The company left out some key details regarding the incident involving one of its robotaxis and a pedestrian.
On October 2, 2023, a woman was run over and pinned to the ground by a Cruise robotaxi. Given the recent string of very public malfunctions the robotaxis have been experiencing in San Francisco, it was only a matter of time until a pedestrian was hurt by the self-driving cars. New reports, though, suggest that Cruise held back one of the most horrifying pieces of information: that the woman was dragged 20 feet by the robotaxi after being pushed into its path.
The LA Times reports:
A car with a human behind the wheel hit a woman who was crossing the street against a red light at the intersection of 5th 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.
But this is what Cruise left out:
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.
read more: https://jalopnik.com/woman-hit-by-cruise-robotaxi-was-dragged-20-feet-1850963884
archive link: https://archive.ph/8ENHu
The second one relies on it for the number of incidents, which cruise is required to report to the police and in my opinion can be taken as fact. You can try to hide who was at fault for the incident, like they’re doing in the original story, but it’s very unlikely you’ll get away with hiding that an incident happened. If cruise doesn’t report it then the driver or pedestrian that got hit sure as shit will, and they’ve got their branding all over it so they know who to report to. If they report it and cruise gets caught trying to cover it up, they’ll be in deep shit, enough to not make it worth trying to do so. They just lost their license for omitting some footage after a report, imagine what would’ve happened if they didn’t report at all.
Sorta… the second does some pretty thin analysis, and the refers right back to the same report, of which i am skeptical considering they were just caught bending the truth in their favor.
We need a robust and publicly accountable third party investigation. I fear we don’t have the political and institutional infrastructure to do that, and it’s going to be like how even just 50 years ago the FDA regularly was letting dangerous shit fly that they absolutely should’ve caught and that companies were straight up lying about.