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Cruise will quickly be deploying fewer autonomous autos in San Francisco whereas investigators are wanting into “current regarding incidents” involving its fleet. In keeping with The New York Instances and TechCrunch, the California Division of Motor Automobiles requested the corporate to chop its fleet in half after an incident whereby one in every of Cruise’s robotaxis collided with a hearth truck at an intersection. The hearth truck had its sirens and crimson lights on and was responding to an emergency on the time, whereas the robotaxi has passengers onboard who sustained non-life-threatening accidents. In one other, maybe much less controversial, incident just a few days earlier than that, a Cruise automobile acquired caught in moist concrete.
The DMV mentioned in a press release that its main focus is “the secure operation of autonomous autos and security of the general public who share the highway with these autos.” It additionally added that it “reserves the precise, following investigation of the info, to droop or revoke testing and/or deployment permits” if it determines that an organization’s autos is a menace to public security. The company has requested Cruise to restrict its driverless autos in operation to 50 throughout daytime and 150 at night time, at the very least till the investigation is finished.
In an evidence concerning the collision posted on the corporate’s web site, Cruise’s Normal Supervisor for San Francisco, Greg Dietrerich, mentioned the robotaxi recognized the emergency automobile as quickly because it got here into view. It was additionally in a position to distinguish the hearth truck’s sirens “as quickly because it was distinguishable from the background noise.” Nonetheless, it wasn’t potential to see autos coming from across the nook “till they’re bodily very near the intersection” the place the incident occurred. Additional, the autonomous automobile had bother predicting the hearth truck’s path, as a result of it moved into the “oncoming lane of visitors” to bypass a crimson gentle. Dietrerich mentioned Cruise’s AV recognized the chance of a collision and hit the brake to scale back its pace, but it surely wasn’t in a position to keep away from the crash utterly because of these situations.
The DMV’s request comes just some days after the California Public Utilities Fee (CPUC) voted in favor of permitting each Cruise and Waymo to cost fares for absolutely driverless rides any time of the day in San Francisco. Earlier than that, Cruise may solely provide fared rides with no security driver onboard in restricted areas of town between 10PM and 6AM. The one commissioner who voted in opposition to the businesses’ paid experience growth argued that the CPUC did not have sufficient data to precisely consider the affect of autonomous autos on first responders.
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