Pomerantz Law Firm has announced that it is investigating claims on behalf of investors of General Motors over concerns that GM and certain company officers and/or directors have “engaged in securities fraud or other unlawful business practices” related to a recent incident involving Cruise, GM’s majority-owned autonomous vehicle technology division.
The incident in question occurred on October 2nd, 2023 around 9:30 p.m. local time in San Francisco, and involved a Cruise-modified Chevy Bolt EV that was outfitted for autonomous vehicle testing. GM suspended its driverless vehicle operations following the incident.
According to a statement from Cruise, a human-driven vehicle struck a pedestrian while traveling in the lane adjacent to the Cruise AV. The impact “launched the pedestrian directly in front of the AV.” The Cruise AV was not carrying passengers at the time of the incident.
Cruise states that the AV “braked aggressively,” while the human driver in the adjacent vehicle fled the scene. Reports indicate that the Bolt EV dragged the pedestrian roughly 20 feet at 7 mph before coming to a stop. The San Francisco Fire Department was reportedly forced to use the Jaws of Life to lift the Cruise AV off the injured pedestrian, who was then transported to a local hospital with serious injuries.
Cruise said it was working with police to identify the driver of the human-driven vehicle, and shared a video of the crash with reporters. Cruise said that it would not release the video publicly as doing so would compromise the ongoing police investigation.
On October 24th, 2023, the California Department of Motor Vehicles announced the immediate suspension of Cruise’s driverless vehicle testing permit. Cruise later voluntarily halted all driverless robotaxi operations, noting on social media that “supervised AV operations” would continue with a human supervisor onboard. During the recent Q3 earnings conference call, General Motors CEO Mary Barra remarked that “Cruise AVs are involved in far fewer collisions than human drivers” based on the data collected thus far.
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