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Kyle Vogt resignation —

After robotaxi dragged pedestrian 20 feet, cruise founder and ceo resigns, gm-owned cruise "failed to disclose" full video and key crash details, dmv said..

Jon Brodkin - Nov 20, 2023 6:07 pm UTC

The CEO of self-driving car firm Cruise resigned yesterday following an accident in which a Cruise robotaxi dragged a pedestrian 20 feet. California officials accused Cruise of withholding key information and video after the accident, and the company's self-driving operations are on hold while federal authorities investigate.

"Today I resigned from my position as CEO of Cruise," co-founder Kyle Vogt wrote in a post on twitter.com . "The startup I launched in my garage has given over 250,000 driverless rides across several cities, with each ride inspiring people with a small taste of the future," he also wrote.

Cruise is owned by General Motors, which bought the company in 2016. Vogt expressed optimism about Cruise's future without him, saying the team is "executing on a solid, multi-year roadmap and an exciting product vision."

"As for what's next for me, I plan to spend time with my family and explore some new ideas. Thanks for the great ride!" Vogt wrote.

On Saturday, one day before resigning, Vogt reportedly apologized to staff in an email. "As CEO, I take responsibility for the situation Cruise is in today. There are no excuses, and there is no sugar coating what has happened. We need to double down on safety, transparency, and community engagement," he wrote in the email quoted by Reuters .

Robotaxi kept moving after hitting woman

The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) last month suspended Cruise's permits for autonomous vehicle deployment and driverless testing. Cruise subsequently announced a "pause" of all of its driverless operations in the US, which includes San Francisco, Austin, Phoenix, Houston, Dallas, and Miami. Cruise said the pause affects about 70 vehicles.

The DMV action came three weeks after a Cruise vehicle hit and dragged a pedestrian in San Francisco. A woman entered a crosswalk at nighttime and was hit by two cars, the second of which was the Cruise vehicle. First, a Nissan Sentra "tragically struck and propelled the pedestrian into the path of the AV," Cruise said in a description of the incident .

The Cruise vehicle then moved "rightward before braking aggressively, but still made contact with the pedestrian," the company said. "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 accident happened at 9:29 pm on October 2. The Nissan driver fled the scene, and Cruise said it was sharing information with authorities to help them track down the hit-and-run driver. The woman suffered severe injuries and was reportedly still in "serious condition" at San Francisco General Hospital in late October.

In an order of suspension that was published by Vice , the California DMV said that in a meeting on October 3, "Cruise failed to disclose that the AV executed a pullover maneuver that increased the risk of, and may have caused, further injury to a pedestrian. Cruise's omission hinders the ability of the department to effectively and timely evaluate the safe operation of Cruise's vehicles and puts the safety of the public at risk."

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on October 16 opened an investigation into Cruise vehicles after receiving reports of two pedestrian injuries, including the October 2 incident. The Cruise cars "may not have exercised appropriate caution around pedestrians in the roadway," the agency said. Another Cruise robotaxi hit a fire truck in San Francisco in August.

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Cruise ship still docked in San Francisco after hitting pier

Ruby Princess' estimated departure is now Sunday, according to officials.

The Ruby Princess cruise ship that startled sleeping San Francisco residents Thursday morning when it collided with a pier while docking won't likely depart until Sunday, officials said.

"Repairs are underway and our technical experts estimate that repairs are likely to take upwards of 24 hours," said Princess Cruises on Friday, giving an estimated departure time of Sunday at 4 p.m. PT.

The ship was returning from a 10-day cruise to Alaska, which had 3,328 guests and 1,159 crew members on board, none of whom were injured and all safely deboarded, according to Princess Cruises.

The damage done to the vessel did not slow down new passengers from boarding at 4 p.m. PT, set to embark on the next 10-day cruise. As of Friday afternoon, 4 p.m. locally, the ship was still docked, according to a live shot from ABC affiliate KGO.

Following an inspection from the U.S. Coast Guard, Ruby Princess will be cleared to sail once all damage from Thursday has been fully repaired, according to the cruise line.

According to the cruise line, there are over 3,000 guests currently boarded, who are being given the option to cancel and receive "a 100% refund of their cruise fare, post-cruise hotel packages and transfers booked through Princess, prepaid shore excursions and other prepaid items and taxes, fees and port expenses."

While also being given a 50% voucher for a future cruise, guests are being given the option to decide by Sunday at 11 a.m. PT, and in the meantime, they are free to come and go from the cruise ship to explore San Francisco.

MORE: 1 dead, 2 missing after barge crashes into boat on Ohio River

Guests who do decide to stay aboard and embark on a now 7-day journey to Alaska, will receive a partial refund of 75%.

The collision was so loud, residents told KGO that they could hear the impact and they were awoken by the sounds of the crew scrambling.

MORE: 2 firefighters die while battling blaze aboard ship in New Jersey

Witnesses said the dock took the brunt of the damage from the crash.

The Coast Guard is investigating the incident, according to police. A spokesperson for the San Francisco Bar Pilots group told ABC News in a statement that it is cooperating with the investigation.

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A Cruise car hit a pedestrian. The company’s response could set back California’s new robotaxi industry

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On Oct. 2, a Cruise driverless robotaxi hit a woman in downtown San Francisco and pinned her under the car, sending her to the hospital with serious injuries.

On Tuesday, state authorities suspended Cruise’s operating permit, banning it from deploying driverless cars on public roads until safety concerns are resolved. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating whether to take action too.

