Cruise recently had its robotaxi permits revoked in California and suspended the service nationwide.
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Before Cruise had its permits revoked in California, the company apparently knew that its driverless cars had trouble correctly identifying children and detecting large holes in the road, according to internal documents reviewed by The Intercept.
Cruise began operating a fleet of fully driverless taxis in San Francisco in early 2022 and got the go-ahead from the city to further expand its services to 24/7 driverless rides in August. At that time, the company operated a fleet of around 300 vehicles at night and 100 during the day. But later in August, Cruise cut its operations by 50% after reports of crashes involving its vehicles.
According to internal materials reviewed by The Intercept, Cruise knew about certain safety issues while its fleet of robotaxis was in operation. Cruise's driverless vehicles are supposed to detect and classify children specifically — rather than grouping them with other pedestrians — because children have the potential to behave more unpredictably, and the vehicles would need to exercise additional caution. The AVs didn't do this like they were supposed to, according to internal safety assessments reviewed by The Intercept.
One assessment from a simulated Cruise vehicle test concluded that "we can't rule out that a fully autonomous vehicle might have struck the child," The Intercept reported. In another test, the autonomous vehicle struck the child-sized crash dummy used for simulated tests at 28 miles per hour with its side mirror, though it successfully detected the dummy first.
When Cruise reduced its operations in August, it specifically targeted daytime rides. This was at least in part to avoid its cars encountering children, according to one safety memo viewed by The Intercept, though Cruise did not publicly mention that at the time.
The company also knew that its cars couldn't detect large holes like construction pits — even those with workers inside — for well over a year, The Intercept reported, citing more internal safety materials.
"The Intercept's reporting does not reflect the scope or effectiveness of our testing and simulation programs," Cruise told Insider in a statement. "Our AVs have always detected and exercised appropriate caution around pedestrians, especially child pedestrians. As a company, we are focused on continuously improving the ability of our technology to respond to potential hazards — which is why we proactively run rigorous testings and simulations on an ongoing basis."
California regulators revoked Cruise's robotaxi permits in late October after an incident in which a pedestrian was pushed into the path of a Cruise vehicle after a hit-and-run from a separate car, resulting in the person being run over by the robotaxi and pinned beneath its tire. A statement issued by the California Department of Motor Vehicles said that the robotaxis posed "an unreasonable risk to public safety,"
GM, Cruise's parent company, has since halted all Cruise robotaxi operations nationwide and recently announced internally that it would be pausing production of its fully autonomous van, called the Origin, according to meeting audio reviewed by Forbes.
Cruise has maintained that its driverless vehicles are safe.
"Our driverless operations have always performed higher than a human benchmark, and we constantly evaluate and mitigate new risks to continuously improve. We have the lowest risk tolerance for incidents with children and treat them with the highest safety priority," Cruise told Insider.
In addition to the pedestrian incident, Cruise's robotaxi fleet has had a series of incidents over the last year. In August, an empty Cruise AV drove into wet concrete at a construction site and got stuck. In June, a Cruise robotaxi blocked emergency vehicles on their way to respond to a mass shooting.
