General Motors’ Cruise autonomous car unit has agreed to chop its fleet of San Francisco robotaxis in half as authorities examine two latest crashes within the metropolis.
The state Department of Motor Vehicles requested for the discount after a Cruise car and not using a human driver collided with an unspecified emergency car on Thursday.
“The DMV is investigating recent concerning incidents involving Cruise vehicles in San Francisco,” the DMV mentioned Saturday in an announcement to The Associated Press. “Cruise has agreed to a 50% reduction and will have no more than 50 driverless vehicles in operation during the day and 150 driverless vehicles in operation at night.”
The growth comes simply over per week after California regulators allowed Cruise and Google spinoff Waymo to function autonomous robotaxis all through San Francisco in any respect hours, regardless of security worries spurred by recurring issues with sudden stops and different erratic habits.
The resolution Aug. 10 by the Public Utilities Commission made San Francisco the primary main U.S. metropolis with two fleets of driverless autos competing for passengers.
On Thursday round 10 p.m., the Cruise car had a inexperienced mild, entered an intersection, and was hit by the emergency car responding to a name, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, based mostly on tweets from Cruise.
The robotaxi was carrying a passenger, who was taken by ambulance to a hospital with accidents that weren’t extreme, Cruise advised the newspaper.
Also Thursday night time, a Cruise automotive and not using a passenger collided with one other car in San Francisco, the newspaper reported.
The San Francisco Fire Department didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark from the newspaper.
The robotaxi nearly instantly recognized the emergency response car because it got here into view, Greg Dietrerich, Cruise’s common supervisor in San Francisco, mentioned in an announcement on the corporate web site.
At the intersection, visibility is occluded by buildings, and it’s not potential to see objects round a nook till they’re very near the intersection, Dietrerich’s assertion mentioned. The Cruise autonomous car detected the siren as quickly it was distinguishable from background noise, he wrote.
“The AV’s ability to successfully chart the emergency vehicle’s path was complicated by the fact that the emergency vehicle was in the oncoming lane of traffic, which it had moved into to bypass the red light,” Dietrerich wrote.
The Cruise car recognized the danger of a crash and braked, lowering its velocity, however couldn’t keep away from the collision, he wrote.
Cruise autos have pushed greater than 3 million autonomous miles within the metropolis and have interacted with emergency autos greater than 168,000 occasions within the first seven months of this 12 months alone, the assertion mentioned. “We realize that we’ll always encounter challenging situations, which is why continuous improvement is central to our work.”
The firm will work with regulators and metropolis departments to scale back the probability of a crash occurring once more, Dietrerich wrote.
The DMV mentioned the fleet discount will stay till its investigation ends and Cruise takes corrective motion to enhance security. “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.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”