The turn of events marks a new chapter in the evolution of driverless cars and trucks. Not only is the underlying technology of autonomous vehicles under question; so too are the ethics of Cruise management, centering on founder and Chief Executive Kyle Vogt.

In pulling the permit, the California Department of Motor Vehicles cited safety concerns but also alleged that Cruise — owned by General Motors — misled the agency about basic facts.

What Cruise did not say, and what the DMV revealed Tuesday, is that after sitting still for an unspecified period of time, the robotaxi began moving forward at about 7 mph, dragging the woman with it for 20 feet.

The combination of safety and trust issues probably will deepen public skepticism about the technology and cause regulators to reevaluate their level of confidence in Cruise, if not the industry as a whole. That’s according to Bryant Walker Smith, an expert in automated vehicle law at the University of South Carolina. If Cruise can’t be trusted to be straightforward about the facts surrounding a serious injury case, “naturally the next question is how can we trust anything else you’ve told us.”

Here’s what happened: A car with a human behind the wheel hit a woman who was crossing the street against a red light at the intersection of 5 th and Market Streets. The pedestrian slid over the hood and into the path of a Cruise robotaxi, with no human driver. She was pinned under the car, and was taken to a hospital.

Those were the facts that were publicized immediately after the incident. Cruise called the crash tragic but said that the robotaxi stopped as it was supposed to and that a human driver couldn’t have reacted any faster.

Cruise had shown a video of the incident to reporters but barred them from posting it publicly. (Because of that restriction, The Times turned down Cruise’s offer.) The video shown to reporters ended with the robotaxi sitting motionless. The video was edited and did not show the car start up and drag the woman 20 more feet.

The DMV said Cruise showed it the same abbreviated video, and only later did the agency see the full version. The two sides are fighting about that version of events. Cruise said it showed the DMV the full video from the start.

In any case, Smith said, “If Cruise did not show [reporters] the whole video or acknowledge that something else happened, that is not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

He found Cruise’s withholding of the full clip “baffling,” because, he said, “of course that’s going to come out.”

San Francisco’s fire chief is fed up with robotaxis that mess with her firetrucks. And L.A. is next

As robotaxi companies plan to provide service in Los Angeles, San Francisco officials battle with state regulators over robotaxi safety.

June 22, 2023

Asked why the company did not show the pedestrian-dragging part of the video to reporters, Cruise spokesperson Hannah Lindow emailed this response: “We moved quickly to get information out to necessary parties, with our top priority being to ensure that all officials had access to the information they needed immediately to apprehend the criminal in this situation — the hit and run driver. Initial media reports stated that the Cruise vehicle initially struck the pedestrian and did not mention the hit-and-run driver that caused the incident. Additionally, first responders did not initially mention the hit-and-run driver. It was important to correct the record to show that the incident was initiated by a human-driven vehicle that fled the scene.”

Cruise and its competitor Waymo have been under fire for months for the tendency of their robotaxis to interfere with firefighters, emergency medical workers and police, to the point where the chief of the San Francisco Fire Department deemed them “not ready for prime time.”

At the time, the companies sought permission for a major expansion of their robotaxi services in San Francisco from the California Public Utilities Commission. Opponents asked the commission for a pause, recommending the emergency responder issue be resolved first. In August, the commission voted 3 to 1 to greenlight the expansion. One of the yes votes came from Commissioner John Reynolds, Cruise’s former corporate counsel, appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

For Cruise, that plan for now has been dashed. After the vote, a Cruise vehicle crashed into a firetruck, and the company’s vehicles began to act in bizarre ways, clustering together to block pedestrian and vehicle traffic at busy intersections for no apparent reason. All that preceded the robot-drags-human incident and Cruise’s questionable response.

The repercussions could be huge, Smith said. “One possibility is that this feeds into the narrative of automated vehicles and the companies behind them are suffering and failing,” he said.

The other possibility is that “this becomes a moment of differentiation” separating the qualities of the various robotaxi companies in the eyes regulators and the general public.

Companies including Zoox, Motional and Waymo are taking a more deliberate and safety-conscious approach to their rollouts, he said. “Waymo, though not perfect, has been quite public and detailed about what safety means to them, in ways much better than Cruise.”

Editorial: The robotaxi revolution is here. L.A., other cities need to be able to regulate driverless cars

California should not blithely turn over public streets to Cruise, Waymo or other robotaxi companies to develop their autonomous vehicle businesses.

Aug. 20, 2023

Los Angeles is currently considering how to handle an expected influx of robotaxis in the near future. One issue: The state has given cities no authority to regulate the technology, a restriction that had been pushed by industry lobbyists, and backed by Newsom.

Vogt often talks about safety as Cruise’s top concern: “The culture of Cruise and the sincerity with which we treat our values and behaviors is much higher than I’ve ever had in my career,” he told an audience at the Disrupt conference in San Francisco in September.

But he also emphasized the need to move fast. “San Francisco is a billion-dollar ride hailing market,” he said. “The scale is going to be very rapid. We are going to build thousands or maybe even more [vehicles] next year…. The goal is to get to scale as quickly as we can in terms of the total number of AVs to make this business profitable and sustainable.”

For now, Cruise is not moving at all.

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Driverless car startup Cruise's no good, terrible year

Cruise rolled out hundreds of its robotaxis in San Francisco this year. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images hide caption

Cruise rolled out hundreds of its robotaxis in San Francisco this year.

