An individual claiming to be a present Cruise worker raised considerations with California regulators concerning the self-driving tech firm’s security tradition and readiness to start industrial operations in San Francisco.

The letter arrived on the California Public Utilities Fee’s inbox for whistleblowers Could 19, two weeks earlier than the regulators cleared Cruise’s robotaxis for these industrial providers.

The alleged whistleblower described circumstances “indicative of a really chaotic setting” by which at the very least one documented security concern went unaddressed for months. The particular person additional mentioned data from site visitors crashes involving the corporate’s automobiles was hidden from staff who labored on important security techniques.

Primarily based on these experiences, clusters of automobiles getting caught at intersections and discussions with fellow staff, the particular person wrote, “staff typically don’t imagine we’re able to launch to the general public, however there’s concern of admitting this due to expectations from management and traders.”

Cruise is majority owned by Common Motors.

A spokesperson for the fee mentioned the company is “wanting into the considerations raised within the letter,” although didn’t say whether or not commissioners have been conscious of its existence once they voted on June 2 to approve Cruise’s utility to start industrial service.

Nor did the company say whether or not it had verified that the nameless letter was, in actual fact, from a Cruise worker. The particular person had written that they may help in verifying employment standing and id. Automotive Information reached out to the nameless author, however they didn’t return a request for remark.

The California Public Utilities Fee’s evaluation was first reported Thursday by The Wall Road Journal.

Cruise says the corporate has a clear relationship with each the fee and different regulatory our bodies and that its executives meet with regulatory representatives on a frequent and ongoing foundation.

“Our security document is tracked, reported and printed by a number of authorities companies,” mentioned Drew Pusateri, a Cruise spokesperson. “We’re happy with it and it speaks for itself.”

Information of the letter’s existence comes amid a spate of incidents involving Cruise robotaxis working in San Francisco.

In April, a San Francisco police officer pulled over a Cruise automobile as a result of it drove at night time with out its headlights on. Then the automobile repositioned itself earlier than the site visitors cease was full. Later that month, a Cruise automobile blocked the trail of a San Francisco Hearth Division truck en path to a blaze, slowing its response to a hearth that resulted in accidents.

In June, one of many firm’s robotaxis was concerned in a crash that resulted in accidents, prompting an investigation from federal security regulators. On June 28, a number of Cruise automobiles clustered at an intersection and blocked site visitors till they have been eliminated by staff.

Within the letter, the alleged whistleblower mentioned these clustering incidents, recognized internally as Automobile Retrieval Occasions or VREs, occur with regularity.

The particular person wrote that they’ve direct data of those incidents and that, whereas generally they are often solved with distant help, “there have been some instances the place fallback techniques have additionally failed and it was not doable to remotely maneuver the automobile exterior of the lanes they have been blocking till they have been bodily towed from their location to a facility.”

Past these incidents, the particular person wrote {that a} documented security concern went unaddressed for six months, suggesting {that a} course of they thought would take days to deal with as a substitute “would stay in triage indefinitely.”

That firsthand expertise stood in distinction to aspirational security objectives set by Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt, who the nameless letter author mentioned inspired staff to share safety-related considerations. Indicators posted all through the corporate’s workplace additional inspired staff to make use of inner processes for relaying issues of safety.

The particular person wrote that they believed the corporate’s method was not “per a safety-first tradition.”

Pusateri, the Cruise spokesperson, mentioned 94 % of respondents agreed with the assertion that “Security is a high precedence right here” in an April inner survey of greater than 2,000 Cruise staff.