Because Of A Collision With A Fire Car, GM Cruise Was Forced To Attract 50% Robotaxi Fleet

Autonomous Taxi. (Dok. Cruise)

JAKARTA - The California Motor Vehicle Department (DMV) has ordered autonomous vehicles operated by General Motors Cruise units in San Francisco and asked the company to pull half the Robotaxi fleet off the streets.

This decision was taken by the DMV after a very busy accident was reported between the driverless Chevrolet Bolt and one of the city's fire engines. The fire truck was responding to a state of emergency, thus passing through a crossroads, Reuters reported, August 21.

Cruise is also said to have approved a 50% reduction in fleets and will not have more than 50 driverless vehicles operating during the day and 150 driverless vehicles operating at night.

This latest development comes less than a month after the California Public Utilities Commission granted Waymo and Cruise permissions owned by GM to add more driverless taxis on the highway.

Cruise has also issued statements with preliminary research results. According to Cruise, many things look normal for autonomous vehicles, but there are also some factors that add to the complexity of this event.

In the company's release, Cruise said that autonomous vehicles could clearly identify emergency vehicles as soon as the emergency vehicles appeared, this was consistent with their basic security expectations design.

However, it should be noted that visual identification becomes more difficult at this particular intersection limit - both for humans and autonomous vehicles - because it is heavily covered by buildings, meaning objects around corners cannot be seen until they are really very close to the intersection. So, the vehicle's ability to plan lanes is disrupted by fire engines moving to opposite lanes so that it can cross red lights.

Cruise also believes the car recognizes possible collisions, reduces its speed, but cannot evade contact. This autonomous Bolt can detect emergency sirens. The car should use this information to "operation safely around emergency vehicles and accompanying events." Cruise also claims that its fleet experienced about 168,000 interactions with emergency vehicles during the first seven months they were allowed to operate.

"We recognize that we will always face challenging situations, which is why improvements continue to be the center of our work. We will continue to work closely with regulators and city departments to interact with emergency vehicles to reduce the possibility of incidents like this happening again," Cruise said.

Meanwhile, the DMV states that public safety on the way is a top priority of the regulations they make.

The DMV also issued a firm warning to Cruise that it would suspend or revoke testing permits if these vehicles proved to be "an unnatural risk to public safety."