General Motors is taking a more active role in shaping Cruise’s safety culture, following a series of accidents that prompted California regulators to suspend permits that allowed its self-driving car company to operate commercially in the state. The legacy automaker is bringing in one of its executives, who is also a member of Cruise’s board of directors, to head the self-driving car company’s legal, policy, communications and finance teams.
Craig Glidden, GM’s executive vice president of legal and policy and a member of Cruise’s board of directors, will serve as chief administrative officer of Cruise. Glidden will oversee workstreams related to transparency and community engagement, according to Cruz.
Cruise said it will also halt all supervised and manual self-driving vehicle operations in the United States, which the company says affects about 70 vehicles. Cruise had already temporarily halted all of its driverless operations in cities across the country, including Houston, Austin and Phoenix, in order to “rebuild public trust” after the October 2 event that left a pedestrian struck by a human. A driven vehicle was struck and towed by a Cruise auto-taxi for 20 feet.
“This orderly stop is another step to rebuild public confidence while we undergo a full safety review,” said A Blog post From the company announcing the changes.
In early November, Cruise hired consulting firm Exponent To conduct a technical analysis of the root causes of the October 2 incident. The company said on Tuesday that its terms of reference will expand to include a comprehensive review of all Cruise safety systems and technology.
The Cruise Board also said it will hire an outside safety expert in the coming weeks to conduct a full assessment of the company’s safety operations and culture. The steps follow in the footsteps of other autonomous vehicle companies, including those that have faced scrutiny over safety practices. Uber ATG, the ride-hailing company’s former self-driving vehicle unit, has hired former National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Christopher Hart to advise the company on its safety culture following a fatal May 2018 self-driving car crash in Arizona.
External Safety Expert In addition to last week’s announcement, Cruise will appoint a chief safety officer to report directly to Vogt. Other AV companies like Aurora have hired chief safety officers. Cruz did not respond in time to confirm whether the company had an executive dedicated to overseeing safety at the company previously.
Poll it blind, an anonymous forum for certified employees, conducted for TechCrunch, found that half of Cruise employees are either not at all confident (32%) or slightly confident (18%) in Cruise’s safety culture. More than three-quarters of Cruise’s 136 employees surveyed Nov. 7-8 said they thought Cruise was trying to expand too quickly.
The changes come a day after Cruise and GM held a board meeting to discuss the embattled AV company’s next steps. CEO Kyle Vogt had warned employees last week that layoffs were coming, and then the company began laying off contract workers.