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The company said in documents posted by US safety regulators on Wednesday that with the updated software, Cruise vehicles will remain stationary should a similar incident occur in the future. San Francisco's police and fire departments have also said the cars aren't yet ready for public roads. They've tallied more than 55 incidents where self-driving cars have gotten in the way of rescue operations. Those incidents include driving through yellow emergency tape, blocking firehouse driveways, running over fire hoses and refusing to move for first responders. The DMV originally gave Cruise a permit for 300 driverless vehicles in San Francisco, but it cut that number in half after one of its cars collided with a firetruck in August. We’re reintroducing a small fleet of manually-operated vehicles to begin mapping with trained safety drivers behind the wheel.
Building the Most Advanced AV
Cruise determined that at its current, relatively miniscule fleet size, one of its AVs would drive into an unoccupied open pit roughly once a year, and a construction pit with people inside it about every four years. Without fixes to the problems, those rates would presumably increase as more AVs were put on the streets. Last week, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into Cruise citing pedestrian safety concerns.
The Future of Road Safety?
Commercializing autonomous vehicles has been far more challenging than many predicted even a few years ago. The challenges have led to a consolidation in the autonomous vehicle sector after years of enthusiasm touting the technology as the next multitrillion-dollar market for transportation companies. "To be clear, human drivers will text, they'll be distracted. There's the saying, 'the lights are on, but nobody's home,'" Koopman says. A lot of that is the claim of driverless cars being superhuman when it comes to safety, he says. Cruise said its car "braked aggressively to minimize the impact." It provided some news outlets with video of the incident, which ended right after the driverless car hit the woman. On the night of October 2, one of Cruise's driverless cars struck a pedestrian in San Francisco leaving her critically injured and fighting for her life.
Interference with police and fire services
"Cruise is so solid even on narrow streets — the steering wheel has no jitter, totally smooth each block." "Our folks cannot be paying attention to an autonomous vehicle when we've got ladders to throw," San Francisco Fire Chief Jeanine Nicholson said in an August hearing. "When you start having passive aggressive protests like people putting orange cones on your cars, this isn't going to come out your way," says Cummings.
In August of last year, an activist group calling themselves the Safe Street Rebels began obstructing the path of robotaxis with traffic cones out of protest. Then, in September, a man was caught smashing a Cruise taxi’s windshield with a hammer for no apparent reason. Despite public angst over autonomous vehicles, California state regulators voted to allow the companies to expand their robotaxi services in August. That prompted the city of San Francisco to file motions with the state demanding a halt to the expansion. Both Cruise and Waymo say their driverless cars are safer than human drivers – they don't get drunk, text or fall asleep at the wheel. The companies say they've driven millions of driverless miles without any human fatalities and the roads are safer with their autonomous systems in charge.
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Cruise officials say their vehicles have logged more than 3 million driverless miles and completed tens of thousands of rides. Among the accomplishments have been 35,000 driverless deliveries in Phoenix, according to the company. "It's an important first step in getting to know Atlanta's roads (and) driving behaviors before we progress to driverless operations," said Anna Haase, in an email statement on Tuesday. "When there is an unreasonable risk to public safety, the DMV can immediately suspend or revoke permits," the DMV wrote in a statement. Over the next few weeks, Cruise continued to expand – launching driverless robotaxi rides in Houston. Then, in a surprise announcement at the end of October, the DMV ordered Cruise to immediately stop all operations in California.
According to internal materials reviewed by The Intercept, Cruise cars were also in danger of driving into holes in the road. The company is now operating a driverless taxi service in San Francisco, Austin and Phoenix. In a video released by the company, a Cruise employee is seen in the passenger seat while the car drives itself through the darkened streets of San Francisco. Cruise’s vehicles all have an emergency switch in the center channel near the gear shift in case something goes wrong, and they are also monitored remotely by Cruise employees. Asked whether remote operators are able to take control of the vehicle when needed, Ammann declined to answer. The company declined to comment on a time frame for a public launch, however Ammann sounded bullish on such operations beginning with the Bolt vehicles before the Origin goes into production.
But in certain circumstances such as a pedestrian positioned on the ground in the vehicle’s path, pulling over is not the desired response. NHTSA opened an investigation on 16 October into four reports that Cruise vehicles may not exercise proper caution around pedestrians. The complaints involved vehicles operating autonomously and “encroaching on pedestrians present in or entering roadways, including pedestrian crosswalks in the proximity of the intended travel path of the vehicles”, the agency said. In the crash, another vehicle with a person behind the wheel struck a pedestrian, sending the person into the path of a Cruise autonomous vehicle. But it then pulled to the right to get out of traffic, pulling the person about 20ft (six meters) forward. The pedestrian was pinned under one of the Cruise vehicle’s tires and was critically injured.
Self-Driving Cars Banned in British Columbia - The Drive
Self-Driving Cars Banned in British Columbia.
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Last October, one of GM Cruise’s self-driving robotaxis ran a woman over and dragged her. The incident subsequently led to the company temporarily shutting down its operations in the city and its CEO later resigned. Cruise will continue its work on driverless cars as a commercial product, says spokesperson Navideh Forghani. She added that the company's approach is "with safety as our north star." GM's spokesperson says it remains committed to Cruise "as they refocus on trust, accountability and transparency." Meanwhile, The Intercept reported that Cruise cars had difficulty detecting children, according to internal documents.
The Cruise system “inaccurately characterized the collision as a lateral collision and commanded the AV to attempt to pull over out of traffic, pulling the individual forward rather than remaining stationary,” the company said. The company had announced its intentions in Atlanta in an online post on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, on Monday. "Our teams are currently doing an analysis to identify potential enhancements to the AV's response to this kind of extremely rare event," said Navideh Forghani, a Cruise spokesperson.
The revocation followed a series of incidents that heightened concerns about the hazards and inconveniences caused by Cruise’s robotaxis. Cruise says in documents posted by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that it already has updated software in test vehicles that are being supervised by human safety drivers. The driverless fleet will get the new software before resuming operations, the company says. The internal materials attribute the robot cars’ inability to reliably recognize children under certain conditions to inadequate software and testing.
And The New York Times reported that remote human workers had to intervene to control Cruise's driverless vehicles every 2.5 to five miles. An activist group called Safe Street Rebel has been cataloging the incidents, which now clock in at more than 500. The group figured out that if they put orange traffic cones on the hoods of driverless cars, they would render the vehicles immobile. So, they started going out at night to "cone" as many cars as possible as a form of protest. With its parent company General Motors, which purchased Cruise in 2016 for $1.1 billion, hemorrhaging money on the venture, any setback for the company’s robo-safety regimen could threaten its business.
Cruise's current test fleet is composed of hundreds of custom Chevrolet Bolt EVs equipped with driverless technology. Ammann said that fleet, which it plans to launch operations with, will continue to expand until the Origin goes into production. The Origin is the company's first vehicle specifically designed to operate without a driver on board.
Cruise ridehail services are not available at this time, but you can join the waitlist to be one of the first. We believe driverless technology has the potential to save lives, enhance access and improve communities. Tesla recently settled a lawsuit over a 2018 crash that killed an Apple engineer. In that case, Tesla maintained that the driver had failed to stay alert and take over driving before the crash. The settlement may have provided a blueprint for others suing over Autopilot.
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