A year ago, the future seemed bright for the driverless car startup Cruise. As 2022 wrapped up, CEO Kyle Vogt took to Twitter to post about the company's autonomous vehicles rolling onto the streets of San Francisco, Austin and Phoenix.

"Folks," he wrote , "we are entering the golden years of AV expansion."

Robotaxis, which give rides to any paying customer with no driver at the wheel, were one of the latest tech products to be fully unleashed to the public this year. Dozens of companies, including Alphabet's Waymo and Amazon's Zoox, have been competing to be king. Cruise, which is owned by General Motors, was one of the fastest growing of those startups.

GM had poured billions into Cruise as the company emphasized scaling up at an unprecedented pace.

"We're on a trajectory that most businesses dream of, which is exponential growth," Vogt said during a July call with investors. He boasted about the size of Cruise's driverless car fleet, adding that "you will see several times this scale within the next six months."

By August, California had given Cruise permission to run around 300 robotaxis throughout San Francisco. (Waymo deploys around 100). And the company had started testing in several more cities across the country, including Dallas, Miami, Nashville and Charlotte.

But then, in October, things took a disastrous turn.

California orders Cruise driverless cars off the roads because of safety concerns

On the night of October 2, one of Cruise's driverless cars struck a pedestrian in San Francisco leaving her critically injured and fighting for her life. Her identity has not been released.

A cascade of events followed that ended with Vogt resigning and GM announcing it was pulling hundreds of millions in funding. Cruise is now facing government investigations , fines that could total millions and an uncertain future.

"They were the bull in a china shop. They just kept charging ahead," says Missy Cummings, a George Mason University professor who runs the Mason Autonomy and Robotics Center. "When we sat around and discussed who was going to have the worst accident in that crowd, everyone knew it was going to be Cruise."

Tension was building

Even before the October incident, tension over self-driving cars was simmering in San Francisco.

Both Cruise and Waymo say their driverless cars are safer than human drivers – they don't get drunk, text or fall asleep at the wheel. The companies say they've driven millions of driverless miles without any human fatalities and the roads are safer with their autonomous systems in charge.

But, as robotaxis became increasingly ubiquitous throughout San Francisco, residents complained about near collisions and blunders. Local reports showed footage of confused vehicles clogging a residential cul-de-sac , driving into wet cement at a construction site and regularly running red lights .

Armed with traffic cones, protesters are immobilizing driverless cars

An activist group called Safe Street Rebel has been cataloging the incidents , which now clock in at more than 500. The group figured out that if they put orange traffic cones on the hoods of driverless cars , they would render the vehicles immobile. So, they started going out at night to "cone" as many cars as possible as a form of protest.

"When you start having passive aggressive protests like people putting orange cones on your cars, this isn't going to come out your way," says Cummings.

Protesters demonstrate against driverless cars in front of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in San Francisco in August. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images hide caption

Protesters demonstrate against driverless cars in front of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in San Francisco in August.

Cruise and Waymo also ran into problems with San Francisco's police and fire departments . At government hearings, the agencies testified that the driverless cars were a nuisance. They tallied nearly 75 incidents where self-driving cars got in the way of rescue operations , including driving through yellow emergency tape, blocking firehouse driveways, running over fire hoses and refusing to move for first responders.

"Our folks cannot be paying attention to an autonomous vehicle when we've got ladders to throw," San Francisco Fire Chief Jeanine Nicholson said in an August hearing.

California allows robo-taxis to expand and emergency responders aren't happy

Despite public angst over autonomous vehicles, California state regulators voted to allow the companies to expand their robotaxi services in August. That prompted the city of San Francisco to file motions with the state demanding a halt to the expansion.

Seven days after the vote, a Cruise car collided with a fire truck, injuring a passenger.

A pedestrian incident and an alleged cover-up

After the fire truck collision, the California Department of Motor Vehicles told Cruise to reduce its fleet in half, to 150 cars, while it investigated the incident.

Then, just weeks later, the Cruise car hit the pedestrian. Based on police reports and initial video footage from Cruise, the woman was first struck by a hit-and-run human driver whose vehicle threw her into the path of the driverless car.

Cruise said its car "braked aggressively to minimize the impact." It provided some news outlets with video of the incident, which ended right after the driverless car hit the woman . Cruise also gave footage to the DMV.

Over the next few weeks, Cruise continued to expand – launching driverless robotaxi rides in Houston . Then, in a surprise announcement at the end of October, the DMV ordered Cruise to immediately stop all operations in California.

The DMV says Cruise withheld footage from the night of the incident.

The facts stated in the DMV's order of suspension for Cruise. California Department of Motor Vehicles hide caption

The new video footage showed the Cruise car striking the pedestrian, running her over, and then dragging her an additional 20 feet at 7 miles per hour as it pulls to the curb and stops on top of her.

Philip Koopman, a Carnegie Mellon associate professor and autonomous vehicle safety expert, says most human drivers wouldn't respond this way. "Before you move your car, you're going to find out where the pedestrian is," Koopman says. "The last thing you want to do is be driving over them, but that's exactly what the Cruise vehicle did."

Cruise says it gave regulators the entire video immediately after the incident. But the DMV says it was only after requesting the footage that Cruise handed it over – 10 days later.

