diff --git a/init/update-engine.conf b/init/update-engine.conf
index 4c05cf4..d3681db 100644
--- a/init/update-engine.conf
+++ b/init/update-engine.conf
@@ -22,7 +22,10 @@
 # also updating that reference.
 start on starting system-services
 stop on stopping system-services
-respawn
+# The default is 10 failures every 5 seconds, but even if we crash early, it is
+# hard to catch that. So here we set the crash rate as 10 failures every 20
+# seconds which will include the default and more.
+respawn limit 10 20
 
 expect fork