Cruise hits, runs over, and drags pedestrian, severely injuring them

Video

Tweets

The initial news stories conveyed the false Cruise narrative that the pedestrian was seriously injured by the human-driven vehicle, and then suddenly “launched” into the path of the Cruise vehicle, implying misleadingly that the Cruise vehicle was not at fault for the serious pedestrian injuries.

According to Cruise, “a human-driven vehicle struck a pedestrian while traveling in the lane immediately to the left of a Cruise AV. The initial impact was severe and launched the pedestrian directly in front of the AV.”

“The AV then braked aggressively to minimize the impact,” the company continued. “The driver of the other vehicle fled the scene, and at the request of the police the AV was kept in place.”

The Verge 10/3/23

Another key news account was by Automative News. The reporter Pete Bigelow was given the opportunity to view the video from the Cruise vehicle, something that was not provided to subsequent reporters. The key piece of information is that contrary to the Cruise narrative, the pedestrian was not mostly injured by the human-driven vehicle and then suddenly “thrown” or “hurled” in front of the Cruise robotaxi. Instead, the human-driven vehicle was at a slow enough speed that the pedestrian remained on its hood for 2-3 seconds, and then only “fell” to the ground.

While staying in the left lane, the adjacent vehicle accelerated faster than the robotaxi. As a result, it was about a car length ahead when it struck the pedestrian. The woman was stuck atop the car’s hood for about two to three seconds as the driver continued down the street.

The victim, whose name has not been released, then fell from the first car’s hood onto the road and into the path of the oncoming robotaxi. She was on the ground for little more than a second before being struck [by the Cruise].

Automotive News 10/4/23 6:32 AM

It is also key that the Cruise vehicle indeed detected that the pedestrian was on the ground in the path of the Cruise vehicle. When the Cruise vehicle decided to continue moving it should have known that the pedestrian was likely still in front or under the Cruise vehicle, and would get dragged.

Sensors aboard the vehicle detected the pedestrian before she was struck by the first car and again after she toppled in front of the Cruise vehicle, Lindow said. But she did not immediately know how the company’s self-driving system classified the pedestrian while she was stuck atop of the first car’s hood.

Automotive News 10/4/23 6:32 AM

Key news reports (also provides timeline of events):

• The Verge 10/3/23
  Cruise says a hit-and-run ‘launched’ pedestrian in front of one of its robotaxis
• Automotive News 10/4/23
  Cruise robotaxi was second vehicle to strike San Francisco pedestrian, video shows
• Forbes 10/6/23
  Cruise Robotaxi Dragged Woman 20 Feet In Recent Accheaident, Local Politician Says
• SF Standard 10/17/23
  Cruise Under Investigation by Federal Regulators Over Robotaxi Safety (around pedestrians)
• SF Standard 10/24/23
  DMV Stops San Francisco Cruise Robotaxis After Woman Got Stuck Under Driverless Car
• Vice 11/17/23
  Cruise Exec Omitted Pedestrian Dragging In Summary of Self-Driving Car Incident to California DMV, Email Shows

It is notable that many news agencies simply repeated Cruise’s version of the story, such as that Cruise “was not at fault.” Also, many agencies reported that the pedestrian was “launched”.

Tweets

That night Cruise spokesperson posted a message on Xitter, knowingly creating a false narrative. The impact of the human-driven vehicle was wrongly described as “severe” and they wrongly stated that the pedestrian was “launched” off of the vehicle when actually they fell off after remaining on the hood for 2-3 seconds. But most news agencies adopted the incorrect and misleading narrative of the Cruise spokesperson, at least until the 10/6/23 Forbes article came out.

October 24th announcement of the DMV suspension:

October 24th claim that after hitting the pedestrian that the Cruise vehicle “attempted to pull over to avoid further safety issues.” But this is very misleading because the vehicle could not and did not pull over to the side when dragging the pedestrian for 20 feet.

October 24th statement that they proactively shared information with the regulators, which was of course misleading since they did not actually share that the Cruise vehicle dragged the pedestrian for 20 feed.

October 26th announcement of suspending driverless operations everywhere:

Blog posts

Cruise posted a additional details of the incident as their 10/24/23 blog posting. But that blog post was modified on 12/1/23, after Cruise was in serious trouble for misleading the regulators, to only state “Out of respect to ongoing regulatory engagement, we have removed the Oct. 24 post.”

Fortunately the original blog posting with the details that Cruise temporarily published can be accessed via the Internet Archive.

Cruise Blog Post 10.24.23 (removed on 12/1/23)

A detailed review of the recent SF hit-and-run incident

Earlier this month, one of our AVs was involved in a horrible hit-and-run incident in which a human driver collided with a pedestrian crossing the street in San Francisco. This then launched the pedestrian directly in front of our AV. First and foremost, our thoughts are with the individual, and we are hoping for their complete recovery. We also assisted the police with identifying the vehicle of the hit and run driver.

Ultimately, safety is at the core of everything we do at Cruise — we want to drastically reduce the number of people injured and killed each year on our roadways. It’s with that mindset that we analyze incidents so we can identify opportunities to further enhance safety. 

