Cruise, the self-driving subsidiary of General Motors Co.
GM,
that operates a robotaxi service in San Francisco, recalled the software program on 300 of its autonomous vehicles after one rear-ended a bus in March.
While nobody was injured and the crash brought on solely minor harm, “We do not expect our vehicles to run into the back of a city bus under any conditions, so even a single incident like this was worthy of immediate and careful study,” Cruise Chief Executive Kyle Vogt stated in a weblog put up Friday.
Cruise is at the moment looking for approval of around-the-clock driverless taxi service in San Francisco (it’s at the moment restricted to sure neighborhoods and occasions of day), and permission to check its autonomous vehicles throughout all of California.
But its know-how has been criticized in San Francisco following a collection of glitches wherein driverless Cruise vehicles have stopped in the midst of streets, blocked site visitors and disrupted emergency responders, spurring complaints by San Francisco lawmakers and an investigation by federal security regulators.
The March 23 fender-bender was “exceptionally rare,” Vogt stated in his weblog put up, explaining that the automobile utilized the brakes too late as a result of it didn’t correctly acknowledge an articulated bus (that’s, a bus with two sections linked by a versatile joint — a typical function on San Francisco’s most closely trafficked bus traces) that was pulling into site visitors.
“Our vehicles encounter buses like this one every day, but we’d never caused this kind of collision before,” Vogt stated.
Cruise engineers recognized the issue and up to date the software program inside two days, Vogt stated, and “the results from our testing indicated that this specific issue would not recur after the update.”
The firm notified the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of the software program recall. “No other collisions have occurred as a result of this issue,” Cruise informed the NHTSA.
Source web site: www.marketwatch.com
