On Oct. 2, a pedestrian in San Francisco was first hit by a car driven by a human driver, and the impact threw her into the path of one of Cruise’s robotaxis. The taxi subsequently pulled over to the side of the road, dragging the woman about 20 feet.

Cruise later paused its driverless operations after investigations led to the California Department of Motor Vehicles and California’s Public Utilities Commission taking away the necessary permits Cruise needs to operate autonomous cars on public roads in San Francisco. The DMV stated the cars were “not safe for the public’s operation.” Soon after, Cruise stopped operations of its autonomous vehicles in Austin, Houston, and Phoenix.

It turned out that the accident was the result of Cruise vehicles’ automated driving system software, mainly the “Collision Detection Subsystem.”  The company explained that this system “may cause the Cruise AV to attempt to pull over out of traffic instead of remaining stationary when a pullover is not the desired post-collision response.”

Cruise said in a blog post that after working with the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration, or NHTSA, it decided to recall the entire fleet. The company said it has already developed a software update that remedies the problem, which will first be deployed to its supervised cars.

“Although we determined that a similar collision with a risk of serious injury could have recurred every 10 million to 100 million miles of driving on average prior to the software update, we strive to continually improve and to make these events even rarer,” said Cruise. “As our software improves, it is likely we will file additional recalls to inform both NHTSA and the public of updates to enhance safety across our fleet.”

Now, in what seems to be crisis mode at Cruise, reports state that there will soon be layoffs at the company. It’s not certain how many people will go, but as Chief Executive Kyle Vogt seeks to ameliorate the fears of investors and get on the right side of regulators and the public, there will be some amount of disruption within the company.

Photo: Cruise