Tag Archives: safety

It’s not just you: American cars have gotten bigger. Over the past two decades, growing numbers of US buyers have turned in their sedans for SUVs and pickup trucks. And those SUVs and pickups have grown ever more hulking. The electrification of driving isn’t slowing the growth spurt. Batteries are …

Tesla is recalling more than 2 million vehicles, nearly all of the vehicles it has sold in the US to date, to fix a flawed system designed to make sure drivers are paying attention when they use Autopilot. Rather than physically recalling vehicles, documents posted today by the US National …

In August 2016, WIRED visited the San Francisco offices of a young startup recently snapped up by a surprising buyer. General Motors acquired three-year-old Cruise for a reported $1 billion in hopes the straitlaced Detroit automaker could coopt the self-driving technology tipped to disrupt the auto industry. Cruise CEO Kyle …

Cruise, the self-driving arm of General Motors, said late today it had halted its robotaxi service across the US and would no longer operate its vehicles without safety drivers behind the wheel. That decision to hit the brakes comes two days after California regulators suspended the driverless-car company’s permit in …

California has suspended driverless vehicles operated by the General Motors subsidiary Cruise in the city of San Francisco—just two months after the state began allowing the robotaxis to pick up paying passengers around the clock. The suspension stems from a gruesome incident on October 2 in which a human-driven vehicle …

Amazon is splashing out on new vehicle inspectors to watch for damage or wear to its vast fleet of delivery vans—and they’re not human. The retailer is installing camera-studded inspection stations equipped with artificial intelligence-powered technology called AVI, or automated vehicle inspection, at hundreds of its distribution centers worldwide. When …

Who owns the data created by cars: their owners, or the companies that built them? In 2020, Massachusetts voters overwhelmingly approved a law that began to answer that question. It required automakers selling cars in the state to build an “open data platform” that would allow owners and independent repair …

If you give a kid a smartphone, they’re going to want a social media account. That’s not the start of a storybook. The average age for a kid getting their first smartphone is 10.3. Within a year, a child has likely made four or five social media accounts; by the …

Take a walk around San Francisco this summer and you’ll see something curious: Jaguar SUVs and Chevrolet hatchbacks driving around with no one inside. The ghostly vehicles are owned and operated by Google spinoff Waymo and General Motors subsidiary Cruise. Soon there will likely be a lot more of them, …

From a young age, women learn to be on defense. We repeat mantras to ourselves and each other: Try not to go places alone. Don't leave drinks unattended. Check your car's back seats and lock your doors after getting in. We're told that doing such normal activities as living alone, …