General Motors’ robot taxi company Cruise is laying off nearly a quarter of its workforce, or 900 workers, after the company’s fleet was grounded following an incident in which a crash victim became trapped under Cruise’s vehicle.
In early October, a driver of a regular car in San Francisco hit a pedestrian who threw himself in front of a nearby cruiser. The driverless car then attempted to veer off the road, dragging the pedestrian 20 feet and seriously injuring him.
In announcing the recall, Cruise acknowledged that in certain situations, attempting to swerve to the side of the road is “not a desirable post-crash response.” Cruise’s automated driving system inaccurately characterized the collision as a side collision and told the car to try to swerve out of traffic, pulling the person forward rather than staying still.
Cruise noted that the crash response evaluation, which took three weeks, found that “a collision with the risk of serious injury may occur with the collision detection subsystem every 10 to 100 million miles on average.”
In response to the crash, the California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended Cruise’s license to operate its vehicles in the state. The department also accused the company of withholding video of the incident that showed its vehicle dragging a pedestrian onto the curb. Cruise denied the allegation, saying he showed the agency the entire video.
Source: The Verge