The incident occurred on October 2, 2023 at 9:29 PM PDT in San Francisco. A Cruise AV named Panini, operating in driverless autonomous mode, was at a complete stop at a red light. A dark colored Nissan Sentra was stopped in the adjacent lane to the left of the AV. When the light turned green, the Nissan Sentra and the AV entered the intersection. Against a red light, a pedestrian entered the crosswalk on the opposite side of Market Street across from the vehicles, passed completely through the AV’s lane of travel, then stopped mid-crosswalk in front of the Nissan Sentra. The Nissan Sentra then tragically struck and propelled the pedestrian into the path of the AV. The AV biased rightward before braking aggressively, but still made contact with the pedestrian. The AV detected a collision, bringing the vehicle to a stop; then attempted to pull over to avoid causing further road safety issues, pulling the individual forward approximately 20 feet. The driver of the Nissan Sentra fled the scene after the collision. Shortly after the incident, our team proactively shared information with the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), California Public Utilities Commision [sic] (CPUC), and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), including the full video, and have stayed in close contact with regulators to answer their questions.

Currently, the human driver responsible for the incident is still at large and we shared details with the San Francisco police and fire departments, as this was an ‘in progress’ crime by a hit-and-run human driver against another road user. 

As part of our safety review process after an incident, we perform simulations to continue to test our AV behavior compared to human drivers. In this case, the simulations performed afterward showed that had it been a Cruise AV rather than the human driver, the AV would have detected and avoided the pedestrian, and the pedestrian could have continued on their way. We wish this has been the case. We also found that in the real-world scenario, the AV responded to the individual deflected in its path within 460 milliseconds, faster than most human drivers, and braked aggressively to minimize the impact. 

Pedestrians and drivers in the real world do not always behave in an expected or predictable manner, for various reasons that can include pedestrians who are confused, inebriated, distracted, or hostile. Cruise’s suite of simulation tests covers variations in pedestrian behavior and physical characteristics such as the pedestrian’s size, speed of movement, and position, including lying in various positions on the ground. To train and develop the AV systems and response to incidents, Cruise leverages on-road data as well as relevant scenarios defined by US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s New Car Assessment Program (NCAP), the European New Car Assessment Programme (EuroNCAP), and Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) tests to validate system performance for collision imminent scenarios. These regulatory and industry bodies did not include this exceedingly rare event in their scenarios nor had Cruise experienced this confluence of factors in the millions of miles of driving and simulations. 

After a collision, Cruise AVs are designed to perform a maneuver to minimize the safety risks to the extent possible within the driving context. This is called achieving a minimal risk condition, and it’s required under California regulations and encouraged under Federal AV guidance. The specific maneuver, such as coming to an immediate stop, pulling over out of lane of travel, or pulling out of traffic after exiting an intersection, is highly dependent on the driving context as well as the Cruise AV’s driving capabilities in the moment.

This incident will be included in future suites of simulation tests to allow the vehicle to better determine if it should pull over safely or stay in place, and to validate that the AV’s behavior remains safe and reasonable. We aim to continuously learn and improve AV behavior, and in developing new simulation tests and rare scenarios, we can assess multiple variations of this type of incident and increase the robustness of the AV’s response.

Safety is fundamental to our mission to save lives — it’s at the core of everything we do. We are devastated by what happened to the victim, and are committed, as always, to continuously improving our safety — including in response to extremely rare scenarios such as this. Our teams are currently doing an analysis to identify potential enhancements to the AV’s response to rare circumstances like this one. With over 5 million miles of driving, our safety record shows that our AVs are safer than a human benchmark in dense, urban environments — but our safety work is never done, and we remain deeply committed to continuously improving our safety performance on a daily basis. 

Archive of Cruise 10/24/23 Blog Post

There were no additional publicly available posts that provided more information on the incident. Though ironically there was a blog post on 9/27/23, just days before the 10/2/23 crash, titled Human Ridehail Crash Rate Benchmark where Cruise touted how safe their vehicles supposedly were.

There was another post on 11/8/23, and updated on 11/14/23, that describes what is being done at Cruise due to the crash. The important items are:

• software recall,
• third-party law firm to review October incident,
• hired Exponent to Conduct Technical Root Cause Analysis,
• commitment to transparency and community engagement,
• major executive changes,
• comprehensive safety assessment,
• voluntary October 26th pause of all service in US,
• dedication to rebuilding trust.

Cruise blog post 11/8/23, updated 11/14/23

Important Updates from Cruise

11.14 2023 Update:

On November 13, the Cruise Board held its regularly scheduled quarterly meeting at Cruise headquarters in San Francisco. The Board took further steps to enhance safety and transparency as we work to build a better Cruise, including:

Craig Glidden to assume the role of Chief Administrative Officer for Cruise

As we posted in our blog last week, we have initiated workstreams in four key areas to identify potential improvements to how we operate. We are pleased that Craig Glidden, GM’s Executive Vice President of Legal and Policy and Cruise board member, will be expanding his support of Cruise and working closely with Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt and the Cruise Senior Leadership Team to oversee the workstreams around Transparency and Community Engagement. Cruise’s Legal & Policy, Communications, and Finance teams will report directly to Craig, and he will assume the title of Chief Administrative Officer for Cruise. He will continue in his current role at GM. Cruise will benefit from leveraging Craig and GM’s experience and best practices when it comes to transparency and engagement around safety. 

Retention of an independent expert to conduct a comprehensive safety assessment

We announced last week that Cruise will hire a permanent Chief Safety Officer who will report directly to Kyle. In addition, the Cruise Board will retain a third-party safety expert in the coming weeks to perform a full assessment of Cruise’s safety operations and culture. These independent findings will help further guide and inform the work we have initiated.

Expansion of Exponent’s scope

Cruise previously hired the independent, third-party engineering consulting firm, Exponent, to conduct a technical root cause analysis of the October 2 incident. That work is ongoing, and the Board plans to expand Exponent’s remit to include a comprehensive review of our safety systems and technology.

