The state of California could fine GM robotaxi and autonomous vehicle subsidiary Cruise after one of its AVs dragged a pedestrian who had been struck and thrown by another vehicle.
The fines will not be for the October dragging incident itself, according to Reuters, but for allegedly failing to disclose all of the details of the incident at the time.
A Cruise telephone call to a California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) analyst “omitted that the Cruise AV had engaged in the pullover maneuver which resulted in the pedestrian being dragged an additional 20 feet at 7 mph (11.27 km per hour),” the Commission said in an order requiring representatives from the GM subsidiary to appear at a February 6th hearing.
Additionally, while the self-driving vehicle company claims it immediately provided video of the accident to the Commission, “the full video was shared only in response to a data request more than two weeks after the incident,” according to the government analyst’s statement.
Cruise has been struggling for several months with the fallout from the accident, first pausing all driverless operations, but continuing to operate its taxi fleet with a safety driver on board, then suspending operations entirely. CEO and founder Kyle Vogt resigned in late November, with co-founder and CPO Daniel Kan also resigning from his position just one day later.
Since then, GM has scaled back its subsidiary’s current and future operations considerably. The ground-up AV design originally planned as a replacement for the current driverless Chevy Bolt EV units used by the company, the Origin, will not be built in 2024. Additionally, once operations restart, they will be confined to a single city, with the specific metropolis not yet publicly revealed. The subsidiary’s budget will also be reduced, further limiting the scope of its near-future plans.
The incident and the allegedly misleading behavior by the robotaxi service are likely to lead to fines and unspecified “sanctions” against Cruise following the hearing.
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Comments
A computer cannot drive an automobile. It can pretend until something like this.
I do believe we are getting closer to fully computer driven vehicles.
Hope not, Machines won’t feel your screams.
And we’re also getting closer to a new ice age.
The whole AV thing strikes me as a massive waste of resources, human and capital.
Yes, I’m a dinosaur.
This fine should be in the hundreds of millions of dollars
Imagine if they put half this effort into figuring out how to stop Dementia/Alzheimers and thousands of families having to watch their parents waste away and lose their minds. But then again they want us sick and dying to prop up the healthcare industry.