California suspended Cruise’s permits to operate self-driving cars on the state’s public roads, effective immediately, the state’s department of motor vehicles said in a statement on Tuesday. The agency said Cruise’s vehicles pose a danger to the public and that the company had misrepresented key facts when dealing with safety regulators.
“When there is an unreasonable risk to public safety, the DMV can immediately suspend or revoke permits,” the regulator said. Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors, can still operate its vehicles with safety drivers, per the DMV’s statement. Google’s Waymo, Cruise’s main rival, maintains its permit to test its autonomous vehicles sans drivers on the streets of San Francisco.
Cruise tweeted in response: “We learned today at 10:30 am PT of the California DMV’s suspension of our driverless permits. As a result, we will be pausing operations of our driverless AVs in San Francisco.”
The statement goes into detail about a recent incident in which a pedestrian was hit by a car with a human driver at a stoplight and flung into the path of a Cruise self-driving car, which then ran her over and stopped on top of her. The pedestrian survived the incident.
“In the incident being reviewed by the DMV, a human hit and run driver tragically struck and propelled the pedestrian into the path of the AV,” Cruise’s statement reads. “The AV braked aggressively before impact and because it detected a collision, it attempted to pull over to avoid further safety issues. When the AV tried to pull over, it continued before coming to a final stop, pulling the pedestrian forward.”
Cruise first obtained a permit to offer paid robotaxi rides in the city in June 2022. In August of this year, the California Public Utilities Commission approved the expansion of paid robotaxi rides. Videos of snafus caused by the driverless cars immediately began appearing on social media. In September, San Francisco officials said a Cruise robotaxi blocked an ambulance and “delayed patient care”, after which a person died at a hospital. Cruise denied it was at fault.
Just last week, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into Cruise over safety concerns. Cruise has begun testing its autonomous vehicles in Nashville, Tennessee; Miami, Florida; and other cities across the US, but San Francisco remains its biggest market.
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The same month, the DMV said it was investigating “concerning incidents” involving autonomous vehicles operated by Cruise in San Francisco and asked the company to take half its robotaxis off the roads. The company agreed, but the move has not appeased regulators. In August, a Cruise robotaxi was involved in a crash with an emergency vehicle in San Francisco.
