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Driverless taxi technology still needs to be perfected. Author |Mingcheng.
Edit |Zhihao's recognition algorithm made serious mistakes, concealed the facts of the accident many times, and the three-party investigation revealed the secret of the cruise robotaxi injury accident! Chexi reported on January 29 that on the 25th local time, Cruise, an autonomous driving subsidiary of General Motors, announced a tripartite investigation report on its Robotaxi injury accident in October last year. According to the report, the accident can be largely attributed to an error in Cruise's Robotaxi recognition algorithm. Robotaxi failed to detect and identify the pedestrian who had fallen to the ground, resulting in the vehicle continuing to drive without emergency braking after hitting the pedestrian, causing the pedestrian to be dragged to serious injury. Forbes' report notes that a significant portion of the reports given by Cruise may have been edited. This suggests that the interpretation of the accident based on current information may be incomplete. 
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forbes reports.
At the same time, Cruise's response to the accident was also very "bad", and the report mentioned that Cruise may have concealed the facts from regulators and the public, such as deliberately creating network disruptions and concealing key details of the accident when presenting evidence online to regulators. Although after the release of the report, Cruise said it would adopt "all the recommendations" in the report, including reforming the leadership and ensuring accountability and transparency. However, the injury accident itself and the attitude of the cruise have undoubtedly exacerbated the public's distrust of the company and autonomous driving, which is not conducive to the development of the autonomous driving industry. To review the whole incident, on October 2, 2023, a pedestrian in San Francisco, USA, was hit by an escape vehicle, and then fell in front of a Cruise's Robotaxi and was run over and dragged more than 6 meters away. The pedestrian was then taken to the hospital** and survived. 
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Accident scene**.
The serious injury accident partly led to the suspension of Cruise's Robotaxi business, the departure of the co-founder and CEO, and the investigation of the company by two U.S. federal agencies. Although nearly 4 months have passed, the truth does not seem to be clear, and I hope that the truth of the accident can be clarified as soon as possible to remove the haze of trust for the development of the autonomous driving industry. Benefits of this article: The accident investigation of GM's autonomous driving subsidiary is released, and the original report is obtained by replying to [Che Xi 0591]. 01.Serious errors in the identification algorithm After the accident that aggravated the pedestrian injury, Cruise officials hired the law firm Quinn Emanuel to investigate the accident and issue a three-party report. The report pointed out the core problem of the accident - a serious failure in the recognition algorithm. The exponent portion of the report mentions that before the accident, the pedestrian was struck by another vehicle in the adjacent lane and thrown into the lane where the Cruise's Robotaxi was traveling. The Robotaxi didn't see the accident happening, but it detected that another car had hit a person and slowed down slightly three-quarters of a second before hitting the pedestrian. 
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Robotaxi travel speed map.
However, after that, Cruise's Robotaxi could not recognize pedestrians. The report mentions that after the pedestrian fell, most of her body, except for her legs, was out of the detection range of the lidar. However, the pedestrian's feet and calves can be seen in the vehicle's left-hand wide-angle camera from the time of the impact to the final stop, and the Robotaxi fails to recognize the pedestrian's legs, resulting in a side-impact accident rather than a frontal impact. As a result, the vehicle made the decision to continue driving to find an opportunity to pull over, and then the vehicle dragged the pedestrian under the vehicle at a rate of 77 miles (12.)4 km/h) before the vehicle came to a stop. Exponet mentions in the report that the robotaxi's revolver ran over pedestrians before coming to a stop. At the time of the accident, there were no problems with the vehicle's sensors or other aspects. The report also pointed out that the vehicle should have stopped immediately in the driving lane (because the right is a bicycle lane), but the street map of Cruise was incorrect, identifying the bicycle lane on the right as a motorized lane, and the bicycle lane was separated from the motorized lane by a white railing, causing the Robotaxi to make the decision to exit the white railing area and pull over, which aggravated the injury to pedestrians. From this accident report, it can be concluded that the root cause of the accident was a serious error in the recognition algorithm of Cruse's RoboXaxi, which failed to correctly identify pedestrians and made wrong decisions, which aggravated the damage to pedestrians. 02.Patching the Smart Driving Software Adopting Report Recommendations In the face of the accusations in the Quinn Emanuel report, Cruise admitted the flaws in the recognition algorithm, saying in a blog post on Thursday (25th local time) that they have updated RoboXis' software to fundamentally solve the problem of not being able to correctly identify pedestrians. In addition, Cruise said it had "failed to meet the reasonable expectations of regulators" and intended to act on "all recommendations" in the Quinn Emanuel report. This includes reforming leadership to ensure accountability and transparency. Since the accident, Cruise has made a partial change in leadership. After CEO Kyle Vogt announced his departure in December last year, Bloomberg reported that Cruise also fired nine senior executives, including chief operating officer Gil West and the head of the legal and ** affairs department. It can be said that almost all of Cruise's top management has been laid off. The recommendations in the Quinn Emanuel report also include the establishment of an interdisciplinary regulatory team to ensure transparency in reporting and interactions, training leadership on regulatory requirements, revising incident response protocols, improving cross-team functions, and implementing report approvals through designated internal teams and lawyers. Perhaps, in the future, we will see Cruise change in these areas. 03.Negative response to the accident concealed some of the facts, however, Forbes' report pointed out that a significant part of the report given by Cruise may have been redacted. This suggests that the interpretation of the accident based on current information may be incomplete. Not only did Cruise conceal the fact of the accident in the report, but it had also concealed the accident from the public and regulators on several previous occasions. Quinn Emanuel's report, in addition to revealing the truth about the accident, also reveals how Cruise reacted in the face of the accident. The report mentions that Cruise may have deliberately misled**, the California Department of Motor Vehicles and the California State Highway Patrol. The company initially withheld some of the key details of the accident and did not disclose key details. These are supposed to show the scene of the crash, the skiding of vehicles, and the process of pedestrians being towed. 
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Foreign media Insideev reports.
And, the original report reads: "At the first meeting held on October 3, with the exception of one meeting, the transmission was affected by network connectivity issues, which made it impossible or possible for regulators to see the entire incident in its entirety and clearly." "The California Public Utilities Commission, which is open to 24/7 driverless operations in California, issued a "Reason Explanation Order" to Cruise in December 2023, ordering Cruise to appear in court in February this year, and the original text of the order mentions that Cruise initially concealed the fact that pedestrians were crushed under the vehicle during the coasting process. and did not provide any ** footage of the collision to the California Public Utilities Commission. This confirms from the side the fact that Cruise has repeatedly concealed the accident. In addition, the report slammed Cruise for allowing executives to protect the company's reputation in interviews rather than giving a full and transparent account of the incident. And Cruise does always emphasize in public outreach that the human driver hits the pedestrian first, avoiding the important information of the Robotaxi accident itself. In particular, the report points the finger at Cruise's senior leaders, pointing out that their work is disjointed, that they have "insufficient leadership" and that they do not understand the importance of transparency. The report also points to a lack of accountability in companies. 04.Conclusion: Although it is not too late to make amends, the injury accident itself and the negative attitude of cruise in response to the accident review have greatly affected the public's trust in Robotaxi and are not conducive to the future development of the autonomous driving industry. I hope that the truth of the accident will be investigated and clarified as soon as possible and made public. Open and transparent information can clarify the cause of the accident, promote the improvement of autonomous driving technology, and dispel the haze of mistrust for the development of the autonomous driving industry.