On Tuesday, officials in California announced that the DMV had suspended permits for General Motors’ autonomous vehicles, Cruise, operating in San Francisco.
Cruise was under investigation by federal and state transportation officials after several crashes occurred, according to the Los Angeles Times. Some of these crashes involved pedestrians.
“Public safety remains the California DMV’s top priority, and the department’s autonomous vehicle regulations provide a framework to facilitate the safe testing and deployment of this technology on California public roads,” the agency said in a statement.
“When there is an unreasonable risk to public safety, the DMV can immediately suspend or revoke permits,” the agency added. “There is no set time for a suspension. The California DMV today notified Cruise that the department is suspending Cruise’s autonomous vehicle deployment and driverless testing permits, effective immediately.”
On Tuesday, Cruise stated that it would halt operations and evaluate improvements.
“Ultimately, we develop and deploy autonomous vehicles in an effort to save lives,” Cruise said in an emailed statement to NBC News. Reportedly, this month, a human driver of another vehicle ran over a pedestrian at night. Then, a Cruise vehicle ran over the woman.
On its website, Cruise said that its self-driving vehicle “braked aggressively before impact and because it detected a collision” and that it then tried to pull over. In the process, the car pulled the pedestrian forward “approximately 20 feet.”
“Our thoughts continue to be with the victim as we hope for a rapid and complete recovery,” Cruise said. “Our teams are currently doing an analysis to identify potential enhancements to the AV’s response to this kind of extremely rare event.”
In the California DMV’s Order of Suspension to Cruise, it claimed that the company did not disclose the full details of the incident and stated that the cars “may lack the ability to respond in a safe and appropriate manner during incidents involving a pedestrian.”
In an email to NBC, Hannah Lindow, Cruise’s senior policy communications manager, said that the company “had a meeting with the DMV on 10/3, in which we showed them the complete video multiple times. They later requested a copy of the video shown on 10/3, which we provided to them. … Shortly after the incident, our team proactively shared information with the California DMV, CPUC, and NHTSA, including the full video. We have stayed in close contact with regulators to answer their questions.”
NBC noted that Cruise vehicles have also “snarled traffic,” blocked city buses and delayed emergency vehicles.
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