Driverless car service suspends rides nationwide but will resume NC mapping

General Motors has halted its fleet of Cruise self-driving cars nationwide as safety concerns swirl around these autonomous vehicles.

Last week, the California Department of Motor Vehicles indefinitely revoked the license of the robotaxi service, citing “unreasonable risk to public safety.” A few days later, Cruise announced on X, formerly Twitter, that it would “proactively pause driverless operations across all of our fleets while we take time to examine our processes, systems, and tools and reflect on how we can better operate in a way that will earn public trust.”

The suspension comes two months after Cruise tested its vehicles in North Carolina’s two largest cities. In August, Cruise compact cars traversed Charlotte and Raleigh to do “initial testing/data collection” as the company seeks to expand beyond its existing commercial markets of Austin, Phoenix and San Francisco.

Data collection in both cities involved human drivers steering the vehicles.

The initial effort in Raleigh was “a first step in getting to know the city’s unique roadways and driving behaviors,” said Cruise spokesperson Anna Haase. Of its Charlotte efforts, the company said it was also “getting to know” that city’s roads and driving behaviors “before going driverless.”

Haase noted the company’s current pause won’t affect these types of supervised drives.

In fact, the day after suspending its self-driving fleet, Cruise informed the City of Charlotte it intended to resume collecting data around the city. In a memo sent to the Charlotte City Council on Monday, the company said it will use unbranded driver-led vehicles to map the city beginning early next week and continuing throughout November. Cruise used branded cars when mapping Charlotte over five days in August.

GM does not need the city’s permission to data test as its operations are regulated by the state.

A timeframe for implementing self-driving cars in Charlotte or Raleigh was vague even before the recent national suspension.

“Cruise didn’t share any feedback or information on how the testing/research went,” City of Raleigh spokesperson Julia Milstead said.

She noted the city believes Cruise tested in Raleigh for about a week.

“As far as next steps go, Cruise wants to meet with public safety and emergency service providers in the city,” Milstead wrote in an email. “Their vehicle has a unique design and they are looking for feedback on their design and services from the public safety entities.”

Haase added that Cruise doesn’t “have anything to share on timing at this point.”

In August, Durham Mayor Elaine O’Neal said a Cruise representative had informed her the company was interested in introducing its driverless vehicles to the Bull City as well.

“I never thought I’d see cars going down the streets of Durham, North Carolina, without a driver,” O’Neal said at an Aug. 23 GoTriangle board meeting. “But evidently that’s what’s going to happen fairly soon.”

No testing has been done in Durham, Haase said.

SF accident fuels concerns

Cruise cars are pretty easy to notice. They’re white, with the company name and red stripes on the sides, and are topped with cameras and other equipment that help guide them. Just below the back window is a warning: “May stop quickly.”

This summer, the company began to operate 24 hours a day across all of San Francisco, including making rides during busy daytime traffic. The expansion was followed by a series of high-profile accidents for Cruise, including a car that became stuck in wet concrete in a construction zone and another that hit a fire truck answering a call.

In August, Cruise reduced its fleet of robotaxis in San Francisco by half as the California DMV investigated these incidents. Then on Oct. 2, a driverless Cruise car hit a woman and dragged her 20 feet, the company acknowledged. The woman, who reportedly suffered serious injuries, had just been struck by a car with a driver behind the wheel when the Cruise vehicle encountered her.

Earlier this month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into the self-driving vehicle division following multiple reports of pedestrian injuries involving Cruise cars.

Last week, Cruise insisted its driverless rides pause was “not related to any new on-road incidents.”

Cruise contends its cars enhance road safety overall. More than 40,000 people are killed each year in car crashes in the United States, the company told The News & Observer in August, almost all of them due to human error. Cruise said its cars had routinely been completing more than 1,000 driverless trips with passengers every day.