Cruise pauses driverless operations after permit suspension

Beset by glitches with its robotaxis and the suspension of its deployment and testing permits in its prime market, Cruise pressed the pause button on its driverless operations across the country Thursday night.

"The most important thing for us right now is to take steps to rebuild public trust," the company said in a written statement. "Part of this involves taking a hard look inwards and at how we do work at Cruise, even if it means doing things that are uncomfortable or difficult."

The operational pause comes two days after the California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended Cruise's testing and deployment permits in the wake of an Oct. 2 pedestrian collision.

In their suspension orders, DMV officials said Cruise vehicles were unsafe for public roads. Further, they allege that Cruise executives withheld safety information in the wake of the crash.

Cruise disputes that it misrepresented or omitted details related to the crash in a meeting with DMV officials that occurred the following day.

But as the company pauses its driverless operations, safety experts say they should skip the acrimonious dealings with the DMV and commit to introspection, which produces a stronger safety culture.

"Cruise is doing a great job of getting in its own way," said Missy Cummings, director of George Mason University's Autonomy and Robotics Center and a former safety advisor at NHTSA.

"They need to get some people in management who really understand this kind of crisis scenario and what you need to do to be predictably safe," she said.

Cummings was one of the U.S. Navy's first female fighter pilots at the beginning of her career. When crashes or safety shortcomings occurred, she said, the Navy's fleet would be grounded so everybody could review incidents and policies.

"It was called a safety stand-down," she said. "Nobody would fly, and we'd try to do a hard and honest look at what's going on. That's what Cruise needs to do."

This week's suspension and operational pause stem from the Oct. 2 pedestrian crash at the intersection of 5th and Market in San Francisco.

The circumstances are complicated. A human-driven car first struck the victim, who remained atop the hood of that car as it drove through the intersection. She then fell off the hood into the path of the oncoming Cruise robotaxi, which ran her over and stopped on top of her.

That's where the incident seemingly ended. But ten days later, the California DMV said it learned from another agency investigating Cruise that the car later moved another 20 feet with the victim dragged underneath.

The DMV alleges that Cruise only showed them video of the initial strike and not the later movement, which potentially caused further injuries. Cruise spokesperson Hannah Lindow said Thursday the company had shown the complete incident to DMV officials multiple times.

Cruise's problems are not limited to the Oct. 2 crash.

NHTSA is conducting two investigations involving Cruise. One centers on vehicle behavior around pedestrians. The agency is reviewing two pedestrian collisions, including the Oct. 2 incident, and two more incidents where it wants to determine if Cruise vehicles exercised appropriate caution around pedestrians.

Cruise is supposed to provide information related to those crashes to NHTSA by Friday.

In the second investigation, the federal regulatory agency is probing at least five incidents in which Cruise vehicles abruptly braked with no apparent obstacles ahead and were subsequently rear-ended by human motorists.

Those investigations are focused in scope. Cruise has endured further problems in San Francisco, with vehicles clustering at intersections and fouling traffic, interfering with first responders during emergencies, even driving into wet cement.

Bryan Reimer, a research scientist at the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics and a founder of the Advanced Vehicle Technology Consortium, has been calling for Cruise to pause its operations for more than a month.

"The road to success here is going to require rest stops and require reflection, discussion and alternate paths," he said. "Failing to acknowledge this only creates new risks and erosion of trust in the system."

Cruise's driverless pause mirrors one that Uber Advanced Technology Group took following a fatal pedestrian collision during self-driving testing in March 2018.

Uber convened outside experts to examine its safety culture in the wake of that crash, Reimer said, suggesting Cruise do the same, bringing together experts from not just state and federal regulatory agencies, but stakeholders from the city of San Francisco — who have long expressed concerns about Cruise — academics and other industry representatives to hash out the best path forward.

"These sides have to have more transparent conversations, and we need some outside forces with a broader perspective in the room," he said. "A collaborative approach is the only way we're going to succeed here."