Voluntary pause of supervised and manual operations 

On October 26, we announced a pause of all our driverless operations while we take time to examine our processes, systems, and tools and improve how we operate. In the coming days, we are also pausing our supervised and manual AV operations in the U.S., affecting roughly 70 vehicles. This orderly pause is a further step to rebuild public trust while we undergo a full safety review. We will continue to operate our vehicles in closed course training environments and maintain an active simulation program in order to stay focused on advancing AV technology.

Cruise is dedicated to rebuilding trust and operating at the highest standards of safety. We are committed to keeping our customers, regulators, and the public informed throughout this process.

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11-08-2023

We believe that over time autonomous vehicles can significantly reduce the number and severity of car collisions, including the more than 40,000 deaths on U.S. roads each year. This is what motivates our work. We also know we have a responsibility to operate at the highest standards of safety, transparency and accountability. 

We recently announced a pause of all our driverless operations while we take time to examine our processes, systems, and tools and improve how we operate. During this time we plan to seek input from our government and agency partners and other key stakeholders to understand how we can be better partners. 

Today we are sharing updates on some of the initial steps we have taken. 

Issued a Voluntary Software Recall

As part of our larger efforts to assess, identify and remedy issues as we work with NHTSA and other regulators, we have issued a voluntary recall of part of our AV software based on a new analysis of our AV’s post-collision response on October 2. The recall addresses circumstances in which the Cruise collision detection subsystem may cause the Cruise AV to attempt to pull over out of traffic instead of remaining stationary when a pullover is not the desired post-collision response. 

We issued the recall through a 573 NHTSA filing, which is the standard protocol for a company looking to notify consumers of hardware or software safety issues that require a remedy. We have also developed a software update that remedies the issue described and have deployed it to our supervised test fleet, which remains in operation. We’ll deploy the remedy to our driverless fleet prior to resuming those operations.

Although we determined that a similar collision with a risk of serious injury could have recurred every 10 million – 100 million miles of driving on average prior to the software update, we strive to continually improve and to make these events even rarer. As our software improves, it is likely we will file additional recalls to inform both NHTSA and the public of updates to enhance safety across our fleet. 

Announced a Chief Safety Officer (CSO) Role

Cruise is conducting a search to hire a Chief Safety Officer who will report directly to the CEO. In the meantime, Dr. Louise Zhang, VP of Safety & Systems, will assume the role of Interim Chief Safety Officer and oversee our safety review & investigations. 

Retained Third-Party Law Firm to Review October Incident

The Cruise Board retained law firm Quinn Emanuel to examine and better understand Cruise’s response to the October 2 incident, including Cruise’s interactions with law enforcement, regulators, and the media. This outside review will help us learn from this incident, strengthen our protocols, and improve our response to these types of incidents in the future. 

Appointed Exponent to Conduct Technical Root Cause Analysis

In addition to our cooperation with investigations from the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), we have hired an independent, third-party engineering firm to perform a technical root cause analysis of the October 2 incident. We will incorporate their findings into our safety and engineering processes.

Initiated Additional Workstreams

We have identified four key areas of potential improvements to how we operate and have assigned leaders to investigate each one and complete follow up actions.

• Safety Governance: We are taking a deep look at our overall safety approach and risk management structures to ensure we are built and positioned to enable continuous improvement. 
• Safety and Engineering Processes: We have advanced tools and processes in place and are committed to further upgrades wherever warranted. We are comprehensively reviewing all of our safety, testing, and validation processes and will add or modify processes where there is room to improve.
• Internal & External Transparency: We understand that transparency is key to trust, especially in an emerging industry like ours.  We are committed to improving how we communicate with the public, our customers, regulators, the media, and Cruise employees. 
• Community Engagement: We also understand the importance of collaborative partnerships. To realize the community benefits of autonomous driving, we need to do a better job engaging with our stakeholders and soliciting their feedback. 

We are dedicated to building a better Cruise, and these initial actions are just some of the steps we’re taking as we listen, learn, and improve. We are committed to keeping our customers, regulators, and the public informed throughout this process.

Cruise 11/8/23 blog post Important Updates from Cruise

Immediately after the crash the SFPD released the following statement to the news:

On 10/02/23 at approximately 9:31 pm officers responded to 5th and Market Streets regarding a vehicle collision involving a pedestrian. Officers arrived on scene and discovered an autonomous vehicle struck an adult pedestrian. Officers rendered aid and summoned medics to the scene and transported the pedestrian to the hospital. The medical condition of the pedestrian is unknown at this time. The autonomous vehicle remained on scene and did not have an occupant at the time of the collision. The operator of the autonomous vehicle is cooperating with the investigation. We believe that another vehicle that was not an autonomous vehicle may have been initially involved in the collision, but the vehicle or driver were not present at the scene during our investigation. The SFPD Traffic Collision Investigations Unit is leading the investigation and is looking into the factors that lead to this collision. Anyone with information is asked to contact SFPD at 415-575-4444 or text a tip to TIP411 and begin the message with SFPD.

At the scene of any vehicle collision, we document what occurred by gathering evidence. This evidence includes the location of the vehicle and/or vehicles before, during and after the collision, which is why the vehicle was kept in its stationary position.

SFPD statement, as published by the Verge

The SF Fire Department provided a report on how they dealt with the results of the crash, including the extraction of the pedestrian, and how the pedestrian had suffered significant trauma.

