Following a pedestrian incident in San Francisco last month, General Motors’ autonomous vehicle business, Cruise, has issued a recall affecting 950 of its robotaxis.
Prior to that, on October 2, a pedestrian was struck by a human driver in a separate vehicle, which caused the pedestrian to be pushed into the path of the Cruise robotaxi. As a result, the business had already suspended all of its autonomous operations.
The crash on October 2 set off a government investigation. Additionally, California regulators revoked Cruise’s company’s permission to operate autonomous vehicles in the state unless a human safety driver was present as a result of the crash and Cruise’s disclosures surrounding it. Alphabet, the parent company of Google, owns rival Waymo, which is still operating autonomous vehicles both inside and outside of California.
In their submission to the federal vehicle safety agency, Cruise stated that under certain conditions, “when a pullover is not the desired post-collision response, the Cruise AV may be caused by the Collision Detection Subsystem to attempt to pull over out of traffic after a collision occurs.” This problem can arise following an impact with a pedestrian who was walking at a low level across the AV’s route.
Source (CNBC)
