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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

Kyle Vogt speaks while sitting on a stage during an event.

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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Crashes and Disasters | ‘We were spinning pretty quick’: Ruby…

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Crashes and disasters | trump bond lowered to $175 million as he appeals civil fraud judgment in new york, crime and public safety, crashes and disasters, crashes and disasters | ‘we were spinning pretty quick’: ruby princess cruise ship crashes into san francisco pier.

cruise crash sf

A Princess Cruises ship crashed into a pier in San Francisco as it was preparing to dock after a 10-day Alaskan cruise, officials said.

The 113,561-ton Ruby Princess “made unexpected contact with the dock at Pier 27” at the port of San Francisco Thursday morning, Princess Cruises said in a statement obtained by CNN.

“There were no injuries and at no time were any guests or crew in danger,” the company said. “The ship is safely alongside and disembarkation is complete.”

Passenger Paul Zasso said he knew something seemed off as the ship approached the pier.

“I noticed we were spinning pretty quick, to be that close to the dock,” Zasso told CNN affiliate KGO . “I was mid-ship, portside, looked out the window, and we smacked into the dock.”

The US Coast Guard is now investigating the crash, Petty Officer Hunter Schnabel told CNN.

The ship, which can accommodate 3,080 guests and 1,200 crew , suffered damage to its left rear side. The dock was also damaged, Princess Cruises said.

While investigators assessed damage to both the ship and the pier, Princess Cruises said it was still planning to board passengers for another 10-day, roundtrip journey to Alaska. But it was not immediately clear when the Ruby Princess would be able to start its next voyage.

“I don’t swim that good. I just think they patch it up,” Simpson told KGO .

But he said he’s not worried.

“It’s a 10-day cruise, there’s plenty of time,” he told the affiliate. “We can make up time moving and things like that. So I don’t think it’s going to be an issue.”

The-CNN-Wire ™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

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Cruise agrees to cut fleet of San Francisco robotaxis in half after crashes

State DMV asks for reduction after autonomous Cruise vehicle collided with unspecified emergency vehicle

General Motors’ Cruise autonomous vehicle unit has agreed to cut its fleet of San Francisco robotaxis in half as authorities investigate two recent crashes in the city.

The state department of motor vehicles (DMV) asked for the reduction after a Cruise vehicle without a human driver collided with an unspecified emergency vehicle on Thursday.

“The DMV is investigating recent concerning incidents involving Cruise vehicles in San Francisco ,” the department said on Saturday in a statement 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 development comes just over a week after California regulators allowed Cruise and the Google spinoff Waymo to operate autonomous robotaxis throughout San Francisco at all hours, despite safety worries spurred by recurring problems with unexpected stops and other erratic behavior.

The decision on 10 August by the California public utilities commission made San Francisco the first major US city with two fleets of driverless vehicles competing for passengers.

On Thursday around 10pm, the Cruise vehicle had a green light, entered an intersection, and was hit by the emergency vehicle responding to a call, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, based on tweets from Cruise.

The robotaxi was carrying a passenger, who was taken by ambulance to a hospital with injuries that were not severe, Cruise told the newspaper.

Also on Thursday night, a Cruise car without a passenger collided with another vehicle in San Francisco, the newspaper reported.

The San Francisco fire department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the newspaper.

The robotaxi almost immediately identified the emergency response vehicle as it came into view, Greg Dieterich, Cruise’s general manager in San Francisco, said in a statement on the company website.

At the intersection, visibility is occluded by buildings, and it’s not possible to see objects around a corner until they are very close to the intersection, Dieterich’s statement said. The Cruise autonomous vehicle detected the siren as soon 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,” Dieterich wrote.

The Cruise vehicle identified the risk of a crash and braked, reducing its speed, but could not avoid the collision, he wrote.

The Cruise rollout has not been all smooth sailing. The vehicles have had several traffic-related problems since the company launched its driverless ride-hailing service in San Francisco in June 2022. Most recently amid increased traffic from the Outside Lands music festival on 11 August, a number of self-driving cars seemed to glitch , causing mayhem when as many as 10 Cruise cars blocked a main thoroughfare.

Other incidents that have attracted headlines included a Cruise robotaxi that appeared to idle in the middle of a mass shooting for several minutes in early June, while in January a firefighter was reportedly forced to break the window of a Cruise vehicle to stop it after the car nearly drove over hoses that were being used to put out a raging house fire.