The October 16th NHTSA investigation is ongoing. Key aspect according to the NHTSA is that Cruise behavior “could increase the risk of a collision with a pedestrian, which may result in severe injury or death.” The subsequent software recall for the October 2nd crash was associated with this particular investigation.

The summary of the NHTSA pedestrian safety investigation:

Autonomous Driving System

NHTSA Action Number: PE23018

Components ELECTRICAL SYSTEM

Opened From: October 16, 2023–Present

Summary

The Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) has received reports of incidents in which Automated Driving System (ADS) equipped vehicles operated by Cruise LLC (Cruise) may not have exercised appropriate caution around pedestrians in the roadway.  These reports involve ADS equipped vehicles encroaching on pedestrians present in or entering roadways, including pedestrian crosswalks, in the proximity of the intended travel path of the vehicles.  This could increase the risk of a collision with a pedestrian, which may result in severe injury or death.

Currently, the total number of relevant pedestrian incidents is unknown.  ODI has received two (2) relevant reports involving pedestrian injuries from Cruise under Standing General Order 2021-01 (SGO).  ODI has identified two (2) additional relevant incidents with videos posted to public websites.

ODI is opening this Preliminary Evaluation (PE) to determine the scope and severity of the potential problem, including causal factors that may relate to ADS driving policies and performance around pedestrians, and to fully assess the potential safety risks. The SGO reports cited in the Opening Resume, can be found in the investigation file at NHTSA.gov. under the following titles:

SGO 2021-01 report ID: 30412-6175

SGO 2021-01 report ID: 30412-6395

NHTSA Recall & Safety Issues for Cruise

The Cruise Equipment Recall Report Section 573.6 (or simplified document) from November 8th, 2023 provides the Cruise explanation that after detecting the collision the vehicle was doing a pull over maneuver in an attempt to pull out of traffic. It states that the Cruise ADS inaccurately characterized the collision as a lateral (side) collision, and therefore thought the best action would be to move forward out of traffic. It should be noted though that this statement contradicts what actually happened. The vehicle did not and could not actually move over further in the lane. Also, there was no need to pull over to be out of traffic given that there were two lanes of travel in that direction and other vehicles would simply be able to go around in the other lane.

Cruise also states that the remedy was a software update such that the Cruise vehicle would not have moved forward after impact. They did not provide any details to the NHTSA on the details of the software change, on testing, nor on how this might affect positively or negatively other situations. They simply stated that they made a software update so now everything is good.

The original submittal to the NHTSA bellow does not provide any useful information but it provided here for completeness.

The DMV Autonomous Vehicle Collision Reports list does not contain a report for this crash. While Waymo continued to report crashes to the California DMV, the safety regulator for robotaxis in California, it appears that Cruise simply stopped sending such reports for approximately 6 weeks, until 9/27/2023. There was a vagueness in the DMV reporting requirements that Cruise decided to take advantage of. Incidents only needed to be reported if a robotaxi system was in “test mode”. Cruise claimed that since the CPUC and the DMV had fully approved their system that they were no longer in “test mode” and therefore no longer needed to report crashes. This lack of reporting and transparency was of course considered very problematic by SF city officials.

The email was obtained by Vice Magazine via a public records request, and was published in a November 17, 2023 article titled Cruise Exec Omitted Pedestrian Dragging In Summary of Self-Driving Car Incident to California DMV, Email Shows.

The text of the Cruise letter is:

Hi Steve,

Look forward to seeing you this morning at 11. 1 know you are generally aware of the incident last night, which we will review in detail with you and your team per our standard operating procedure. A summary is as follows. At approximately 9:30 pm Oct 2 at Sth and Market in San Francisco, a human-driven, non-Cruise vehicle hit a pedestrian at significant speed near the middle lane of two-way traffic and left the scene. At the time of the incident, a Cruise AV was simultaneously traveling in an adjacent lane close. The pedestrian rolled off of the still-traveling perpetrating vehicle and landed in the lane directly in front of the moving Cruise vehicle, which hard-braked but was unable to stop before making impact with the pedestrian. The pedestrian has been transported to the hospital with injuries. The Cruise AV. captured the incident on video and we are actively working with police to help identify the responsible driver. There were no passengers in the Cruise vehicle at the time. We can discuss further today, and will do a full review with you and the assembled team.

David

Cruise email to DMV

The author of the Vice article states very clearly that the letter to the DMV omits crucial information, that the Cruise vehicle dragged the pedestrian 20 feet before stopping again:

This narrative omits a key detail: After the Cruise vehicle hard-braked, it then executed a “pullover maneuver” while the pedestrian was underneath the car, dragging the person some 20 feet before coming to another full stop, according to the DMV’s narrative of events based on the full video of the incident as captured by Cruise vehicles. Cruise’s summary of the incident only vaguely refers to the vehicle “making impact” with the pedestrian. 

Vice Magazine 11/17/23

The actual letter to the DMV:

DMV press release on Cruise suspension

A DMV Statement (press release) was emailed for those who are subscribed to their notices. The statement was very clear that the DMV did not consider the Cruise system to be safe and that Cruise has misrepresented information.

Today’s suspensions are based on the following:

• 13 CCR §228.20 (b) (6) – Based upon the performance of the vehicles, the Department determines the manufacturer’s vehicles are not safe for the public’s operation.
• 13 CCR §228.20 (b) (3) – The manufacturer has misrepresented any information related to safety of the autonomous technology of its vehicles.
• 13 CCR §227.42 (b)(5) – Any act or omission of the manufacturer or one of its agents, employees, contractors, or designees which the department finds makes the conduct of autonomous vehicle testing on public roads by the manufacturer an unreasonable risk to the public.

