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This comes after a recent increase in the legal pressure on Cruise, which offered to pay to settle an investigation into the delayed reporting of the accident.
A California regulator has said it would impose the maximum fine on GM’s Cruise division for not immediately providing updated information about an incident in which one of its self-driving cars crashed last year. Cruise has not said anything about the situation and therefore did not comment on the request sent by Reuters.
The importance of this penalty also highlights the increased attention directed towards self-driving car companies such as Alphabet’s Waymo and Amazon’s Zoox as a result of safety concerns following several car accidents.
The California Public Utilities Commission or CPUC will let Cruise pay the greatest possible penalty, USD 112,500 – USD 7,500 for each of the 15 days taken to release information on the occurrence. Another stipulation of the settlement is that Cruise must file “collision reports” to both the CPUC and the NHTSA in case of any future accidents in California.
This comes after a recent increase in the legal pressure on Cruise, which offered to pay to settle an investigation into the delayed reporting of a pedestrian strike. One of them occurred in October when a pedestrian was first struck by a vehicle and then with a Cruise robotaxi in San Francisco.
Although Cruise started offering limited operational self-driving cars in phoenix, Arizona in April, their ability to offer passenger service through the self-driving cars still remains prohibited as per what the CPUC said on Thursday. Cruise announced its plans to resume operations through manual driving to facilitate the creation of maps and collection of essential road information in select cities, commencing with Phoenix. This phased approach involves utilising human-driven vehicles without autonomous systems engaged, as outlined in the company’s recent blog post.
The decision to reintroduce human-driven cars into Cruise’s operations aims to validate and enhance its self-driving systems, a crucial step towards reinstating fully autonomous operations. Cruise intends to extend this initiative to additional cities as part of its strategic roadmap. Cruise’s move comes amidst the backdrop of intensifying competition in the autonomous driving sector.
