General Motors
General Motors faces a $1.5 million fine after being accused of misleading regulators after a self-driving car hit a pedestrian
Associated Press
California regulators allege that a General Motors robotaxi service in San Francisco covered up the severity of an accident involving one of its self-driving cars, raising the specter that it could add a fine to the recent revocation of its California license.
The potential fine for GM’s cruise service could be around $1.5 million, according to documents filed late last week by the California Public Utilities Commission.
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The notice orders Cruise to appear at an evidentiary hearing on Feb. 6 to determine whether the robotaxi service misled regulators about what happened after one of its driverless cars crashed into a pedestrian on the evening of Feb. 2 who had already been hit by another vehicle driven by a human in October in San Francisco.
The February hearing comes just six months after the commission approved Cruise’s robotaxi service to charge riders for 24-hour rides throughout San Francisco, despite strong objections from city officials , who had warned that driverless cars were malfunctioning.
Three weeks after Cruise’s Oct. 2 accident, the California Department of Motor Vehicles effectively shut down the robotaxi service by revoking its license to operate in the state.
The suspension was a blow to Cruise and its parent company GM, which suffered huge losses during the development of the driverless service, which was expected to generate $1 billion in revenue by 2025 as it expanded beyond San Francisco.
After Cruise, almost 6 billion founders since the end of 2019.
Without directly addressing the potential fine, GM CEO Mary Barra said Monday that the October accident helped the automaker learn more about the need for transparency and a better relationship with regulators.
“We’re very focused on righting the ship here because it’s a technology that can make the way we move from point A to point B safer,” Barra said.
Barra also pointed to the cruise management overhaul, which included a reorganization of its government relations and legal teams, as a sign of progress. “We believe we can do things more effectively,” she said.
Cruise issued his own statement promising to respond “in a timely manner” to the Public Utilities Commission’s concerns. The company has already hired an outside law firm to review its response to the Oct. 2 accident.
The most serious questions about the incident concern Cruise’s handling of a video that shows a robotaxi called “Panini” dragging the pedestrian 20 feet (6 meters) at a speed of seven miles per hour before coming to a stop.
In a Dec. 1 filing outlining how Cruise handled disclosures about the accident, the commission alleged the company tried to hide how its robotaxi responded to the accident for more than two weeks.
The documents allege that Cruise’s cover-up began with an Oct. 3 call to a regulatory analyst who was told that the robotaxi had come to an immediate stop upon impact with the pedestrian, without mentioning that the vehicle had actually traveled another 20 feet drove while the injured person was still trapped.
According to regulatory documents, Cruise did not provide the video footage until October 19th. According to the commission, the cover-up lasted 15 days and exposed Cruise and GM to potential fines of $100,000 per day, or $1.5 million.
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