DMV Statement on suspending Cruise

DMV Order of Suspension

The DMV Order of Suspension explained the incident, how the vehicles appear to be unsafe, and how they are therefore suspending Cruise’s permit immediately.

After coming to an initial stop following the accident, the autonomous vehicle attempted to perform a pullover maneuver while the pedestrian was under the vehicle. This action increased the risk of, and may have caused, further injury to the pedestrian. The subsequent maneuvering of the vehicle indicates that Cruise’s vehicles may lack the ability to respond in a safe and appropriate manner during incidents involving a pedestrian so as not to unnecessarily put the pedestrian or others at risk of further injury.

Although the accident involved a vehicle operating under Cruise’s deployment permit, the behavior of the vehicle raises concerns that vehicles operated under Cruise’s driverless testing permit also lack the ability to respond in a safe and appropriate manner during incidents involving a pedestrian. Until the department can make a determination regarding the safe operation of the vehicles, the continued operation of Cruise’s driverless test vehicles on public roads poses an unreasonable risk to the public.

DMV Order of Suspension 10/24/2023

Original DMV Order of Suspension pdf

Note: much of the following information from the CPUC was obtained from their online documents on ruling R1212011.

On 11/8/23 a declaration was made by Ashlyn Kong, senior analyst for CPUC AV projects, outlining both the lack of Cruise proactively providing information, and then being untruthful about what communication had transpired. The declaration was officially filed on 12/1/23.

Key in the declaration is that Cruise on October 3rd, the day after the crash, did not communicate that the Cruise vehicle moved after initially striking the pedestrian and coming to a full stop. Cruise also did not show or even offer to share any video from the incidence. Additionally, at a meeting on October 18th with Cruise, DMV, and Ashlyn Kong, Kong asked Cruise if there was any additional relevant information on the October 2nd crash. Mr Alvarado once again did not disclose that the Cruise vehicle moved 20 feet after striking the pedestrian, and did not show or offer to show any video of the incidence.

The declaration also explains how on October 24th Cruise publicly published on their blog the claim that they “proactively” shared information with the Commission “including the full video.” The claims of Cruise were directly contradicted by their actual actions.

A similar declaration was made by Bezawit Dilgassa, also an analyst at the CPUC. The declaration indicates that Dilgassa asked on October 5th for information about the crash but did not receive the response, including the full video, from Cruise until two weeks later, October 19th. The declaration also states “I have not received any proactive communication from Cruise sharing, or offering to share video footage of the October 2 incident”, which contradicts statements made by Cruise.

On 12/1/23 a judge submitted a ruling for the CPUC asking Cruise to explain why they shouldn’t be sanctioned for withholding information from the CPUC.

On December 6th Cruise requested and received an extension for responding to the Order to Show Cause. The extension changed the response date from December 18th, 2023 until January 12, 2024. This e-mail exchange also included the addresses of all of the parties, which can also be found here.

January 5th, 2024 Cruise submitted a filing requesting an “alternative dispute resolution” and asking to settle for $75,000, a trivial amount for them. Their response is covered in a Reuters article GM robotaxi unit Cruise offers $75,000 to resolve crash probe.

Filing from Cruise requesting settlement pdf

On January 12, 2024 the judge responded with a ruling. It denied Cruise’s request for Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). Importantly, it also requires Cruise to submit their investigation report by January 30, 2024. And it requires Cruise to still explain their proposed settlement agreement in person on February 6th.

IT IS RULED that:

1. Cruise’s Motion for ADR is denied.
2. By January 30, 2024, Cruise shall file a motion for approval of the
   settlement pursuant to Rule 12.1. The motion shall attach the settlement
   agreement and a copy of the investigation report.
3. The OSC hearing currently scheduled for February 6, 2024 shall be
   postponed.
4. On February 6, 2024, at 1:30 p.m. Cruise shall appear at the Commission
   Auditorium at 505 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, California, to answer
   questions regarding its proposed settlement agreement.

Judge’s motion from 1/12/24

Judge’s motion with updated requirements pdf

On 12/23/2023 GM, the owner of Cruise, submitted a lawsuit against the City of San Francisco asking for a refund for past taxes paid, for a total of $131m. The lawsuit was reported on by Bloomberg, SF Chronicle, SF Standard, and Robotaxi.rodeo.

While other news publications concentrated on the complicated tax issues that GM is fighting with their lawsuit, there are likely additional issues of interest.

• The tax payments in question go all the way back to 2016. Yet it took GM till after the California DMV and the CPUC permitted citywide Cruise robotaxi service (and then later shut them down) before they actually filed the lawsuit.
• GM first approach the City of San Francisco in early 2020 about their taxes, and to resolve any potential disputes. Back I n the summer of 2020 the City clarified that it did not agree with the GM’s position. In December 2020 GM fully paid the assessed taxes and penalties. In September 2021, GM filed a claim for a refund of taxes and penalties. That claim was denied by the City. In other words, several yers ago the City fully evaluated the situation and let GM know that they indeed had owed those taxes.
• The GM lawsuit claims: The San Francisco Business and Tax Regulations Code (“Code”) is facially invalid. If this were true then San Francisco is suddenly on a severe financial precipice. This seems very doubtful.
• The lawsuit is also specifically emphasizes the 2019 Homelessness Gross Receipts Tax (“HGR”) and the 2022 Overpaid Executive Gross Receipts Tax (“OEGR”). Focusing on these two taxes together is quite disturbing. They appear to be fully acknowledging that they have paid their executives excessively, the very same people they recently fired, but they also do not want to pay taxes for people at the other end of the spectrum, those suffering from homelessness.

