As GM Authority has been extensively following, General Motors’ autonomous driving subsidiary Cruise has been wading through the fallout of its October 2023 incident where one of its robotaxi units unintentionally trapped and dragged a pedestrian after they had been struck and thrown by a human-driven vehicle. With that in mind, it appears as though the self-driving company will pay a hefty fine for the accident.
According to a report by Reuters, Cruise has agreed to pay a $112,500 penalty for the mishandling of its response to the aforementioned October 2023 incident, the sum of a $7,500 fine for each of the 15 days during which Cruise omitted to share specific details about the incident. The company has also committed to send collision reports to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for any future incidents occurring in the state.
Of course, GM Authority reported back in December 2023 that Cruise could be fined as such. Beyond that, the autonomous driving subsidiary has tried resolving its ongoing investigations by offering $75,000 to California regulators to defer its CPUC-ordered hearing, which was later bumped up to $112,500. More specifically, the self-driving company was seeking an alternative mode of dispute resolution.
In recent Cruise-related developments, a proposed California law that would’ve allowed individual cities to regulate and potentially fine the robotaxi company was dismissed to the delight of the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association – a business group that represents autonomous driving subsidiaries like GM’s Cruise and Alphabet’s Waymo. Meanwhile, General Motors also announced that it will invest another $850 million into Cruise, which follows roughly $8 billion in total funding.
As for robotaxi operation, Cruise recently got back on the streets of Houston, Texas, as well as Phoenix, Arizona and Dallas, Texas. Moving forward, human drivers will be present during Cruise AV operation to take the wheel should the need arise, while Cruise itself has ambitious plans to expand its operations into the Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, Tempe, Mesa, Gilbert, and Chandler areas as certain safety benchmarks are reached.
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Comments
I guess we will have to hope the poor pedestrian who was drug will punish the company with a 8 figure payout. The regulators are asleep at the wheel.
This had already happened
Robotaxis are another in a long line of Silicon Valley start-ups specifically designed to remove the need for labor from the cost of doing business to maximize profits for the extremely wealthy management and shareholders while eliminating jobs for thousands of people.
It’s a deeply destructive business model that only furthers the divide between the haves and the have nots.
Are you actually being critical of a gm project? Has heck frozen over? Wow!
This fine should have had about three more zeros added to the end of it.
So what happened to the person that hit the pedestrian in the first place? Let me guess he also sued GM.
Almost $10 BILLION …. so far .