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Less than a day after one in every of its driverless taxis collided with a fireplace truck in a San Francisco intersection, Cruise agreed on Friday to a request from state regulators to chop in half the variety of autos it was working within the metropolis.
The setback for the driverless automobile firm got here only a week after the California Public Utilities Commission voted to permit the growth of driverless taxi providers from Cruise, which is owned by General Motors, and its rival Waymo, which is owned by the Google father or mother firm Alphabet.
On Friday, the California Department of Motor Vehicles, which regulates the protection of the driverless automobiles, requested Cruise to halve the variety of autos it was working in San Francisco. The Cruise car’s collision with a fireplace truck the day earlier than had injured a passenger within the driverless automobile. Earlier within the week, one other Cruise car obtained caught in newly poured concrete on one other metropolis road.
Drew Pusateri, a spokesman for Cruise, mentioned in an announcement on Saturday that in contrast with the accidents and fatalities on the roadway as we speak, Cruise “positively impacts overall road safety” and that it’s going to present state officers with “any data they need to reinforce the safety and efficiency of our fleet.”
The firm, which now has 400 autos working in San Francisco, can have not more than 50 driverless automobiles operating throughout the day and 150 at evening.
Last weekend, about 10 Cruise autos stopped functioning in the course of a busy road in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood, blocking visitors for quarter-hour. Mr. Pusateri mentioned in an earlier assertion that the automobiles had issue connecting to the Cruise workers who may need guided them out of the way in which due to a spike in mobile visitors attributable to a music competition within the metropolis’s Golden Gate Park about 4 miles away.
Several different Cruise autos additionally stalled in streets close to the park.
One week in the past, the C.P.U.C. allowed each corporations to cost for rides across the clock anyplace in San Francisco. The C.P.U.C. and the D.M.V. are the 2 companies governing autonomous autos in California. An organization has to acquire a allow from the D.M.V. earlier than it applies for driverless deployment permits — the sort that Cruise and Waymo obtained final week — from the utilities fee.
The motor autos authority mentioned in an announcement that it’s “investigating recent concerning incidents involving Cruise vehicles in San Francisco.” The company requested Cruise to chop the variety of autos working in San Francisco “until the investigation is complete and Cruise takes appropriate corrective actions to improve road safety.”
“The DMV reserves the right, following investigation of the facts, to suspend or revoke testing and/or deployment permits if there is determined to be an unreasonable risk to public safety,” the company mentioned in its assertion.
San Francisco officers have complained since January that autonomous autos have been interfering with emergency autos. Before this week, officers documented 55 incidents the place a driverless automobile abruptly stopped or interfered with emergency autos, together with one occasion with firefighters who have been battling a home fireplace.
On Wednesday, metropolis officers filed an injunction asking the C.P.U.C. to quickly halt the driverless taxi growth. Neither firm has detailed how they plan so as to add to their driverless taxi providers.