Cruise vehicles have driven more than 3m autonomous miles in the city and have interacted with emergency vehicles more than 168,000 times in the first seven months of this year alone, the statement said. “We realize that we’ll always encounter challenging situations, which is why continuous improvement is central to our work.”

The company will work with regulators and city departments to reduce the likelihood of a crash happening again, Dieterich wrote.

The DMV said the fleet reduction will remain until its investigation ends and Cruise takes corrective action to improve safety. “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.”

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Cruise says a hit-and-run ‘launched’ pedestrian in front of one of its robotaxis

The incident is the latest to involve a driverless vehicle in san francisco, where hundreds of robotaxis are operating commercially 24/7..

By Andrew J. Hawkins , transportation editor with 10+ years of experience who covers EVs, public transportation, and aviation. His work has appeared in The New York Daily News and City & State.

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A Cruise driverless vehicle in San Francisco

A hit-and-run in San Francisco last night ended with a pedestrian “stuck” under a Cruise autonomous vehicle. Police are investigating whether a human-driven vehicle may have been involved in the crash.

The driver struck a female pedestrian, throwing her in the path of a Cruise robotaxi that was operating autonomously. The Cruise vehicle then braked, with its rear tire still on top of the woman’s leg, fire officials told NBC . After Cruise disabled the vehicle, rescuers were able to get the vehicle off the woman’s leg using the jaws of life, NBC reports.

While the investigation is ongoing, Cruise put out a series of statements on X (formerly Twitter) to explain its role in the crash. The pedestrian was “launched” in front of a Cruise robotaxi after being struck by a vehicle that was traveling in the lane to the left, the company said. The robotaxi “braked aggressively to minimize impact,” while the driver of the other vehicle fled the scene. The condition of the struck pedestrian is unknown at this time, police said.

The crash was the latest in San Francisco to involve a driverless vehicle, as hundreds more have hit the road recently for 24/7 commercial service . With more robotaxis have also come a number of crashes, most of which have been minor, though a handful have involved injuries.

The crash was the latest in San Francisco to involve a driverless vehicle

A spokesperson with the San Francisco Police Department sent this statement:

On 10/02/23 at approximately 9:31 pm officers responded to 5th and Market Streets regarding a vehicle collision involving a pedestrian. Officers arrived on scene and discovered an autonomous vehicle struck an adult pedestrian. Officers rendered aid and summoned medics to the scene and transported the pedestrian to the hospital. The medical condition of the pedestrian is unknown at this time. The autonomous vehicle remained on scene and did not have an occupant at the time of the collision. The operator of the autonomous vehicle is cooperating with the investigation. We believe that another vehicle that was not an autonomous vehicle may have been initially involved in the collision, but the vehicle or driver were not present at the scene during our investigation. The SFPD Traffic Collision Investigations Unit is leading the investigation and is looking into the factors that lead to this collision. Anyone with information is asked to contact SFPD at 415-575-4444 or text a tip to TIP411 and begin the message with SFPD. At the scene of any vehicle collision, we document what occurred by gathering evidence. This evidence includes the location of the vehicle and/or vehicles before, during and after the collision, which is why the vehicle was kept in its stationary position.

According to Cruise, “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 company continued. “The driver of the other vehicle fled the scene, and at the request of the police the AV was kept in place.”

Cruise says it is “actively working with police to help identify the responsible driver,” including sharing video footage from its vehicle’s cameras with police, spokesperson Aaron Mclear said in an email. A spokesperson from the San Francisco Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The crash incident has yet to be filed with the Department of Motor Vehicles, which requires all AV companies to report collisions .

  • Robotaxis are driving on thin ice

In August, a Cruise robotaxi collided with a fire truck , injuring one passenger. In response, the company reduced the number of vehicles it had deployed by half while the city investigated the incident.

City officials, including transit, police, and fire departments, have expressed serious concerns about driverless vehicles intruding on emergency scenes, blocking intersections, and obstructing emergency vehicles. They have also been involved in a number of minor fender benders and rear-end collisions that have some residents worried about escalation as more are deployed.

Update October 3rd 9:23AM ET: Updated to include details from local news reports.

Update October 3rd 12:22PM ET: Updated to include a statement from SFPD.

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Driverless car startup Cruise's no good, terrible year

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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

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

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.

cruise crash sf

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

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.

cruise crash sf

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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Cruise Says Hostility to Regulators Led to Grounding of Its Autonomous Cars

A law firm’s review found that executives had failed to fully explain an October crash, which the Justice Department is also investigating.

