Cruise Crash in Detail
In October, a serious incident involving a Cruise Robotaxi led to the subsequent suspension of Cruise’s Robotaxi license by the California Public Utility Commission (PUC). In the meantime, Cruise has also published a report on the incident prepared by a law firm commissioned by Cruise.
To make it easier to understand how the accident happened and why the temporary suspension was imposed, I have drawn up a diagram here.
It starts with the pedestrian whose path is indicated by the red arrow. She crosses the road and then continues across the intersection when the light turns red. At the same time, a Nissan in the right-hand lane and a Cruise Robotaxi driving in parallel in the left-hand lane approach when the light turns green. The Nissan is driven by a human driver, the Cruise drives without a driver and has no passengers in the vehicle.
1. the pedestrian crosses the crosswalk on red
The human driver in the Nissan sees the woman too late, but despite braking, he hits the woman, who lands on the hood. At the same time, the Cruise Robotaxi also drives up, sees the woman, slows down slightly, but as soon as the woman has disappeared from the sensor’s view, it accelerates again.
2. the Nissan driven by a human hits the pedestrian
The woman is thrown sideways against the Cruise by the hood of the Nissan. The Cruise brakes immediately as a result.
3. the pedestrian is thrown against the Cruise Robotaxi
However, the woman comes to rest under the Cruise and is trapped. The Cruise does not recognize this situation and, as prescribed and programmed, drives to the side of the road so as not to block the traffic. The Cruise drags the woman about 6 to 7 meters. The Nissan driver drives off again.
4. the cruise drives about 6 meters to the side, dragging the trapped pedestrian with it
While the Cruise with the trapped woman remains on the side of the road, the Nissan driver commits a hit-and-run.
In the meantime, the cruise has reported the incident to the operations center and is waiting for the service engineers.
6. the Cruise Robotaxi is waiting for the service engineers, the pedestrian is still trapped under the vehicle
It is important to know that the Cruise management reacts incorrectly as a result. As the media report this accident as having been caused by the Cruise Robotaxi, Cruise management on the one hand tries to point out to the media that the Nissan driver was responsible for the accident, while on the other hand the subsequent maneuver of the Robotaxi, in which the accident victim was dragged along, is only discovered later within Cruise. These videos are not shown to the investigating authorities in the first few hours after the accident. When the authorities then became aware that the videos had been withheld, the driver’s license was first reduced and later suspended.
After three months in hospital, the accident victim has since been released, but no information is available on the Nissan driver himself.
KREATIVE INTELLIGENZ
Über ChatGPT hat man viel gelesen in der letzten Zeit: die künstliche Intelligenz, die ganze Bücher schreiben kann und der bereits jetzt unterstellt wird, Legionen von Autoren, Textern und Übersetzern arbeitslos zu machen. Und ChatGPT ist nicht allein, die KI-Familie wächst beständig. So malt DALL-E Bilder, Face Generator simuliert Gesichter und MusicLM komponiert Musik. Was erleben wir da? Das Ende der Zivilisation oder den Beginn von etwas völlig Neuem? Zukunftsforscher Dr. Mario Herger ordnet die neuesten Entwicklungen aus dem Silicon Valley ein und zeigt auf, welche teils bahnbrechenden Veränderungen unmittelbar vor der Tür stehen.
This article was also published in German.
