Federal regulators say the software in the recalled vehicles may have “incorrectly predicted” the path of oncoming vehicles, and Cruise Corp. says it has now determined that the unusual situation will not recur after the update.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has stepped up its scrutiny of advanced driver assistance systems and self-driving vehicle systems in recent months. Last year, the agency directed all automakers and technology companies to promptly report accidents involving self-driving vehicles.

The NHTSA said on Thursday that Cruise’s recall request “to address a safety flaw in its self-driving system software” is required by law.

NHTSA also added that it “expects all manufacturers, including those developing self-driving systems, to continually ensure that they meet the requirement to initiate recalls for any safety issues that pose an unreasonable risk to safety.

NHTSA said the recalled Cruise software could “in some cases cause (the self-driving system) to incorrectly predict the path of another vehicle when making an unprotected left turn, or to under-react to sudden path changes by road users.

Cruise disclosed on Thursday that it temporarily banned its vehicles from making unprotected left turns and reduced the areas in which its vehicles could operate following the June 3 crash in San Francisco. Following a July 6 software update, Cruise said it has gradually reintroduced unprotected left turns, which are intersections without a dedicated left-turn arrow light.

In a statement Thursday, Cruise stressed that all vehicles received the software update and that the recall “will not affect or change our current highway operations. The company added, “Cruise’s self-driving cars are now even better equipped to prevent this particular incident.”

NHTSA said, “Inappropriate self-driving system reactions increase the risk of collisions.” The agency said last month that it launched a special investigation into the accident involving the Cruise self-driving car.

Cruise said that in rare cases, the software caused the autonomous vehicle to brake hard while executing an unprotected left turn that the software believed was necessary to avoid a serious front-end collision. The company said the self-driving vehicle “had to decide between two different risk scenarios and chose the one that had the least likelihood of a serious collision before the oncoming vehicle suddenly changed direction.

Cruise also noted that the police report found that the party most at fault in the June crash was another vehicle that was traveling 40 miles per hour in a 25-mile zone.

In March, startup technology company Ponywise also agreed to recall some versions of its self-driving system software that had been used in three cars following the October crash in California.

GM has lost nearly $5 billion since 2018 trying to build a self-driving cab business in San Francisco. The company also disclosed in July that it lost $500 million in the second quarter after Cruise began charging for rides in a limited area of San Francisco.

GM and Cruise disclosed in February that they had submitted applications to the NHTSA to deploy self-driving vehicles on the road without steering wheels, mirrors, turn signals and windshield wipers. Last month, NHTSA said it would extend the public comment period on the request.

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Cruise’s report to the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) shows that the occupants of both vehicles suffered injuries, Todd Brugger, Cruise’s vice president of global marketing, wrote in the report that police and emergency medical services treated the occupants and “reported that the occupants of both vehicles were slight injuries.”

Cruise, which had received an investment from General Motors, said its self-driving vehicle stopped in its lane before completing a left turn and was stationary when it was hit.

The company provided further statements in its filing regarding the interpretation of the location and behavior of the Toyota Prius, which was driven by a human driver, stating that the Prius was speeding and that it was continuing straight ahead in the right-turn lane.

But those details could not be independently verified. A spokeswoman for the San Francisco Police Department could not locate an incident report related to Wednesday’s crash and said it’s possible no report was generated about the crash.

On Wednesday, a Cruise spokeswoman declined to say why the car stopped before completing the turn.

Although Cruise’s vehicle may have been stationary at the time of the accident, Carnegie Mellon University professor and autonomous vehicle safety expert Phil Koopman said investigators still need more information to assess the behavior of the human driver and the self-driving software in the collision.

Many people are upset and sometimes cursing at drivers who cut in front of them and then pull off the road,” he said. There are a lot of unknowns in this accident. For example, we don’t know if the Prius driver intended to turn right, but then swerved to try to avoid a collision with a stationary vehicle.”

Cruise said in its mandatory report that the crash occurred while the vehicle was in “driverless mode. A company spokesperson declined to provide more specific information, such as whether one or more occupants of the self-driving car were or were not crew members or employees.

Although the accident occurred more than a month ago, details surrounding it did not emerge until this week.

The accident occurred just one day after the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) allowed Cruise to open its paid self-driving taxi service to the public without a human safety driver present under certain conditions, the first such permit issued in the state.

CPUC Chair Alice Reynolds said in a written statement at the time, “This is an exciting milestone for the self-driving car program.”

The paid service had not yet begun to be available to the public at the time of the June 3 crash, but Cruise had been offering free rides to select customers in the months prior.

A spokeswoman for the California DMV, which oversees the state’s self-driving car program, said officials from the agency have spoken with Cruise executives since the accident. The CPUC did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

As Koopman noted, the crash raises questions about the interplay between humans and self-driving software and how they communicate their respective intentions to each other. In addition, Cruise declined to say whether its vehicles were equipped with side airbags or side air curtains and, if so, whether they deployed successfully in the crash. In the crash, the Prius struck the rear passenger side of the self-driving vehicle.

In addition to the June 3 crash, the company’s self-driving cars have previously been involved in a series of accidents in San Francisco.

On June 28, multiple Cruise self-driving cars gathered at a city intersection, blocking traffic for several hours. The incident was not resolved until a human driver removed the vehicles. At the time, a company spokesman blamed the blockage on a “technical issue,” but he didn’t elaborate on what kind of technical issue.

In April, one of the company’s self-driving cars blocked the path of a San Francisco Fire Department truck heading to a fire, an incident that city officials later told the CPUC slowed down the fire’s processing and led to injuries. Also in April, a San Francisco police officer stopped a Cruise car for driving at night without its headlights on and the vehicle in question for running a light.

Koopman said these incidents in general show that self-driving technology still has a lot of problems to solve. Everything about autonomous driving is very concerning,” he said. In this case in particular, a brief reading of the accident report reveals a number of very troubling things. The blame should be on Cruise and they need to prove that their vehicles are still capable of operating safely.”

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