Kyle Vogt, wearing gray, white and black casual clothes, stands on a stage in front of a high-tech vehicle.

By Tripp Mickle and Cade Metz

Reporting from San Francisco

Cruise, the driverless car subsidiary of General Motors, said in a report on Thursday that an adversarial approach taken by its top executives toward regulators had led to a cascade of events that ended with a nationwide suspension of Cruise’s fleet and investigations by California and federal authorities, including the Justice Department.

The roughly 100-page report was compiled by a law firm that Cruise and G.M. hired to look into whether Cruise’s executives had misled California regulators about an October crash in San Francisco in which one of its vehicles dragged a woman 20 feet. The review found that while the executives had not intentionally misled state officials, they had failed to explain key details about the incident.

In meetings with regulators, the executives let a video of the crash “speak for itself” rather than fully explain how one of its vehicles — part of Cruise’s autonomous taxi service in the city — severely injured the pedestrian. The executives later fixated on protecting Cruise’s reputation rather than giving a full account of the incident to the public and media, according to the report, which was written by the Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan law firm.

Cruise also said the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as state agencies and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, were investigating how it had handled the incident.

The report is central to Cruise’s efforts to regain the public’s trust and eventually restart its business. Cruise has been largely shut down since October, when the California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended its license to operate because its vehicles were unsafe and the company misrepresented the incident. It responded by pulling its driverless cars off the road across the country , laying off a quarter of its staff and replacing Kyle Vogt, its co-founder and chief executive, who resigned in November, with new leaders.

Cruise didn’t name Mr. Vogt in a blog post summarizing the law firm’s review, but he was named throughout the report. Mr. Vogt declined to comment.

The summary of the report was a long list of reasons to explain why regulators accused Cruise of misleading them. The law firm found that an engineer who had provided video of the crash to regulators had a poor internet connection that prevented the regulators from seeing a complete and clear version. Some senior Cruise leaders also didn’t know the details of the incident before a meeting with state officials.

Last month, Cruise dismissed nine employees, including most of those who had met with the D.M.V. Its vice president of communications later departed. The company eliminated about 900 of 3,800 positions, mostly corporate and commercial roles that were less important after it suspended its operations.

Cruise hopes that the investigation will help repair its reputation and clear a path for it to restart its self-driving business. It believes that its problem was the outgrowth of a leadership team that made quickly building out a business a priority over the safety of its operations.

Cruise is providing the report to the D.M.V. and the California Public Utilities Commission, which authorizes driverless car programs in the state. It said it would make it available to the public as well.

The report will be closely scrutinized by everyone with an interest in the future of driverless cars. Cruise’s troubles have stoked concern among the tech and auto companies that have poured billions into developing the technology. It also amplified the safety concerns of regulators and people who have been worried about the risks created when robots take to the road.

In Cruise’s absence, Waymo, which was started by Google, has become the only self-driving car operation offering taxi rides in San Francisco. Though Waymo’s fleet of roughly 250 cars has had few major incidents, the City of San Francisco sued the State of California last month for allowing Waymo and Cruise vehicles to operate without tighter regulations.

“We know our license to operate must be earned and is ultimately granted by regulators and the communities we serve,” Cruise said in its blog post. “We are focused on advancing our technology and earning back public trust.”

Cruise is the latest tech company to tap a law firm to review its business. Uber hired former Attorney General Eric H. Holder to examine issues of sexual harassment and wrongdoing under co-founder Travis Kalanick.

How Cruise responded to the Oct. 2 crash inflamed regulators’ concerns over the crash itself. Another car hit the woman in a San Francisco intersection and flung her into the path of one of Cruise’s vehicles. The Cruise car stopped and then drove forward 20 feet, dragging the woman as it pulled to the curb.

The report said that although the Cruise leadership team and personnel did not try to deceive or mislead regulators during key meetings with a variety of government officials the day after the incident, they did not explain that a technical problem had caused the car to drag the pedestrian after she was struck.

Rather than share with the D.M.V. a full video of the crash taken by the Cruise vehicle, state officials said, Cruise shared an abbreviated version that ended with its car stopping. It omitted footage of the car dragging the woman. The D.M.V. said it had learned of the full video from another agency.

