SAN JOSE: The boss of robotaxi company Cruise, Kyle Vogt, resigned Sunday during the investigation into an accident involving a pedestrian in San Francisco, reported dpa news.
Vogt wrote on the online platform X, formerly known as Twitter, that he now wanted to spend time with his family and pursue new ideas. After the accident, the information policy of Cruise’s management was also criticized.
The company is owned by car giant General Motors.
In the accident at the beginning of October, a driverless Cruise car dragged a woman several metres. The pedestrian had previously been hit by another vehicle with a person at the wheel and thrown in front of the self-driving car. According to the accident report, the robotaxi braked immediately – but the woman was still thrown under the vehicle.
The Cruise cars are programmed so that in some cases they automatically pull over to the side of the road after collisions so they do not obstruct traffic. In this case, the software also decided to do this – even though the woman was still under the car.
She was dragged around 6 metres and the car reached a speed of about 11 kilometres per hour, according to a report by the Californian traffic authority.
Cruise has since changed the software for its approximately 950 vehicles to prevent the situation from happening again. In addition, all journeys on public roads in the US have been suspended.
The transport authority criticised the fact that only the first part of what happened was initially made public, but not the fact that the robotaxi tried to pull over to the side of the road after the accident with the woman stuck underneath. -Bernama
