An anonymous tip about the mistakes made by the Cruise vehicles was received by a California regulatory agency.
The robot taxis from Cruise, which the startup for General Motors designed to ride the streets of San Francisco. They are allowed to go about their business on certain streets and charge money for it. But there have been anomalies. So there was one accident, the one from the NHTSA being checked, a car drove one police officers of it and a strange one roadblock of the vehicles that gathered there.
Now comes an unexpected message from the company itself. At least the anonymous source claims that she works at Cruise. In a letter to authorities, the individual expresses concern that Cruise’s robotic taxi service would be launched too early.
The tenor was that the service was not ready yet. There were regular failures, so that the vehicles failed, got stuck or emergency vehicles would be blocked. It reflects the opinion of the workforce. According to an internal survey, 94 percent of the 2,000 employees are convinced that safety is the top priority. The anonymous letter reached the authorities before the Cruise vehicles blocked the road and before the commercial service was approved.
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which is the permit granted for autonomous driving, will investigate the allegations. This authority can revoke the permit if it finds unsafe behavior. Cruise indicated that it is cooperating with authorities. The reports are always closed failures submitted and provide further data if required.
The unknown whistleblower explained that the vehicles stopped in the lane and blocked traffic. There were also cases where the fallback security system failed and it was not possible to control the vehicles remotely. They had to be towed.
The person also spoke of a chaotic environment at Cruise, which is particularly evident in the company’s internal security reporting system. Employees can voice their concerns there. His objection had not been processed more than half a year later. The person does not know whether this is an isolated case. But it would not prioritize the documentation of core system functionality, and would intentionally hide the results of accident investigations and other critical matters from the majority of the workforce. This is only for damage limitation.