An individual claiming to be a present Cruise worker raised issues with California regulators concerning the self-driving tech firm’s security tradition and readiness to start business operations in San Francisco.
The letter arrived on the California Public Utilities Commission’s inbox for whistleblowers May 19, two weeks earlier than the regulators cleared Cruise’s robotaxis for these business providers.
The alleged whistleblower described circumstances “indicative of a very chaotic environment” through which no less than one documented security concern went unaddressed for months. The individual additional mentioned info from visitors crashes involving the corporate’s autos was hidden from staff who labored on important security techniques.
Based on these experiences, clusters of autos getting caught at intersections, and discussions with fellow staff, the individual wrote, “employees generally do not believe we are ready to launch to the public, but there is fear of admitting this because of expectations from leadership and investors.”
Cruise is majority owned by General Motors.
A spokesperson for the CPUC mentioned the company is “looking into the concerns raised in the letter,” although didn’t say whether or not commissioners had been conscious of its existence after they voted on June 2 to approve Cruise’s software to start business service.
Nor did the company say whether or not it had verified the nameless letter was, in truth, a Cruise worker. The individual had written they may help in verifying employment standing and identification. Automotive News reached out to the nameless author, however they didn’t return a request for remark.
The CPUC’s assessment was first reported Thursday by The Wall Street Journal.
Cruise says the corporate has a clear relationship with each the CPUC and different regulatory our bodies and that their executives meet with regulatory representatives on a frequent and ongoing foundation.
“Our safety record is tracked, reported and published by multiple government agencies,” mentioned Drew Pusateri, a Cruise spokesperson. “We’re proud of it and it speaks for itself.”
Knowledge of the letter’s existence comes amid a spate of incidents involving Cruise robotaxis working in San Francisco.
In April, a San Francisco police officer pulled over a Cruise automobile as a result of it drove at evening with out its headlights on. Then the automobile repositioned itself earlier than the visitors cease was full. Later that month, a Cruise automobile blocked the trail of a San Francisco Fire Department hearth truck en path to a blaze, slowing its response to a hearth that resulted in accidents.
In June, one of many firm’s robotaxis was concerned in a crash that resulted in accidents, prompting an investigation from federal security regulators. On June 28, a number of Cruise autos clustered at an intersection and blocked visitors till they had been eliminated by staff.
In the letter, the alleged whistleblower mentioned these clustering incidents, recognized internally as Vehicle Retrieval Events or VREs, occur with regularity.
The individual wrote they’ve direct data of those incidents and that, whereas typically they are often solved with distant help, “there have been some cases where fallback systems have also failed and it was not possible to remotely maneuver the vehicle outside of the lanes they were blocking until they were physically towed from their location to a facility.”
Beyond these incidents, the individual wrote {that a} documented security concern went unaddressed for six months, suggesting {that a} course of they thought would take days to handle as a substitute “would remain in triage indefinitely.”
That firsthand expertise stood in distinction to aspirational security objectives set by Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt, who the nameless letter author mentioned inspired staff to share safety-related issues. Signs posted all through the corporate’s workplace additional inspired staff to make use of inside processes for relaying questions of safety.
The individual wrote they believed the corporate’s strategy was not “consistent with a safety-first culture.”
Pusateri, the Cruise spokesperson, mentioned 94 % of respondents agreed with the assertion that “Safety is a top priority here” in an April 2022 inside survey of greater than 2,000 Cruise staff.
Source: www.autonews.com