It quickly snowballed for Cruise after that. The company recalled and grounded all of its cars nationwide – nearly 1,000 vehicles. It initiated a third-party safety review of its robotaxis and hired an outside law firm to examine its response to the pedestrian incident. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also opened an investigation into Cruise .

Meanwhile, The Intercept reported that Cruise cars had difficulty detecting children , according to internal documents. And The New York Times reported that remote human workers had to intervene to control Cruise's driverless vehicles every 2.5 to five miles.

By mid-November, Vogt was gone. Nearly a dozen other executives stepped down and Cruise announced it was laying off nearly a quarter of its staff.

Ripple effect across the industry

Cruise will continue its work on driverless cars as a commercial product, says spokesperson Navideh Forghani. She added that the company's approach is "with safety as our north star." GM's spokesperson says it remains committed to Cruise "as they refocus on trust, accountability and transparency."

Waymo has avoided much of the public ire that built up over the summer. Its spokesperson told NPR that "safety is our mission and top priority" and that "we treat every event seriously by investigating it to understand what happened."

But Cruise's controversy still affects the self-driving industry overall, says Carnegie Mellon's Koopman.

"The whole industry, with one voice, has been promoting the same talking points as Cruise," Koopman says. "So, if one of them is discredited, it discredits the entire industry because they're all using the same playbook."

A lot of that is the claim of driverless cars being superhuman when it comes to safety, he says.

Both Cruise and Waymo have released studies saying their vehicles are involved in fewer crashes than human drivers. One Waymo study says it has an 85% reduction in injury-causing collisions and a Cruise study says it has a 74% reduction . Neither company has released the raw data of these reports.

Koopman says the safety narrative can unravel when people see the driverless cars on city streets making the same mistakes as human drivers. He says he'd like to see the companies focus on making sure the technology is actually safe.

"To be clear, human drivers will text, they'll be distracted. There's the saying, 'the lights are on, but nobody's home,'" Koopman says. "But it turns out, that happens to robotaxis too."

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Woman injured after being struck by SF hit-and-run driver, trapped under autonomous car, Cruise says

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- A woman is seriously injured after being struck by a human driver that "launched" her in front of a Cruise autonomous car in San Francisco Monday night, the robotaxi company said.

Police say at 9:31 p.m., officers responded to 5th and Market Streets and discovered a female pedestrian trapped under a Cruise vehicle.

San Francisco Fire Department says they had to use the "jaws of life" to lift the car off of the woman, who was trapped underneath.

The victim was transported to SF General Hospital with "multiple traumatic injuries," according to SFFD.

In a statement posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, Cruise explained that another driver hit the woman, sending her into the path of the Cruise, before leaving the scene.

Here is the statement:

"At approximately 9:30 p.m. on October 2, 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 driver of the other vehicle fled the scene, and at the request of the police the AV was kept in place. Our heartfelt concern and focus is the wellbeing of the person who was injured and we are actively working with police to help identify the responsible driver."

Tuesday morning, ABC7 News talked with a spokesperson for Cruise who shared some video of the crash in question.

VIDEO: Driverless Cruise car struck by SF firetruck, injuring passenger, company says

While they would not let ABC7 News record the video as to not compromise the police investigation, it showed that the victim was hit by another car first.

The impact of that crash was so severe, the victim was thrown into the way of the Cruise vehicle before she was run over.

Cruise officials said their vehicle operated as designed and started braking moments before impact.

Police are investigating the incident.

"At the very minimum, we are canvassing the area for witnesses, for surveillance video, for any video that may have been captured by any personal individuals, as well as the technology that's utilized in the vehicle itself," SFPD Officer Robert Rueca said.

MORE: Why Cruise is keeping half of its driverless fleet off the streets of SF

Police added that this is a first for them and they have not seen a crash involving injuries this serious with an autonomous car up until Monday night.

Sam Abuelsamid is an automotive technology analyst with Guidehouse Insights.

He says that automated driving systems are constantly adding data.

"Part of the doing an automated driving system is the detection. Having to use the sensors to detect what's around you -- predicting what all the other road users are going to do in the next several seconds" said Abuelsamid.

He says engineers try to plan for every possible scenario -- even ones that involve collisions with pedestrians.

VIDEO: Journalist documents wild ride inside Waymo self-driving car in SF

"There's literally an infinite number of potential scenarios that could occur. This is certainly one of those," said Abuelsamid.

Abuelsamid says a driverless car most likely couldn't have avoided the collision on Monday night.

"Sometimes things happen so quickly that there is simply nothing you can do," he said. "No matter how well you are tracking all the other road users around you."

Cruise says its car started braking before striking the pedestrian. AV experts say that doesn't change the facts.

"It's basic physics. When you have a 4,000-pound vehicle, it inherently is going to take a certain amount of time to stop," said Abuelsamid.

The SFPD Traffic Division is leading the investigation. Anyone with information is asked to contact SFPD at 415-575-4444 or text a tip to TIP411 and begin the message with SFPD.

If you're on the ABC7 News app, click here to watch live

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Driverless Taxis Blocked Ambulance in Fatal Accident, San Francisco Fire Dept. Says

Two Cruise taxis delayed an ambulance carrying a car accident victim to a hospital, a department report said. The company said it was not at fault.

By Yiwen Lu

Two Cruise driverless taxis blocked an ambulance carrying a critically injured patient who later died at a hospital, a San Francisco Fire Department report said, in another incident involving self-driving cars in the city.

