Autonomous-vehicle company Cruise confirmed Thursday that the U.S. Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are among agencies that have opened investigations into an October crash that critically injured a pedestrian in San Francisco.
In a blog post, Cruise, the self-driving unit of General Motors Co.
GM,
released results of an independent investigation into the Oct. 3 incident, in which a Cruise driverless car hit a pedestrian who had already been struck by another car. After briefly stopping, the Cruise vehicle pulled to the side of the road, dragging the victim beneath it for about 20 feet — a detail which was not immediately relayed to authorities investigating the crash.
In the aftermath of the crash, California regulators revoked Cruise’s license to operate in San Francisco, accusing the company of not being forthcoming enough, and Cruise later suspended all operations of its driverless cars. Cruise co-founder and Chief Executive Kyle Vogt resigned in November, and in December nine “key leaders” were dismissed as the company said it would lay off about 24% of its workforce.
The investigation by the law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan found that Cruise did not intentionally mislead regulators, but cited “numerous” failings including poor leadership, mistakes in judgment and an “us vs. them” mentality with regulators.
The report said Cruise’s leadership appeared “not to have fully appreciated how a regulated business should interact with its regulators,” calling it a “a fundamentally flawed approach” and saying its regulatory suspension was “a proverbial self-inflicted wound.”
In a statement Thursday, Cruise said it accepted the findings and admitted falling short of expectations, both internally and externally. Cruise said it was cooperating with multiple investigations into the incident, including previously announced probes by the California Department of Motor Vehicles, the California Public Utilities Commission and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and disclosed for the first time that the Justice Department and SEC were also looking into the matter.
An investigation into the technical root cause of the incident found, among other things, that after hitting the pedestrian, the Cruise vehicle incorrectly classified it as a side-impact collision, which prompted it to pull over.
The company said it is working to restore the public’s trust and has already made a number of safety and accountability changes.
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