Last year, California gave autonomous vehicle companies Cruise and Waymo permission to operate driverless robotaxis on the streets of San Francisco. Almost immediately, the cars demonstrated they weren’t ready for the road.
General Motors recalled 950 of its Cruise robotaxis on Wednesday after a pedestrian was dragged under the vehicle in San Francisco last month.
Things just keep getting worse for Cruise, the troubled robotaxi company that once dreamed of being a leader in the autonomous driving industry.
GM-owned Cruise suspended its driverless taxis, the company said in a post on X, formerly called Twitter.
General Motors’ autonomous vehicle company Cruise can’t shake the safety scrutiny over its driverless robotaxis. Now the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is digging into whether or not these AVs are safe for the pedestrians being forced to live with them.
Big tech companies want to put big, driverless trucks on the road, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom is ready to help them reach that goal. Now the Democratic mainstay is taking a beating from unions who say he’s allowed unsafe 10,000+-pound vehicles onto the road without drivers.
A couple of weeks ago, as San Francisco emergency responders attempted to pull away from a scene where a man had been seriously injured, a pair of Cruise robotaxis allegedly loitered in the ambulance’s path, not understanding that they were required to get out of the way. The man died not long afterward. It didn’t…