Featured in this episode of Tech News of the Week
Autonomous vehicle transport company Cruise had their permits suspended by the California DMV after investigations of several incidents involving the robotaxis managed by Cruise turned up some concerning evidence. One such incident involved a hit and run of a pedestrian in San Francisco.
The actual hit and run vehicle was a human-piloted Nissan Sentra that struck a pedestrian at night while she was crossing the street. The struck woman was propelled into the path of the Cruise vehicle, which attempted to perform an emergency braking maneuver, but still ended up striking the pedestrian.
Detecting a collision, instead of stopping and waiting for further instruction, the Cruise AV chose to pull over to the side of the road, dragging the injured woman another 20 feet in the process. Cruise chose to omit that part of the incident to investigators, and only produced the video from the car up to the point where it stopped on the initial collision. It was only later that investigators discovered the woman had been dragged and Cruise was forced to cough up the additional footage.
In the wake of the incident and ensuing permit suspension, Cruise has paused service in all cities and the CEO of Cruise, Kyle Vogt, has resigned. Cruise is owned by GM, and they are rumoured to be taking a more active role in Cruise’s management going forward, installing two GM executives to run things. Yeah, probably a good idea.
Even better idea? Stop pushing robotaxis that endanger everyone.