On Aug. 14, two Cruise autonomous vehicles were stopped in the right two lanes of a four-lane, one-way street in the SoMa neighborhood, where the victim was found, according to the department report. It said that a police vehicle in another lane had to be moved in order for the ambulance to leave.

The driverless vehicles delayed transport and medical care, the report said. The patient, who had been struck by a car, was pronounced dead about 20 to 30 minutes after arriving at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, about 2.4 miles away from the accident.

Cruise, an autonomous vehicle subsidiary of General Motors, said that it was not at fault. The footage Cruise shared with The New York Times appeared to show that one of its vehicles had moved from the scene before the victim was loaded to the ambulance, while the other stopped in the right lane until after the ambulance left. The footage also showed that other vehicles, including another ambulance, passed by the right side of the Cruise taxi.

“As soon as the victim was loaded into the ambulance, the ambulance left the scene immediately and was never impeded” by the Cruise vehicle, the company said in a statement. The ambulance passed the stopped Cruise vehicle approximately 90 seconds after loading the victim, according to the footage.

Cruise said that a police officer spoke to one of its employees through remote assistance in the vehicle, and that the company was able to navigate it away from the scene after the ambulance left.

The Fire Department confirmed the report , which was first obtained by Forbes. Jeanine Nicholson, chief of the Fire Department, said that “seconds matter” in such incidents and the problem was that responders were not able to access to the patient.

“I have yet to see Cruise taking responsibility for anything,” Ms. Nicholson said, adding that more conversations need to happen.

Aaron Peskin, the president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, said that regardless of what led to the victim’s death, the “accumulative total” of incidents involving driverless cars was more alarming. “All of them have a common theme, which is autonomous vehicles are not ready for prime time,” Mr. Peskin said.

Cruise and Waymo, which is backed by Alphabet, Google’s parent company, began to offer driverless taxi services in San Francisco last year. The accident occurred four days after both companies obtained a permit from California state regulators to expand their services to charge for rides at all hours in San Francisco.

The Fire Department said the case was one of more than 70 of autonomous vehicles interfering with emergency responders. San Francisco officials have protested the expansion of driverless taxi services since January, pointing to cases where driverless cars blocked emergency vehicles and interfered during active firefighting and crime scenes.

Some city officials have said that these incidents are a small fraction of all cases involving driverless cars. The companies were required to report only collisions to regulators, not other incidents.

Since the expansion of driverless taxi services began, Cruise vehicles were reported to have blocked traffic and to have been stuck in wet cement. On Aug. 17, a Cruise vehicle collided with a fire truck. The next day, the California Department of Motor Vehicles, which oversees the safety of autonomous vehicles, asked Cruise to halve the number of vehicles it was operating in the city as it investigated the incidents.

City officials plan to file a motion for a new hearing on the service expansion, Mr. Peskin said. David Chiu, the city attorney, previously asked the California Public Utilities Commission, the agency that approved the expansion, to halt the plan.

Yiwen Lu is a technology reporting fellow based in San Francisco. More about Yiwen Lu

Driverless Cars and the Future of Transportation

China’s Advantage: Across China , more assisted driving systems and robot taxis are being tested than in any other country, with censors limiting discussions about safety.

A Very Slow Restart: An incident that seriously injured a pedestrian in San Francisco led Cruise, G.M.’s driverless car subsidiary, to take all of its cars off the road. The question now is when they will return .

An Appetite for Destruction: A wave of lawsuits argue that Tesla’s Autopilot software is dangerously overhyped. What can its blind spots teach us about Elon Musk, the company’s erratic chief executive ?

Along for the Ride: Here’s what New York Times reporters experienced during test rides in driverless cars operated by Tesla , Waymo  and Cruise .

The Future of Transportation?: Driverless cars, once a Silicon Valley fantasy, have become a 24-hour-a-day reality in San Francisco . “The Daily” looked at the unique challenges of coexisting with cars that drive themselves .

Here's what reportedly led to Cruise robotaxis getting banned in San Francisco

• Officials have banned Cruise robotaxis in San Francisco, warning they are a risk to public safety.
• Officials said this is because Cruise failed to disclose information about a recent accident, per Vice.
• Cruise has disputed these claims. 

Cruise's robotaxi permits were reportedly revoked because the company failed to disclose video footage of an incident in which a pedestrian was dragged beneath one of its driverless cars for 20 feet after it ran her over, California regulators have said, per Vice .

Cruise was banned from operating its robotaxi service in San Francisco on Tuesday, with regulators warning that the controversial autonomous car company's vehicles posed "an unreasonable risk to public safety" following a series of accidents.

The company, which aims to build the world's most advanced self-driving cars, is still able to test its vehicles with a safety driver in the car.

In the order of suspension, obtained by Vice , the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) referred to an incident from earlier this year , where a pedestrian was hit by a separate vehicle and fell into the path of a Cruise robotaxi, which ran them over.

The autonomous car hard-braked and, having detected a collision, attempted to pull over, traveling 20 feet at a speed of 7 mph while the pedestrian was still underneath the car.

The DMV said that its representatives met with Cruise the following day and were shown video footage of the accident captured by the robotaxi's cameras.

However, they said that the self-driving company did not disclose the footage of the car attempting to pull over immediately after the crash, and only provided it several days later at the DMV's request.

"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," the DMV wrote, per Vice.

In a statement to Vice, a spokesperson for Cruise disputed the DMV's report. "I can confirm that Cruise showed the full video to the DMV on October 3rd, and played it multiple times," they said.