This lawsuit will undoubtedly take quite a while to move through the courts.

GM Lawsuit against City of San Francisco pdf

On November 8, 2023 unions wrote a letter to the USDOT asking for increased safety standards in light of the October 2nd Cruise crash.

In his post from October 21, 2023 titled SAFETY ANALYSIS OF TWO CRUISE ROBOTAXI PEDESTRIAN INJURIES, Koopman makes the key point that the Cruise vehicle was required by California Vehicle Code to exercise all due care and shall reduce the speed of the vehicle:

(c) The driver of a vehicle approaching a pedestrian within any marked or unmarked crosswalk shall exercise all due care and shall reduce the speed of the vehicle or take any other action relating to the operation of the vehicle as necessary to safeguard the safety of the pedestrian. (emphasis added)

California Vehicle Code 21950

Upon seeing that a pedestrian was at risk, a prudent driver would have stopped or slowed down, thereby likely having enough time to avoid hitting the pedestrian when they ended up in their path:

The question is when the Cruise AV could have stopped. There are at least three possible decision points for stopping to avoid this collision with the pedestrian, and the Cruise vehicle appears not to have exercised the first two:

• The light changes green, but there is a pedestrian still in the crosswalk in the Cruise vehicle’s direction of travel in front of the Cruise vehicle. Did it slow down?  Or execute a normal acceleration because it predicted the pedestrian would be clear by the time it got there?   A prudent human driver would have waited, or more likely crept forward while waiting to signal cars behind it not to honk for failing to recognize a green light.
• The pedestrian clears the Cruise lane, but the Cruise vehicle clearly sees the pedestrian about to be hit by the adjacent vehicle. The Cruise vehicle could have (I would argue should have) stopped to avoid being close to an injury event. Expecting it to predict a pedestrian collision trajectory is asking a lot — but it should have stopped precisely because it cannot predict what will happen after such a collision. Safety demands not going fast past a pedestrian who is about to be hit by another vehicle in an adjacent lane. But this is precisely what the Cruise vehicle did.
• The pedestrian lands in the Cruise lane and the Cruise vehicle has not slowed down yet. By then it is too late, and it runs over the pedestrian.  This could likely have been avoided by a prudent driving strategy that addresses the previous two decision points.

SAFETY ANALYSIS OF TWO CRUISE ROBOTAXI PEDESTRIAN INJURIES

The vehicle appears to not have realized the pedestrian ended up underneath the vehicle and executed a “pull over” maneuver, dragging the pedestrian:

…after the vehicle had stopped post-crash, it started movement again with the pedestrian still under the vehicle, dragging that victim about 20 feet at a speed up to 7 mph, which was said to contribute to severe injuries. This strongly suggests the vehicle did not account for a pedestrian being trapped underneath it when deciding to move. 

SAFETY ANALYSIS OF TWO CRUISE ROBOTAXI PEDESTRIAN INJURIES

Cruise should have been more transparent and not redacted alleged “confidential business information” from their report to the DMV:

A straightforward update to the crash report is to add at the end as at least part of the “redacted confidential business information”…

This certainly makes Cruise look bad, but that is not an acceptable reason for a redcation [sic]. It is difficult to understand how this can reasonably be characterized as “confidential business information” in a mandatory crash report.

SAFETY ANALYSIS OF TWO CRUISE ROBOTAXI PEDESTRIAN INJURIES

Cruise appears to never have notified emergency services by calling 911, which shows a serious safety problem with autonomous vehicles:

Consider: they had a vehicle tire on top of a pedestrian’s leg and did not call 911. (Again, if this is incorrect I will update this statement when I get that information.) That’s a HUGE problem nobody is talking about. A human driver would have realized they just ran someone over and either called 911 or asked someone to do so. If there had been no passer-by, how many minutes would that pedestrian have been trapped under the car before help was summoned?

The Cruise AV and its support team need to realize an injury has happened and take immediate action. It would be no surprise if the remote operators had no idea what the vehicle had run over. By the time they download and review video logs (or whatever) that pedestrian has been trapped under the vehicle for a while. That’s not acceptable. They need to be able to do better.

SAFETY ANALYSIS OF TWO CRUISE ROBOTAXI PEDESTRIAN INJURIES

Cruise inappropriately blames others for crashes instead of trying to focus on safety:

Cruise blames crashes on other parties to the maximum degree possible, and ignores injuries where it is less than 50% at fault (there have been others; notably a very ill-advised left turn maneuver by a Cruise robotaxi that resulted in multiple injuries).  Safety is not achieved by blaming others. If Cruise vehicles are crashing and injuring people more often than other vehicles, then that is an increased rate of injury regardless of blame.

A company with a responsible safety culture would be asking what they can do to reduce the risk of future injuries — regardless of blame. We will have to wait to see the outcome of this NHTSA investigation, and whether Cruise proactively improves safety or waits for NHTSA to force the issue.

SAFETY ANALYSIS OF TWO CRUISE ROBOTAXI PEDESTRIAN INJURIES

The pedestrian first being hit by a human-driven vehicle does not absolve the Cruise vehicle’s dangerous behavior:

…comparisons to human driver errors are not productive. Indeed, another driver hit the pedestrian first in the second crash. But another driver being negligent does not forgive imprudent driving behavior from a robotaxi that is being relentlessly touted as safer than human drivers.