The report described Cruise as a disorganized company embroiled in disagreement and confusion over what had happened and how to handle it. Though engineers and dozens of people inside the company knew that its car had dragged the woman, key senior executives, including the chief legal officer, said they hadn’t known before meeting with the D.M.V.

During Quinn Emanuel’s review, the employees who had met with the D.M.V. disagreed about whether the company had shown the complete video to regulators. The bigger problem was that Cruise didn’t tell regulators about what had happened, the law firm said.

“We were lucky they didn’t pick up on the dragging,” one employee said a participant in the D.M.V. meeting had said afterward.

The report said that Cruise had shared the video with some regulators, but that when an employee showed the video during the Oct. 3 meetings, “transmission issues” impeded or prevented regulators from seeing that the car had dragged the pedestrian.

“They could have survived this if they had been honest, but they took a different approach and wound up destroying their reputation,” said Matthew Wansley, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law in New York who specializes in emerging automotive technologies. “To recover, they had to have a fully transparent autopsy of what happened.”

G.M., which bought Cruise in 2016 for $1 billion, has stepped in to steer the company. It installed its general counsel, Craig Glidden, as president of Cruise and made him responsible for overseeing the investigation and helping to evaluate how the business should proceed. Mr. Glidden is trying to change the culture of the company to put more emphasis on safety and transparency with regulators and the public.

Even before the Oct. 2 accident, Cruise’s cars were generating headlines for other issues, including a collision with a fire truck and an incident in which one of its cars drove into wet concrete and got stuck .

  More about Tripp Mickle

Cade Metz writes about artificial intelligence, driverless cars, robotics, virtual reality and other emerging areas of technology. More about Cade Metz

Driverless Cars and the Future of Transportation

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 .

Stressing Cities: In San Francisco and Austin, Texas, where passengers can hail autonomous taxis, the vehicles are starting to take a toll on city services , even slowing down emergency response times.

A Fast Rise and Fall: Cruise, a subsidiary of General Motors, wanted to grow fast. Now, the company faces safety concerns  as it contends with angry regulators, anxious employees and skepticism about the viability of the business .

cruise crash sf

Friends identify victims of horrific San Francisco bus stop crash as family of 4 on anniversary outing

F riends of the victims of Saturday's horrific crash at a bus stop in San Francisco identified them as a family of four on an outing to celebrate the parents' wedding anniversary.

Police announced on Sunday a third victim in the crash, the mother, died from her injuries . Only her infant, a baby boy, survived with critical injuries. 

The crash happened Saturday afternoon near the West Portal Muni station on Ulloa Street. Authorities said a car plowed into a bus stop, hitting four people waiting for the bus.

Friends of the victims declined an on-camera interview but shared some details of the victims. They said the father was named Diego, 40, and the mother was named Matilde, 38. They did not want to provide the victims' last names. Their toddler, a boy about one and a half years old, died at the scene. 

The infant is about two months old. Paramedics rushed him to the hospital and police said the child suffers from life-threatening injuries.

Friends said the family lived in the Mission District. They said Saturday was Diego and Matilde's wedding anniversary and they were taking the bus to celebrate the anniversary with the boys at the San Francisco Zoo.

"How can a car race so fast and end up taking out an entire bus stop?" asked neighbor Johanna Dimayuga.

Police are investigating the cause. Some witnesses believed the elderly driver of the white Mercedes SUV suffered from some kind of medical condition and crashed into the bus shelter. Police could not confirm that.

Witnesses said the driver was going between 50 and 70 miles per hour in the wrong direction on Ulloa Street. They said there were no signs of braking and no skid marks on the road.

"It's just very heartbreaking. It's very difficult for us to unsee what we saw here yesterday," said Dimayuga. "I'm still shaking just thinking about it."

Dimayuga was among the many that came to pay her respects. She lives across the street from the bus stop and ran out when she heard the crash on Saturday.

"I am just unable to move forward. I need to have closure with what I saw," said Dimayuga. "I can't really unsee the carnage that happened here yesterday."

Witnesses, neighbors, and well-wishers dropped off flowers, stuffed animals, and toys at the bus stop. Street safety advocates left a white stroller and three pairs of shoes at the make-shift memorial, one for each victim that died in the crash.

They also left flowers at a second smaller memorial about 60 feet from the bus stop. That was where the toddler landed and died. Witnesses said the impact of the crash sent the toddler, who was in a stroller, into the air.

