NEWS
Cruise Suspends All Self-Driving Operations Across US After California Permits Revoked
Cruise
Cruise on Thursday announced it was pausing all driverless vehicle operations across the U.S., two days after California’s Department of Motor Vehicles suspended the company’s permits to operate driverless taxis in San Francisco.
The most important thing for us right now is to take steps to rebuild public trust, the General Motors-owned startup posted on X, formerly Twitter.
In that spirit, we have decided to proactively pause driverless operations across all of our fleets while we take time to examine our processes, systems, and tools and reflect on how we can better operate in a way that will earn public trust, Cruise said.
The California DMV suspended Cruise’s autonomous vehicle deployment and driverless testing permits after a string of safety complaints and pedestrian injuries prompted the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to open an investigation.
The DMV cited four regulations that had apparently been violated, including that the manufacturers vehicles are not safe for the publics operation.
Two of the stated reasons involve omissions and misrepresentations from the company.
The manufacturer has misrepresented any information related to safety of the autonomous technology of its vehicles, according to one violation, and according to another, an act or omission of the manufacturer or one of its agents, employees, contractors, or designees which the department finds makes the conduct of autonomous vehicle testing on public roads by the manufacturer an unreasonable risk to the public.
That omission appears to be related to an Oct. 2 crash in which a human driver struck a pedestrian, throwing them into the path of a Cruise autonomous vehicle. The Cruise vehicle was unable to stop in time, and ran over the pedestrian. It initially stopped, then drove again, dragging the pedestrian under the car.
Cruise said it submitted a full video of the incident to state officials, but the DMV said it did not learn of the additional movement that dragged the pedestrian until another government agency shared the complete video with them.
According to Cruise, the human driver that initiated the hit-and-run is still at large. The company said it provided details of the human driver’s Nissan Sentra to police.
Cruise still retains its permit for testing with a safety driver, and said Thursday that supervised autonomous operations will continue.
In addition to San Francisco, Cruise was operating driverless taxis in Houston and Austin in Texas, and in Phoenix, Ariz.
Also on Thursday, Uber announced it was launching driverless Waymo rides in Phoenix. Uber said that passengers in the Phoenix metro area who request an UberX, Uber Green, Uber Comfort, or Uber Comfort Electric may be matched with a Waymo vehicle, for a fully autonomous ride, with no human driver behind the wheel.
Waymo’s operating territory also expanded to include Sky Harbor International Airports 24th St and 44th St SkyTrain locations.
TMX contributed to this article.
