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Based on police reports and initial video footage from Cruise, the woman was first struck by a hit-and-run human driver whose vehicle threw her into the path of the driverless car. Problems at Cruise could slow the deployment of fully autonomous vehicles that carry passengers without human drivers on board. It also could bring stronger federal regulation of the vehicles, which are carrying passengers in more cities nationwide. Precautions like reduced daytime operations will only lower the chance that a Cruise AV will have a dangerous encounter with a child, not eliminate that possibility. “The reason you remove safety drivers is for publicity and optics and investor confidence,” he told The Intercept.
Cruise Self-Driving Cars Struggled to Recognize Children - The Intercept
Cruise Self-Driving Cars Struggled to Recognize Children.
Posted: Mon, 06 Nov 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Technology
More worrisome to me was that on one of my trips — to a Warriors game at the Chase Center arena — at a busy intersection, a Waymo in front of us wouldn't respond to a traffic cop trying to wave it through a red light. Then another Waymo pulled up beside it and also didn't respond to the cop. So now three Waymos were sitting there, blocking traffic and waiting for the light. The traffic cop stopped trying to move us and just held his hands over his head in disgust. "Another excellent @Cruise ride. From a hotel to a grocery store and back to the hotel - fully autonomously. If you think the future is not here yet, you’re just yet to try it. Long autonomy. P.S. Tweeting this from an AV."
Rider Reviews
"We're on a trajectory that most businesses dream of, which is exponential growth," Vogt said during a July call with investors. He boasted about the size of Cruise's driverless car fleet, adding that "you will see several times this scale within the next six months." GM recently paused production of the Origin, a fully autonomous van designed for Cruise to carry multiple passengers. The company is expected to resume production at a Detroit-area factory once Cruise resumes autonomous ride-hailing. The Cruise Origin, a self-driving vehicle with no steering wheel or pedals, is displayed at Honda’s booth during the press day of the Japan Mobility Show in Tokyo on Oct. 25, 2023. For the moment, there's still a driver at the wheel, but San Francisco-based Cruise has begun testing its self-driving vehicles in Atlanta.
Driver in fatal Texas crash was using Ford’s auto driving system, officials say
Even before the October incident, tension over self-driving cars was simmering in San Francisco. In a statement on Wednesday, the GM unit said that it did the recall even though it determined that a similar crash with a risk of serious injury could happen again every 10m to 100m miles without the update. Instead of seeing public accidents and internal concerns as yellow flags, Cruise sped ahead with its business plan. Before its permitting crisis in California, the company was, according to Bloomberg, exploring expansion to 11 new cities. "The vast majority of the 807 automation-related crashes have involved Teslas, the data shows," the Post reported. "Tesla—which has experimented more aggressively with automation than other automakers have—also is linked to almost all of the deaths."
And the company had started testing in several more cities across the country, including Dallas, Miami, Nashville and Charlotte. The DMV and others have accused Cruise of not initially sharing all video footage of the accident, but the robotaxi operator pushed back – saying it disclosed the full video to state and federal officials. In particular, the materials say, Cruise worried its vehicles might drive too fast at crosswalks or near a child who could move abruptly into the street. The materials also say Cruise lacks data around kid-centric scenarios, like children suddenly separating from their accompanying adult, falling down, riding bicycles, or wearing costumes.
Building the Most Advanced AV
In 2017, Cruise was conducting testing on public roads with Cruise AVs in San Francisco, Scottsdale, Arizona, and the metropolitan Detroit area. Cruise was the fifth company to receive a driverless permit from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles, the others being Waymo, Nuro, Zoox, and AutoX. Currently, 60 companies have an active permit to test autonomous vehicles with a safety driver in California. The comments come a day after Reuters reported Cruise and rival Waymo have applied for permits needed to eventually start charging for rides and delivery using autonomous vehicles in San Francisco. Neither company revealed when they intend to launch services, according to the report.
A pedestrian incident and an alleged cover-up
Kyle Vogt — co-founder, president, chief executive officer, and chief technology officer of Cruise — holds an articulating radar as he speaks during a reveal event in San Francisco on Jan. 21, 2020. Cruise is a relatively recent upstart in the effort to build a self-driving vehicle sector. By Andrew J. Hawkins, transportation editor with 10+ years of experience who covers EVs, public transportation, and aviation. When asked a hypothetical question about public operations beginning within the next two to three years, Ammann said that "sounds reasonable to me."
The Future of Road Safety?
At government hearings, the agencies testified that the driverless cars were a nuisance. They tallied nearly 75 incidents where self-driving cars got in the way of rescue operations, including driving through yellow emergency tape, blocking firehouse driveways, running over fire hoses and refusing to move for first responders. Cruise has known its cars couldn’t detect holes, including large construction pits with workers inside, for well over a year, according to the safety materials reviewed by The Intercept. Internal Cruise assessments claim this flaw constituted a major risk to the company’s operations.
The time frame given for the vehicle is the most detailed yet and also hints at when the commercial operation of Cruise's current autonomous vehicle test fleet is expected to start. During the crash, the driver of the Prius, who was outside his vehicle, also was struck and thrown into the southbound lanes, the release said. The NTSB can only make recommendations, but NHTSA has the authority to take action, including seeking recalls for safety issues. Or maybe it's simply for people who would rather not interact with another human when they're in a taxi.
The company recalled and grounded all of its cars nationwide – nearly 1,000 vehicles. It initiated a third-party safety review of its robotaxis and hired an outside law firm to examine its response to the pedestrian incident. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also opened an investigation into Cruise.
In its response to The Intercept’s request for comment, Cruise went on to concede that, this past summer during simulation testing, it discovered that its vehicles sometimes temporarily lost track of children on the side of the road. The statement said the problem was fixed and only encountered during testing, not on public streets, but Cruise did not say how long the issue lasted. Cruise did not specify what changes it had implemented to mitigate the risks. California has ordered the company Cruise to immediately stop operations of its driverless cars in the state. The Department of Motor Vehicles said on Tuesday that it was issuing the indefinite suspension because of safety issues with the vehicles. While the department of motor vehicles did not elaborate on specific reasons for its suspension of Cruise’s license, the agency accused Cruise of misrepresenting safety information about the autonomous technology in its vehicles.
The driver of a Ford electric SUV involved in a February fatal crash in Texas was using the company’s partially automated driving system before the wreck, federal investigators said on Thursday. Meanwhile, Cruise is starting up again, but this time with humans in the driver's seat. Elon Musk has promised to unveil his robotaxi this summer, and while your doubt about anything Musk says is well warranted, you never know.
"These Cruise vehicles are dangerous on our streets. When they see tragedy or see danger or there's an obstacle in their way, all they know how to do is freeze." The era of commercial autonomous robotaxi service is here — Cruise officially became the first company to offer fared rides to the general public in a major city as of late Wednesday. The milestone comes after Cruise received official approval from the California Public Utilities Commission in early June to operate driverless in a commercial capacity. Cruise was expected to launch a ride-hailing service for the public in San Francisco in 2019. It has been operating an employee ride-hailing service with a current fleet of autonomous vehicles in San Francisco for several years.
The materials note results from simulated tests in which a Cruise vehicle is in the vicinity of a small child. “Based on the simulation results, we can’t rule out that a fully autonomous vehicle might have struck the child,” reads one assessment. In another test drive, a Cruise vehicle successfully detected a toddler-sized dummy but still struck it with its side mirror at 28 miles per hour.
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