The notoriety of General Motors' Cruise programming failures became more widespread after an incident in October. In this incident, a pedestrian was hit by a driver, thrown into another lane, and then hit a second time by the self-driving vehicle. The vehicle dragged her twenty feet and eventually came to a stop on top of her. Following this accident, Cruise withdrew its fleet and began working on a software update. However, well before this incident, Cruise was fully aware of other major flaws in its vehicles' programming and released the cars onto the public anyway.
Famously, the cars have difficulty detecting children and large holes in the road.
Currently, the ubiquity of these incidents is unknown. The San Francisco subreddit seems to be the only consistent place where incidents involving Cruise driverless vehicles are being cataloged.
As it stands right now, in order for an individual to file a complaint, they have to go through a convoluted form on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration website that requires a VIN number, something impossible for a pedestrian to easily obtain. Despite all these errors, GM appears eager to push its product as quickly as possible, public safety be damned.
Cruise in front of me yesterday illegally went through a Stop sign and nearly ran over two moms and their kids.
byu/lordnla insanfrancisco
