The move comes just two days after California regulators told the company to take its autonomously driven cars off the road.
Cruise said on Thursday evening that it would pause all driverless operations in the United States, two days after California regulators told the General Motors subsidiary to take its autonomous cars off the state’s roads.
The decision affects Cruise’s robot taxi services in Austin, Texas, and Phoenix, where a limited number of public riders could hail paid rides. Noncommercial operations in Dallas, Houston and Miami were also paused.
Cruise did not say how long the halt will last. Testing of driverless vehicles with a safety driver behind the wheel will continue, the company said.
In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Cruise said that it had made the decision to “examine our processes, systems, and tools and reflect on how we can better operate in a way that will earn public trust.”
The decision to stop all driverless operations is a major setback for Cruise, which was expanding from limited services in San Francisco and Phoenix. The company also had plans to test its driverless vehicles in Nashville and Seattle.
On Tuesday, California’s Department of Motor Vehicles suspended Cruise’s license to test and operate the company’s driverless fleet in the state, citing an Oct. 2 incident in which a Cruise vehicle dragged a San Francisco pedestrian for 20 feet after a collision.
In an initial meeting with Cruise after the October crash, the D.M.V. said, the company showed footage from the car’s cameras that ended with the driverless vehicle coming to a complete stop after hitting the pedestrian, who was first hit by another car.
D.M.V. officials later learned through “discussion with another government agency” that the pedestrian had also been dragged, according to a suspension order sent to Cruise.
In a statement, Cruise said it had shown the agency “the complete video multiple times.”
In August, California’s D.M.V. told Cruise to reduce its fleet by half while the agency investigated a string of other incidents involving the company’s driverless cars in San Francisco, including a collision with a fire truck.
The California Public Utilities Commission, which greenlighted an expansion of Cruise robot taxi service in San Francisco in August, also suspended its permit for the service on Tuesday.
Source: The Newyork Times
