Cruise Service Suspended by GM in SF After (ancilliary) Pedestrian Accident 2

[drwebb]

Initial report from earlier in the month:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/03/tech/driverless-car-pedestrian-injury/index.html

"Video shown to CNN by Cruise shows the autonomous vehicle was a secondary car in the collision"
"Cruise cars have their own cameras . . . which may help in the investigation of the accident. . . we are actively working with police to help identify the responsible driver"

And the plot thickens:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/27/business/gm-halts-robotaxi-service/index.html

"The California DMV said the move was due in part to Cruise, GM’s self-driving vehicle technology subsidiary, withholding video and information about a crash"
"Cruise said '. . . taking steps to rebuild public trust.'”

So clearly the 'spokesperson' in the initial response was only reading from section X paragraph Y of the crisis management manual and was essentially not speaking for GM. Maybe doing what you say would be a good start for GM to 'rebuild public trust'. Assuming the second CNN report is accurate, it really looks like GM is hiding something important, considering they provided what they thought was exonerating video from the accident to the press.

 

[IRstuff]

The apparent issue is described near the end of the second article

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/27/business/gm-halts-robotaxi-service/index.html[/URL]]After striking the pedestrian, the Cruise vehicle, attempting to pull off the road and out of the way of traffic, dragged the pedestrian along the road for 20 feet at a speed at about seven miles an hour, according to the California DMV’s report.

That would seem to be a serious issue, since it seemingly violates the tenet of moving out of traffic, IF it's safe to do so. Dragging a victim 20 ft would seem to contrary to that.

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[3DDave]

California might consider a ban on human driver operated cars for the more significant reason that not only did the human driver create a collision, they broke state law by leaving the scene. Can't trust human drivers.

"flipped over the roof"

How hard is one hit to be flipped over the roof of a car?

The ban is most likely a political move as a consequence of pressure from the human driven taxi and ride share lobbyists.

California would have banned Cruise regardless of reporting.

 

[drwebb]

IR Stuff- I noted that but have heard many anecdotal reports of human drivers failing (or claiming to have failed) to realize they had run over a pedestrian, so whether that was a performance deficiency (distinct from a design deficiency) would seem to require more data. To my mind it really highlights the difficulty of designing these systems to cope with any situation. We tend to give the hypothetical human driver the benefit of the doubt, but in practice individuals can often be more unreliable than automated systems. And maybe that's a part of the policy dilemma.

I even wonder if the primary vehicle driver may have been distracted by the novelty of finding themself beside a driverless car. There's so many RCA angles in this tragedy . . .

 

[BrianPetersen]

It's rather unlikely that the vehicle has any way of detecting that it is dragging a pedestrian.

 

[drwebb]

Would be surprised that it did. Should that have been anticipated, and does that incapability make the Cruise cars unsafe to operate on public roads? Or less safe than a typical human driver, for a less absolute benchmark?

 

[BrianPetersen]

I think it's indicative that there will be no way to detect or plan for every possible thing that can go wrong. Humans can't do that, either, but we can always realise "WTF just happened" then stop and relocate our eyes and ears outside the vehicle to establish what to do next.

 

[IRstuff]

I even wonder if the primary vehicle driver may have been distracted by the novelty of finding themself beside a driverless car.

Unlikely; the Cruise needed to be about a car length behind the hit and run driver in order to have run over the victim after they were hit by the first car; since the victim was hit, then fell into the adjacent lane for the Cruise to hit them.

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