"The stroller was clearly destroyed. Yeah, so he was still strapped in there," said Dimayuga.

The father landed about 80 feet away from the point of impact and died. Paramedics rushed the mom and the baby to the hospital. Authorities said on Sunday the mom died from her injuries.

"You just want to hug your kids closer and just really be mindful of every single moment you have with each other," said neighbor Michelle McCauley who brought her husband and kids to the memorial.

Friends said Diego was originally from Brazil and his family is flying to San Francisco. They said Matilde was originally from Portugal and her family is flying to the Bay Area as well.

The elderly driver was also taken to the hospital in stable condition. Police said they are still investigating the crash and it's unclear if she will face any charges.

Street safety advocates will hold a vigil at the site of the crash on Monday at 5 p.m.

San Francisco police said they do not believe that traffic engineering was a factor in this case.

Friends identify victims of horrific San Francisco bus stop crash as family of 4 on anniversary outing

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

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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

cruise crash sf

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

cruise crash 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.

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A woman is arrested in fatal crash at San Francisco bus stop that killed 3 people

Police say a 78-year-old woman has been arrested in connection to a fatal crash at a San Francisco bus stop that killed two adults and a child and injured an infant who remains hospitalized

SAN FRANCISCO -- A 78-year-old woman was arrested in connection to a fatal crash at a bus stop in San Francisco that killed two adults and a child and injured an infant who remains hospitalized, police said Monday.

Mary Fong Lau, of San Francisco, was booked into jail on Sunday and remained in custody Monday, jail records show.

Jail officials said Monday that Lau had not yet appeared in court. It was not immediately known if she had an attorney who could speak on her behalf.

Lau was charged with three counts of felony vehicular manslaughter, felony reckless driving causing bodily injury, and additional traffic violations, the San Francisco Police Department said in a statement.

A man and a child were killed at the scene of the crash after a Mercedes SUV crashed into a bus shelter Saturday afternoon in the city’s West Portal neighborhood, police said. Three others, including Lau, were taken to hospitals.

The third victim, a woman, later died at a hospital, police said. The infant remains in the hospital with life-threatening injuries, police said.

Residents left flowers at a growing memorial where the crash occurred, The advocacy group Walk San Francisco planned a vigil Monday evening at the site.

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

A Cruise vehicle, which is a driverless, autonomous robotaxi, drives at night in San Francisco.

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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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NBC Bay Area

78-year-old driver arrested in deadly San Francisco bus stop crash

By nbc bay area staff • published march 18, 2024 • updated on march 18, 2024 at 5:30 pm.

A 78-year-old driver was arrested in the Saturday afternoon crash at a San Francisco bus stop that killed three people, including a child, and left an infant in critical condition, police said.

Mary Fong Lau of San Francisco was booked into county jail Sunday on multiple felony charges, including vehicular manslaughter, reckless driving and driving the wrong way, court records show.

On Sunday, police said a third person in the bus stop crash died at the hospital . The woman's death marked the third fatality in the crash after two people died at the scene.

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A police spokesperson said one of the victims in the hospital is an infant and is still suffering from life-threatening injuries.

Four people were at the bus stop at Ulloa Street and Lenox Way on Saturday afternoon outside the West Portal Branch Library when an eastbound car struck a bus shelter at 12:13 p.m., said Lt. Mariano Elias, a fire department spokesman.

"I've just visited the scene and it is heartbreaking," San Francisco Mayor London Breed said in a social media post on Saturday. "We will share more information when we can, but now our focus is on the victims and their families."

cruise crash sf

2 killed, 3 injured after car crashes into San Francisco bus stop

cruise crash sf

Third person in SF bus stop crash dies at hospital, police say

San Francisco police said an investigation is ongoing, but they do not believe that traffic engineering was a factor in the collision.

The victims of Saturday's crash were the city's fifth and sixth pedestrian deaths this year, Walk San Francisco said. Sunday's death brings that number to seven.

That figure is more than double what it was at the same time last year, according to pedestrian advocates. In 2023, 17 people were killed while walking in San Francisco, the organization said.

A vigil for the crash victims was scheduled for 5 p.m. Monday.

Since Saturday's deadly crash, people have been coming by the area and adding items to a growing memorial made up of flowers, shoes, and a baby stroller.

The San Francisco Police Department's Traffic Unit is investigating. Anyone with information is asked to contact police at 415-575-4444.

Bay City News contributed to this report.

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