Cruise has been a controversial presence in San Francisco ever since it received approval to run its robotaxi service 24/7 in the city in August.

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The company's cars have been involved in several accidents, including a collision with a firetruck that resulted in a passenger being taken to hospital, ultimately leading to Cruise agreeing to slash its fleet in half .

Following the suspension of its driverless permits, Cruise announced that it would pause its driverless car services in San Francisco entirely.

"Ultimately, we develop and deploy autonomous vehicles in an effort to save lives. In the incident being reviewed by the DMV, a human hit-and-run driver tragically struck and propelled the pedestrian into the path of the AV," a company spokesperson told Insider.

"The AV braked aggressively before impact and because it detected a collision, it attempted to pull over to avoid further safety issues. When the AV tried to pull over, it continued before coming to a final stop, pulling the pedestrian forward.

"Shortly after the incident, our team proactively shared information with the CA DMV, CPUC, and NHTSA, including the full video. Our teams are currently doing an analysis to identify potential enhancements to the AV's response to this kind of extremely rare event," they added.

Watch: Experts say we're decades from fully autonomous cars. Here's why.

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GM’s Cruise Loses Its Self-Driving License in San Francisco After a Robotaxi Dragged a Person

California has suspended driverless vehicles operated by the General Motors subsidiary Cruise in the city of San Francisco—just two months after the state began allowing the robotaxis to pick up paying passengers around the clock. The suspension stems from a gruesome incident on October 2 in which a human-driven vehicle hit a female pedestrian and threw her into the path of a Cruise car. The driverless Cruise car hit her, stopped, and then tried to pull over, dragging her approximately 20 feet.

California’s Department of Motor Vehicles says in a statement that it has determined that Cruise’s vehicles are not safe for public operation, and that the company ”misrepresented” safety information about its autonomous vehicle technology. In a filing on the suspension, the agency says that Cruise initially provided footage showing only the collision between its vehicle and the woman. It says Cruise did not disclose information about its car's subsequent “pull-over maneuver” that dragged the woman after the initial impact, and that the DMV only obtained full footage nine days after the crash.

Cruise spokesperson Navideh Forghani says Cruise has stayed in close contact with regulators but disputed the DMV’s timeline. She says the agency was shown video of the entire incident, including the pull-over, the day after the crash. The DMV says Cruise will either have to appeal its decision or provide information about how it has addressed its technology’s “deficiencies” in order to win back its permit.

Also today, the California Public Utilities Commission, which initially granted Cruise permission to carry passengers, suspended the company’s permits as it carries out its own investigation of the company, CPUC spokesperson Terrie Prosper wrote in an email. Passengers will not be able to ride in San Francisco until the permits are reinstated.

The suspensions mark a serious setback for the driverless vehicle industry, which has faced charges of under-regulation even as Cruise and others plan to expand to new cities across the US. Cruise is still permitted to operate robotaxis in San Francisco with a human safety driver behind the wheel—which is how the company initially began to test self-driving cars in the city. The DMV suspension has no specified end date.

Cruise provided additional details of the October 2 collision in a blog post published today. According to the company, which has 40 cameras and sensors mounted on each of its vehicles, its self-driving vehicle quickly swerved and braked in an attempt to avoid a collision with the woman, but still made impact. The vehicle then stopped but, according to Cruise, “attempted to pull over,” dragging the woman an additional 20 feet. Cruise says this sort of evasive maneuver was built into the vehicle’s software to promote safety, and is required by both California and federal regulators.

Cruise says the vehicle then stopped again. Emergency responders arrived soon after, according to TV station NBC Bay Area, and the San Francisco Fire Department said the victim was “extricated from beneath the vehicle using rescue tools.” The department said she was transported to the hospital with multiple traumatic injuries. The human driver of the vehicle that initially struck the woman has not been caught.

Last week, the top US road safety regulator, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, opened an investigation into Cruise’s autonomous driving system, based on at least four reported incidents in which Cruise vehicles collided with or got close to pedestrians and pedestrian crosswalks, including the October 2 crash

Forghani, the Cruise spokesperson, says the company has shared video and other information related to the incident with the California DMV and NHTSA officials. “Our teams are currently doing an analysis to identify potential enhancements to the [autonomous vehicle]’s response to this kind of extremely rare event,” she wrote in a statement.

In August, California’s DMV asked Cruise to cut in half the number of self-driving vehicles operating in the city after its robotaxis were involved in a series of crashes, including one in which a Cruise vehicle collided with a fire truck that ran a red light on the way to an emergency.

Even before Cruise and its leading competitor, Alphabet’s Waymo , received permission from the state taxi regulator to operate all-day paid rides in San Francisco, both companies received criticism from city residents, emergency responders, and labor advocates for incidents in which the technology froze in or impeded city traffic .

In August, the San Francisco Fire Department told state officials that its employees experienced at least 55 incidents with self-driving cars since the beginning of 2023, including a handful in which fire officials report the cars delayed emergency responders. In one incident, worried fire personnel broke the windows of a Cruise vehicle in an attempt to prevent it from driving onto an active fire scene. Robotaxis have also delayed city transit buses and streetcars. Cruise said earlier this month that it has improved the way its technology responds to emergency vehicles and situations.

Updated 10-24-2023, 8:45 pm EDT: This story was updated with information about the CPUC suspending Cruise's permit to carry passengers.

