Story is also in WaPo, and the story is calling out the misinformation component of the rationale for suspension.
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Cruise
- Thread starter hooty
- Start date
“In its reasoning for suspending Cruise’s permits, the DMV cited one particularly jarring incident from earlier this month when a Cruise vehicle rolled over a pedestrian who was flung into its path by a human driver. While the Cruise initially came to a complete stop, the driverless car then attempted to pull over to the side of the road with the woman critically injured underneath.”
Now we will need cameras underneath the car
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
Yep, that seems pretty major. They completely omitted that fact to the media and apparently did the same to the DMV (they had the footage, but cut it off the part where it dragged the pedestrian). That shows they are willing to deliberately hide safety related incidents from regulators, which is a big no-no.
If you dig back to previous reports, the way they presented it to the media was the car just stopped immediately after the incident, and then it was the first responders that told them to not move the car. Now that we know that the car attempted a pull-over maneuver while dragging the pedestrian, it makes more sense why first responders had them not to move the car.
Tam
Well-Known Member
I was confused about why the car was parked far from the crosswalk/intersection. Now, it makes sense because it dragged itself there in an attempt to pull over.
It looks like Cruise is programmed to continue to travel additional distance to pull over, which makes sense in a police stop but inappropriate in an accident because the police now have to figure out if it happened at the intersection or in the middle of a block with no crosswalk.
The one time Cruise actually needed to stop and sit in the middle of the road...
voyager
Active Member
OxBrew
Active Member
They had already stopped and then started again. And hid that fact at first.
No, AVs are not evil, but extremely hard to make safe. Until there an actual problem that they can reasonably solve, we are wasting billions on them.
Even if we magically made them all perfect today, it would take 30-60 years to build enough to make a difference to anyone.
We have MAYBE 10 years to solve climate change, and we're f---ing around with irrelevant horse---- like this? We're actually doomed.
voyager
Active Member
"Elementary, dear Watson"
IMO, in order to make a car smart (drive itself), we need to reformat, "retemplate" the car.
After all, it's the car that is being displaced, yes or no disrupts traffic, bumps into other road users...
That AV developers decided to jump in bed with carmakers, proved to be erhh... suboptimal to say the least.
diplomat33
Average guy who loves autonomous vehicles
Cruise has lost their CPUC permit now too. So Cruise cannot do driverless, cannot carry passengers and cannot charge for rides anymore. So it looks like their entire robotaxi business is now officially dead in SF.
Cruise didn't seem to get the message they needed to clean up their act. At the least it's probably time for leadership change. Maybe even dump SF.
diplomat33
Average guy who loves autonomous vehicles
Worse than just not getting the message, I feel like Cruise was tone deaf and arrogant. They outright dismissed concerns and feedback. They routinely responded to incidents with statements spinning things to take the blame off of Cruise, like with the fire truck collision. And when the cars were shown to do something wrong like not yielding to pedestrians in the crosswalk, the PR was basically "our cars are fine". When public outcry increased in SF against Cruise, instead of taking the criticism to heart and making changes, they responded with a full page ad bashing human drivers.
Tam
Well-Known Member
The ad seems to work as Electrek seems to take the bait:
"Recently, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt stated that these incidents have been “sensationalized,” and frankly he’s not entirely wrong. We’ve known all along that people would be overly cautious of new technology, would accept far less dangerous driving from AVs than the run-of-the-mill (and increasing) chaos they happily accept from human drivers.
You could write volumes about the crazy things that humans have done on the road in the same time frame as Cruise has been operating in SF."
Go home, Cruise, you're drunk – but call a Waymo, 'cause you can't drive in California anymore
GM's Cruise driverless taxis have had their license to operate suspended after misrepresenting the facts of an accident to the California DMV
electrek.co
It might be true that humans are the worst drivers but the way Cruise defends itself arrogantly doesn't help.
When something goes wrong, they need to fix it and not arrogantly bash humans as an excuse.
Back to this incident, the punishment is the result of the saying: "The Cover-Up is Worse than the Crime."
diplomat33
Average guy who loves autonomous vehicles
I wonder if the CA DMV would have suspended Cruise's driverless permit if Cruise had not tried to cover it up. I would say 50/50. Certainly, if the Cruise AV had not dragged the pedestrian under the vehicle, I don't think Cruise would have lost their permit. But dragging a pedestrian under the vehicle AND covering it up, that was too much. There was no way the CA DMV could overlook that.
Personally I could have seen the DMV telling them to fix the response if the car detects an impact...if they were honest, but yeah the coverup is a no no situation all around.
With novel tech you may have instance where it does something you weren't 100% sure about, hell I've seen bugs crop up from that line of thinking nearly daily in non novel tech. I'm certain the DMV would have told them to fix it, it could have been a temp shutdown until they confirm they've fixed it as well. But now? It's a "get out of town" scenario.
I'm also curious how urgently Waymo is testing their response to impacts after this incident...
diplomat33
Average guy who loves autonomous vehicles
Absolutely. We've seen before that the CA DMV will usually be pretty lenient if the company admits their mistake and offers a clear solution to fix the problem from happening again.
I imagine Waymo has already tested their system in this scenario. Waymo would be smart to be proactive about this.
DMV letter to Cruise
www.scribd.com
California DMV - Orders of Suspension to GM-owned Cruise | PDF
California DMV issued orders of suspension for driverless testing and robotaxi deployment in the state to GM-owned Cruise, an autonomous vehicle maker.
OxBrew
Active Member
The Cruise parking lot at the end of Cesar Chavez was locked up all day today, and packed full of cars, stashed in every open space, double, triple parked.
And there's been one of those ambulance chaser attorney's cars parked outside their headquarters all week. Probably negotiating for the pedestrian? IDK, just wild speculation.
(and then my friend who works down in that area got cut off by a Waymo while on the phone with me, had to slam on the brakes to avoid getting T-boned when the light turned green and the driverless Waymo approaching from the opposite direction turned left in front of him, trying to beat him off the line).
Just a normal safe day with AVs in San Francisco.
And there's been one of those ambulance chaser attorney's cars parked outside their headquarters all week. Probably negotiating for the pedestrian? IDK, just wild speculation.
(and then my friend who works down in that area got cut off by a Waymo while on the phone with me, had to slam on the brakes to avoid getting T-boned when the light turned green and the driverless Waymo approaching from the opposite direction turned left in front of him, trying to beat him off the line).
Just a normal safe day with AVs in San Francisco.
Doggydogworld
Active Member
Each Robo replaces 5-10 consumer cars. By extension they can accelerate the transition 5-10x faster.
EVNow
Well-Known Member
The basic question I've is - and this is how I've felt about Cruise for a while - are they the typical extremely aggressive, absolutely ruthless and unethical bay area company. Think Uber, Peter Theil et al. We know what happened with Uber. An ideology that thinks all regulations are evil and a few lives lost in the service of companies is fine.
This also shows how bad of a job CPUC and other agencies have been doing.
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