Implicated in several accidents, the autonomous vehicle company Cruise announced that it would temporarily interrupt its operations, a few days after the decision by Californian authorities to suspend its permit to operate its cars without drivers.
“The most important thing for us right now is to take steps to restore public trust. Part of that means taking a hard look at ourselves and how we work at Cruise, even if that means doing uncomfortable or difficult things.”declared the subsidiary of the American giant General Motors (GM) Thursday evening on the platform X (ex-Twitter).
“We have decided to proactively suspend driverless operations across all of our fleets while we take the time to review our processes, systems and tools, and consider how we can better operate so that we ensure public confidence”Cruise added.
“Unreasonable risk to public safety”
The California Motor Vehicle Agency (DMV) notified Cruise on Tuesday that it was suspending its permits for autonomous vehicle deployment and driverless testing, ” with immediate effect “. The DMV then mentioned in a press release a “unreasonable risk to public safety”without giving a deadline for the duration of this suspension.
“The DMV has provided Cruise with the necessary steps to request reinstatement of its suspended licenses, which the DMV will not approve until the company has completed the required requirements to the satisfaction of the department”the authority explained.
According to its website, Cruise offered rides in autonomous vehicles in several urban centers: San Francisco, California, Houston, Austin (Texas) and Phoenix (Arizona). Earlier this month, in San Francisco, a self-driving Cruise car ran over a pedestrian who had just been hit by another vehicle with a driver. The victim was hospitalized in critical condition.
Packed with cameras and lidars (detection lasers), autonomous electric taxis from Waymo (Google) and Cruise have invested in San Francisco since last year, sparking intense debates on the progress they bring and the risks that they present.
In August, the California Transportation Agency granted permission for the two companies to expand their paid services in the city. But soon after, highway authorities asked Cruise to reduce its fleet in San Francisco by half (50 cars active during the day and 150 at night) while they investigated two collisions, including one with a fire truck.
Cruise’s decision to suspend its driverless operations is unrelated “no new incidents on the road and supervised operations will continue”specifies Cruise in his message on X.