Over a month ago, on June 3, news broke about an accident involving one of the few dozen Cruise autonomous taxi cabs that are operating in certain parts of San Francisco. We reported at the time that a passenger was sitting in the vehicle at the time and that he or she needed medical attention afterward and now this has been confirmed by the San Francisco Police Department.
Then another report was published, but we couldn’t link it to this particular incident. Well, now according to a new report, there were three people riding in the vehicle at the time of the accident, and one needed to be taken to hospital afterward. Automotive News quotes an SFPD spokesperson as stating that the other two Cruise passengers also needed medical attention, as did the two people in the Toyota Prius that the self-driving taxi reportedly collided with. All are said to have suffered only minor injuries.
Gallery: GM Cruise Driverless Taxi
Interestingly, based on the information presented in the source article, it seems the self-driving Cruise (based on a Chevrolet Bolt EV) wasn’t to blame for the crash, at least that’s what it sounds like to us. It apparently was stopped (or it was about to stop) while it was trying to make a left turn at an intersection, when it crashed into the Toyota Prius, which was said to be speeding, going around 40 mph in 25 mph zone.
The police have reportedly not concluded investigating this case (now over a month old), and at the scene they placed no blame on either party. Cruise officials insist it was the Prius driver’s fault, but since they made no video public to back that up (you can imagine that all of this was caught on camera from multiple angles) we’re going to have to wait for the police investigation to come up with the answer.
General Motors-owned Cruise has been getting some bad press recently, after a dozen robotaxis malfunctioned and bunched together blocking a street in San Francisco - Cruise did not say what caused it, but acknowledged that a technical issue was to blame. More recently, an alleged whistleblower from within the company went public and said it has a “chaotic” safety culture and that Cruise rushed to get its robotaxis out on the road, when really they should have stayed in development for longer.
