After a Cruise self-driving vehicle hit and dragged a pedestrian in October, the General Motors (GM) subsidiary has offered to pay $75,000 to help resolve an ongoing investigation from California regulators.
Last month, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) mandated that Cruise must appear at a hearing next month, after claiming that the company had omitted details and misrepresented its own response to the accident. In a filing on Friday, Cruise made the settlement offering to resolve the investigation, adding that it would complete and publicize its own internal investigation on the team’s response by the hearing with the help of legal firm Quinn Emanuel (via Automotive News).
In the filing, Cruise said that it “is committed to undertaking significant process improvements with respect to its interactions with regulators” adding that its also “committed to increased transparency, cooperation, and rebuilding regulatory trust with the commission.”
In addition, Cruise said in the filing that it would increase its collision reporting efforts to the commission as a piece of the settlement.
Cruise must appear at a hearing set for February 6 by the CPUC, following the regulator’s claims that an official from the company left out critical details about the October 2 accident in a conversation the day after the crash.
Specifically, the regulator said the official “omitted that the Cruise AV had engaged in the pullover maneuver which resulted in the pedestrian being dragged an additional 20 feet at 7 mph.”
Following the accident, the state of California immediately revoked Cruise’s permit to operate driverless vehicles, and the company has since been faced with joint investigations from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
Additionally, Cruise recalled around 950 of its driverless vehicles, and the founder and CEO, along with another founding executive, resigned from the GM self-driving unit. GM has halted production of its Origin self-driving van, and last month, Cruise announced that it would be laying off nearly a quarter of its staff.
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