Cruise Loses Self-Driving Permit in San Francisco Over Withheld Crash Footage
Cruise’s autonomous vehicle deployment and driverless testing permits were suspended effective immediately on Tuesday after the company held back part of a video showing a pedestrian injury amid an investigation into the incident, the California Department of Motor Vehicles said. In an Order of Suspension, the state DMV said that the Oct. 2 incident, which helped spur a federal investigation, involved a situation in which a pedestrian became trapped under a Cruise vehicle after being thrown into its path by another vehicle. The DMV said it and the California Highway Patrol met with representatives of Cruise the next day “to discuss the accident.” Cruise showed the investigators video footage from the first part of the accident, in which the driverless car came to a complete stop. Investigators, however, were not told by Cruise about a later section of the video in which the vehicle performed a “pullover maneuver” and dragged the pedestrian, according to the order. The DMV only learned of this second part “via discussion with another government agency,” it said. A Cruise spokesperson told Vice News that the DMV was shown “the whole video” the day after the incident, and that it was “played... multiple times.”
