California Regulatory Body Investigates Accidents Involving GM’s Cruise Robotaxis

The California Department of Transportation announced on Friday that it is looking into “recent troubling incidents” involving autonomous vehicles operated by Cruise, a General Motors business, in San Francisco. The agency also ordered Cruise to remove half of its robotaxi fleet from the road.

The latest incident involving self-driving cars featured a Cruise robotaxi colliding with an emergency vehicle in San Francisco late on Thursday. The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) issued a statement in response.

The regulator added that until the inquiry is finished and Cruise takes steps to increase road safety, it has requested Cruise to immediately cut its active fleet of vehicles by 50%. It said that Cruise had consented to a 50% cut.

After 10 p.m. on Thursday, Cruise reported that one of its vehicles “entered the intersection on a green light and was impacted by an emergency vehicle that seemed to be en route to an emergency scene” (0500 GMT Friday).

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Robotaxi Incident Prompts Safety Review in San Francisco

The San Francisco Police Department stated in a statement to Reuters that the first investigation reveals the incident happened when a fire engine was working in an emergency with its forward-facing red lights and siren activated.

The only person riding in the autonomous vehicle (AV), according to the police, was taken to a nearby hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Despite heavy opposition from locals and city agencies, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) last week decided to allow robotaxis from Cruise and Alphabet’s Waymo to operate throughout San Francisco at all hours of the day and charge riders for rides.

Within San Francisco, the two have been conducting robotaxi testing that are time and location-constrained.

The ambitions of Cruise and Waymo to charge for robotaxi trips in the city at all hours were halted earlier this week after papers were submitted to the CPUC by the San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu. In a public meeting held prior to the CPUC’s vote, locals and other municipal officials made remarks that Chiu’s arguments echo.

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Source: Yahoo! Finance