Here’s what happened at Cruise after the pedestrian-dragging incident
An independent investigation that probes the madness that ensued at Cruise after one of its robotaxis dragged a pedestrian 20 feet in San Francisco last October has been released. In it, you’ll find everything from blaming it on the internet to hush-hush culture to what went wrong with the automated vehicle itself.
A new analysis from General Motors’ own investigation team, released yesterday and first reported by Automotive News, found that after the incident, Cruise says it tried to send a full 45-second video to regulators. In the full video, the pedestrian was shown being dragged, but only part of the video was sent due to “internet connectivity issues,” according to a report from law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan.
The law firm, hired by GM, which owns Cruise, has been investigating whether or not its executives misled regulators after the October 2nd incident. The investigators reviewed more than 205,000 documents, emails, and Slack communication from staff, as well as interviewed 88 current and former employees in their research.
According to the law firm, Cruise staff attempted on three separate times to send the full video, but during all three of these separate meetings, “internet connectivity issues likely precluded or hampered them from seeing the Full Video clearly and fully,” the report stated. Yet, no one pointed out that the video was missing crucial bits either.
The fallout happened after a pedestrian in San Francisco was first struck by a hit-and-run vehicle, then flung into the path of a Cruise robotaxi, which then dragged her 20 feet. The unlucky pedestrian, an unidentified woman, was injured but survived.
The report, which is nearly 200 pages, states that Cruise is also being investigated by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
For the vehicle itself, apparently it failed to detect the woman’s location, or what part of the car hit her, and the car inaccurately read its own location after striking the woman, so drove on rather than making an emergency stop, according to a report by engineering consultancy Exponent.
From the report in Automotive News:
Mistaking the hit as a side-collision instead of a frontal impact, it moved ahead for about 20 feet at 7.7 miles per hour (12.4 km per hour), dragging the pedestrian underneath, pursuing the prescribed goal of pulling over to the curb, for safety.
In fact, the car was already in the lane next to the curb, but it did not know that because of a location error, the review found.
The pedestrian’s feet and lower legs were visible in the wide-angle left side camera from the time of impact to the final stop, but despite briefly detecting the legs, neither the pedestrian nor her legs were classified or tracked by the vehicle, Exponent said.
Right after the incident, more than 100 Cruise employees were aware of the full scope of the incident prior to the meeting the next day with the San Francisco mayor’s office, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Department of Motor Vehicles, and other officials. Still, even then, Cruise left out the pedestrian-being-dragged part, just “letting the video speak for itself.”
Hours after the accident, apparently, too, some Cruise employees didn’t know that the pedestrian had been dragged, but issued a press statement and shared an early video with the media, The Verge writes. Soon after becoming aware of what happened, Cruise didn’t update its statement, apparently just wishing it would all go away, unnoticed.
Interestingly too, as The Verge pointed out, the report reveals an antagonistic culture within the company regarding regulators, with Cruise employees saying that it “observed too much of an ‘us versus them’ attitude… which is not indicative of a healthy, mutually productive relationship,” says the investigators’ report.
GM has already been hemorrhaging money from its big bet on Cruise, having lost $1.9 billion on Cruise expenses between January and September last year, in addition to a $732 million loss in the third quarter.
California’s Department of Motor Vehicles quickly pulled Cruise’s operating permit after the incident, with Cruise voluntarily pausing all of its operations nationwide soon thereafter.
Meanwhile, a federal probe and independent investigations also dug up internal documents, which detailed pretty awful details about the vehicle’s algorithm – such as it had trouble identifying children, which wasn’t a secret to company staff.
CEO and founder Kyle Vogt called it quits on November 19, followed by a mass layoff of 900 employees as well as nine top execs.
Cruise is facing a potential $1.5 million in fines and additional sanctions over its failure to disclose details about the accident.
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Environment
U.S. Steel shares rally as Trump approves Nippon takeover with unique government ‘golden share’
Trails of Iranian ballistic missiles light up the night sky as seen from Gaza City during renewed missile strikes launched by Iran in retaliation against Israel on June 15, 2025.
Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images
Tehran will “pay the price” for its fresh missile onslaught against Israel, the Jewish state’s defense minister warned Monday, as markets braced for a fourth day of ramped-up conflict between the regional powers.
Fire exchanges have continued since Israel’s Friday attack against Iran, with Iranian media reporting Tehran’s latest strikes hit Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa, home to a major refinery. CNBC has reached out to operator Bazan for comment on the state of operations at the Haifa plant, amid reports of damage to Israel’s energy infrastructure.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said overnight it deployed “innovative methods” that “disrupted the enemy’s multi-layered defense systems, to the point that the Zionist air defense systems engaged in targeting each other,” according to a statement obtained by NBC News.
