The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has revoked the robotaxi license of GM’s Cruise subsidiary. This is the temporary consequence following an accident involving personal injury.
A few weeks ago, there was an incident in which a vehicle driven by a human hit a female pedestrian who was crossing an intersection on a red light, and the pedestrian was then thrown under a Cruise driving alongside. Although the Cruise had braked immediately, the woman was pinned under the vehicle until emergency personnel arrived and were able to free her.
It now turns out that after the incident, the Cruise had attempted to take evasive action and pull to the side of the roadway to avoid blocking traffic. In doing so, the robotaxi dragged the woman trapped under the car about 20 feet, coming to rest with one wheel on the woman’s foot.
According to DMV, the videos showing the additional maneuver of swerving to the side of the roadway were first withheld from the authority. Here is the crash report filed by Cruise.
This evasive maneuver appears to have been programmed in by Cruise in response to past agency complaints because Cruise had repeatedly blocked traffic after incidents or mistakes.
The DMV statement:
During the meeting, the department was shown video footage of the accident captured by the AV’s onboard cameras. The video footage present to the department ended with the AV’s initial stop following the hard-braking maneuver. Footage of the subsequent movement of the AV to perform a pullover maneuver was not shown to the department and Cruise did not disclose that any additional movement of the vehicle had occurred after the initial stop of the vehicle. The department only learned of the AV’s subsequent movement via discussion with another government agency. The department requested Cruise provide a copy of the video with the additional footage, which was received by the department on October 13, 2023.
The DMV also outlined next steps, which include what Cruise must do to regain his license.
As a response Cruise tweeted:
Note
The accident is the fault of the human Nissan driver who originally hit the woman and then began a hit-and-run. The fact that the Cruise recognizes a person stuck under the vehicle and does not drag them along must be programmed into the system. However, to now revoke the license of the entire fleet of robotaxis because of an accident scenario that occurs quite rarely seems to be an overreaction on the part of the DMV.
The DMV needs to clarify for itself which violations or scenarios should be tested for licensing and also which should have the complete suspension of the Robotaxi license as a consequence. As robotaxi expert Brad Templeton notes, the federal agency NHTSA also tends to make recalls slowly, and in the process does not prohibit the vehicles from immediate further use.
KREATIVE INTELLIGENZ
Über ChatGPT hat man viel gelesen in der letzten Zeit: die künstliche Intelligenz, die ganze Bücher schreiben kann und der bereits jetzt unterstellt wird, Legionen von Autoren, Textern und Übersetzern arbeitslos zu machen. Und ChatGPT ist nicht allein, die KI-Familie wächst beständig. So malt DALL-E Bilder, Face Generator simuliert Gesichter und MusicLM komponiert Musik. Was erleben wir da? Das Ende der Zivilisation oder den Beginn von etwas völlig Neuem? Zukunftsforscher Dr. Mario Herger ordnet die neuesten Entwicklungen aus dem Silicon Valley ein und zeigt auf, welche teils bahnbrechenden Veränderungen unmittelbar vor der Tür stehen.
This article was also published in German.
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