Updated 10-24-2023, 6:05 pm EDT: This story was updated with additional details of the DMV's suspension and appeal's process, and additional comment from Cruise.

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12.1.2023 Update:

Out of respect to ongoing regulatory engagement, we have removed the Oct. 24 post, and  as previously communicated , are performing a full review on our response to the Oct. 2 incident. We will share more information at the appropriate time.

Laid-off Cruise worker dishes on lingering impact of San Francisco crash on robotaxi company

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Cruise’s announcement Thursday that it would cut around a quarter of its staff came at the tail-end of months of chaos and what a laid-off employee characterized as an internal lack of transparency at the company that helped sow distrust internally.

The sacking of around 900 employees is the latest blow to the General Motors-owned company still reeling from the impact of an Oct. 2 incident in San Francisco, where a Cruise vehicle struck and dragged a woman nearly 20 feet after she was first hit by a human-driven vehicle.

Regulators have accused the General Motors-owned company of hiding video of the accident and are potentially levying $1.5 million in fines against Cruise. 

According to a regulatory filing with state employment officials, Cruise laid off a total of 535 employees across the state, including 371 positions located in San Francisco. The majority of these—228 jobs—were centered at the company’s SoMa headquarters at 333 Brannan St., with 120 positions cut at Cruise’s 1201 Bryant St. office and 23 jobs at its servicing center at 640 Cesar Chavez St.

A further 43 jobs were cut at the company’s Sunnyvale office and 18 jobs at its South San Francisco warehouse location. The remainder—98 positions—were remote employees based in California. 

These positions spanned departments including software development, marketing, recruiting, accounting and operations. 

Many rank-and-file employees were blindsided by much of the news that came out of the dragging incident and the reports about the company hiding the footage, according to the employee, who asked to remain anonymous because of fears of retaliation.

The scale of the mass layoffs also came as a surprise. The laid-off employee said there were only mentions of “small operational drawdowns” among temporary workers who were not getting their contracts renewed or staff to support operations in markets where Cruise has paused deployment. 

“The 24% or so was a surprise in terms of the numbers that we saw coming out,” the laid-off employee said. The employee said they realized they were among the positions affected when Slack access was shut off Thursday morning. 

After information shared during all-staff meetings by company leadership, including then-CEO Kyle Vogt, was leaked to the media, the employee said executives became much less transparent in company-wide meetings, breeding more mistrust in recent weeks.

General Motors, which announced it would be cutting spending on the self-driving car company by “hundreds of millions of dollars,” has been in the process of clearing out much of Cruise’s leadership. 

Vogt resigned as CEO last month, which was soon followed by the departure of his Cruise co-founder Daniel Kan. Earlier this week, Cruise announced that nine top executives were being fired amid a probe into the company’s safety practices, including its chief operating officer and chief legal officer.

“It felt like we were not being told the full story when folks left, especially when Dan and Kyle left,” the former employee said. 

Also among the cuts, according to Bloomberg , was Prashanthi Raman, Cruise’s vice president of government affairs. Raman was featured in a promotional video last year where she rode around San Francisco in a Cruise robotaxi alongside former Mayor Willie Brown.

Now leading the company is General Motors General Counsel Craig Glidden, who is serving as co-president with Cruise Chief Technology Officer Mo Elshenawy.

Elshenawy was listed as the author of the memo informing staff of the layoffs, which offered details about severance, benefits and career support. Laid-off Cruise employees are being offered at least 16 weeks of pay after their departures.

In the note, Elshenawy said the company is drastically scaling back its expansion plans, pausing work on its Origin shuttle and slowing down its road map to “focus on delivering the improvements to our tech and vehicle performance that will build trust in our AVs.”

Previously, the company planned to expand to 12 new cities next year. That has been pared back to relaunching its robotaxis in a single, yet-to-be-determined market. 

Kevin Truong can be reached at [email protected]

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A crowd destroyed a driverless Waymo car in San Francisco

No one was in waymo’s driverless taxi as it was surrounded and set on fire in san francisco’s chinatown..

By Wes Davis , a weekend editor who covers the latest in tech and entertainment. He has written news, reviews, and more as a tech journalist since 2020.

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A person jumped on the hood of a Waymo driverless taxi and smashed its windshield in San Francisco’s Chinatown last night around 9PM PT, generating applause before a crowd formed around the car and covered it in spray paint, breaking its windows, and ultimately set it on fire. The fire department arrived minutes later, according to a report in The Autopian , but by then flames had already fully engulfed the car.

At the moment, no outlets seem to have reported a motive for the attack. Waymo representative Sandy Karp told The Verge via email that the fully autonomous car “was not transporting any riders” when it was attacked and fireworks were tossed inside the car, sparking the flames. Public Information Officer Robert Rueca of San Francisco’s police department confirmed in an email to The Verge that police responded at “approximately” 8:50PM PT to find the car already on fire, adding that there were “no reports of injuries.”

A video posted by the FriscoLive415 YouTube channel shows the burnt-out husk of the electric Waymo Jaguar.

Another set of videos posted by software developer Michael Vendi gives a view into the scene as it played out and the fire grew.

The fire takes place against the backdrop of simmering tension between San Francisco residents and automated vehicle operators. The California DMV suspended Waymo rival Cruise’s robotaxi operations after one of its cars struck and dragged a pedestrian last year, and prior to that, automated taxis had caused chaos in the city, blocking traffic or crashing into a fire truck . Just last week, a Waymo car struck a cyclist who had reportedly been following behind a truck turning across its path.

