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Unions Pressing U.S. Regulators To Investigate Waymo And Zoox After Cruise Incidents

As GM Authority has been closely following, General Motors’ self-driving subsidiary Cruise has been through a rough patch as of late, including an NHSTA investigation, California DMV suspension, and pause of its entire robotaxi operation across the United States. In light of this, more than 20 unions have urged U.S. automotive safety regulators to initiate an industry-wide probe into driverless vehicle companies, including Waymo and Zoox.

According to a report from Reuters, the unions cite the aforementioned NHTSA investigation and California DMV suspension as the reason that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and NHTSA Acting Administer Ann Carlson need to begin a probe into the industry. To this end, the unions sent a letter directly to Buttigieg and Carlson.

It’s worth noting the Waymo and Zoox are owned by Alphabet (Google) and Amazon, respectively.

Photo of Waymo van.

The letter claimed that driverless vehicles “are unsafe and untenable in their current form. This industry is in dire need of federal regulation and leadership to restore a modicum of safety and establish a realistic path for these vehicles to operate without threatening other road users. NHTSA must initiate an industry-wide investigation to determine the true extent of the safety failures behind the scenes.”

The letter continued to state that workers are facing safety issues from robotaxi units, and that it’s time for the NHSTA to “step up its regulatory authority to ensure these vehicles are being operated responsibly and with the serious oversight they require.”

Photo of Cruise AV unit.

As a reminder, these developments all stem from a recent incident where a Cruise AV unit unintentionally dragged a pedestrian underneath itself after the pedestrian had been struck by a human-driven vehicle. As one may imagine, this created quite the uproar, which lead to the previously mentioned NHTSA investigation and California DMV suspension.

In an attempt to address the issue, Cruise recently released a safety recall with updated directions on how the robotaxis are to handle these types of unpredictable circumstances.

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As a typical Florida Man, Trey is a certified GM nutjob who's obsessed with anything and everything Corvette-related.

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Comments

  1. All AV’s should be required to report any incident in full detail starting at 10 minutes before the incident until 10 minutes after to all agencies AND the public. I and anyone else should have been able to view the entire cruise pedestrian dragging incident in full detail within an hour after it happened. If we require police body cam footage to be released, why isn’t this? Everything you read even with the clamped down information available to the public screams this is not ready. I get it, these companies have invested billions and are chomping at the bit to get a return, but wouldn’t it be nice if our legislators were more interested in the public then the big donors? Come on governors, throw us sheeple a bone.

    Reply
  2. Self driving cars are far safer than humans overall, especially in the well mapped, slower speed city environment.

    How bout head mounted cameras for all Taxi and Uber drivers. If they ever look away from the road for more than a second or two while moving they are banned from driving ever again. If implemented we would very quickly have zero taxi and Uber drivers left. Humans are still better than self driving cars in reacting to unusual situations. But even the best human drivers look away and lose concentration far too often to possibly be as safe as self driving cars which are paying attention 100% of the time.

    Reply
  3. Unions trying to hold back the future again. Something they have done throughout history.

    Reply
    1. A freedom robbing “future” nobody wants

      Reply

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