Analysis reveals how GM's Cruise robotaxi struck and dragged pedestrian 20 feet
A series of technical failures were the cause of an October 2, 2023 accident in San Francisco where a woman was struck and dragged by a Cruise robotaxi, a report reveals.
A series of technical failures were to blame for the October accident in which a woman was struck and dragged by a Cruise robotaxi, an analysis commissioned by General Motors showed on Thursday.
A failure to detect the woman's location, inaccurate detection of what part of the car hit the woman and an error about where the car itself was led the vehicle to continue after hitting the woman instead of making an emergency stop, according to the report by engineering consultancy Exponent.
The San Francisco woman, who was dragged 20 feet by the rogue driver-less vehicle, suffered injuries but survived.
GM shut down Cruise's robotaxi operations amid an ongoing safety probe in the aftermath of the accident. The incident was a major setback for the entire autonomous vehicle industry and has prompted an investigation by the Justice Department.
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The technical report by Exponent, part of a report from law firm Quinn Emanuel, provides a second-by-second account of how the accident unfolded and an in-depth look at the technical errors.
The accident happened after the woman was struck by another vehicle in an adjacent lane, one car length ahead, and thrown into the path of the Cruise autonomous vehicle.
The Cruise robotaxi could not have predicted the accident, the report said. Its sensors detected that the other car hit the pedestrian and marginally slowed down a fraction of a second before it hit the woman itself.
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She then fell out of view of the robotaxi's lidar object detection sensor. The Cruise car's left wheel ran over her before it came to a halt, Exponent said.
The Cruise vehicle mistook the hit for a side collision instead of a frontal impact. Instead of making an emergency stop in place, the robotaxi moved ahead for about 20 feet at 7.7 miles per hour, dragging the pedestrian underneath, in order to pull over to the curb for safety.
The car also suffered from a location error and failed to identify that it was already in the lane next to the curb, according to the review.
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The woman's feet and lower legs were visible in the wide-angle left-side camera from the time of impact to the final stop, but even though her legs were briefly detected, the Cruise robotaxi did not classify or track the woman, Exponent said.
The report added there were no issues with the robotaxi's sensors or vehicle maintenance.
Cruise announced in a blog post Thursday that it had updated its software to correct the underlying issues.
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The report emphasized that a human driver would have performed better.
"After the AV contacted the pedestrian, an alert and attentive human driver would be aware that an impact of some sort had occurred and would not have continued driving without further investigating the situation," Exponent said.
Reuters contributed to this report.