Israel has widely depended on its highly efficient Iron Dome missile defense system to fend off attacks throughout regional conflicts — but even it can be overwhelmed if a large number of projectiles are fired.
The fresh hostilities are front-of-mind for investors, who have been weighing the odds of further escalation in the conflict and spillover into the broader oil-rich Middle East, amid concerns over crude supplies and the key shipping lane through the Strait of Hormuz connecting the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.
Oil prices retained the gains of recent days and at 09:19 a.m. London time, Ice Brent futures with August delivery were trading at $73.81 per barrel, down 0.57% from the previous trading session. The Nymex WTI contract with July expiry was at $72.7 per barrel, 0.38% lower.
Elsewhere, however, markets showed initial signs of shrugging off the latest hostilities early on Monday.
Spot prices for key safe-haven asset gold retreated early morning, down 0.42% to $3,417.83 per ounce after nearly notching a two-year-high earlier in the session, with U.S. gold futures also down 0.65% to $ 3,430.5
Tel Aviv share indices pointed higher, with the blue-chip TA-35 up 0.99% and the wider TA-125 up 1.33%.
European stock markets opened higher Monday, meanwhile, and U.S. stock futures were also in the green.
Luis Costa, global head of EM sovereign credit at Citigroup Global Markets, signaled the muted reaction could be, in part, attributed to hopes of a brisk resolution to the conflict.
“So markets are obviously, you know, bearing in mind all potential scenarios. There are obviously potentially very bad scenarios in this story,” he told CNBC’s “Europe Early Edition” on Monday. “But there is still a way out in terms of, you know, a faster resolution and bringing Iran to the table, or a short continuation here, of a very surgical and intense strike by the Israeli army.”
U.S. response in focus
As of Monday morning, Israel’s national emergency service Magen David Adom reported four dead and 87 injured following rocket strikes at four sites in “central Israel,” reporting collapsed buildings, fire and people trapped under debris.
Accusing Tehran of targeting civilians in Israel to prevent the Israel Defense Forces from “continuing the attack that is collapsing its capabilities,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, a close longtime ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said in a Google-translated social media update that “the residents of Tehran will pay the price, and soon.”
The IDF on Sunday said it had in turn “completed a wide-scale wave of strikes on numerous weapon production sites belonging to the Quds Force, the IRGC and the Iranian military, in Tehran.”
CNBC could not independently verify developments on the ground.
The U.S.’ response is now in focus, given its close support and arms provision to Israel, the unexpected cancellation of Washington’s latest nuclear deal talks with Iran, and President Donald Trump’s historically hard-hitting stance against Tehran during his first term.
Trump, who has been pushing Iran for a deal over its nuclear program, has weighed in on the conflict, opposing an Israeli proposal to kill Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to NBC News.
Discussions about the conflict are expected to take place during the ongoing meeting of the G7, encapsulating Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the U.K. and the U.S., along with the European Union.
— CNBC’s Katrina Bishop contributed to this report.
A Tesla Model 3 got stuck on a train track and was hit, albeit slightly, by a train in Sinking Spring, PA. The driver claimed it was in “self-driving mode.”
According to the fire alerts in Berks County, a Tesla Model 3 drove around a train track barrier near South Hull Street and Columbia Avenue and got stuck in the tracks.
The driver was able to exit the vehicle, but a train hit the car, reportedly snapping off the side mirror.
The fire commissioner ordered to stop all train traffic as the emergency services worked to get the Model 3 off the tracks using a crane.
Spitlers Garage & Towing, performed the recovery and shared a few pictures on Facebook:
The Tesla driver reportedly claimed that the vehicle was in “self-driving mode” leading up to getting stuck on the train tracks.
Tesla claims that all its vehicles built since 2016 will be capable of unsupervised self-driving with software updates; however, this has yet to occur.
Instead, Tesla has been selling a “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) package for up to $15,000 that requires the driver to constantly supervise the vehicle, with the driver remaining responsible for the car at all times.
Electrek’s Take
There have been instances of Tesla drivers engaging in reckless behavior and then attributing it to the Full Self-Driving (FSD) features.
I’m not saying it’s the case here, but it’s a possibility.
On the other side, I’ve seen FSD try to navigate around construction barriers. It’s possible that it tried to do that in this case, here and then got caught on the tracks.
We would need more data.
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