SAFETY ANALYSIS OF TWO CRUISE ROBOTAXI PEDESTRIAN INJURIES

In his October 27th, 2024 blog post titled I knew this was coming, Sam Anthony discusses how Cruise was in a different situation from other self-driving car companies. Instead of having the “deliberate and unhurried testing process” of Waymo, Cruise had raised $15 billion in outside investor money, and had already spent most of it, and there wasn’t going to be sufficient money for the long process of creating a truly safe system. Then two years ago they decided to change their approach, quickly. They greatly increased their fleet in San Francisco and received permission from regulators to move forward with running autonomous service and accepting fares. They appeared to run out of time for adequate “further testing and iteration.”

Anthony expresses that it has been long known that autonomous vehicles will have problems, but they will be different from those of human driven cars:

People—like me—have been saying for years that one of the big issues with self-driving cars is that they won’t fail in the same ways that human driven cars fail. They would stop short for no reason, responding to a sensor glitch, or would fail to see objects directly in front of them that a human would have no problem identifying. The fact that they see the world dramatically differently than humans do would make sure of it. Solving the problem of how to make these vehicles behave in a human-like way even though they operate so dramatically differently from a human driver is the central challenge of deploying a self-driving car.

Many of the incidents that came to light with Cruise cars were precisely failures of the vehicles to behave in a coherently human way.  Cruise cars stopping in the middle of intersections, or in the middle of a road maneuver.  Cruise cars passing much too close to pedestrians, like they didn’t see them or didn’t understand where they were going.  Cruise cars failing to understand the clear—and quite angry!—body language of first responders trying to get them out of the way. These kinds of issues are predictable, related to each other, and indicative of a self-driving software stack that has NOT solved the thorniest technical problems for self-driving cars. Rather than being outliers in an otherwise perfectly functioning system, they were clues, indicators that the work of designing and testing these cars was not finished, that the hardest effort was still to come.

I knew this was coming – Sam Anthony

The pressure of finite funding created a need to move forward quickly, and this was simply incompatible with creating a safe safe and adequately tested system:

By abandoning focus on the technical challenges, Cruise, with Kyle Vogt at the helm, made it inevitable that their vehicles would fail, and, because these are cars we’re talking about, they made it inevitable that their cars would cause unnecessary injury.

I knew this was coming – Sam Anthony

The Cruise autonomous vehicle then ran into a very difficult situation it had repeatedly had problems with: what to do in an emergency. It did a “pull over” maneuver, which dragged the pedestrian underneath for 20 feet:

… What the car did next, though, was execute a “pull over” maneuver.  It drove twenty feet to get to the curb with the seriously injured pedestrian under its wheels. That is, as a matter of ethics and optics, quite bad. In fact, though, the situation is even worse than that. As Cruise cars had gotten deployed more widely, one of the problems that turned up was that their vehicles were unresponsive or insufficiently responsive to emergency vehicles.

…

For Cruise, trying to ramp up revenue deployments, it is a mitigation that is simply not within the realm of technical possibility. So if that is true, and Cruise was getting intense pressure from city and state regulators to improve their performance around emergency vehicles, the most expedient response would be to simply hard-code their vehicles to pull over whenever it seems like it might be important.  Err, nominally, on the side of safety.

I knew this was coming – Sam Anthony

This “pull over” maneuver, which was claimed by Cruise, shows to the regulators that the system was dangerous and harmful, and likely motivated Cruise to not be fully transparent:

if I was a technically-informed regulator, seeing that behavior happen in a situation where, in context, it was affirmatively harmful, it would set off all kinds of alarm bells.  From that perspective, Cruise’s cover up, where they hid the final seven seconds of the accident video from regulators and journalists, starts to make more sense. Did they risk angering regulators with their lack of transparency?  They did, as it turns out. But they very likely knew that the regulators would understand that behavior of their vehicle in that situation is close to dispositive proof that they have not surmounted the greatest and most important technical challenges involved in running their service safely.

I knew this was coming – Sam Anthony

The financial and technical problems with Cruise could be intractable:

The big question is whether Cruise, trapped as it is between the inexorable demands of the capital it has taken on and the impenetrable difficulty of the remaining technical challenges of deploying their fleet commercially, has a path forward at all. If I had to bet—and I’m sure glad I don’t—I don’t think I’d bet on them existing in anything like their current form a year from now. The curtain has been pulled aside, and the revealed road ahead for Cruise’s robotaxis is dark, uncertain, and quite possibly impassable.

I knew this was coming – Sam Anthony

In Templeton’s October 3rd, 2023 article in Forbes titled Pedestrian Flung In Front Of Cruise Robotaxi; Could Robocars Improve Things?, he states the Cruise car detected the pedestrian in the crosswalk:

I was given the opportunity to watch the video by Cruise. The pedestrian is crossing at a very unwise time to cross, while the street is full of traffic. She probably expected vehicles to stop for her. Indeed, the display of the Cruise perception system shows it detected her and would presumably had stopped if she was in the lane of travel of the robotaxi

Pedestrian Flung – Brad Templeton

The Cruise vehicle did not have a way to determine if it was good or bad to move forward:

With somebody under the car, it would be risky to attempt to move the vehicle without a full understanding of the situation, as this could cause more injury. On the other hand, the vehicle should be able to know that something—somebody—is under the rear wheels

Pedestrian Flung – Brad Templeton

An autonomous vehicle might not be aware that it would drag a pedestrian if it moved forward:

nightmare question of a vehicle being aware or unaware of what it had done in an online thread. Robocars do not have the same awareness of their world that humans do. In many ways it is superior, but there are ways in which it is not, and so it is possible for a vehicle to hit somebody or something without full awareness of it, and also possible to drag a victim without awareness.