City officials and residents opposed the cars being given a license for 24/7 operation last year, with some residents rendering them immobile by putting orange cones on the cars’ hoods in protest.

Vandalism and defacement are time-honored parts of the human experience, seen in subway cars in New York City or the walls of the ancient destroyed city of Pompeii . Tech companies have been forced to reckon with this inevitability as they deploy their equipment in public with impunity. Scooters get tossed into lakes , cars are punched by pedestrians , and in some places, dockless bike share bikes are destroyed en masse .

Update February 11th, 2024, 3:00PM ET: Updated attribution for San Francisco Police Public Information Officer Robert Rueca.

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Former San Francisco Giants Pitcher Tragically Killed In Car Accident At Age 31

The baseball world is in mourning after news came down about Reyes Moronta.

Former San Francisco Giants pitcher Reyes Moronta tragically lost his life at the age of 31 when Hector Gomez reported that Moronta sadly passed away in a traffic accident on Sunday night.

Other reports state Moronta died in a traffic accident in the Dominican Republic while driving a four-wheeler.

The tragic accident took place in the Quinigua neighborhood near the city of Santiago de los Caballeros, according to Dominican news outlet El Pregonero .

The Bravos de León of the Mexican League, his most recent team, would go on to confirm his death on X.

The Mexcian Baseball League said in a separate post that it “deeply regrets the death of former player Reyes Moronta.”

Moronta signed with Bravos de León in May and was released by the team just a few days ago.

Reyes Moronta Played For Several Teams During His Six Seasons In Major League Baseball

Reyes Moronta is gone but will never be forgotten during his time in Major League Baseball.

The right-handed reliever pitched for the San Francisco Giants, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Arizona Diamondbacks before he would last make two appearances with the Los Angeles Angels in 2023.

During his six-year big league career, he posted an impressive 3.05 career ERA.

Making his debut with the Giants in 2017, he would go on to have four impressive seasons with San Francisco, posting a sub-2.90 ERA every year he was on the team.

His best year was in 2018, when he posted a 2.49 ERA in 65.0 innings pitched, striking out 79 batters.

In 177 major league games, Reyes Moronta went 10-11 with a 3.05 ERA and 202 strikeouts in 171.1 innings.

The post Former San Francisco Giants Pitcher Tragically Killed In Car Accident At Age 31 originally published on Total Pro Sports .

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'We have the flight records': Trump insists that he was on helicopter with Willie Brown

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump doubled down on Friday evening that he had an emergency helicopter landing with Willie Brown, even as the former San Francisco mayor denied such an incident ever happened.

Trump told the New York Times he had records to back his claim , but he has not produced them.

On Thursday, it appeared Trump had confused Brown with the former California Governor Jerry Brown , during a press conference, including a bizarre and false story about a near-death experience in a helicopter.

Adding to the mystery, a former Los Angeles city council member, 95-year-old Nate Holden, told POLITICO  that it was, in fact, he who was with Trump aboard the helicopter.

“Willie is the short Black guy living in San Francisco,” Holden told POLITICO. “I’m a tall Black guy living in Los Angeles."

From Mar-a-Lago, the former president dramatically recalled a story about almost crashing on a flight while traveling with  Willie Brown, who briefly dated Vice President  Kamala Harris  several decades ago.

“I went down in a helicopter with him; we thought maybe this was the end,” Trump said. “We were in a helicopter going to a certain location together, and there was an emergency landing. This was not a pleasant landing.”

Trump claimed that Brown had made critical comments about Harris, but the former mayor refuted those remarks, stating that he was always on good terms with his former protégée, even after their breakup.

“And Willie was — he was a little concerned, Trump explained. “So, I know him, but I know him pretty well. I mean, I haven’t seen him in years. But he told me terrible things about her. But this is what you’re telling me, anyway, I guess. But he had a big part in what happened with Kamala. But he — he, I don’t know, maybe he’s changed his tune. But he — he was not a fan of hers very much, at that point.”

However, new details show that perhaps Trump confused the two California politicians.

Brown, a longtime Democratic power broker who also served as the California State Assembly speaker, told the San Francisco Chronicle after Trump’s press conference that he was never in a helicopter with the former president .

“You would have known if I had gone down on a helicopter with Trump,” he told the newspaper. He also denied that he had ever said anything disparaging about Harris to Trump.

The NYT reported that Willie Brown wasn’t on the helicopter flight at all , but Gov. Jerry Brown, the former governor of California. The current governor of California, Gavin Newsom , who was also on the flight, said there was no emergency landing, and the helicopter’s passengers were never in any danger.

“I call complete B.S.,” Newsom said.

So what did happen on the helicopter?

In 2018, then-President Trump toured fire-ravaged portions of California via helicopter alongside then-California Governor Jerry Brown.

Brown, who left office in January 2019, confirmed to CNN through a spokesperson, that there was no emergency landing and no discussion of Kamala Harris.

Trump’s campaign and the Harris campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday about the apparent mix-up.

When President Joe Biden , 81, was still running for reelection, Trump, 78, frequently challenged him to take a cognitive test, alleging he was unfit for office.

Biden has since been replaced atop the ticket by the 59-year-old Harris, forcing Trump to scramble to find new lines of attack.

Reuters contributed to the reporting of this story