Autonomous driving
Cruise: Robotaxi returns to the road after an accident
A self-driving car from the US company General Motors’ robotic car company Cruise is causing dissatisfaction among pedestrians after it got stuck at an intersection and left it when it turned red. photo
© Andrej Sokolow/dpa
The Cruise company was a pioneer in robotaxi services – until the cars were taken off the road after an accident. Now Cruise is making a cautious restart.
Vehicles from the robotaxi company Cruise are returning around six months after a momentous one Accident back on the road. The subsidiary of the US car giant General Motors announced that the cars will initially only be driven by humans in order to update map data and collect fresh information about the surrounding area.
The first city is Phoenix in the state of Arizona, with others to follow. In this phase, information about traffic lights, lanes and traffic routing, for example, should be collected, explained Cruise.
As a second step, autonomous test drives with safety drivers at the wheel are planned. On this basis, a decision will then be made as to which city the vehicles will again be on the road without people behind the wheel.
The accident was initially portrayed as more harmless
Cruise was a pioneer in robotaxi services and had ambitious expansion plans – but then in early October, a Cruise driverless car dragged a woman several meters. The pedestrian had previously been hit by another car with a human behind the wheel and thrown in front of the self-driving car. According to the accident report, the robotaxi braked immediately – but the woman still fell under the vehicle.
The cruise cars are programmed so that they can automatically move to the side of the road after collisions so as not to obstruct traffic. In this case too, the software decided to do this – even though the woman was still under the car. She was dragged around six meters and the car reached a speed of a good eleven kilometers per hour, according to a report from the California traffic authority.
What was devastating for Cruise’s reputation was that these details only became known later, while the accident was presented in a more harmless manner. GM replaced the top management of the robotaxi company and all trips on public roads were stopped. Now the focus of the restart will be on safety, emphasizes Cruise. In the past few months, the vehicles have continued to travel, among other things, on a test site.