Pedestrian Flung – Brad Templeton

Templeton also states “It’s not clear what to do” for detecting a crash and a pedestrian possibly being underneath the vehicle. It is a very difficult problem, but a situation that can occur.

Templeton also states that there was a deficiency in understanding complicated real-world situations, where pedestrians do cross against a traffic signal, and where pedestrians are suddenly in the path of a vehicle:

One potential option would be to get better at predicting the bigger situation. Unfortunately, while jaywalking is technically illegal, it is also very common and in fact plays a role in making cities more pleasant. It is often said that streets are for people, not cars, and it’s true—but the cars are generally fully of people who want good traffic flow when they are in a car and ease crossing the street when they are not and must decide how to trade those off.

Pedestrian Flung – Brad Templeton

A solution would have been for the Cruise vehicle to detect a potentially dangerous situation with the pedestrian and proceed more slowly:

in this specific situation—no traffic behind and no passengers in the car—the car could have slowed down well in advance because of the pedestrian on the road with no impediment to anybody.

Pedestrian Flung – Brad Templeton

In Templeton’s October 30th, 2023 article in Forbes titled Cruise Suspends Robotaxi Operations, What They Must Do To Fix It he describes the main issue is that Cruise needs to be more transparent and honest, even if the news is bad.

Can Cruise Regain Trust?

While almost all companies resist disclosing flaws and bad news, Cruise went well beyond the norm in this case. For a long time to come, people will ask why they should believe Cruise, or at least if Cruise is leaving out something important. That their vehicle, after it had stopped, followed programming to attempt to pull over to the side of the road, making the situation worse, was the most important and non-obvious thing about Cruise’s involvement in this incident,

Cruse Suspends Robotaxi Operations – Brad Templeton

Cruise provided only positive information and hid anything negative:

I have worked with Cruise’s communications team for a few years now, and in my judgment and to my bafflement, they largely follow a policy of mostly disclosing things that make them look good unless they have to. All companies will have a tendency to do that, and most people expect it, but this time a line was crossed.

Cruse Suspends Robotaxi Operations – Brad Templeton

Specifics on what Cruise needs to do, be transparent and humble:

Going forward, here’s what all companies, but in particular Cruise, need to do.

1. Be up front that bad things are going to happen. Unexpected bad things. Never pretend things are better than they are, so that when the bad things happen—and they will—the story is, “OK, this was one of the bad things we warned could happen.”
2. Clarify that you don’t know what sort of problems might happen—it will be problems you could not find testing with safety drivers or simulators—so that surprises should be expected, sometimes very non-human behavior. But also clarify that that’s why you are on the road, to find these problems with a small fleet, and fix them before you expand to a bigger fleet.
3. Maintain an ongoing naturalistic driving study of a large number of human drivers in the same territory. Constantly compare your performance to it, and if you’re not better, act on that quickly. See below for details.
4. Be very open on problems. Report more than regulators demand you report. When you report, compare to your naturalistic data.
5. Be quick and generous with anybody you harm, but don’t force them to sign an non-disclosure agreement to get your settlement. Don’t make people wonder what you are hiding.
6. Explain with every mistake what you’ve learned from it and how you’ve improved.
7. In particular with Cruise, hire independent consultants and give them access to your internal data. They don’t have to have the right to publish your secrets unless they decide (on their own discretion) that you are hiding important things, in which case they can whistleblow with impunity.
8. Publish the video and logs of any significant incident, redacting only that which invades the privacy of other parties. Even if you feel it will disclose some internal business information.
9. Yes, if you’re a material part of the value of a public company, this is not going to be easy because you must be accurate. So be accurate. Good news for Waymo as their affect on Alphabet is smaller than Cruise’s effect on GM.

Cruse Suspends Robotaxi Operations – Brad Templeton

Plus Templeton states unequivocally “Don’t be Tesla.“

And some more on being transparent:

“It was just a matter of time before an incident like this occurred, and it was incredibly unfortunate that it happened, but it is not a complete surprise” said David Chu, the San Francisco city attorney who has been petitioning the CPUC to revoke Cruise Permits. Chu should not be the one to say this, it should have been Cruise, before this happened.

Cruse Suspends Robotaxi Operations – Brad Templeton

Companies like Cruise have a natural tendency towards secrecy, which can cause them to cross the line:

Where Cruise Went Wrong

Companies have a natural tendency to keep things close to the vest. Sometimes it’s to not inform competition. Sometimes they feel their dirty laundry will make customers lose confidence. Sometimes it’s just a general philosophy of “don’t disclose it unless you have a good reason.” They will craft official statements about things and do them. PR advisors will even tell them when a bad story is out, the less you say the better, because anything you stay keeps the story alive. If there are no statements, there’s soon nothing to cover. That’s not always bad advice but it leads to a culture of secrecy. And that can lead to crossing the line. 

Cruse Suspends Robotaxi Operations – Brad Templeton

Questions whether victims of crashes were paid by Cruise to not tell their stories, and thereby hide bad news:

It is worth noting that we are not hearing the stories of people who were involved with both Cruise crashes and the rare Waymo crashes. While there is obviously no confirmation, it may be that companies are offering payments to such people and asking them to not discuss the event as part of the deal. We see lots of reports from passers-by, and videos from people in the cars when nothing serious goes wrong, but not reports from people in the crashes. That should stop.

Cruse Suspends Robotaxi Operations – Brad Templeton