It's not easy to forget that a Cruise driverless taxi was involved in a brutal car accident in October last year, especially since it was the final nail in the coffin that led to its suspension in California. As it turns out, there is more to the incident than the company revealed.
Cruise Blames the Internet Connection
General Motors kept a few important details about the incident from the regulators, even the law firm it hired, Quinn Emanuel, to sort out the mess that its Cruise robotaxi made. The firm disclosed the events that actually happened, and the automaker has accepted the events.
As it turns out, the autonomous vehicle did not just pin the victim under the vehicle after it was thrown in its way by a hit-and-run caused by a human driver. The Cruise robotaxi pulled out of traffic and dragged the woman for 20 feet, as mentioned in Ars Technica.
According to the investigators, Cruise did not "verbally point out" that the taxi performed a pullover maneuver when a video of the incident from the vehicle was presented to government officials. Cruise said that it was likely due to an issue with the internet connection.
With the unstable network connection, Cruise believes that it "precluded or hampered" the regulators' ability to see the whole video. In addition to that, the Cruise executives were accused of putting much of the attention on the fact that the incident was prompted by a human driver.
The law firm stated that there were a lot of failings on Cruise's side, and that "poor leadership, mistakes in judgment, lack of coordination, an 'us versus them' mentality with regulators, and a fundamental misapprehension of Cruise's obligations of accountability and transparency."
In light of this new information, Cruise might find it more difficult to go back to being operational in its suspension. Regulators, among others, are increasingly wary of the trouble that driverless vehicles pose to people on the road.
What Cruise Initially Claimed
The part about the accident being started by a human driver is true. The woman who was pinned under the Cruise taxi was hit by a human-driven car and the driver escaped the scene. In the previous reports, it said that the taxi stopped as soon as it detected the civilian.
It viewed the person as an obstacle, which the autonomous vehicles are programmed to halt for. The problem was it stopped a little too late and ended up pinning the woman under its rear and axle tire, and the woman screamed in pain as it did.
We now know that wasn't the full story. As per Engadget, firefighters came to the scene to rescue the woman from the situation, using the jaws of life to extract her from under the autonomous vehicle.
According to Fire Captain Justin Schorr, the victim was immediately transported to the San Francisco General Hospital. It was this event that fully suspended Cruise's operations after it already cut the number of its active vehicles in half.
