Cruise will be fined $1.5 million for withholding details of a pedestrian accident from safety officials

General Motors' self-driving subsidiary Cruise must pay a $1.5 million fine to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration after initial reports to the safety agency about the pedestrian accident last year failed to mention 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, mutually agreed to by the company and NHTSA, also requires Cruise to submit a “corrective action plan” outlining changes made to better comply with the regulator's rules.

“It is critical for companies developing automated driving systems to prioritize safety and transparency from the outset,” NHTSA Acting Administrator Sophie Shulman said in a statement.

Cruise must also submit safety reports to the regulator every 90 days for the next two years, along with a report on all software updates and another report on its robotaxi fleet's compliance with traffic rules. NHTSA has the option to extend the duration of the consent order for an additional 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 a year after the infamous San Francisco crash. The pedestrian was initially hit by a human-driven vehicle and landed in the path of the Cruise robotaxis. While the Cruise AV was braking, it still hit 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 lines and other AV companies are required to submit a series of reports to NHTSA each time one of their vehicles is involved in an accident. The first statement Cruise submitted the day after the crash did not contain any information about the woman being dragged, according to NHTSA. The regulator said a second report, which had to be filed within 10 days of the crash, also omitted that information. It wasn't until the third report, filed a month after the crash, that Cruise provided the NHTSA with a complete picture.

At the time, Cruise had been accused by the California Department of Motor Vehicles of failing to share footage of the robotaxi towing the pedestrian – a reason the Department of Motor Vehicles had used to revoke Cruise's operating licenses.

NHTSA said in Monday's consent decree that at the time of filing those first two reports, Cruise “was aware of the behavior of the Cruise vehicle following the accident” but “omitted that material information from the reports.”

Over the past year, Cruise has undergone a redesign, now has new leadership, fewer employees and is slowly putting its robotaxis back on the road to test them in multiple locations. In June, the company paid a fine to the California Public Utilities Commission, and earlier this month the company announced that it was beginning to bring some AVs back to the Bay Area – albeit human-operated and only in Mountain View and Sunnyvale.