Aug 22 (Reuters) - The National Highway Traffic Safety

Administration said on Thursday it was closing its preliminary

evaluation into hard braking and immobilization in 1,194

autonomous ride-hailing vehicles operated by General Motors' ( GM )

Cruise unit.

NHTSA said it was closing the evaluation after a review of

Cruise's recall and data analysis, which showed a decrease in

hard braking incidents following software updates.

The robotaxi unit earlier this month filed a recall

affecting all its vehicles equipped with automated driving

systems in the United States.

Cruise still faces investigations by the Justice

Department and Securities and Exchange Commission following an

accident last October in which one of its robotaxis struck a

pedestrian and dragged her 20 feet (six meters).

Cruise along with other self-driving vehicle companies like

Alphabet's Waymo and Amazon's Zoox have come

under heavy regulatory scrutiny due to safety concerns after

multiple crashes involving their vehicles.

Cruise, which resumed U.S. operations in April with a

small fleet of human-driven vehicles in Phoenix, Arizona, said

it updated the software in all supervised test fleet vehicles.

(Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Eileen

Soreng and Anil D'Silva)