The Cruise circus has a new Ringmaster.
The Cruise Board held a regularly scheduled quarterly meeting at Cruise headquarters in San Francisco last week. It was the first one coming after the ongoing controversy about accidents caused by or including the operation of its autonomous vehicles on San Francisco Streets, which potentially has serious product liability implications now and in the future. (AutoInformed: Circus Time – Cruise AV Collision with San Francisco Fire Truck; GM, Cruise, Honda – 2026 Autonomous Ridehail in Japan)
“As we posted in our blog last week, we have initiated workstreams in four key areas to identify potential improvements to how we operate,” Cruise said. “We are pleased that Craig Glidden, GM’s Executive Vice President of Legal and Policy and Cruise board member, will be expanding his support of Cruise and working closely with Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt and the Cruise Senior Leadership Team to oversee the workstreams around Transparency and Community Engagement.”
Uhm. Cruise’s Legal & Policy, Communications, and Finance teams now report directly to Glidden. Glidden becomes the Chief Administrative Officer for Cruise. “He will continue in his current role at GM. Cruise will benefit from leveraging Craig and GM’s experience and best practices when it comes to transparency and engagement around safety,” Cruise said.
Well, it seems that the discovery that Cruise altered released accident footage to eliminate one of its accident vehicles dragging a pedestrian with it as it continued to run (drive away?) has moved the normally buttoned-down GM safety culture and it people to the verge of, well, annoyance. So send in the lawyers to monitor the California clowns starting with Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt.
“In addition, the Cruise Board will retain a third-party safety expert in the coming weeks to perform a full assessment of Cruise’s safety operations and culture. These independent findings will help further guide and inform the work we have initiated,” Cruise said.
Cruise previously hired the independent, third-party engineering consulting firm, Exponent, to conduct a technical root cause analysis of the 2 October incident. That work is ongoing, and the Board plans to expand Exponent’s responsibility to include a comprehensive review of Cruise safety systems and technology.
On 26 October Cruise announced a pause of all driverless operations while it “reviews processes, systems, and tools to improve how we operate. In the coming days, we are also pausing our supervised and manual AV operations in the U.S., affecting roughly 70 vehicles. This orderly pause is a further step to rebuild public trust while we undergo a full safety review. We will continue to operate our vehicles in closed course training environments and maintain an active simulation program in order to stay focused on advancing AV technology.”
Parting thought: AutoInformed wonders how long Honda will stay linked with Cruise of GM for that matter???
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New Circus Ringmaster at Cruise Autonomous Vehicles
The Cruise circus has a new Ringmaster.
The Cruise Board held a regularly scheduled quarterly meeting at Cruise headquarters in San Francisco last week. It was the first one coming after the ongoing controversy about accidents caused by or including the operation of its autonomous vehicles on San Francisco Streets, which potentially has serious product liability implications now and in the future. (AutoInformed: Circus Time – Cruise AV Collision with San Francisco Fire Truck; GM, Cruise, Honda – 2026 Autonomous Ridehail in Japan)
“As we posted in our blog last week, we have initiated workstreams in four key areas to identify potential improvements to how we operate,” Cruise said. “We are pleased that Craig Glidden, GM’s Executive Vice President of Legal and Policy and Cruise board member, will be expanding his support of Cruise and working closely with Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt and the Cruise Senior Leadership Team to oversee the workstreams around Transparency and Community Engagement.”
Uhm. Cruise’s Legal & Policy, Communications, and Finance teams now report directly to Glidden. Glidden becomes the Chief Administrative Officer for Cruise. “He will continue in his current role at GM. Cruise will benefit from leveraging Craig and GM’s experience and best practices when it comes to transparency and engagement around safety,” Cruise said.
Well, it seems that the discovery that Cruise altered released accident footage to eliminate one of its accident vehicles dragging a pedestrian with it as it continued to run (drive away?) has moved the normally buttoned-down GM safety culture and it people to the verge of, well, annoyance. So send in the lawyers to monitor the California clowns starting with Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt.
“In addition, the Cruise Board will retain a third-party safety expert in the coming weeks to perform a full assessment of Cruise’s safety operations and culture. These independent findings will help further guide and inform the work we have initiated,” Cruise said.
Cruise previously hired the independent, third-party engineering consulting firm, Exponent, to conduct a technical root cause analysis of the 2 October incident. That work is ongoing, and the Board plans to expand Exponent’s responsibility to include a comprehensive review of Cruise safety systems and technology.
On 26 October Cruise announced a pause of all driverless operations while it “reviews processes, systems, and tools to improve how we operate. In the coming days, we are also pausing our supervised and manual AV operations in the U.S., affecting roughly 70 vehicles. This orderly pause is a further step to rebuild public trust while we undergo a full safety review. We will continue to operate our vehicles in closed course training environments and maintain an active simulation program in order to stay focused on advancing AV technology.”
Parting thought: AutoInformed wonders how long Honda will stay linked with Cruise of GM for that matter???
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