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Forghani said Cruise provided regulators a video of the incident and is complying with the DMV's order and "pausing operations." Those cars that have a human safety driver will be allowed to continue operating in the state. The move comes after one of Cruise's driverless cars struck a pedestrian in downtown San Francisco earlier this month. The incident involved a woman who was first hit by a human driver and then thrown onto the road in front of a Cruise vehicle. The Cruise vehicle braked but then continued to roll over the pedestrian, pulling her forward, then coming to a final stop on top of her. The news that the company will be relying less on its operations staff during its testing comes after Cruise’s safety drivers have complained about a lack of safety standards during the pandemic and subsequent wildfires. They accuse Cruise of deploying its self-driving cars during the spring lockdown in defiance of public health orders banning nonessential travel.
A new way to ride
With the wheel still there and a human behind it, Cruise would struggle to tout its technology as groundbreaking. Cruise and its competitors have worked hard to keep going despite safety concerns, public and nonpublic. Before the California Public Utilities Commission voted to allow Cruise to offer driverless rides in San Francisco, where Cruise is headquartered, the city’s public safety and traffic agencies lobbied for a slower, more cautious approach to AVs. Cruise, the self-driving car company affiliated with General Motors and Honda, is testing fully driverless cars, without a human safety driver behind the steering wheel, in San Francisco. The company is among the first to test its driverless vehicles in a dense, complex urban environment.
Driverless by design
Last year, General Motors’ Cruise self-driving car unit recalled all 950 of its cars following an accident in which one of its vehicles struck and dragged a pedestrian in San Francisco. Both Cruise and Waymo have released studies saying their vehicles are involved in fewer crashes than human drivers. One Waymo study says it has an 85% reduction in injury-causing collisions and a Cruise study says it has a 74% reduction. Cruise and Waymo also ran into problems with San Francisco's police and fire departments.
Cops Say 14-Year-Old Set Fire to Waymo Self-Driving Car in San Francisco
The company had planned to launch a commercial taxi service in 2019 but failed to do so, and it has yet to publicly commit to a new date. In both cases, the Mach Es hit vehicles stopped on freeways at night, and neither the driver nor the system were able to prevent the collisions. Ford says on its website that its driving systems do not replace human drivers, who have to be ready to take control at any time.
In Phoenix, where Waymo first launched consumer access, it has about the same number of cars but no waiting list. Sometimes it's just a sense that the tech we all depend on may be harming us in ways we don't understand and can't control. Seven days after the vote, a Cruise car collided with a fire truck, injuring a passenger. A cascade of events followed that ended with Vogt resigning and GM announcing it was pulling hundreds of millions in funding. Cruise is now facing government investigations, fines that could total millions and an uncertain future.
G.M. to Cut Spending on Cruise Self-Driving Unit - The New York Times
G.M. to Cut Spending on Cruise Self-Driving Unit.
Posted: Wed, 29 Nov 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Rider Reviews
On one of my trips, this happened on a particularly tight, winding San Francisco street. As my Waymo and I negotiated with each other, we ended up blocking multiple cars, including a minivan whose driver started honking at us in frustration. While Waymo says it drives tens of thousands of trips a week, even the most tech-savvy people I talk to have yet to ride in one.
Creating the AV Ecosystem

A police spokesperson said a person from the Hyundai was also on the roadway and was hit. Another driver who was able to avoid the CR-V told investigators that neither its tail nor hazard lights were working at the time. But unlike with other Big New Tech innovations I've seen in the past — anyone still have a 3D TV in their living room? I think the people behind the tech will figure out its possibilities, its limitations, and the places it does and doesn't make sense.
Watch: Driverless taxi torched by mob in San Francisco
The teenager was identified as the result of a search warrant recently served at his residence, and the District Attorney’s Office has now filed charges against them. The other crash involving a Mach E killed two people around 3.20am on 3 March in the northbound lanes of Interstate 95 in Philadelphia. Data from the 2022 Mustang Mach E SUV showed that Ford’s “Blue Cruise” driver-assist system was in use ahead of the 24 February crash, according to a preliminary report released by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
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Cruise, a majority-owned autonomous vehicle subsidiary of General Motors, expects production of its driverless shuttle called the Origin to begin in early 2023, CEO Dan Ammann said Thursday. Other companies have also struggled with attempts to produce self-driving or partially autonomous cars. Apple canceled its decade-long, multibillion-dollar effort to build a self-driving electric car earlier this year, following numerous setbacks in the program. The agency said it intends to issue safety recommendations to prevent similar crashes. It has said it opened the inquiry due to continued interest in advanced driver assistance systems and how vehicle operators interact with the new technology.
Cruise offers to pay $112K in fines over allegations it misled regulators about driverless car - NBC Bay Area
Cruise offers to pay $112K in fines over allegations it misled regulators about driverless car.
Posted: Wed, 07 Feb 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Cruise’s undisclosed struggles with perceiving and navigating the outside world illustrate the perils of leaning heavily on machine learning to safely transport humans. “At Cruise, you can’t have a company without AI,” the company’s artificial intelligence chief told Insider in 2021. Cruise regularly touts its AI prowess in the tech media, describing it as central to preempting road hazards. “We take a machine-learning-first approach to prediction,” a Cruise engineer wrote in 2020.
Cruise says it gave regulators the entire video immediately after the incident. But the DMV says it was only after requesting the footage that Cruise handed it over – 10 days later. After the fire truck collision, the California Department of Motor Vehicles told Cruise to reduce its fleet in half, to 150 cars, while it investigated the incident.
But the limits are part of a plan by regulators and the company to prove out the safety and efficacy of its system before deploying it in more locations at additional times. The new operating window already extends its total active time by 1.5 hours as compared to the free driverless test pilot service it was offering between June of last year and the debut of this paid service. Cruise was approved to test fully driverless cars (also called Level 4 in industry parlance) in California on October 15th. According to the DMV, Cruise can only test five driverless vehicles “on specified streets within San Francisco.” The vehicles are not allowed to exceed 30 mph, and can’t operate during heavy fog or heavy rain. Waymo's rival Cruise halted its service last fall after a slew of incidents, including a grisly one where a self-driving Cruise dragged a pedestrian who had been hit by a human-driven car.
Which is what David Margines, Waymo's director of product management, says is the service's chief appeal for customers right now. And to be honest, I'm not even sure I would always order a Waymo if I had a chance. Right now, beyond the novelty, the big upside for me is that the fleet's cars — electric Jaguars — are comfortable and clean. And that the per-trip cost is about the same as an Uber Comfort (one level up from the base Uber X fare) — but really a bit cheaper, since you're not tipping your robot driver.
So I think that one way or another, we are going to make some version of this standard for many of us in the not-far-off future. Like using it for food delivery — which is happening in Phoenix, via Uber Eats. Maybe it's for people who believe a robot is more reliable than a human driver — at least we know a Waymo won't watch TikTok while driving on the highway like a Lyft driver did when I was in their back seat a couple of years ago. By August, California had given Cruise permission to run around 300 robotaxis throughout San Francisco.
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