GM autonomous vehicle and robotaxi subsidiary Cruise has suspended driverless operations of its Cruise AV vehicles across its entire fleet.
The Cruise AVs will continue to run and carry fares to destinations within the cities where they operate, but will have a human safety driver on board for now, Bloomberg reports.
The trigger for the overall halt of driverless operations was a decision by the state of California to suspend the license of Cruise to operate autonomous vehicles within its borders. The DMV yanked the company’s permission to operate AVs over a recent incident.
During the accident, one of the modified Chevy Bolt EVs ran over a pedestrian who had been struck and thrown by another vehicle, then dragged the pedestrian about 20 feet at a speed of 7 mph before stopping. Officials say this may have worsened the pedestrian’s injuries.
The NHTSA opened a pedestrian safety investigation into Cruise following the incident. The agency has investigated the GM subsidiary before after numerous complaints about autonomous vehicles blocking roads, braking excessively, and interfering with emergency vehicles such as fire trucks and police cars.
Cruise voluntarily halted all driverless robotaxi operations, though it noted in a post on X (previously Twitter) that “supervised AV operations will continue.” During the recent Q3 earnings conference call, GM CEO Mary Barra remarked that “we know from the data that Cruise AVs are involved in far fewer collisions than human drivers.”
Barra also said the autonomous technology itself “is safer than a human driver and is constantly improving and getting better.” After suspending its driverless operations, Cruise said in another X post “our teams are currently doing an analysis to identify potential enhancements to the AV’s response to this kind of extremely rare event.”
The autonomous vehicle company also declared “the most important thing for us right now is to take steps to rebuild public trust” and pointed out that it “stayed in close contact with regulators to answer questions and assisted the police with identifying the vehicle of the hit and run driver.”
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Comments
ZeRo CRasHeS, ZEro EmIssIOns, ZerO FAtaLItIeS.
This statement is so asinine:
“We know from the data that Cruise AVs are involved in far fewer collisions than human drivers.”
Barring the AV’s continually colliding with themselves, it’s impossible for the statement to not be true. 500 AV’s on the road. 1 billion human drivers on the road. An AV collides with a human driver, the collision count is a draw. As soon as 1 single human collides with a non-AV vehicle, the AV’s magically win the fewer collisions contest.
So curious, has the actual video of the cruise car dragging the pedestrian been released, or have they managed to bury it with an NDA? I watched the news last night and they danced all around the issue. Claimed the suspension was traffic jams in Austin. (I’m in TX). Reality was the gruesome pedestrian incident. Why they did not mention is a mystery. It is sort of like how tesla has managed to escape news coverage of their crashes. They bury them. From the chopping people in half incidents to the guy who smashed into the Y on elevated roadway. These stories just disappear. Almost like the media is paid off not to report them.
Stop wasting money on these menaces. They are not needed.
Between these things and EV’s Mary has wasted billions!
Mary might be headed for the exit sooner than later.