A woman who was struck and dragged about 20 feet by an autonomous Cruise vehicle last year has reportedly been awarded a settlement of $8 million to $12 million from parent company General Motors.
News of the settlement comes from Fortunewhich says it independently verified the details after being told of the settlement by “someone with knowledge of the matter.” Bloomberg Law also reported on the settlementsaying it could not confirm the amount but that it was beleved to be between $8 million and $12 million.
The settlement was reportedly struck “earlier this year.”
The incident in question happened on the night of October 2, when a Cruise robotaxi struck a female pedestrian at the intersection of Fifth and Market streets. The woman had reportedly been knocked by another car into the path of the autonomous vehicle, and the Cruise car, instead of coming to a halt, attempted to pull over to the side of the street — all the while dragging the woman underneath the car. The autonomous vehicle then came to a stop on top of the woman’s leg as she screamed in pain, and put its hazard lights on.
The victim was hospitalized with injuries and survived the ordeal, and she has never been publicly identified.
Within weeks of the incident, Cruise was under investigation by federal regulators, and saw its operating permit suspended by the California DMV. Cruise then recalled all of its vehicles, CEO Kyle Vogt resigned, the company was accused of withholding evidence in the case, and most of its executives were axed as GM cut the company’s budget by $1 billion.
Cruise commissioned an independent report on the incident and the company’s subsequent handling of it that was released in January, after which the company issued a mea culpa that said, “We acknowledge that we have failed to live up to the justifiable expectations of regulators and the communities we serve,” and “We are profoundly remorseful both for the injuries to the pedestrian, as well as for breaching the trust of our regulators, the media, and the public.”
The company has been looking to move on from this incident, and the settlement with the victim is one further step in that process. As of last month, we learned that Cruise was starting the process of getting its permits reinstated by the California DMV — so we may not have seen the last of those orange and white robocars, after all.
Meanwhile, we learned this week that the same federal regulatory agency that investigated Cruise last year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), is investigating competitors Waymo and Zoox, because it seems that all autonomous vehicles have had mishaps of one kind or another. Cruise, though, is the only one that struck and dragged a pedestrian 20 feet.
